The Energon Pub

aronjlove wrote:

sol magnus wrote:The comments I've been seeing on other pop culture sites and my own Facebook feed suggest that some of us are really out of touch with what 'regular' people expect out of this show. I'm seeing a lot more praise and barely any serious criticism of the show overall, with most comments being something along the lines of "I loved it, can't wait for the next part."

Go figure.

Fandoms can often be overly critical, there is a reason the saying "No one hates Star Wars more than a Star Wars fan" exists. I think the critique of the voice work here is accurate, but it is not as much of a deal-breaker to the average individual than it is to someone who would frequent these forums. The average person probably hasn't had any Transformers animation to watch so this seems fresh, while many here probably own entire previous series on disc and watch them again frequently. This reinforces our opinions of previous shows, which are often times tinted with nostalgia from when we initialy watch those shows.

Can be? LOL. You're being generous.

I can watch G1 (and do, with my son...who often trundles off to play Sonic or whatever) with no problem, even the 'bad' episodes and it just is what it is. Same with any other Transformers show. I can seperate my liking or loving whatever media form for what it is and not impose my own strictures on it. To me, that's a form of entitlement. No, I don't like everything about everything - some of it is my preference for Transformers fiction same as many here - some of it is more meta commentary based. But - the ability to sit back and just watch something and not get all emotional about it is looking more and more like a lost art.

I feel the same about the IDW comics. It's just toxic talking to anybody on dedicated TF forums about them, which sucks, because it means there's no outlet for what you actually enjoy about the comic.

I don't hate watch or hate read anything. I got better things to do tonight than whine. I don't mean that as offense to anyone, I'm just talking about if I don't like something I just. Don't. Watch. It. Or. Read. It. The never ending running negative commentary actually shut down IDW's boards. That's how ridiculous is was, and this was even when Roberts was hitting his stride.

You can actually collect Transformers toys and divorce yourself from any of the fiction, or vice versa. Life is just too short (or too long) to waste time on things you don't enjoy. If it's not something of actual importance, I don't see the point - yet, the things of actual importance we shout each other down over. I don't want to turn this into a soapbox, but I guess it's too late.

I enjoyed WFC: Siege, warts and all, and they killed my favorite character. Maybe I'm just too optimistic by nature. I don't know. End rant.

sol magnus wrote:I enjoyed WFC: Siege, warts and all, and they killed my favorite character. Maybe I'm just too optimistic by nature. I don't know. End rant.

I knew I'd find another Moonracer fan! Oh, wait, you mean someone else...

sol magnus wrote:The comments I've been seeing on other pop culture sites and my own Facebook feed suggest that some of us are really out of touch with what 'regular' people expect out of this show. I'm seeing a lot more praise and barely any serious criticism of the show overall, with most comments being something along the lines of "I loved it, can't wait for the next part."

Go figure.

A lot of those comments are most likely given by the same people who blindly praised the Prime Wars Trilogy, in that they praise it simply because it uses character designs that greatly resemble those from the 1980s Transformers fiction, because that's all that matters to those people.

That, and if Optimus Prime sounds enough like Peter Cullen.

Speaking of character designs, I can't be the only one who liked the fact that the animation models were so accurate they even had Siege effect nubs. Some scenes almost looked like toys themselves had come to life. I'm guessing none of the animators own any of the figures and Hasbro's people never gave guidance just CAD files or something.

I've watched it three times now and enjoy it more each time.

I'd be happy never to see Bumblebee or Alpha Trion in the franchise again. I like movie Bumblebee but I never liked G1 Bee and this version was as Wheeljack rightly put it, "an ass". I didn't like Cyberverse Bumblebee either.

Like an earlier poster, I did think it odd that Cog was observed to not be carrying weapons when he was scanned. There was something weird to me about Arcee's animation model.

Overall, I really like the show though I'm in a minority that likes the Prime Trilogy (I'm aware of it's flaws) and finds Animated overrated as I can't get past the human villains.

The main problem with Siege is the voice acting though upon repeated viewing, it becomes more acceptable to me.

Starscream's voice still borders on cringey to me like Beast Wars Dinobot.

