The episode gives us a brand new title sequence, featuring a logo cut by a laser from the floating head of Unicron, (Spoilers, maybe?) who looks like he was rendered using the animation software from the G2 commercials. It leads us to the title of the episode...
-Insert obligatory, completely original Shrek joke here-
Megatronus, voiced by Mark Hamill, starts us off by explaining to some mysterious force, whoistotallynotUnicronwhydoyouask, that he has to find a relic called the Requiem Blaster to complete the ancient...triumphurent? Right off the bat the usual problems pop up, blocky animation, expressionless faces, terrible lip sync, the usual, but they all seem to be worse this time around. It definitely seems like the series was rushed to try to premiere at the same time the coinciding toys were on store shelves, something neither of the two previous shows were able to do. Most of the movements characters make are sudden, with just a few frames dedicated to each. We'll dive into that more a bit later in the episode.
Anyway, Megatronus has a brief flashback to the era of the original 13 Primes, back when he had used the requiem blaster for good to defeat evil, not the other way around. It also introduces a frankly strange love interest in the form of Solus Prime. Solus wants the blaster destroyed, and Megatronus is offended that she doesn't trust him to keep it safe. Solus' performance is stale and rigid, especially given that she's trying to be portrayed as a warm, charming character. But, similarly, voice direction has not been one of the past show's highlights.
Because even Megatronus has to have a villain backstory. For some reason.
This whole scene gets a bit exposition heavy, and doesn't flow very well as a normal conversation. It's quite painfully obvious that this scene is purely to inform the viewer of Megatronus' plan and backstory, even though there are more organic ways of achieving that. Megatronus doesn't find the blaster, and dissapears, off to search another area.
We then catch up with the main cast, consisting of Perceptor, Windblade, Victorion, and Megatron, who find themselves being watched in the middle of a cybernetic swamp. The same story with Megatronus and Solus is detailed again, making the previous scene unneeded. While it's hard to get across in text form, there's a scene here that shows all of these characters together, talking one at a time. The only character that ever moves, blinks, or changes their facial expressions is the one that's talking. The rest are just still character models until it's their turn to talk. This looks AWFUL, and has to be one of the worst looking shots I've noticed in any of these shows. The way the characters are animated makes them look lifeless enough, let alone just making them stand frozen when they aren't talking.
The group is then ambushed by the Dinobots, who appear from the plant growth in the swamp.
*Live Studio Audience Applauds*
Something extremely important to note here is that, despite the Dinobots combining later in the episode, they all have their own personalities and voices, something other combiner members in this show notably do not have. It's been all but established that the limbs of combiners are little more than drones, and it's just one consciousness shared between the members. This totally retcons that entire thing, showing that (at least with Volcanicus) each member has a consciousness, identity, name, voice, and (in the case of Grimlock and Slug at minimum) a robot mode and the ability to transform.
So wait, does that mean Dust Up just got straight up sliced in half? Is she dead? How can Victorion still control her right arm? This presents so many questions.
To the episode's credit, it is really nice to hear Gregg Berger as Grimlock again. He delivers a great performance, and it's a great callback to the original show.
The Dinobots start attacking the gang, because they don't trust Megatron. Grimlock takes out Megatron with the slowest, easiest-to-see-coming tail swipe ever. He then grabs Perceptor, trying to drown him, even though he shouldn't need air to breathe. There are several instances here where a few more frames would have made things look considerably smoother, such as when Perceptor gets knocked over. On the first couple of watches I genuinely though he just clipped through Grimlock's leg.
Grimlock moves more like a sock puppet here then I would like to admit.
Meanwhile, the other members of the expedition are having their own problems with the dinos. For instance, Victorion is having to deal with both Sludge and Snarl, who both seem to be nearly the same size as her even though we've seen Volcanicus and Victorion being the same size in trailers.
I swear to Primus they're saying "TOM" "HANKS!" "TOM" "HANKS!"
And then we're treated to the best/worst part of the entire episode. Windblade is in the middle of a battle with Slug, and tosses him across the clearing. In the next shot, however, he stands up, transformed, about ten feet away on her left. You can see Windblade on the ground after tossing Slug in the lower left hand corner of the first image, and then where Slug pops back up in literally the NEXT SHOT in image 2. Who in the production office decided that was okay?
...10 outta 10
The Dinobots regroup, and reveal to the cast that they can form Volcanicus, the bombshell on which the episode ends.
That was quite the episode. I wish I could say that they've fixed everything, or that it's even an improvement over the last series, but I honestly can't. The mouth movements are worse, the animation feels rushed, the writing is still terrible, the voice direction and some of the acting isn't good, and there's glaring continuity errors that are just glossed over. There isn't enough story to fully critique yet, so I'll reserve my judgement for the full series until more episodes are released, but I don't harbor a lot of hope.
Thanks for tuning in with me to take a look at Power of the Primes. If you want to watch the episode for yourself and tell me if I was right or wrong, you can find it on Go90 or the Transformers Tumblr page. Join me next week as we take a look at episode 2!
