ZeroWolf wrote:D-Maximal_Primal wrote:Rodimus Prime wrote:Which continuity/series is the better quality is subjective. It depends on the viewer's taste and preference. Despite Kingdom's failure, I thought WFC was pretty good, definitely superior to both Cyberverse and Earthspark. Those are shows for pre-teens/early teens. Definitely not for anyone older than 14.
As for this new animated feature, I'll wait for official reveals. I thought the Exodus novel was average, but a skilled scriptwriter could take it and expand it into a decent movie story. We'll see.
Even using Kingdom, the best of the 3 WFC series, the only things I'd call it superior to were the Prime Wars trilogy and Energon. There is a reason Netflix passed on a Legacy series. And there is a reason F.J. DeSanto should not be allowed anywhere near Transformers again.
Mostly agreed, though honestly, I'd watch Energon again before Kingdom.
I feel like the main reason Kingdom was more watchable than the ungodly miserable Siege and ungodly boring Earthrise was because of Mae Catt being brought on as a writer.
As for Energon, for how bad that show was (and it definitely was), people often forget that its first 13 or so episodes were actually decently watchable. It only really got unwatchable after that, when the writing staff seemingly couldn't think of anything more to do with the series after they ran out of ideas so early and just twiddled their fingers for the next 39 episodes.
The Prime Wars Trilogy was just embarrassing from start to finish, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever besides Jason Marnocha's snarky Megatron.
On the more positive side, Cyberverse started as a slog marred by both the anthology storytelling style of the first season and the required brand synergy with the Bumblebee movie (Bee being both a radio-talker and amnesiac). But once Season 2 started, both of those hindrances of the first season were thrown out the window, the setting was shifted away from the hunt for the Allspark on Earth to the
end of that hunt and the subsequent beginning of the Transformers' departure from Earth, and the stories really began to go all-out on doing whatever they wanted to do as the Ark made its exciting interstellar voyage back to Cybertron and even more exciting return home where, in the third season, the series shot up to 11 with the final decisive battle between the Autobots and Decepticons, the half-season-long Quintesson invasion arc, and the rest of the season dealing with the aftermath of that before the world is once again put in jeopardy by the arrival of Megatron X. And that could have been the end of it, yet we got two more epilogue movies with Season 4, providing us a fun romp with new Dinobots fighting mercenaries led by Trypticon, and a dark final epic with the arrival of the one and only Tarn.
Over with EarthSpark, we've gotten some of the best fight choreography we've had in years (the Optimus/Megatron vs. Skywarp/Nova Storm fight in particular stands out as amazing), while the rest of the time the show really gets to the heart and soul of its cast, showing what it really means to be an Autobot, a Decepticon, a neutrally-aligned individual, and more. Of all five Terrans, Jawbreaker's arc is a real standout, as he struggles to pick an altmode for himself and gets into the nitty-gritty of what it really means to have an altmode and why characters pick the ones they do. The show is surprisingly deep and even, at times, philosophical, treating its audience as intelligent individuals who deserve good strongly-written stories and characters. And even those characters whom the show expects us to take one way are a lot more complex than we think, such as Agent Schloder being more ethically-wholesome than how morally-gray he is initially shown to be, due to his essentially working on the side of the bad guys but unknowingly so since he genuinely believes (or wants to believe) that G.H.O.S.T. is a force for good.
While Starscream of all 'Cons (once again voiced wonderfully by Steve Blum) is shown to be a multi-layered individual who, instead of the surface-level schemer that so many of his past namesakes have been, has already lived and schemed, and been scorned and abused by Megatron, so much in his life, that he's a broken individual and lost his ability to trust anyone other than himself. In other words, he has PTSD. No other cartoon has ever come this close to actually psychoanalyzing Starscream and trying to start that healing process he'd need to put himself back together again. And yet, it also showed that it's not that simple, as Starscream remained reluctant to seek out said help because of his aforementioned trust issues. He doesn't trust Megatron, or the Terrans, or anyone, and doesn't want anyone's help. It's pretty tragic when you think about. Yet, the show is also hopeful in its subject matters, and leaves the door open for Starscream to potentially get better. We'll just have to wait and see what Season 2 holds in store for him and the rest of its cast.