Mirage and Ironhide sound too young. I think Hound and Ironhide's voices and roles should have been swapped though I get that Hound was homaging Bayverse Hound.

After Prime and the Bumblebee movie, Shockwave sounds miscast.

I'll be honest before I watched the show, I was dreading the voice casting of Starscream and Soundwave and my misgivings were justified. Despite modern technology, only Bumblebee has ever perfectly replicated Soundwave's iconic G1 voice.

Since Dark of the Moon, I feel voice acting has gone down in quality in the franchise.

Brains, Lockdown, Drift, Crosshairs, the Wreckers, Devestation Starscream, RID Grimlock and especially Prime Wars Menasor have all sounded atrocious.

But to end on a positive note, I have overall enjoyed Siege particularly the secondary characters like Red Alert (Interesting take and I'm glad they didn't make him parsnoid), Spinister, Soundblaster, Prowl and Chromia.

aronjlove wrote:

sol magnus wrote:I enjoyed WFC: Siege, warts and all, and they killed my favorite character. Maybe I'm just too optimistic by nature. I don't know. End rant.

I knew I'd find another Moonracer fan! Oh, wait, you mean someone else...

I actually think most of the deaths in Netflix Siege are egregious, and yet not Ultra Magnus'.

It's similar to the point that the comic turns on. Why did they have to kill Brainstorm to start off everything? As someone said about Cliffjumper, 'what if someone wanted to see him in action'? I'm not a huge Brainstorm fan, but he's a legitimate toy. Why cut off his potential by killing him? Moonracer is the same. Skywarp is...absurd to me. Sideswipe might be dead - we'll see with Earthrise, but if he is come on, man.

In the comic, they made up Rubble. Why not build up somebody to get killed, rather than Brainstorm? I would say the same if it was Pipes or Beachcomber or anybody that had a toy. I'm also not saying they can't be killed, but that it should make some kind of sense as these are 30 year old characters with a following.

I would rather Ultra Magnus not get killed before everything really jumps off, but it's 18 episodes, and his death did have meaning. He's like Captain America in a sense - nobody is going to straight up kill him in a fight, so having Megatron execute him with him bravely not flinching and never giving him what he wanted is as good as it gets.

Skywarp got killed and never even teleported. If they killed him in Earthrise, I probably wouldn't make a peep, because at least he justified his inclusion in Earthrise.I'll be honest: Hotlink would have made a better choice in my view. He got a toy for this series - he could die and have name recognition but not really hurt as bad because he isn't really a character that has been fleshed out. Moonracer has more 'flesh' than Hotlink. Moonracer also seems like a waste. They could have painted her purple and called her Purple Car Lady and it would have had the same impact. I get that in war people die, and that's part of what I love about Transformers. Still, that's no excuse to not have death have meaning, even if it's pointless. In this she was essentially a red shirt with name recognition. Sideswipe got dropped unceremoniously during the final battle and you never see him again. He might be dead. But, if he is, you cut off the Sideswipe/Sunstreaker dynamic other than maybe Sunstreaker super-belately saying "my brother died."

Rodimus Prime wrote:

sol magnus wrote:they killed my favorite character.

When it happened and then I saw those light beams go into Bee I was hoping maybe it was an homage to the IDW comics where Magnus's essence lives in Bee, like Bee did in Starscream. That would have been cool. Maybe he could have given Bee his knowledge and even his strength. Imagine a minibot being able to punch with the power of Magnus.

And then all of that information was deleted like an episode later, I honestly thought that part was a tad lame but oh well, I guess it was a way for the writers to not have the equivalent of a super powerful weapon in the Autobots hands to reset the status quo.

Nemesis Primal wrote:I'm so glad I'm not the only one ridiculing Netflix's decision to try to pass this off as an "anime".

The only thing "anime" about it was a typical bad English dub.

Seibertron wrote:

Nemesis Primal wrote:I'm so glad I'm not the only one ridiculing Netflix's decision to try to pass this off as an "anime".

The only thing "anime" about it was a typical bad English dub.

Is it really a dub though? Like the voices are on par with some of the mediocre dubs people laughed at (not like they're all trash as the wannabe-weebs would say), but wasn't the voice acting initially made in the US or wherever Rooster Teeth resides?

