PlasmaPrime wrote:That's exactly what being a fan is all about though, before adulthood or other outside factors had us scoff at what were once simple pleasures.
No, being a fan just means liking the franchise. There's no requirement to like every single story, or not speak out when you think quality's taken a turn for the worst.
PlasmaPrime wrote:And really, I'm not talking about accepting things JUST because they are presented to you, but at some point, we all must admit, we all start out loving alot about something we are fans of... and eventually become so intrenched in it that we end up ripping it to shreds because we think we know it best.
Can't speak for anyone else, but I'm "ripping it to shreds" because it's poorly done from general standards of art and writing *and* bad compared to what we'd gotten before now. I'm more than willing to read stories that take TF in new directions. Heck, seeing as how I'm one of the fans who got into TF with the '07 Movie, pretty much
everything TF is new directions to me, as I didn't grow up with childhood nostalgia. But those new directions have to actually be good quality, and I feel like AHM and this art style... aren't.
PlasmaPrime wrote:I also absolutely hate what All Hail Megatron has done to Simon Furman's excellent story while enjoying the story as self-contained Transformer fun -- Love/Hate.
I disliked AHM even as a self-contained story... in a general sense, I see no reason to spend extra effort trying to find tiny little things to like about a story I otherwise don't like on the whole just for the sake of fairness. (Not to say that there aren't a few things I did like about AHM, but they weren't near enough to make the story enjoyable.)
PlasmaPrime wrote:I'll say it again: this visual style allows for the robots to be capable of much more in terms of expressed movement, combat capabilites and eventual toy engineering (and "gimmickness").
...eh? IMHO this sort of design limits movement, especially in terms of the faces lacking expressive range. The G1 designs, in contrast, tend to be very expressive, especially in the hands of someone like Roche who's got facial expressions and body language down to a fine art (pun intended).
Action scenes I admittedly can't speak about until we get to see some. As for toy engineering, what does that have to do with it? IMHO, if Hasbro is going to start making toys from the IDW comics, it's EJ Su's excellent detailed modernizations of the G1 designs that would be the most perfect, not these. Why would they waste time creating toys based on a bastardization of the Movie aesthetic when they can just make toys with the proper Movie designs?
PlasmaPrime wrote:Introducing this art style allows for an eventual visual streamlining of the brand; after years of this becoming tiresome and a bit boring, Hasbro/Takara and the comic company with the liscense will return thing to a more diverse and homaging state that will keep Transformers continuosly relevant, going back to what I said about the brand needing to EVOLVE to survive.
...Buh? Transformers already
has diversity in the form of its plethora of continuities all having wonderfully diverse designs and atmospheres. Blending everything into one single design aesthetic would be a giant step backwards that would lose the diversity that is one of the Transformers franchise's interesting unique aspects.
IMHO a story set in a given continuity should have designs based on that continuity's aesthetic. If Hasbro feels a need to create drastically new designs, then that's the purview of new continuities.
