Machinima's Transformers: Combiner Wars Episode 7 REVIEW

To steal some dusty philosopher's phrase, that was nasty, brutish, and short. There was no sense of space or weight to the animation. There was no sense of meaning or interaction in the dialogue. The plot was stupid.

The animation models were cool.

Some moments in the voice acting were good (Megs), so long as it did not rely on any other character's lines.

I had not though DoTM could have been topped for bottom, but this is the worst.

Awe come on, if you were the nostalgia critic this review would be 75% of cut aways of bad acting and a "fair use" public service announment about how mean and nasty companies don't want you cashing in on their successes.

Can I PLEEEEEEASE make a small request? Can someone take a picture of Victorion with CW Computron's hands?

SillySpringer wrote:Can I PLEEEEEEASE make a small request? Can someone take a picture of Victorion with CW Computron's hands?

...Wrong thread?

Sabrblade wrote:

SillySpringer wrote:Can I PLEEEEEEASE make a small request? Can someone take a picture of Victorion with CW Computron's hands?

...Wrong thread?

...yes. Sorry. I read Combiner Wars and skipped over "Machinima". Forgot this cartoon even exists.

Big Grim wrote:

o.supreme wrote:Anyone trying to say this bares any resemblance to the original animated series is about as far off as you can be.

Not particularly. All his points are pretty spot on. For all the love the G1 cartoon gets, it was poorly written and could be appallingly bad now and then. IDW ain't 100% perfect but it's a damn sight better than the G1 cartoon.

The ways that the writing is "bad" are not the same.

G1 cartoon tended to be maybe a bit trite and moralistic and employed what would now be regarded as some offensive ethnic and gender stereotypes. The humans were often forced into plots and action was often constrained or disappointing. It had a perhaps formulaic sitcom structure.

This had no moral. It was all action. It didn't have trite morals because it didn't have morals, really. It lacked structure.

I would seriously prefer Optimus and Elita One going on a date where a bumbling Grimlock and Computron dress up as butlers, trying to create a romantic dinner for them. Hot Rod, Bumblebee, and Daniel try to make spare cash to get Jazz new hubcaps by selling cookies door-to-door. Meanwhile, Galvatron wants all the cookies for himself and sends Bruticus to steal them.

I would absolutely take that and call it Combiner Wars over the forty odd minutes we just watched of action figures tearing one another's limbs off.

So, my thoughts on the last episode and the series... It wasn't good. It wasn't that bad either. Not a fan of Starscream's final words being the same as the only lines said by the Banshee in Darby O'Gill and the Little People. I mean, they excited me with a Combiner Combiner, but then they made it a giant Starscream hologram. Now, I would have been able to get past that.. But THEN they turned him into a head (Am I the only one who thinks he looks like BB-8?). However, I really enjoyed Megatron's performance and was sad to see him leave in the end. But what gets me is that it's all like "Yay! Starscream's dead! We won!" then *BOOM* the Titans have instantly returned. There's no conclusion like the Council rebuilding Cybertron, Metroplex's arm is left standing there in the city, and Rodimus is still missing an arm. There are good things about this episode. Like the look of the characters. By God I love that. The next good thing would be Megatron and his tank-gun-robot triple changing gimmick. But what I actually liked was the ending, and not just because it meant the end of this. It was the nod to a possible Titans Return series. Half of me actually wants to see that become a reality, the other half is a bit apprehensive. That's all I can say about this series. (Phew, I haven't gone on a semi-rant like that since I talked about King Kong vs. Godzilla on my blog...). Actually, being only five minutes long, all 8 of these episodes would make nice shorts for a certain show...

Decepticon Stryker wrote:Actually, being only five minutes long, all 8 of these episodes would make nice shorts for a certain show...

Ehh, I doubt that would happen.

Maybe in the not too distant future...

Bronzewolf wrote:

Decepticon Stryker wrote:Actually, being only five minutes long, all 8 of these episodes would make nice shorts for a certain show...

Ehh, I doubt that would happen.

Maybe in the not too distant future...

Will it be next Sunday A.D.?

Decepticon Stryker wrote:

Bronzewolf wrote:

Decepticon Stryker wrote:Actually, being only five minutes long, all 8 of these episodes would make nice shorts for a certain show...