Quantum Surge wrote:

Seibertron wrote:

Nemesis Primal wrote:I'm so glad I'm not the only one ridiculing Netflix's decision to try to pass this off as an "anime".

The only thing "anime" about it was a typical bad English dub.

Is it really a dub though? Like the voices are on par with some of the mediocre dubs people laughed at (not like they're all trash as the wannabe-weebs would say), but wasn't the voice acting initially made in the US or wherever Rooster Teeth resides?

No, it's not a dub. Just sounds like a bad anime dub. It was my poor attempt at sarcasm.

Truth be told, the only anime I like is Akira. The version I was introduced to which I think is the 88 dub, the one I have on blu Ray and will buy again when it is finally released on 4k.

I also am not into robots, cars, jets and military hardware don't do much for me and I'm not into guns or wars.

But man, am I into Transformers for some reason.

Big "Ha, ha" to the kid who got a $50 Ultra Magnus toy. At least Optimus was two years old by the time they killed him in TFTM. Ultra Magnus, you die in your first couple of episodes!

sol magnus wrote:The comments I've been seeing on other pop culture sites and my own Facebook feed suggest that some of us are really out of touch with what 'regular' people expect out of this show. I'm seeing a lot more praise and barely any serious criticism of the show overall, with most comments being something along the lines of "I loved it, can't wait for the next part."

Go figure.

That's because "normies" think Bayformers is fine.

cruizerdave wrote:

sol magnus wrote:The comments I've been seeing on other pop culture sites and my own Facebook feed suggest that some of us are really out of touch with what 'regular' people expect out of this show. I'm seeing a lot more praise and barely any serious criticism of the show overall, with most comments being something along the lines of "I loved it, can't wait for the next part."

Go figure.

That's because "normies" think Bayformers is fine.

No, these people aren't quite as normal as that. But lets continue to denegrate the audience and the show because we want it to be = Citizen Kane.

cruizerdave wrote:

sol magnus wrote:The comments I've been seeing on other pop culture sites and my own Facebook feed suggest that some of us are really out of touch with what 'regular' people expect out of this show. I'm seeing a lot more praise and barely any serious criticism of the show overall, with most comments being something along the lines of "I loved it, can't wait for the next part."

Go figure.

That's because "normies" think Bayformers is fine.

Yah and I'm kind of tired of the saying "well, the masses liked it so you guys must not know what you're talking about." Which I kind of find insulting at this point after all of the crap with the live action Bay movies. I've also seen enough things like Star Wars, Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, where the roles are flipped and I'm part of the masses. After seeing the end results with those three properties, I wish they had listened to their fan bases more.

Even Disney's Jon Favreau seems to get it: Jon Favreau Encourages ‘Star Wars’ Team to Listen to Fans
https://insidethemagic.net/2020/06/jon- ... fans-rwb1/

NETFLIX She-ra and the Princesses of Power is another great example of how a good story with good acting can take someone out of their comfort zone and feel very invested in characters and have a good time watching a show with their family. I think that show set my expectations way too high for NETFLIX Transformers.

Seibertron wrote:

cruizerdave wrote:

sol magnus wrote:The comments I've been seeing on other pop culture sites and my own Facebook feed suggest that some of us are really out of touch with what 'regular' people expect out of this show. I'm seeing a lot more praise and barely any serious criticism of the show overall, with most comments being something along the lines of "I loved it, can't wait for the next part."

Go figure.

That's because "normies" think Bayformers is fine.

Yah and I'm kind of tired of the saying "well, the masses liked it so you guys must not know what you're talking about." Which I find insulting at this point after all of the crop with the live action Bay movies. I've also seen enough things like Star Wars, Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, where the roles are flipped and I'm part of the masses. After seeing the end results with those three properties, I wish they had listened to their fan bases more.

Even Disney's Jon Favreau seems to get it: Jon Favreau Encourages ‘Star Wars’ Team to Listen to Fans
https://insidethemagic.net/2020/06/jon- ... fans-rwb1/

NETFLIX She-ra and the Princesses of Power is another great example of how a good story with good acting can take someone out of their comfort zone and feel very invested in characters and have a good time watching a show with their family. I think that show set my expectations way too high for NETFLIX Transformers.

