So I watched the whole thing, and I have to agree that it was...decent, but certainly not "the new best piece of TF media" or anything. I liked it, and I am interested in where the Earthrise segment will go
considering the ending, seems like we're either doing Mercs or Quints almost immediately, and that should help those who are frustrated with the story not being super original.
I am very happy with some of the character inclusions, particularly Impactor, the goon squad of Barricade, Skytread, and Spinister, and the appearance towards the end of
Soundblaster as a Merc of all characters.
The voicework was hit and miss, some characters were great, some were forgettable, and some were eh. Hound sounded like Bulkhead for some reason, Ironhide sounded generic, and everyone has already mentioned Prime and Soundwave, but on the other hand, Wheeljack was spot-on, Impactor, Mirage, Starscream, and Ratchet were all solid, Megatron was suitably sinister-sounding without falling into the WfC/FoC game problem of him SCREAMING EVERY LINE
, and Soundblaster's demon voice was a particular highlight for me.
Outside of the first episode, the action was fine, and Mirage in particular gets I think the best fight scene of the show, and the plot was a bit derivative but still included just barely enough new tweaks to be interesting for me. The way they handled the individual character plots were pretty good though, I was able to be invested in
Jetfire and Impactor's allegiances wavering despite knowing it was coming because of how they make both of them unique (is that a spoiler? The toys straight-up marketed it).
I think the character models being based off the toys was for the most part actually a good thing, I like being able to see the figures on my desk in motion on the screen, although it did bother me that Ratchet had Ironhide's shoulders for some reason
and Arcee randomly showed up in full Sunbow-kibble-free glory because...why?Hopefully Astrotrain gets to see more action in Earthrise, the fact that there's no WfC Buzzsaw is now especially annoying because I need one for Soundblaster, and I guess now we know both why the spoiler Magnus was just a beat-up Magnus instead of a Decepticon repaint and why Elita's release is being relegated to the Netflix exclusives instead of a proper ER release.My brother also kept popping in and watched most of it with me, and he both says he liked it and had surprisingly few questions for his level of TF knowledge, so if they wanted the series to be enjoyable for both the casual Netflix viewer and the TF fans I guess they succeeded?
excalibur1814 wrote:I'm 7 minutes in and it's lacking any and all energy. It's dull, boring, but amazing to see the characters on screen again (close to their G1 versions).
-Starscream is spot on, at least.
-Just an avenue to sell toys. Usual.
-Do they just walk everywhere?
-Nice to see the Ark again.
-So many, many words. Blah, blah.
11 minutes in, terrible. I'll continue watching as it's all we have.
P.s. Optimus put up one heck of a fight. Not /s
If it helps, I thought the pilot was probably the weakest of the 6 episodes, the protagonists just running away and the Seekers changing TO ROBOT MODE TO CHASE THEM WHEN THEY WERE ALREADY IN TETRAJET MODE was just plain stupid.