The Energon Pub

[o.supreme]

That would make sense, except that this TF universe is establishing things that are somewhat different. Sure the love interest between Megatronus and Solus is established in a flashback. However the Requiem Blaster being part of a *triumvirate* of sacred relics (along with the Matrix and Enigma) is new, to me at least. Also the idea that Megatronus defeated Unicron previously is also a new take on things, unless there is some other version of these events I'm not familiar with. Of course it makes sense that Unicron being Evil, and Megatronus (The Fallen) would somehow become his servant. But why would you choose to serve one you defeated? It could just be poor script writing....

[WreckerJack]

I sort of wonder if the toys coming before the series is to pay for the series before they air it? Because it seems kinda backwards that the toys are out before the episode. Back in the day the show was supposed to hype you up to buy the toys not the other way around.

[o.supreme]

Toys arriving in comparison to a show has always been a sliding scale. The entire 1984 line was released in the summer, the show did not start airing until September, and that was only the first 3 episodes. TF:TM movie toys were released shortly before the movie, but not before advertisements began to air.

Also you have scenarios like in Beast Wars. The Ultra Assortment of Rampage and Depthcharge came out during the summer of 1998. Rampage's first episode aired in February (5 months before the toy came out), and Depthcharge's first episode aired in November (4 months after the toy had already been out)....

Besides PotP will feature Predaking, Before his toy is released.

[Sabrblade]

However the Requiem Blaster being part of a *triumvirate* of sacred relics (along with the Matrix and Enigma) is new, to me at least.

The "three relics" thing is likely just a cost-saving measure to avoid having to include every personal artifact of all thirteen Primes, instead just focusing on the three that are the most relevant to this series.

Also the idea that Megatronus defeated Unicron previously is also a new take on things, unless there is some other version of these events I'm not familiar with. Of course it makes sense that Unicron being Evil, and Megatronus (The Fallen) would somehow become his servant. But why would you choose to serve one you defeated? It could just be poor script writing....

While the specifics are new, the idea of the specific member of a group of heroes who personally dealt the killing blow to a great evil being the one to later go bad and side with that evil is an idea that has been used many times over in fiction, Transformers or otherwise.

[william-james88]

Toys arriving in comparison to a show has always been a sliding scale. The entire 1984 line was released in the summer, the show did not start airing until September, and that was only the first 3 episodes. TF:TM movie toys were released shortly before the movie, but not before advertisements began to air.

Also you have scenarios like in Beast Wars. The Ultra Assortment of Rampage and Depthcharge came out during the summer of 1998. Rampage's first episode aired in February (5 months before the toy came out), and Depthcharge's first episode aired in November (4 months after the toy had already been out)....

Besides PotP will feature Predaking, Before his toy is released.

Optimus primall as well. Also I remember back in the cybertron show, nobody understood why Hasbro released a giant Starscream, until one year later where Starscream got bigger to fight Primus.

[fenrir72]

Who's the big head on the left?

[Sabrblade]

Who's the big head on the left?

I take it you didn't watch the episode.

Solus Prime is included on this poster as a character in the show.

[fenrir72]

Who's the big head on the left?

I take it you didn't watch the episode.

Solus Prime is included on this poster as a character in the show.

1. Nope

2. Thanks

3. I usually watch this stuff completed (looooooooong patience)

[Ultra Markus]

Toys arriving in comparison to a show has always been a sliding scale. The entire 1984 line was released in the summer, the show did not start airing until September, and that was only the first 3 episodes. TF:TM movie toys were released shortly before the movie, but not before advertisements began to air.

Also you have scenarios like in Beast Wars. The Ultra Assortment of Rampage and Depthcharge came out during the summer of 1998. Rampage's first episode aired in February (5 months before the toy came out), and Depthcharge's first episode aired in November (4 months after the toy had already been out)....

Besides PotP will feature Predaking, Before his toy is released.

Optimus primall as well. Also I remember back in the cybertron show, nobody understood why Hasbro released a giant Starscream, until one year later where Starscream got bigger to fight Primus.

yeah and a lot of the Prime trilogy figues released have not been on the machinima show like superion and bruticus and most of all no titan masters besides the one and only Emissary!
and he never turned into Cerebros's head and never saw Cerebros period but only Fortress Maximus
so besides what we have seen so far i doubt we will even see the terrorcons
i would have really liked to have seen a Megatronus toy come out in this series

[william-james88]

I hated the first season, it was pure crap. So I ignored the second season. This episode was getting good comments from people, so I took a look. Oh boy, our expectations have sunken really low. Firstly, the animation is still terrible, it feels super cheap. I understand other webseries, and especially web comics dont have much movement either, but at least they arent selling anything more than what they are and arent made by such a high profile studio.

The story, or wahtever I witnessed, also made no damn sense. I have no clue why the dinobots fought, especially when it was confirmed that they did indeed know who erceptor was. So why start drowning him. Also, the tall grass made for a terrible sense of scale. This looked more like a scene from I shrunk the kids.