I'm not saying 'the masses.' The people I've seen aren't just the "oh, gee maybe I'll check out Transformers on Netflix" types. We have to stop thinking it's us or them. There's a huge middle in this as in all things. The show isn't perfect, but not everyone needs it to be perfect.

If you take offense, I'm sorry. I'm not trying to offend anyone. I was as surprised as anyone to the reactions I saw from both the casual and what I might call 'semi-casual.'

I agree 100% with listening to the fans. Put it this way: If they listened to the fans, it would probably go over even better than it seems to be in quarters other than on a dedicated Transformers message board.

I feel the term "listening to the fans" can be hard to break down in terms of what the result will be. Like, part of me feels it might lead to outsiders believing that TF fans want everything to be exactly the same as it's been since whineteen eighty-four and would hate any other franchise for being different (even if there is a small number of understandable criticisms to them). I also gotta admit that I tend to roll my eyes when someone who's involved with a large roll in a show says they're a big fan of the franchise when it's mainly the cartoon that gets brought up. Feels like a gimmick as much as the term "anime" in WFC, and I feel that with the exception of Cyberverse and even Transformers '84 comics based on the Marvel Comics, the TF media we've gotten since 2018 felt like nothing more but an average form of using mostalgia as a gimmick and making everything else feel dull, and WFC Netflix is no exception.

This is why I'm hesitant on agreeing that people behind a series must listen to the fans. While there are some flaws with a couple of franchises we've gotten, I'd rather they do what they want with their own take on Transformers (so long as it's well-written) than have shallow stuff like WFC Netflix that'd appeal to the extremely die-hard fans and the nerd culture sites.

sol magnus wrote:If you take offense, I'm sorry. I'm not trying to offend anyone. I was as surprised as anyone to the reactions I saw from both the casual and what I might call 'semi-casual.'

I agree 100% with listening to the fans. Put it this way: If they listened to the fans, it would probably go over even better than it seems to be in quarters other than on a dedicated Transformers message board.

I'm not offended in the least, and didn't mean to direct my comment to you, sol magnus. I was generalizing from past comments about the Bay movies and even comments some folks have made toward me about the NETFLIX series.

My whole point is, the show itself isn't horrible. It does have a lot of qualities i like. The graphics, minus a few lips here and there, are pretty top notch. Its just the voice acting and characterizations that are off, which are things someone could have fixed had it been addressed early enough. That's what is frustrating about it. The only reason I'm voicing my opinion is because I want to see these things addressed in the future or on future projects.

Aimless Misfire wrote:I hated how they killed Cliffjumper in Prime & Bumblebee. What if some of us actually want to see that character in action for a while?

So.... kill off a character nobody's heard of before, nobody cares about, to demonstrate the stakes and get people invested?
It's, um, different, I'll grant you that.

Transformers: Prime was a mess, as far as I'm concerned. And I didn't like the bait-and-switch of promoting Cliffjumper as a featured character, to kill him off. But I get why they did it. Unfortunately, it came to nothing and they didn't follow through with the premise that anyone was fair game. It was wasted, as no subsequent Autobot experienced any legitimate jeopardy; each time, one would predict, and be correct, that some Deus ex Machina would save the day, or that the jeopardy just vanished entirely (e.g. Bulkhead's critical injury just evaporating, despite the dialog saying that he would never be the same). A persistent status quo that the show is notorious for.

I like Peter Cullen, he'll always be the definitive Optimus Prime to me. But Transformers: Prime is not something to be held up as "what could have been" for Siege. He did the best with what he was given, but TFP Optimus Prime was stilted, vacillated between emotionless and rampagey, lumbered with "it stands to reason" exposition that didn't make sense, artificially limited by their insistence that Optimus doesn't use contractions, didn't engage with anyone as a character, only as an "always on" politician. Robots in Disguise Optimus Prime was marginally, but not much, better (e.g. "Out of Focus"). I'm not even kidding here, but Rescue Bots Optimus Prime was more personable, more engaging, more real, more Primey and definitely more like the classic G1 Optimus Prime, than TFP Optimus Prime ever was.