Ehh, I doubt that would happen.

Maybe in the not too distant future...

Will it be next Sunday A.D.?

Maybe by someone not too different from you or me.

Bronzewolf wrote:

Decepticon Stryker wrote:

Bronzewolf wrote:

Decepticon Stryker wrote:Actually, being only five minutes long, all 8 of these episodes would make nice shorts for a certain show...

Ehh, I doubt that would happen.

Maybe in the not too distant future...

Will it be next Sunday A.D.?

Maybe by someone not too different from you or me.

Will they work at Gizmonic Institute? And be just a regular face in a red jumpsuit?

Decepticon Stryker wrote:

Bronzewolf wrote:

Decepticon Stryker wrote:

Bronzewolf wrote:

Decepticon Stryker wrote:Actually, being only five minutes long, all 8 of these episodes would make nice shorts for a certain show...

Ehh, I doubt that would happen.

Maybe in the not too distant future...

Will it be next Sunday A.D.?

Maybe by someone not too different from you or me.

Will they work at Gizmonic Institute? And be just a regular face in a red jumpsuit?

He'll do a good job cleaning up the place, but his bosses won't like him, and they'll shoot him into space.

Bronzewolf wrote:

Decepticon Stryker wrote:

Bronzewolf wrote:

Decepticon Stryker wrote:

Bronzewolf wrote:

Decepticon Stryker wrote:Actually, being only five minutes long, all 8 of these episodes would make nice shorts for a certain show...

Ehh, I doubt that would happen.

Maybe in the not too distant future...

Will it be next Sunday A.D.?

Maybe by someone not too different from you or me.

Will they work at Gizmonic Institute? And be just a regular face in a red jumpsuit?

He'll do a good job cleaning up the place, but his bosses won't like him, and they'll shoot him into space.

I'm all seriousness, though, I had a really good laugh at this. Good to meet a fellow MSTie. We better get back on topic, though, before Burn yells at us.

SMH. No one ever considers the cast of an animated project is doing the job as they were directed by their employee to do it.

jON3.0 wrote:SMH. No one ever considers the cast of an animated project is doing the job as they were directed by their employee to do it.

I do consider it, actually. Like I said, Megatron is great, and his voice acting is a large part of that. I love your Prime, and I think it's obvious that you've had experience doing him before. You can't blame the VA's for bad writing/directing/producing/instruction in general, and so I haven't in my reviews.

No one blames Ben Affleck (in many people's opinion, the highlight of the movie) for Batman Vs. Superman, I don't think anyone is blaming the voice actors for anything that was out of their control. I think we know you all weren't given the best instruction in the world for this.

Don't take anything I say in the reviews personally, because I certainly don't mean it that way. Now, the writers? Them I would blame, but you all came in, did a job, and worked with what you are given. Nothing against you.

jON3.0 wrote:SMH. No one ever considers the cast of an animated project is doing the job as they were directed by their employee to do it.

Like I said: I found the casting for the principals to be good. You and Jason were fantastic, although Jason was a real breakout talent here. Abby and Jason were good. Frank had big shoes to fill with Starscream and all the Starscream/Cobra Commanders since Latta passed have been hit or miss for me. Beyond the principals, some of the voices sounded like odd choices, especially Metroplex. (And especially sounding so unprocessed compared to how processed your voice was.)

I would be up for you and Jason returning as Prime and Megatron for everything Welker, Cullen, Kaye, and Chalk don't do.

Just because this wasn't my thing doesn't mean I don't appreciate your choices, your growth into the role, your process as an actor, or the amazingly awesome rich tones in your voice.

If you and Jason did Transformers 6 or a professional dub of the Japanese Headmasters or the next show after RiD or the video game sequel to Devastation? Awesome. If you did voice recordings for toys? Awesome.

For me, any criticisms I have with casting, audio processing, animation, or writing don't rest with the actors.

RodimusRex wrote:

Big Grim wrote:

o.supreme wrote:Anyone trying to say this bares any resemblance to the original animated series is about as far off as you can be.

Not particularly. All his points are pretty spot on. For all the love the G1 cartoon gets, it was poorly written and could be appallingly bad now and then. IDW ain't 100% perfect but it's a damn sight better than the G1 cartoon.

