Tigerhawk7109 wrote:Tell me where said false promises are. Prime delivered on the stories, the voice acting, the animation, and the characters. Animated and Beast Wars pretty much do the same. Optimus isn’t boring; he’s a veteran tired of fighting that war. And all the Decepticons were spot on as characters. The same cannot be said for the Predacons of Beast Wara. Quite a few were simply hollow shells. Prime succeeded where Beast Wars failed. As for Prime vs. Animated, I consider the two interchangeable depending on your preference.
All I can tell you is that your objectively wrong, Prime was a disaster in writing, almost all Transformers shows minus Animated, Beast Wars and Rescue Bots have mediocre writing so it's up to other factors to make their shows entertaining, like not making the majority of the show a bunch of relic hunts for relics which are almost never brought up again or written off to a corner.
Optimus is factually the worst character on the show with no question whatsoever, he has no depth, is incredibly monotone, has nothing to learn and never grows as a character, duller then a rusty blade, how the guy has more personality in the RID sequel is hilarious for just how bad this incarnation was, not subjectively but objectively, this is not how you write a leader, G1 Optimus pulled the father to his men mentor role then Prime did, also he lets human children heavily participate in the war which is quite the flaw in such a "realistic and high stakes" show, this wasn't Animated or the low stakes shows but one with "high" levels of risk.
The Decepticons are a mixed bad, most of their base personalities aren't bad but the direction of their characters on how the show went is laughable.
Starscream: He had such a strong start in the show but he went down incredibly hard as the show went on after he gets "kicked out" by the Decepticons and became a joke of a character, a literal butt monkey who lost all urgency as a character and became a punching bag for everyone else with the only thing he was able to accomplish later on the show was the whole Omega Bridge stuff with the keys before being reduced to Megatron's "loyal" tamed lap dog for the remainder of the show.
Soundwave: He was fine bare bones, but he overstayed the quite gimmick for too long so in the end he was a prop with no character besides generic loyalty which is fine for a side character but that's all he was... a side character used for plot convenience and was written out of the show via plot convenience.
Also he gets punked in his field by a 12 year old magic child, Soundwave himself is getting outmatched in war by a 12 year old boy, that is the actual worst part of the character when he gets presented as a competent otherwise.
Knock Out: Fantastic character! He was written consistent and is probably one of the few with the least flaws but there is one problem. His defection wasn't deserved or earned nor was it ever hinted at, it was a lazy even if fun development, it kinda feels it was picked out from a certain character's aborted arc...speaking of such.
Breakdown: Ah poor Breakdown, a clear example of someone who was intentionally written out of the show because of their actor, I remember hearing that they cut the voice actor due to expense as well as some internal conflicts which were a common occurrence behind the scenes. (Seriously if you read up about all this it's just terribly unprofessional) In the show his death was abrupt and not written well because of the dropped plot points like the Bulkhead rivalry or the teased loyalty conflictions the character had early on.
Airachnid: Christ this character was such an abomination, constantly brought up then dropped then brought up again, this character served to be nothing but just a more menacing version of Starscream who was too much of a joke to actually serve the traumatic enemy of Arcee and her angst, her story was left unconcluded being literally shooed out on a moon and now she's suddenly a vampire? How can she control Insecticons despite not being one? What was the pay off to her and Arcee's rivalry? Literally nothing and she was thus a waste of a character who removing would of made the show so much better.
Also she was a mary sue and writers pet.
Shockwave: Not bad but all he serves is to be exposition and talkative science version of Soundwave, half of his dialogue is just about logic, but outside of a couple of plot convenient developments he doesn't serve much purpose in the show and we don't even know what the heck happened to him in the end after giving the Predacons some encouraging words.
Dreadwing: He was mostly fine, being a less boisterous replacement for Breakdown (yes I know he showed up before Breakdown died but this was pretty much his character) and his developments and death was fine even if it's clear that death was invented because the writers couldn't figure what to do with him.
Megatron: What a joke, this was the worst character of the main roster including Autobots and Humans, he was an idiot through and through who was the main reason he lost, it's ironic considering that the Decepticons were doing fine before the start of the series before he returned with the Dark Energon. His personality and performance were fine I'll give you that but his writing and direction was atrocious.
He throws away tools and people, like the whole Cylus thing which was not even the latter's fault, he was responsible for turning Predaking against him even though the Predacon was loyal and had no reason to turn against him, Megatron was ultimately responsible for the Decepticons losses, it is pathetic how much Starscream was a better leader then Megatron in the entire show.
His redemption was not deserved at all, he gets tortured for a little bit and then magically realizes that he was "bad" but he doesn't get any consequences for the things he did, the Autobots let him go like nothing ever happened, he was already killed off in the shows finale before that movie why did they resurrect the character instead of simply use his corpse as a vessel for Unicron?
Makeshift: No problems with the character but where did he come from? Why wasn't he around before? The only flaw with this guy was existing so early on with the writers having to kill him immediately because they didn't know what to do with him.
These are just the Decepticons, most of the Autobots were boring and written poorly as well.