[King Kuuga]

Of all the episodes of all the shows I've ever seen in my life, that..... was one of them.

They did some really cool stuff at the beginning by following the falling drop of energon or whatever it was, I thought that was the highlight of it all. The rest is just more of the same. The Dinobots are MAD for REASONS. Megatron is monotonous. Megatronus is monologuing. The voice director needs to find a new career path because this just isn't working out for them. The animation is the usual, lips that don't match the words and static faces and bobbing heads. I wasn't even excited by the Dinobots because they just showed up and were angry because they had nobody to fight and it's just.... boring.

[Sabrblade]

So why start drowning him.

I don't know what's worse. The fact that the Dinobots tried to drown Perceptor when he's a robot that doesn't need to breathe, or the fact that Perceptor started gasping and gagging as though he wasn't a robot that doesn't need to breathe.

[o.supreme]

The story, or wahtever I witnessed, also made no damn sense. I have no clue why the dinobots fought, especially when it was confirmed that they did indeed know who Perceptor was.

Grimlock believed his former allies had aligned themselves with Megatron (Megatron-BAD). Not saying it's a good reason, but it is what it is....

Obviously the creators of this show have not seen TF:TM, or any number of random episodes where scenes take place under water. . Of course that stuff looked more like Antifreeze, or Lava Lamp goo than water...maybe THATS what drowns Transformers .

[ZeroWolf]

Maybe they were basing the dinobots after their movie selves who had to be beaten by prime to actually help out

[william-james88]

So why start drowning him.

I don't know what's worse. The fact that the Dinobots tried to drown Perceptor when he's a robot that doesn't need to breathe, or the fact that Perceptor started gasping and gagging as though he wasn't a robot that doesn't need to breathe.

Also, the second part is worse. The dinobots are clearly the biggest idiots they have ever been here, so whatever.

[Bronzewolf]

This is it. The beginning of the end. The final chapter in Machinima's Prime Wars trilogy, bringing with it my last reviews for the series. I've reviewed Combiner Wars, Titans Return, and now it's time to review the finale season. We still have lots of episodes to get through, though, before we get to the true ending, so let's buckle up for one last ride, courtesy of Power of the Primes.

The episode gives us a brand new title sequence, featuring a logo cut by a laser from the floating head of Unicron, (Spoilers, maybe?) who looks like he was rendered using the animation software from the G2 commercials. It leads us to the title of the episode...


-Insert obligatory, completely original Shrek joke here-


Megatronus, voiced by Mark Hamill, starts us off by explaining to some mysterious force, whoistotallynotUnicronwhydoyouask, that he has to find a relic called the Requiem Blaster to complete the ancient...triumphurent? Right off the bat the usual problems pop up, blocky animation, expressionless faces, terrible lip sync, the usual, but they all seem to be worse this time around. It definitely seems like the series was rushed to try to premiere at the same time the coinciding toys were on store shelves, something neither of the two previous shows were able to do. Most of the movements characters make are sudden, with just a few frames dedicated to each. We'll dive into that more a bit later in the episode.

Anyway, Megatronus has a brief flashback to the era of the original 13 Primes, back when he had used the requiem blaster for good to defeat evil, not the other way around. It also introduces a frankly strange love interest in the form of Solus Prime. Solus wants the blaster destroyed, and Megatronus is offended that she doesn't trust him to keep it safe. Solus' performance is stale and rigid, especially given that she's trying to be portrayed as a warm, charming character. But, similarly, voice direction has not been one of the past show's highlights.


Because even Megatronus has to have a villain backstory. For some reason.



This whole scene gets a bit exposition heavy, and doesn't flow very well as a normal conversation. It's quite painfully obvious that this scene is purely to inform the viewer of Megatronus' plan and backstory, even though there are more organic ways of achieving that. Megatronus doesn't find the blaster, and dissapears, off to search another area.

We then catch up with the main cast, consisting of Perceptor, Windblade, Victorion, and Megatron, who find themselves being watched in the middle of a cybernetic swamp. The same story with Megatronus and Solus is detailed again, making the previous scene unneeded. While it's hard to get across in text form, there's a scene here that shows all of these characters together, talking one at a time. The only character that ever moves, blinks, or changes their facial expressions is the one that's talking. The rest are just still character models until it's their turn to talk. This looks AWFUL, and has to be one of the worst looking shots I've noticed in any of these shows. The way the characters are animated makes them look lifeless enough, let alone just making them stand frozen when they aren't talking.

The group is then ambushed by the Dinobots, who appear from the plant growth in the swamp.


*Live Studio Audience Applauds*

Something extremely important to note here is that, despite the Dinobots combining later in the episode, they all have their own personalities and voices, something other combiner members in this show notably do not have. It's been all but established that the limbs of combiners are little more than drones, and it's just one consciousness shared between the members. This totally retcons that entire thing, showing that (at least with Volcanicus) each member has a consciousness, identity, name, voice, and (in the case of Grimlock and Slug at minimum) a robot mode and the ability to transform.