The ways that the writing is "bad" are not the same.

G1 cartoon tended to be maybe a bit trite and moralistic and employed what would now be regarded as some offensive ethnic and gender stereotypes. The humans were often forced into plots and action was often constrained or disappointing. It had a perhaps formulaic sitcom structure.

This had no moral. It was all action. It didn't have trite morals because it didn't have morals, really. It lacked structure.

I would seriously prefer Optimus and Elita One going on a date where a bumbling Grimlock and Computron dress up as butlers, trying to create a romantic dinner for them. Hot Rod, Bumblebee, and Daniel try to make spare cash to get Jazz new hubcaps by selling cookies door-to-door. Meanwhile, Galvatron wants all the cookies for himself and sends Bruticus to steal them.

I would absolutely take that and call it Combiner Wars over the forty odd minutes we just watched of action figures tearing one another's limbs off.

^
This

One addendum to G1's writing compared to this...thing's is that in G1 you actually understood what the stakes were to any given conflict. Heroic Autobots vs. Evil Decepticons, got it. Decepticons want to steal resources to fuel their war machine, Autobots want to stop that. Yes. We know the basic rules of the story and why characters are doing what they do.

Combiner Wars, though? Not so much. Something happened to Caminus because of combiners, we don't know what, who was involved, or even if people still live on the planet. Combiners are their own faction, except when they're not and are fighting each other. The enigma of combination needs to be destroyed because it creates more combiners, or maybe it powers up existing combiners, or maybe it destroys them, or maybe it does all three. The council on cybertron doesn't seem to know exactly what it does at any given time. They just know they want to use it. The combiners are a threat to society, except when they're doing their own thing, fighting megatron for funsies, or fighting each other on behalf of their factions.

Windblade is angry at combiners for the thing we don't know about, but despite the fact that some are working for the council, Computron, she's mad at all of them, even though there's a total of four. Starscream wants peace, except when he doesn't. It's not clear if this was a long term plan, if he knew how the enigma worked, or if he was a mindless monster at the end. Is his plan to just blow up Cybertron? Does he want to be the sole ruler? How does he plan to do that if he's just a screaming blob monster with laser beams?

The story seems to take a lot from the IDW fiction that most of us are familiar with, but makes key changes and expects us to just know how things are supposed to work. It's infuriating. Were the G1 episodes ridiculous and over simplified to the extreme, yes. But that is so much better than not understanding the basic premise of the story.

RodimusRex wrote:I would seriously prefer Optimus and Elita One going on a date where a bumbling Grimlock and Computron dress up as butlers, trying to create a romantic dinner for them. Hot Rod, Bumblebee, and Daniel try to make spare cash to get Jazz new hubcaps by selling cookies door-to-door. Meanwhile, Galvatron wants all the cookies for himself and sends Bruticus to steal them.

I... I want this

jON3.0 wrote:SMH. No one ever considers the cast of an animated project is doing the job as they were directed by their employee to do it.

Dude. The voices were like the only good part of this. Don't worry about it.

From the News post, because I suspect the thread has long since buried it...

He couldn't climb the latter more if he tried. He even said how he convinced the public to trust him. He's where he wants to be! Where he's always wanted to be. Why would he ruin that? Why?

In hind sight, I think the point they were trying to get to, some of the things Megtron was trying to say, was that while Starscream had Political Power, an illusionary power, he wanted physical power. He wanted to be not just a leader, he wanted to be Strong. The giant among men, who lead because to be defied menat he destroyed the world of lesser bots. The COuncil was just a way to get to the artifact.

I think maybe the point is the last line of Starscream's prelude - "I got power... but it wasn't what I thought it was."
So he's in the position he wanted, he literally couldn't get any higher; but he hates it now. So his getting the Enigma is his way of...

... and that's where the series fails. It doesn't explain in what way he dislikes it (hell, if you didn't watch the prelude you wouldn't know at all), and you don't know why him becoming all-powerful with the Enigma helps solves his dilemma. Is he simply lashing out? Does he want 'revenge' on everyone? Does he think ascending to a higher being will help him? Maybe by doing this and causing random destruction he'll revert the world back to war, hence becoming a military leader which is the position he actually wanted all along, hence being a leadership position he's finally comfortable in.

