Okay, this is starting to get old. Every time I try to post more than a few sentences, I lose it. I’ve lost three posts for every one I’ve made these past few weeks. I am not normally a complainer, but this is extremely frustrating. So,
again, here is the Cliff’s Notes of my long, thought-out post that just vanished into the Internet ether:
Nico wrote:1)He din't appear in ANY episode before the Movie
Half the cast of the second season was never alluded to in the first. Even prominently-featured characters just appeared out of nowhere. Starscream never mentioned Skyfire. The Constructicons never mentioned Omega Supreme (heck, they’d been built on Earth). Optimus Prime never mentioned Elita-1.
3)He's the "Chosen One" but never did anything really heroic to deserve that
That Rodimus “never did anything heroic” is perhaps the best argument AGAINST his being a Marty Stu. It’s a defining trait of Stus that they are perfect, or that their flaws are “cute” and never actually get them or anybody else hurt. If Hot Rod were a Marty Stu, he would have saved Optimus Prime, not wound up a hostage. He wouldn’t have almost gotten himself and Kup killed on Junk. He wouldn’t have needed so much help from the others.
Nico wrote:2)He's the main caracter while Prime should have been it
4)When he's about to die, he use the Matrix and become Rodimus Prime
It was a stupid idea to kill off Optimus Prime and I don’t think you’ll find anybody saying otherwise (even people who don’t like him would have to agree it was an act of narrative desperation). But Hot Rod is not a Marty Stu just because he got Optimus’s job. If he’d gotten Optimus’s job and exceeded him at it, that would be another story, but the two Primes were rarely compared at all, and when they were Optimus always came out the better.
Nico wrote:5)He beat Galvatron, who is basically a super-powered-up Megatron (And Megatron is damn strong!)
6)He use the power of the Matrix to kill a PLANET-SIZED ROBOT WHO HAPPEN TO BE A GOD!
Galvatron was fighting both Rodimus and Unicron, and was already starting to lose his mind; basically, Roddy had an advantage. And it was the power of the Matrix that defeated Unicron; again, if the power had actually come from Rodimus, I’d feel differently, but he just used a weapon any Prime could have used.
The new cast was not the problem. The artless removal of the old cast was the problem. As a character, I like Hot Rod quite a bit.
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