Transformers Prime is more than Optimal

Transformers Prime has finished, well nearly finished. There's a movie coming out in a few months, but the series itself has wrapped up. Just live Star Trek tries to hit that magic Season 7, Transformers seems to have three seasons and a movie. It's weird that I only really started watching it a year ago, after some initial hesitation which had left me abandoning the show. When I wrote about it at that time I was only a few episodes into the first season and I was already starting to enjoy the new cartoon. Having now seen all three, I think it might just be the best Transformers show there has been. Ever.

One of my original complaints were the kids being in the driving seat. I've almost always been annoyed at the inclusion of humans, going all the way back to Spike. I've just never seen the point. They get in the way and annoy, and that's exactly how the three in Prime started. If we were getting another show about kids who just happened to be friends with giant robots I wasn't interested. Then it turns out they tend to be one of the shows biggest strengths.

Transfomers: From Cybertron's Fall to Prime

I am a huge Transformers nerd. It's one of my Big 4 childhood franchises, though I do tend to drift away from it. But every now and again something comes along that has me looking back to see what's on offer. Once again it's High Moon Studios that have got me to return to the war between the Autobots and Decepticons with Transformers: Fall of Cybertron.

Fall is awesome! That's quite an opening statement but I feel quite safe saying it. Its predecessor, War on Cybertron, was pretty damn good but something was slightly lacking. Looking back, while the three player co-op was fun it severely hamstrung the game at the same time. No robot stood apart from the rest, they all felt like one homogeneous whole. It's understandable, the person playing Bumblebee has to be just as capable as the one playing Optimus Prime, despite all evidence to the contrary.

More Then Meets the Eye

Last night I watched the Transformers, to date this is the biggest franchise of my childhood to be remade by Hollywood and it's unlikely to replaced except for the unlikely event Mask gets remade. The film was quite good, not amazing but certainly not a bad movie either.

It certainly had plenty of fanboy moments to keep me happy. The first meeting between an Autobot and a Decepticon certainly proved to me that Michael Bay got the subject matter and the Rangers were pretty cool, especially when I found out they were based on GI Joe.

However, there were some bad points in the film too, the scene in and around the Witwicky's house seemed very out of place for the movie, one friend described as Transformers meets American Pie which sums things up perfectly in my opinion. The guy from Sector 7 was just plain annoying and as Drew pointed out he seemed like he was from a bad 80s kids film.

I did enjoy the film, and I am looking forward to the sequel, but not too fussed about re-watching this one. Still, for the first time in Transformers, I actually liked Bumblebee.

Where Did Transformers Go Wrong?

For me there is a definite moment when it happened. Season 3 of the first ever series. Now I’m not saying it was crap, just saying that’s when it all started to fall apart. It went into space started throwing new races, alien and transformer, around like it was Star Trek and looking back Season 3 is a shade of what Season’s 1 and 2 were. Then we had the Beast Wars, a good concept but not when you compare it to the original; Beast Machines, a clever way of tying Beast Wars back to Cybertron and Leftfield’s Phat Planet as a theme tune. Next we had Robots in Disguise, Armada and Energon, truth be told I’ve seen 5 seconds of Armada and saw a flying shark and switched off but friends who have sat through entire episodes hate it.

So how to fix it? Well first off bring back the proper voices. I remember finally figuring it out, I was watching Beast Machines and I suddenly realised why Optimus Primal sounded wrong, there was no electronic hint in his voice. He sounded totally normal. The electronic voices were great, Christ except for the cassettes it was all Soundwave had going for him.

Now this next bit I think they’ve already fixed, but I’m gonna moan about it anyway because it’s one of the things that really cheesed me off about Season 3. The setting. Transformers only really works on Earth and Cybertron and when Autobots are fighting Decepticons. Random planets with random aliens do not make a cool Transformers story.

The vehicles. Ok, let’s me start with Hot Rod was fucking cool! Now I’ve said that I can bitch about the fake cars. I have no problem with the fake cars, I love the fact that they’re being used as the Cybertronian version of the ’Bots, it makes sense, why would they be built on another planet to look like a Toyota Supra? Can’t we have some that were designed on Earth and built there that does look like a Supra though? When you look back Jazz, Bumble Bee and Sunstreaker were cool because they were actual cars. Now I don’t know who blame. The toy company (because they don’t want to pay the licence fees) or the manufacturers (because I can see the arguments now “But we don’t want our car/gun/plane/fridge to be evil, our car/gun/plane/microwave is obviously good and should be an autobot”). If it was the manufacturers, SHUT UP! When I see a Porsche 911 or a Lamborghini Diablo I don’t think ‘Wow Jazz’ or ‘Cool just like Sunstreaker’ I think ‘Bloody Nice Car’. I have always loved the design of the F-16, who knows if it’s because of Starscream and co, but I don’t think of it as a evil plane, just a cool one.

Now they seem to have the right idea with BinalTech and Alternators. I’m not sure how they did it but they’ve got companies to let them design Transformers around their cars. Which is just fantastic! Now can we have a cartoon about them please? With electronic voices? Based on Earth?