A few of those directions are potentially interesting. Too bad it's never explained which one, if any, it is.

I don't want to jump on the negative bandwagon, but this series was lackluster. The potential was there but it all got chopped up in some corporate meeting...... so much potential lost.

Seibertronians, it is time. It certainly has been a journey full of ups and downs, curves, and many, many problems. But like all other journeys this one must come to an end. The curtains are starting to close. It is time. Time to review the final episode of Machinima's Combiner Wars series.


We start with Windblade. She is floating in a Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows-style afterlife dream sequence. A voice wakes her. She realizes it belongs to metroplex. He tells her that the titans have been listening to her thoughts, and don't like the anger they've seen within them.

Fear leads to Anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

She apologizes for what she's done, but the titans remind her of who she truely is. She wakes up again on cybertron, because death means nothing.


And then, and then!!As if being able to take down a Combiner with a swipe of her sword or stop a friggin' BLACK HOLE WITH HER TURBINES wasn't enough for her, Windblade gets to take complete control of Metroplex! Awesome potential there for a entertaining story, right? Well...

It's just his arm...That's it.

Yes, that's right. Metroplex's arm makes a surprise appearance for some reason.


Friggin' called it! Well, sorta

A quick note: Starscream's...well...screams are absolutely horrendous. Nearly unwatchable. They sound like some tormented demon baby. 

Windblade smashes the titan's limb onto starscream, grabbing hold of him so Prime and Megatron can have a clear shot.

Now comes one of the top five moments in the series: Megatron turns into a gun. Yes, not only does this Megatron have a gun mode, but he's a triple changer. There's something for everyone to enjoy. I seriously, SERIOUSLY, love this Megatron.

Awesome!

Prime arms himself with Megatron, taking that one final shot at Starscream, destroying him.

Optimus checks on Windblade, and is surprised to learn she's still alive. Megatron approaches with the (somehow still intact) enigma of Combination. Seriously though, if an explosion of that caliber couldn't destroy it, I find it unlikely that anything Optimus or Megatron could do would. But then again, maybe Windblade can pull out another Dues Ex Machina magic power and destroy it single-handedly.

Megatron, Prime and Windblade have a quick conversation about what to do with the Enigma, and Megatron literally mentions how he's "more than meets the eye", as the entire audience participates in a collective eye roll.


Har har har

It's decided (by pretty much just Windblade) that the Enigma belongs to the combiners, and it's presented to Victorion. She does this weird chest-merge thing with it, sort of like the Matrix of Leadership, but more gross.

The council finally reappears for one last time, just long enough for Windblade to tell them that the Titan's have returned.

But then! Just when you thought it was over, we're teased with a shot of what is presumably Fort Max's head. Yep. Seriously.


Pfft. As if.

Well, I'm sure we'll be seeing that half a year after the Titan's Return toy line ends.

And that's it. That's the end. Of the whole thing. Some final, final thoughts:

I'd like to look at pros first before I get to my usual thoughts, because I feel that the good things about this series have been kind of trampled by the band wagon hate. I'd like to bring some of those good things to a greater light.

Pros:

The art style:
Although it does occasionally have its problems, the animation and art style are very visually pleasing, and have a great feel to them. The character models are new, but inspired, and suit each character well. I know it's very attractive to many fans to have toys that look like they just came off the screen, and vice versa. This delivers tenfold in that front. You almost couldn't get closer in some cases.
The color pallets used are very attractive, rich, and occasionally stunning.

Like this! I want this framed!

It's very beautiful sometimes, and is a highlight of the series. I wish it would have given us some more landscape shots, where this could have really shined.

Another positive would be most of the voice acting. Megatron, Starscream and Prime are done extreme justice here, and Rodimus and The Mistress of Flame are good most of the time, save for one or two lines here and there. I also don't mind the voice of Metroplex, Devastator, or Victorion. These are all well done, and, as I've said, did great with what they were given to work with.

Speaking of Megatron, I'm not exaggerating when I say that if this isn't one of my favorite incarnations of the character, it's by far the most interesting. I love every aspect of him. He's voiced perfectly, his personality is spot on, and his triple-changer ability satisfies the TankknotGuun camp and the GuunnotTankk camp, which, in my experience, is pretty damn near impossible. Boy, Machinima, you got a lot of things wrong but when you get something right you get it right!
Outstanding job. A+.