So wait, does that mean Dust Up just got straight up sliced in half? Is she dead? How can Victorion still control her right arm? This presents so many questions.

To the episode's credit, it is really nice to hear Gregg Berger as Grimlock again. He delivers a great performance, and it's a great callback to the original show.

The Dinobots start attacking the gang, because they don't trust Megatron. Grimlock takes out Megatron with the slowest, easiest-to-see-coming tail swipe ever. He then grabs Perceptor, trying to drown him, even though he shouldn't need air to breathe. There are several instances here where a few more frames would have made things look considerably smoother, such as when Perceptor gets knocked over. On the first couple of watches I genuinely though he just clipped through Grimlock's leg.


Grimlock moves more like a sock puppet here then I would like to admit.

Meanwhile, the other members of the expedition are having their own problems with the dinos. For instance, Victorion is having to deal with both Sludge and Snarl, who both seem to be nearly the same size as her even though we've seen Volcanicus and Victorion being the same size in trailers.


I swear to Primus they're saying "TOM" "HANKS!" "TOM" "HANKS!"

And then we're treated to the best/worst part of the entire episode. Windblade is in the middle of a battle with Slug, and tosses him across the clearing. In the next shot, however, he stands up, transformed, about ten feet away on her left. You can see Windblade on the ground after tossing Slug in the lower left hand corner of the first image, and then where Slug pops back up in literally the NEXT SHOT in image 2. Who in the production office decided that was okay?




...10 outta 10

The Dinobots regroup, and reveal to the cast that they can form Volcanicus, the bombshell on which the episode ends.

That was quite the episode. I wish I could say that they've fixed everything, or that it's even an improvement over the last series, but I honestly can't. The mouth movements are worse, the animation feels rushed, the writing is still terrible, the voice direction and some of the acting isn't good, and there's glaring continuity errors that are just glossed over. There isn't enough story to fully critique yet, so I'll reserve my judgement for the full series until more episodes are released, but I don't harbor a lot of hope.
Thanks for tuning in with me to take a look at Power of the Primes. If you want to watch the episode for yourself and tell me if I was right or wrong, you can find it on Go90 or the Transformers Tumblr page. Join me next week as we take a look at episode 2!

[Bronzewolf]

Sorry for the delay on this one, guys and gals. Life got ahead of me yesterday. Enjoy!

[ZeroWolf]

Okay bronzewolf, which staff member did you insult in order to be forced to watch this series?

[kurthy]

Sorry for the delay on this one, guys and gals. Life got ahead of me yesterday. Enjoy!

Thank you for suffering through the episode so I don't have to!

Where were you during Beast Machines?

[D-Maximal_Primal]

Okay bronzewolf, which staff member did you insult in order to be forced to watch this series?

He told Burn Stalker sucked and Scrounge deserved to smelt in the pool. Burn disabled his ability to post unless he agreed to be the reviewer for the series.

On that note, the one good thing: Finally, a combination sequence. And of all people it's the Dinobots.

Where are the other 3 combiners? and Fort Max? Weren't they coming too?

Also, come on Victorion, get that arm fixed. Dustup is missing her legs for Primus' sake!

[Deadput]

Also, come on Victorion, get that arm fixed. Dustup is missing her legs for Primus' sake!

Dustup doesn't exist remember?

Victorion is just missing an arm.

[Sabrblade]

Also, come on Victorion, get that arm fixed. Dustup is missing her legs for Primus' sake!

Dustup doesn't exist remember?

Victorion is just missing an arm.

Stromclash does, at least.

[Skritz]

Oddly enough, the Dinobots seem to be the reverse of how this show treated combiners in that they are individuals who merge into one bigger robot. I'm sure this was always the intent behind Combiners even in this serie as this is how Combiners always worked, several individuals fused into a bigger robot...and yet?

I can't help but think that when they wrote Combiner Wars and Titans Return they handled the concept in reverse. That the combined whole is the character and the limbs are sub component. If you look at the writing of the last two shows as a misunderstanding of the incompetent writers it suddenly make sense: they though the big combined robot was the individual who split into smaller bots rather than smaller individuals merging into a bigger robot.

[william-james88]

I wish I could say that they've fixed everything, or that it's even an improvement over the last series, but I honestly can't. The mouth movements are worse, the animation feels rushed, the writing is still terrible, the voice direction and some of the acting isn't good, and there's glaring continuity errors that are just glossed over. There isn't enough story to fully critique yet, so I'll reserve my judgement for the full series until more episodes are released, but I don't harbor a lot of hope.

Perfect review Bronzewolf, I like how you say it like it is. And I am in complete agreement.

I use no hyperbole when I say that this is the worse TF fiction I have ever bore witness to. Granted I have never looked into Kissplayers but I have watched all the Bay films.

[Skritz]

The Prime Wars toyline may go down in Tf history as a good line but it's cartoons will be something we'll look back at and laugh about for decades. Just like Energon.