And then there's Titans Return. 'Nuff said.

So, you know, there's some hits and there's some misses there, even for Mr. Cullen.

Quantum Surge wrote:I feel the term "listening to the fans" can be hard to break down in terms of what the result will be. Like, part of me feels it might lead to outsiders believing that TF fans want everything to be exactly the same as it's been since whineteen eighty-four and would hate any other franchise for being different (even if there is a small number of understandable criticisms to them). I also gotta admit that I tend to roll my eyes when someone who's involved with a large roll in a show says they're a big fan of the franchise when it's mainly the cartoon that gets brought up. Feels like a gimmick as much as the term "anime" in WFC, and I feel that with the exception of Cyberverse and even Transformers '84 comics based on the Marvel Comics, the TF media we've gotten since 2018 felt like nothing more but an average form of using mostalgia as a gimmick and making everything else feel dull, and WFC Netflix is no exception.

This is why I'm hesitant on agreeing that people behind a series must listen to the fans. While there are some flaws with a couple of franchises we've gotten, I'd rather they do what they want with their own take on Transformers (so long as it's well-written) than have shallow stuff like WFC Netflix that'd appeal to the extremely die-hard fans and the nerd culture sites.

This is a good take on things. Would we have gotten shows like Beast Wars and Animated if the creatives had listened to the fans? We have to allow for people to try their own spin, that's how innovation works. There's also the problem of which fans do you listen to? I'd say were all Transformers fans yet we all have wildly different views! Only thing people can seem to agree on is that the voice direction needs a lot of work.

Seibertron wrote:

Nemesis Primal wrote:I'm so glad I'm not the only one ridiculing Netflix's decision to try to pass this off as an "anime".

The only thing "anime" about it was a typical bad English dub.

Eh...It hits a LOT of early 2000's anime tropes.

I'm not sure how to point these out other than watching it together and pausing every time it happens, but if you know it, you see it.

Examples: the sad, dying, knowing smile of Ultra Magnus, the "what did you say?!?" responses, the entire Bumblebee characterization of reluctant but compelled membership.

Seibertron wrote: the show itself isn't horrible. It does have a lot of qualities i like. The graphics, minus a few lips here and there, are pretty top notch. Its just the voice acting and characterizations that are off, which are things someone could have fixed had it been addressed early enough. That's what is frustrating about it. The only reason I'm voicing my opinion is because I want to see these things addressed in the future or on future projects.

As I said before. This is a completely average show. Far from the worst (It is no Energon or Beast Machines, there is nothing here that egregious after all) and the main issue that holds it back was the incredibly poor audio decisions, from mixing to direction. It wouldn't have taken much more than a little attention to detail to elevate this show from the finished product we were given.

ZeroWolf wrote:This is a good take on things. Would we have gotten shows like Beast Wars and Animated if the creatives had listened to the fans? We have to allow for people to try their own spin, that's how innovation works. There's also the problem of which fans do you listen to? I'd say were all Transformers fans yet we all have wildly different views! Only thing people can seem to agree on is that the voice direction needs a lot of work.

I think it goes to say that while fan feedback should be noted to avoid mistakes, at the same time you should never let the fans "write" the show or take too big of a role in involvement, it can be as much as a detriment as it can be a help.

Because fans can be quite fickle, it's impossible to make something that will satisfy everyone because each individual has their own very specific taste.

Deadput wrote:

ZeroWolf wrote:This is a good take on things. Would we have gotten shows like Beast Wars and Animated if the creatives had listened to the fans? We have to allow for people to try their own spin, that's how innovation works. There's also the problem of which fans do you listen to? I'd say were all Transformers fans yet we all have wildly different views! Only thing people can seem to agree on is that the voice direction needs a lot of work.

I think it goes to say that while fan feedback should be noted to avoid mistakes, at the same time you should never let the fans "write" the show or take too big of a role in involvement, it can be as much as a detriment as it can be a help.

Because fans can be quite fickle, it's impossible to make something that will satisfy everyone because each individual has their own very specific taste.

Exactly