And that brings me to my thoughts. I don't hate this series. I don't. I just don't like it, either. The middle of the series was enjoyable, good, above par, even by standards set outside of the series. But the beginning was an absolute train wreck, and the ending was a textbook Dues Ex Machina situation. I feel that if it had just done a handful of things differently, it could have been unprecedentedly good. And hey, maybe if a Titan's Return series does happen, they'll take some of the criticism in stride and make it what I know it has the potential to be.


And that is it. All eight episodes, all eight weeks. I have to say that while the programme wasn't always enjoyable, these reviews were. I hope that you all had as much fun reading them as I had writing them. And while the Combiner Wars have indeed ended, who knows, maybe I'll review Another series some day. Thanks for reading my rants and rambles, it's been a ride, for sure, and a pleasure!

Wanna relive the journey? All of the episodes are available now for free on Go90 and Machinima's YouTube channel.

And, as always, thank you for keeping it tuned to seibertron.com, your best source for Transformers news (and reviews!) on the net!

Like you, I don't hate the series, just disliked it...what I hated with a passion was the wasted potential and the Titan-sized hype they wanted us to have for a product that, to me at least, feels rushed or unfinished or something along those lines, maybe the budget was cut or there were last-minute script changes or SOMETHING! Because there's a very noticeable inconsistency in the goods and the bads.
And yes, I really liked this Megatron, Starscream voice was nice when he wasn't screaming, because you used the perfect words for his description: tormented demon baby
I seriously cringed badly at that.
But to me, the highlight of this series was undoubtedly the fact that Jon Bailey is FINALLY an official Optimus Prime voice actor!
I just wish he had debuted in a better series
Also, the hell??? Was it me or did they treat the combiners as a race and not a team of combined cybertronians?

@ Bronzewolf.

Excellent neutral/fair take on the series. 'nuff said.

MaverickPrime wrote:Also, the hell??? Was it me or did they treat the combiners as a race and not a team of combined cybertronians?

It wasn't just you.

Kurona wrote:

MaverickPrime wrote:Also, the hell??? Was it me or did they treat the combiners as a race and not a team of combined cybertronians?

It wasn't just you.

Sadly, the series' inability to treat any of their components as characters was probably just an inevitable result of the short runtime, and the fact that it was CG. Now, I REALLY do like the look of this series, but multiple gestalts meant full individual models for each bot composing them was prohibitively expensive, and even if it was ol' 2D animation, the economy of characters would've never allowed development for more than one on each team. Just thinking of that gives me more bad Energon flashbacks, since that's probably the reason no CG series before or since had very much combining. No matter how good the writers were, that was an insurmountable problem from the get-go.

Someday, I'd like to see a TF series spend a season structured like the Cybertron cartoon, but with the object of the search on different colony worlds being to find every combiner necessary to form some ancient super gestalt who's the only hope to defeat the big-bad-whatever. Maybe an update of the Multiforce so they could do some dual combining action before they all unite for the grand finale. Has any TF story come closer to this than the Breast Force in the first half of Victory?

And on Windblade just blowing away the Unicron Singularity...has no one else ever heard that "Hairdryer-Man" song? Someone has to find that PBS recording and synch it to that scene. This series is going to be edited into a LOT of youtube parodies, and that desperately needs to be one of them!

Bumblevivisector wrote:Someday, I'd like to see a TF series spend a season structured like the Cybertron cartoon, but with the object of the search on different colony worlds being to find every combiner necessary to form some ancient super gestalt who's the only hope to defeat the big-bad-whatever. Maybe an update of the Multiforce so they could do some dual combining action before they all unite for the grand finale. Has any TF story come closer to this than the Breast Force in the first half of Victory?

There was Nexus Prime in the Timelines stories.

This series was complete garbage from start to finish.

The only good thing about it was the animation.

The voice acting was by a bunch of half ass, no talent youtubers and the story was like something a 2 year old wrote.

It was a huge disappointment.

Total shit beginning to end.

Glad it's over, let's hope Hasbro NEVER makes this mistake again.

