Main Voice Cast for Transformers Earthspark Revealed with Alan Tudyk as Optimus Prime

Evil Eye wrote:Earthspark details revealed.

Oh dear. The character designs still look hideous, and making your only major white human character a villain is not a good look. On the plus side Megatron is going to be a tiltrotor, but that aside...oof.

You do realise this is just the main cast, right? Still plenty of opportunity for good and bad representation on both sides. Heck, as far as I can recall we never knew Fowler or Silas even existed when they first announced Prime, and they were pretty significant characters.

So, is the preview clip region-locked? Because I can't see it.

Also, minor pet peeve, but why do we get the name of every human character - even the Terran Transformers get a human last name - and the human villain only gets a "code name"?

Just watched the trailer. For a kids show the animation is far superior to Cyberverse, so that is a huge plus. Still not too keen on the acting though. I'll probably give the show a chance fully acknowledging however it is not for me.

Megatron: "Holy CRAP, what is happening on Nickelodeon?"
Starscream: "A good Transformers cartoon?"
Megatron: "A.... a GOOD Transformers cartoon!? Something decently written with a well-paced plot and an interesting cast of characters, broadcast on a non-exclusive platform entirely from within your KITCHEN?"
Starscream: "Yes?"
Megatron: "May I SEE it?"
Starscream: "...No."

Region locked video.

Why it's still a thing?

So quick Google on some of the actors. We basically have Sandor Clegane as Megatron and Wash (or Dutch to keep it purely Transformers-related) as Optimus.

...now I want to hear Optimus say "I'm a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar".

As much as Alan tudyk is awesome he forgot to act as a human in the rookie recently and seemed stuck in his resident alien role :p more cast of powerless is never a bad thing tho.

Evil Eye wrote:Oh dear. The character designs still look hideous, and making your only major white human character a villain is not a good look.

Sometimes I almost miss the days when we were so smugly secure in our privilege that we weren't wringing our hands over representation in media and expecting every cartoon family to have a token white man in it. But then, I guess most of us aren't.

I am disappointed that the main villain is human though. On first read I thought he was a Transformer that hated Transformers, which sounded really interesting. Kind of like IDW Sandstorm.

I'm really interested to see what Megatron's role is going to be.

As far as humans' involvement in war as passive observers versus active participants, one thing the Bay movies did get right was the weapons. Budiansky's bios back in the day mixed sxifi tech with conventional weaponry, calling out machine guns, missiles, and bombs, especially for the Decepticons. They used high-end versions of weapons that are standard fare for Earth military vehicles. Their armor, when called out as exceptional, was still made of familiar materials, and it wasn't usually called out as exceptional.

The cartoon bent more scifi, though no more so than G.I. Joe - Transformers had laser guns and scifi shenanigans, but so did humans - who were frequently inventing things advanced enough that the Decepticons needed to steal. Bots could also be repaired oe outright built on Earth using resources available here, and your average Autobot could be roughed up a bit even with a traffic-speed collision, so they weren't usually supposed to be invincible.

Dr. Caelus wrote:

Evil Eye wrote:Oh dear. The character designs still look hideous, and making your only major white human character a villain is not a good look.

Sometimes I almost miss the days when we were so smugly secure in our privilege that we weren't wringing our hands over representation in media and expecting every cartoon family to have a token white man in it. But then, I guess most of us aren't.

Look at it this way- if it were the other way around and the only revealed main character who WASN'T white was the mad scientist villain, there'd be complaints. It works both ways; if you're claiming to be diverse, you need to be, well, diverse. And "Everyone is one race except the villain" is not that, regardless of what those races are. It could be that everyone was from Venezuela except the villain who was Mongolian and it would be equally ridiculous.

Prime, for all the things I found subpar about it, did it right. You had a white kid, a Japanese kid, a Latino kid, a black agent (also the best character incidentally) and it never felt forced. Likewise, Animated has the main human character be of Indian descent, and she's one of my favourite humans in Transformers. This? It just feels very much like pandering. Not even to black fans or even black kids- rather, to people who literally just want to see THEIR worldview given credit, THEIR egos stroked (even if they aren't black themselves) at the expense of everybody else, even though they can literally go to any other property for that already.

A mainstream cartoon having representation of other people in it? That's cool, no problem. A show aimed at a black audience? Why not? But mixing the two together seems incompatible- you're going for a show that's supposed to have as broad an appeal as possible specifically targeting a relatively niche audience.

Honestly I would have thought the classic Japanese approach of "Mukokuseki" would have been a better one- making race beyond basic skin colour pretty indeterminate and honestly utterly unimportant to the story or character's personality. To children- you know, the actual audience for these shows- even assuming they care about being "represented" beyond basic skin colour and sex, their main draw to a character will be "They're cool/cute/funny!".

Plus, quite aside from anything else, the character designs are objectively hideous.

I'm new here so forgive me for not knowing how to respond properly, but to the gentleman Evil Eye; youre reasoning for your first comment mentioned that black fans wouldn't even want this. Now I know I am paraphrasing so I do suggest you all read his comments fully, but, unless you are black what place or right do you have to speak on our behalf? Even if you talked to 100 black fans you still don't get to speak for what we do and don't want. I was born in 1995 and while most of the older stuff I watched was secondhand, one show I really loved was armada and animated. Carlos was a brown character and so was Sari. Also the villains of animated were all white and that wasn't an issue, so why now? I grew up with two loving parents and a younger brother and this show finally give me a chance to see characters who look like me join in the adventure. Yes I am happy that a black family is the lead cast because representation matters. This show paints us in a positive and non stereotypical way and that's all I've ever wanted. It already hurts enough when I get discriminated against in real life but to come here and see it?

Like dude, it's not woke or an agenda. We just want a chance to be represented and to join in the story. Why do some of you get so upset for that? And you complain about the only villains being white bothers me even more. Transformers isn't suddenly about to demonize all white people by making them villains. And NO. This show isn't just aimed at black people. If I can enjoy Generation 1 even though the main cast is white there's no reason you can't look past the main characters here being black. Let us have a chance to be the lead without making us feel terrible for it. We're not a political device, we are human beings and when we read other fans saying stuff like this it hurts us and makes us feel like we'll never be truly accepted by the Fandom. I've always wanted to draw transformers comics and be involved with the brand but comments like Evil Eyes make me think that might never happen. You can not like the designs, that's fine, but the whole Black comment and White villains comment was unnecessary.