by primezimm » Wed Dec 21, 2011 4:50 pm
Prime dead, Prime alive, I'm for some growth and development here. Love Prime, and a big fan of G1, but even the basic story has been done so many times that its getting old. Season three of G1 could 've been better had they put more into development of the series instead of pushing for more toy sales. The only way they could've pulled it out of the crapper was to bring Prime back, then they gave up with 3 episodes of season 4. What made Beastwars work was the character development and the connection to the G1 universe without rehashing it. Unicron trilogy, Animated, Prime, RID, and Bay-verse trilogy all rehash the same basic story. If Prime lives, maybe move him to the back of the plot for awhile. If he dies, actully develop the characters and make us care about them like we do Optimus Prime. I was upset when an important character died near the end of the Beastwars animated series. I want to care about the characters in what I watch and read. I was hoping for more development with Thundercracker in the ongoing series.
Now my beef about these two new series is this: One takes place on Cybertron, the other is intergalactic. Transformers is about robots in disguise. The basic story is about robots who crash on earth and disguise themselves for recon, to be unseen from the native populace, and basic survival from their enemies. What made it coo was the realistic and recognizable earth forms. In my opinion, this is what killed the toyline near the end of the 80's and brought the critics out for the unicron triology. An airplane, a gun, a truck, a sportscar that turn into a fighting robot? Awsome! Now we are back on Cybertron, no need for earth modes. Alt modes are more for convenience or transportation, rather than disguise. Tne there is the other story. Ok, visits to other planets will permit modes of disguise. Of course then there is the transportation aspect as well. But where is the real connection here? Vehicle modes are only limited by imagination, and whatever character limits exist. I think often the reader and the writers get lost on the imagination after time. Eventually the reader loses interest as stories become more "out there". Writers get to a point where they run out of new and interesting ideas. I think this has been the downfall of many science fiction, fantasy, and animated shows, as well as the written word. Not to mention what thrills me about the transformers has always been the complexity of the character design. To take them off Earth, would seem to remove limits to the character design (how this robot becomes a police car, that robot becomes a tank) making future designs too easy to come up with, to explain away the mode and transformation. Might as well make them grow and shrink at will, add and remove extra appendages at any given time and develop any kind of weaaponry needed at anytime. Limitations and relation to earth kept the story real and grounded. I'm concerned that these stories are going to fizzle out and lose interest. On that note, as a collector and a fan, I'm going to give it a chance and hopefully I'll be pleasntly surprised.
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