I like that Starscream was defeated by Optimus and Megatron working in tandem. That's a really smart idea. Other than that, this episode had nothing good.

Microraptor wrote:I like that Starscream was defeated by Optimus and Megatron working in tandem. That's a really smart idea.

One that's been done before (in the exact same way, even) in a much better story that I highly recommend to everyone.

(read right to left)





Actually, the more I think about it, this show's climax feels more and more like it ripped off the climax of THAT story! Starscream merges with a superweapon to become an all-powerful form that threatens to destroy everything and everyone, even producing a black hole as a weapon, and needed to be stopped by a team-up between Optimus and Megatron, in which the former in robot mode uses the latter in gun mode to blast Starscream into oblivion.

They couldn't even be bothered to come up with their own unique climax that they had to rip off the one from a much better story!!!

I don't know...that is pretty much the exact same thing, but I just don't think the writers of this show are that well researched in TF lore to go looking up a Manga...then again, maybe they were banking on western fans having never read that...and copied it exactly. Its The Lion King all over again.

Sabrblade wrote:They couldn't even be bothered to come up with their own unique climax that they had to rip off the one from a much better story!!!

You think the writers of this show, who don't seem exceptionally versed in Transformers mythology, ripped off an obscure manga that most TF fans haven't even heard of?

Galactic Prime wrote:The voice acting was by a bunch of half ass, no talent youtubers

Whoah there pal. The voice acting was one of the high points of this show. We went over this at the beginning and during the show's run, being primarily from YouTube doesn't mean they aren't skilled or ready for a more professional production like this. Their performances were fine, many people are even praising Jason Marmocha as Megatron and of course our venerable Jon Bailey as Prime. There were a few questionable vocal choices (the totally not-imposing Menasor and Metroplex) but otherwise the acting was one of the better elements.

Galactic Prime wrote:
The voice acting was by a bunch of half ass, no talent youtubers

Meanwhile Jon Bailey (Optimus prime) Is a professional voice actor who has done countless ads for many gigantic multinational companies.

Just because they're on YouTube or do YouTube as a hobby doesn't mean they aren't professional.

Yeah, that's pretty disrespectful. Regardless of whether they did a good job or not - and honestly, the voice acting in parts was one of the few things done well - you should still be courteous and respect their profession rather than labelling them as, essentially, random people off the street.

So I'm late to the party as I may have sub-consciously been putting off watching the last episode.

In the beginning I thought "once I've watched all the episodes, I'll go back and watch them all in one sitting so it feels like one big story"

I won't be doing that.

The animation was fine. Some of the voices were great, while others, particularly Starscream, I'll be happy to NEVER hear again.

Story wise, by the end it just seemed to be ANOTHER story to shove Windblade down our collective throats and establish her as this all powerful being and major part of the mythology.

Not to mention the last 30 seconds basically turned the entire series into a prequel/advert for Titans Return, which would explain why we got it NOW and not during the CW run.

Overall ... enjoyed the CGI, I would like to see a series done this way. I'd like to see (hear) some of the voice actors return, but what's really needed is some decent writing, budget and time constraints were clearly a burden with this series. But the potential to build and improve is there.

King Kuuga wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:They couldn't even be bothered to come up with their own unique climax that they had to rip off the one from a much better story!!!

You think the writers of this show, who don't seem exceptionally versed in Transformers mythology, ripped off an obscure manga that most TF fans haven't even heard of?

No. I was upset at the time and just venting.

But you gotta admit, it is a pretty scary coincidence how similar the climax of this show was to climax of that manga, right down to some very strikingly similar details. But, yeah, the manga is pretty obscure and the two do still have their differences (the biggest being that that manga was amazingly good while this show was just the opposite).

Another one of those jokey photocomics, this time for the final episode:

King Kuuga wrote:

Galactic Prime wrote:The voice acting was by a bunch of half ass, no talent youtubers

Whoah there pal. The voice acting was one of the high points of this show. We went over this at the beginning and during the show's run, being primarily from YouTube doesn't mean they aren't skilled or ready for a more professional production like this. Their performances were fine, many people are even praising Jason Marmocha as Megatron and of course our venerable Jon Bailey as Prime. There were a few questionable vocal choices (the totally not-imposing Menasor and Metroplex) but otherwise the acting was one of the better elements.

