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Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy

Started by Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse, August 22, 2021, 03:18:05 PM

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Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse

Anybody else watch this, or am I the only sad bitch desperately hearkening back to her childhood to try and block out The Horror?

All three seasons (Siege, Earthrise and Kingdom) are up on Netflix, where I stumbled across it in my suggestions. Being a fan of the original 80s cartoon and having crafted my very own Transformers T-shirt for the 2007 movie, I had to check it out. It's based on/a retelling of the backstory to the 80s cartoon - the war between the Autobots and Decepticons which leaves Cybertron a burned-out shell, the exodus of the Autobots and Decepticons and their crash-landing on earth - and Transformers: Beast Wars. Here's a list of my pros and cons after my first watch-through:

Pros
Relevant themes ("Kill the centrist coward second, at least the Autobot stands for something"; race purist Starscream;
Spoiler alert
stop fighting about stupid shit, there's an existential threat to your entire planet looming
[close]
)

The voice actors for Optimus Prime, Megatron and Starscream are decent soundalikes for the original G1 VAs

Optimus Prime/Elita One

Optimus Prime is just as recklessly brave as he is in the G1 cartoon

Lesbian transformer

Unintentional hilarity when Ultra Magnus dons a cloak as a disguise even though it doesn't hide his huge shoulder-struts

Lots of war-weariness and soul-searching of the "I thought I knew why I joined up with Megatron but now I can't remember and I don't know if it was worth it" kind

Starscream being Starscream

Jetfire

Female Autobots

Shockwave deleted his emotions to be a better warrior

Morally conflicted Megatron (at least, for a few astroseconds)

Don't have to have watched any other Transformers media to understand it, any relevant lore is explained

Ending leaves things open for a sequel

Cons
It's implied that the war started because Megatron and the other Decepticons wouldn't be patient and wait for a political solution to their oppression

Optimus Prime and Megatron both speak very slowly as if their batteries are running down, which I guess hints at war weariness but also gets frustrating after a while, like spit it out for fuck's sake

Elita One can't make up her mind or take a stand on anything till the second season, which makes her look contrary at best and badly written at worst

Optimus Prime spends 2/3rds of the series moping about the stupid reckless thing he did in the first 1/3rd of the series and forgets that
Spoiler alert
he did it because Megatron was going to genocide everybody
[close]

Evil lesbian transformer

Not a lot of laughs in general, it's Very Serious Business

Most of the rank and file Decepticons have the same design as each other. You can explain it away as them being built to be either ground infantry or air force but it's hard not to read it as a way to make the show easier to animate

Only six episodes per season make it difficult to care when characters get killed off because we just don't get enough time with them. Or maybe the ongoing pandemic has just hollowed me out from the inside.

---

When I see that there's a new incarnation/adaptation of an intellectual property from my childhood, I always hope that it'll be a bit more grown-up in its themes and subject matter. Especially Transformers, the original of which had Good Robots and Bad Robots and the Good Robot Leader turned into a truck and was red white and blue like AMERICA, and the Bad Robot Leader turned into a Walther P-38 like HITLER would use. War for Cybertron is that. Some of the Decepticon characters defect, the leaders doubt themselves, nobody's really sure why the war started or if it's all been worth it, and I like that we don't get a flashback episode explaining all the backstory. Thank you, I don't need to be spoonfed, I can infer the backstory from what the characters say to each other.

I would watch more of it, if there was more, and I will be watching it again. I hope they do a sequel series, as the ending seemed to be setting one up.