by Jaw Crusher » Thu Apr 02, 2009 8:36 pm
- Weapon: Mace
Off the top of my head, an idea for a new TF cartoon I have takes some influence from some of the old movies I've been exposed to lately - from Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" to John Carpenter's "The Thing" - with maybe certain elements of some of the newer TF shows and the movies as well as a touch of Green Lantern and Ultraman. It would be set mainly on Cybertron; Earth would be mentioned occasionally, but it would never be particularly clear whether the TFs have ever been there or not. The protagonist would be the "teenager" Orion Pax (his design would probably best be described as the E-hobby Kup repaint with a blue Hot Rod head); and yes, Optimus Prime would still be a prominent character - and yes, Orion and Optimus are still one and the same - but more on that a bit later. AND it would also have to be done in Mainframe-level CGI.
The backstory would be that Cybertron is actually one of several colony worlds of the Transformer race, and that the Great War has been over for nine million years, ever since the original colonists, the Cybertrons, drove the deviant Destron army off the planet; the Autobot and Decepticon factions as we know them do not yet exist - peace on Cybertron is kept by an elite defense force led by Ultra Magnus, Megatron, Starscream, and Prowl. However, things change when Megatron's scientific advisor Shockwave unearths a spacecraft that crashed on Cybertron four million years prior, and dig out a bizarre bio-mechanical carcass - which promptly infects the dig team and causes them to mutate and fuse into each other to create multi-limbed, multi-faced horrors full of hatred. The Seekers manage to contain the threat - after promptly showing up Ironhide's efforts to destroy the beast - but it gets Megatron to thinking that it could represent a failed retaliation by the Destrons, and if the infection were to spread, Cybertron and its population would be unsalvageable - thus, Megatron begins to initialize a 'survival of the fittest' strategy, to weed out those Transformers that fit certain standards of perfection, to neutralize those who don't and might actually cause a ruckus for it, and catch the next starship out of Iacon before things get out of control and the populace is any wiser.
Unbeknownst to Megatron, however, each of the other colony worlds have had the benefit of having a chosen one to lead them against just such a horror - each one selected via a mysterious cosmic power here known as the Prime Matrix, which not only holds the key to eliminating the virus but also the key to the long-lost origins of the Transformer race. When the Seekers interpret an oncoming vessel as another Destron attack, they promptly disobey Magnus' field orders and shoot it down, mortally wounding its sole occupant, the sage Alpha Trion and causing him to crash along the outskirts of the city-state just as a disgruntled Orion is going for a drive. Orion can't save the dying pilot, but before he goes Alpha transfers the Prime Matrix to Orion, telling the young 'bot that he will be able to access its power and wisdom in times of crisis. Alpha then turns coal-black and crumbles to dust, and Orion realizes he must warn the people of Iacon of the growing danger, knowing full well he'll become a hunted outlaw in the process.
Fortunately, for him, he gains a band of allies that include Jazz, Bumblebee, Ironhide, and Ratchet - all of whom have just been dismissed from their government jobs by Megatron in favor of Megs' own hand-picked talents, which serves to diminish Magnus' power base, even more so when Prowl is left for dead after discovering Megatron's escape plan and quickly replaced by Barricade. With the decadent Iacon falling into the iron grip of Megatron, and any who oppose him getting promptly thrashed, Orion and his merry mechs (Robin Hood reference totally intended) begin sieging the archives where Orion once worked; when Grimlock and his Dynobot team try to close in on the escaping 'bots, Orion is able to tap the Prime Matrix to materialize (a la TF: Energon) a heavily-armed trailer that also sports an additional surprise: a Super Mode which transforms Orion Pax into Optimus Prime, leader of the newly-christened Autobots, taking the long-lost Cybertron slave brand as their insignia and ultimately burning it into the battered Grimlock's chest, a la Zorro, as a message to Megatron.
From there, the series chronicles Megatron's attempts to capture and destroy Prime and his growing band of allies as the Autobots outmaneuver and outsmart Megs' foot soldiers at every turn, also staying one step ahead of the by-the-book Ultra Magnus as well as Magnus' right hand, Elita-1, who's determined to bring in Optimus Prime yet finds herself increasingly drawn to him. And on top of that, there's still also the pesky little matter of the original Destron-mutated Transformers that have managed to escape custody and absorb a maximum of five Transformer carcasses apiece, making them five times as strong, five times as smart, and five times as twisted...
I admit that I took a couple of conventions of the TF mythos and tried to spin them in somewhat different directions - the increasingly-evil Decepticon characters being worshipped by millions as heroes while the Autobots are hunted down and shot at by the same millions for their courage and selflessness (as opposed to the typical 'mirror universe' schtick, or even "Beast Machines" where nobody else is around); Orion Pax and Optimus Prime being dual identities as opposed to one being permanently 'reformatted' into the other; the Transformers inadvertently creating the Quintessons, instead of the intentional other way around. In addition, there were some aspects of some of the newer TF 'toons I did sort of bring back - Optimus' Super Mode, multiple Transformer planets, Magnus and Optimus being in opposition to each other.
Seriously it would be awesome!
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