Yeah it takes a lot of skill to do an Optimus Prime voice. Same goes for Starscream (which I can do), and Megs.

The thing that bummed me out was that this show started out actually pretty well in the first episode. They had a great setup! Menasor and Computron fighting in space, Menasor's "ZERO" line, and that was about it. All of the stuff up to that was amazing. If they had just done everything ELSE different, then it would've been cooler! (Maybe even have- oh, I don't know, maybe made it actual COMBINER WARS? I mean come on. Having only a few combiners and them only showing up for a few seconds doesn't cut it.)

This is how it should've been:

-Instead of Optimus Prime sillily being by himself and finding Windblade by random chance as she is about to shoot the combiney doodad (I can't even remember the name. That's how much I care), they should've had Optimus Prime with his four wave-mates from the toyline; Prowl, Ironhide, Sunstreaker, and Mirage; and they should've been going around as some adventure team or something. Windblade being greeted by all of them would've been awesome.

-There should've been combiners actually fighting each-other for more of the show. There should've also been a whole lot more carnage from the combiners. This thing shouldn't have been called "Combiner Wars" and should've been called "Combiner Wars Could be a Possible Threat so Let's Stop It" instead.

-In the end, instead of Starscream actually being evil, what SHOULD'VE happened is Starscream actually WAS trying to make up for his past sins, and the combiney doodad just got to his head and made him lose his mind or something. Then he should've made some sort of blast that maybe caused Optimus and the four Autobot wave-mates to, I dunno, maybe become combineable and turn into Optimus Maximus??? That may've not made an extreme amount of sense, but it would've at LEAST looked awesome! Also, Starscream should've stayed in that giant combiner form and fought Optimus Maximus instead of blowing up and becoming a screaming head.

I could point out a few other changes, but my post is long enough already.

Sabrblade wrote:Another one of those jokey photocomics, this time for the final episode:

Hey, hey! Don't lump this on Crosscut. He deserves better

Kurona wrote:Hey, hey! Don't lump this on Crosscut. He deserves better

Not my doing. I just found the comic.

I'm sure i read somewhere that someone has merged all of them together so that it plays as just one episode, it's prob on Youtube by now....or something

Just finished this. It felt like something I would've made up and acted out playing with my figures as a kid, so I really did enjoy it from that standpoint. Far from a serious venture though.

Also, I agree a lot of the voice acting was not great. Windblade and Starscream were definitely nice though, and I thought Megatron was kind of cool, not just because of the acting, but the overall demeanor of the character felt a little bit different than what I'm used to in general.

I didn't think the voice acting was the best for a few of characters, but I doubt I could do any better myself overall than what was done. The Optimus and Megatron performances were very reasonable in my mind, with Megatron being one of the better points and the Optimus performance right behind it. They sounded enough like the characters we know. Plus, getting Cullen and Welker to do it probably would've ate over half of the budget or more and made this a lot more troubled and a lot shorter.

On respecting the creatives, I do have a friend that voice acts in a lot of independent productions, definitely not easy for him to do. He says it can be very unpleasant, but he tries to have fun with it. So that's why I hold a lot of respect for the creative types that can and do things I know my own personal limits on. There's no reason to disrespect anyone here in this case based on their level of "fame". Voicing constructive criticism is infinitely more reasonable overall than senselessly bashing and getting personal about it too. If it's that much of an affront, don't watch it.

I do feel disappointed by this or at least underwhelmed with it due to the run-time of the episodes and a lot of what's being pointed out with the combiners being treated as one entity and not individuals coming together. One thing I do like about the comics is how they get into combining being a conflict of minds all running together. I think that would've been really something very good to include in this series. That's rehashing a lot of my previous posts though.

Unfortunately I dread the Titans Return sequel to this and if it even gets made, but I hope the powers here have kept their ear to the ground and taken the constructive stuff to heart to improve it and make it better. CW web series definitely wasn't as "adult" as advertised though and that's actually been another central issue I've had with it. I mean there were plenty of butt shots for Windblade and a lot of moaning or so coming from her as she fought, but that doesn't actually constitute making something adult enough in my mind. Usually when someone says "adult" I picture there being a lot of interpersonal drama, adult like themes, and the various. This... just didn't have it. I can only hope for improvement if there's another attempt.