Arcee: is the absolute worse, she is a complete wrench to the Autobots who is a hypocrite who chews out characters like Smokescreen or the kids for overstepping their boundaries when Arcess constantly did these things before and after, she has no self control and constantly costs the Autobots things like potentially gaining Starscream as an ally which she ruins all herself, she goes against Optimus who does nothing to correct behavior kinda like he's a terrible leader or something. She whines about her 2 dead partners (a tragic backstory so interesting they did it the exact same way twice!) all the time but when she gets Airachnid in a position to actually end her and do something good for once she spares her!
Bulkhead: is just worse boring Bulkhead from animated with none of the good entertaining qualities of the character he is based off of, but the worse part was his death fake out where it's treated like he could be crippled for life but is literally fine a couple episodes later with no explanation, his potential fate is treated by the Autobots as a more serious thing then Cliffjumper's potential death which reminds me.
So overall Bulkhead should of died and been replaced with Wheeljack, could of given the show some real meaningful depth.
Cliffjumper: Christ the ultimate bait and switch who was a waste of a character model (We get 3 episodes with the model, all 3 with him and 1 episode with the barely visible Tailgate) which is funny how Prime's devs went on about the limited budget with character models despite not getting good use out of them, not too mention his death was so poorly written because of it's reliance of shock value even though we are given little time to know the guy before said death, it was used to raise the stakes that were never met afterwards.
No other good guys died except for Optimus at the very end which also doesn't count because Gary Prime gets raised back to life in the next series with no consequences, Cliffjumper was the only death as a false sign that things could get worse for the good guys who never had to sacrifice or struggle.
I truly wish that they would of done their original plan that they were going to use Smokescreen for him, the plan being that he was going to be a member of the main cast from the start of the show but be killed at the end of season 1 by Megatron which would of been much better since maybe people would of actually felt sad and not shocked and angry.
Ratchet: Great character and there was nothing wrong with him or the direction they went with him, probably the best character of the show by far and the only one with no big flaws in writing.
Ultra Magnus: He gets 1 or 2 moments of character development but is otherwise the exact same character as Optimus Prime which is great we get two stoic personalityless leader characters that are as entertaining as drying paint, doesn't help he showed up way too late to matter, he served no role in the plot besides getting his butt kicked in by Megatron and later crippled for the rest of his screentime by the Predacons and considering we don't see him in RID it's possible he never recovered. (Ok that last one is a joke but it's plausible with how he was treated by the writers) so Ultra Magnus was a copy paste joke and nothing else.
Wheeljack: Character was great even if he was more like Drift then Wheeljack but the writing was weird, the first time he left it was understandable but his search for other Autobots payed off with...literally nothing (Hello Seaspray, Goodbye Seaspray), he gets back to Earth and then just...goes off somewhere? Shows up a few times afterwards to help on some missions before he returns to help to defend their base only to get shot down and captured...only to escape immediately and then does not much in Season 3 besides that one episode where he's put off by Ultra Magnus and such which was cool but was just kinda there.
Smokescreen: Mr. I-can't-believe-it's-not-Hotrod as a character was fun and brought some cool dynamics into the show...about 44 episodes in...it took 44 episodes and the later half of season 2 to bring a new Autobot into the main cast (Wheeljack was just a guest star before that), he was set up for some big destiny or whatever as a potential Prime...which goes nowhere, making him not a Prime is fine but they should of taken his path somewhere because it certainly feels like Bumblebee took it last minute.
Bumblebee: This wasn't a character, he had a couple of good episodes but was otherwise just there, his radio gimmick doesn't work here like it did initially in the live action movies because he doesn't even use a Radio with actual words to speak just R2 droid speech which Raf instantly understands and no other human because magic? So the audience has no idea what he's saying, he only becomes a real character at the end of the show...it took 65 episodes to become a character and only because the writers chose the most stupid thing ever.
Pretend to "kill" their beloved Bumblebee like anyone would ever believe he was going to be dead, because of course the final episode of the show and the writers still can't actually present any meaningful sacrifice.
I'm going to briefly address the humans, Jack was...fine although he kinda fell out of prominence as the show went on, Miko never learned, always did things to get into trouble and was just annoying, Raf is magic human kid and one of the biggest keys for the show to magically resolve conflicts, the kids did not really get much development although there was some it was just a low note.
Fowler was great, my personal fave human in the franchise and it just makes me think that the kids should of just been soldiers...no really it would of improved things quite a bit and resolves the "bringing kids into combat" thing, Jack would stay pretty much the same as a character besides the school stuff which also never mattered and was hardly there, Miko could simply be a trigger happy soldier but it wouldn't change the stupidity of some of the things she did, Raf being a hacker could finally make some sense to an extent.
I got not much to say about Silas and Mech, they did not build up to anything besides Silas murdering his people and then gets teased as a potential asset to the Decepticons only to immediately get turned into a dissection piece because he failed due to Megatron's idiocy and for events outside of Silas's control, and then later on he dies...which was only a means to finally resolve the last loose ends of Mech, waste of time and people who never accomplished anything.
This isn't even everything that Primes does wrong but this is probably way too long now so I'm going to end it here, I'm not great with my wording but Prime is an objectively badly written show, the greatest short example of the show creators incompetency was the whole Trypticon/Nemesis thing which shows how much disrespect the show had for Hasbro and the Aligned continuity, High Moon studios compromised aspects of Fall of Cybertron for them and they get what in return? Disrespect of the highest degree, and for that I can't give this show any praise beyond looking pretty at the expense of environments/world/cast and the few good aspects of it's characters.
