Machinima's Combiner Wars series, centered around characters from the toyline of the same name, held some promise for me when we saw the trailers and screencaps from various conventions. It's premise looked good, original, and tied in nicely with the rest of the current fiction. I was hopeful. However, after watching the first episode, that hope is fading. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad, perse, but there's a formula when it comes to a good series opener based off of the gigantic robots we know and love: It has to have Good Characters with good development, a good setting and premise, a nice production quality, and it should set you up well for what the rest of the series is going to bring. This is what made cartoons like Beast Wars, Prime, and, in some of those cases, the original G1 Cartoon so close and unforgettable to a lot of us. Combiner Wars fails on most of these grounds.
Let's break down the first episode.
The series starts off with a fight through a space bridge between Menasor and Computron. Menasor literally tears Computron to shreds, and the autobot combiner ends up "dying". We hit our first road block here. We're immediately thrown into a intense action sequence without any backstory at all. This would be completely fine by me if the rest of the episode tried to explain what's happening, but it doesn't. However, the episode is only five minutes long, so I will let this slide in hopes that future episodes will go into more detail.
Maxima and Windblade take on Menasor
Windblade and new fembot Maxima show up to try to defeat the remaining combiner. We get a small bit of exposition here, but it's only a few lines, and it only explains that Windblade used to be a "City Speaker", meaning she could talk to "Titans" (Metroplex, Fort Max, Etc.) We already knew she could do this, but it's nice to see Machinima try to keep this new series grounded in existing fiction. However, Menasor delivers this dialogue in the new "I will start yelling at random intervals for no reason" voice Machinima gave him, so it's not very easy to listen to. Roadblock #2 comes in the form of the animation. It's pretty good on the whole, but sometimes it's really smooth and fluid, and then sometimes it's broken up and choppy like a motioncomic. So, during the fight between Windblade, Maxima, and Menasor, due to this mix of the two, it's hard to keep track of what exactly is happening.
The series tries to pump some tension into the episode by having Windblade get caught by Menasor, and Maxima feels the only way to save her is to make the Ultimate Sacrifice. She becomes the embodiment of the "Friend/mentor/parent/sibling dies" trope to give Windblade a bit of a backstory and a reason to hate combiners. This doesn't work mainly because she already hates combiners. It's not like she had this drastic change of heart only when her (Friend? Sister? Pupil? We don't know. We never find out) dies. The tension comes across as forced and doesn't get any emotion out of the viewer, especially since the character dying is completely new and we know nothing about her.
Maxima, a new Female Autobot, does two minutes in.
Windblade, now freed, takes on Menasor alone. This isn't a problem, however, because somehow she takes him down in literally two swipes of her sword; about 5 seconds. This would also be excusable if she watched her friend die and went into a Anakin Skywalker-style fit of rage and just started beating up Menasor, but no. She just randomly gets this power with no real change in emotion.
This image is finally revealed to be Windblade, cutting Menasor in half, winning a fight that was much easier than it should have beenShe kills Menasor after he worries her for a moment, talking about how he and her are alike, both killers. It's just that she uses a good cause to justify it. This story ark holds promise, and it will be interesting to see where it goes. After Windblade leaves, Computron starts waking up. The episode ends with a still shot of Optimus Prime, in the desert we saw him in in his spotlight video.
Windblade leaves after smashing Computron's Autobot badgeAll and all, the series does have its flaws, but it's the first episode. I'm willing to give it a chance, and I recommend you do, too. It's only five minutes of your time, and it gives us the Transformers action we all know and enjoy.
Wanna see the episode for yourself? Check it out at https://www.go90.com/ or on the Go90 mobile app!
Or you could just watch it right here:
What were your thoughts on the new episode? Leave 'em in the comments below!