Talking of how badly combining got handled, I was looking at TFWiki's tongue-in-cheek bios for the Energon/Super Link combiner components recently - in that they had no personality - and realised with horror that Energon/Super Link treated Combiners as Combiners more than this series did.

I can't believe they done it.

The more I think about it, the more this show kinda reminds me of how the third season of TF: Prime was in regards to its use of the Predacons. In that show, the Predacons were included at the behest of Hasbro, but only given the barest minimum of effort by the show to answer Hasbro's pleas since the Predacon subplot was swiftly wrapped up and dropped after five episodes (one of which had nothing to do with the Predacon subplot, even) in favor of the show returning to its "revive Cybertron with the Omega Lock" plot that it previously had going in the second season finale. Like with that show seemingly wanting to tell the Omega Lock story while Hasbro instead wanted a Predacon story, it really feels like Machinima wanted to tell an old-school G1-ish story in which Optimus and Megatron team up to fight against a super-powerful Starscream while Hasbro instead wanted them to tell a Combiner-centric story featuring them, Windblade, the Enigma, and other IDW-based elements.

The lack of focus on the Combiners in this show, with it opting instead to focus more on everyone else in the show, really makes the Combiners' screentime feel like it was tacked on after the fact. Victorion and Devastator are barely in this show at all, and the Menasor vs. Computron fight is little more than a plot device that ultimately feels superfluous since Windblade starts out the story as already being angry at the Combiners even before Menasor and Computron come to Caminus. We could literally take out the Menasor and Computron fight and start the story with the angry Windblade already on her way to Cybertron with no real value to the story lost. Because, in the long run, all that really matters in this story is Windblade being angry at something related to the Council that convinces Optimus to recruit Megatron to team up with him to destroy that something that Windblade is angry at, and which Starscream uses to become super powerful. The Combiners themselves are merely an extension of the threat posed by the Enigma, which itself could be replaced by literally any other powerful MacGuffin so long as it enables Starscream to make himself all powerful.

Although TF: Prime may have had to shoehorn in Predacons in the 3rd season at the request of Hasbro, at least Predaking was a well developed character, even Skylynx and Darksteel weren't totally forgettable in their sole movie appearance. I have no TF Prime toys, but all the characters are memorable to me. Whereas the Combiners in CW basically got no character development at all...if for lack of time than nothing else. If I did not already have the Victorion toy, I would have no idea who she was, or even care why she was there.

Also...I don't know how they can do Titan Wars when they cant afford to even fully animate a single whole Titan Then again it will probably be the same story (substitute Sentinel Prime for Starscream and Alpha Trion for Windblade) wash, rinse, repeat.

o.supreme wrote:Although TF: Prime may have had to shoehorn in Predacons in the 3rd season at the request of Hasbro, at least Predaking was a well developed character,

One could argue that he was kind of a retread of Dreadwing's schtick as a "noble villain whose sworn loyalty to Megatron which be then breaks after hearing of something underhanded that Megatron did behind the noble villain's back". Only with Predaking, this all occurred across a mere three episodes unlike Dreadwing's season-long arc.

In any case, TFP still handled their baggage better than CW. One could still find Predaking to have interesting and enjoyable traits - and an actual personality. The same absolutely cannot be said about this series' Combiners. I don't even know if they exhibited any personality traits beyond "I'm a street punk", "I'm a PC", "I laugh evilly" and... "I'm the leader I guess".

Oh yes, don't get me wrong, this show certainly handled its use of Combiners worse than Prime handled its use of Predacons. But the similarities are still there as I remember tons of people hating on Prime for its only having one Predacon in the third season and for dropping any and all prospects for its having more by terminating Shockwave's Pred lab just so it could go back to the Omega Lock story. People wanted more Preds, lots more Preds, than the single one we got, and were absolutely mad about the show's seemingly hyping up the coming of more Preds and then tossing all of that in the can for the rest of the season (Predacons Rising was made after the fact and was more of a Unicron story than anything). It's the same feeling I got from this show when first Devastator and then Victorion showed up only for both of them to quickly get absorbed by Starscream.