Not good enough. Seriously, that could literally be anything. You've actually just described like, at least a good 30 - 40% of everything found in a TRU. There has to be something beyond that which defines the franchise to distinguish it from everything else. Otherwise, anything could fit. Go-Bots, Voltron, Robotech... anything that involves stuff turning into other stuff. I think maybe we've hit on the problem right here...BWprowl wrote:Robots turnin' into stuff.Shockwave wrote:I think the question that needs to be asked at this point is what makes something "Transformers" to you?
Yeah yeah I know, GoBots already ARE officially TFs. But they weren't originally.
The analogy is still valid. There are certain things that define each franchise as being that franchise rather than any of the hundreds of clones that inevitably come out. There are things about Superman that make him Superman and not Thor. There are things that distinguish Transformers and actually Transformers and not just "that thing with the robots". This is where it's carried by the specific characters and settings.BWprowl wrote:The difference, at least to me, is that Superman is an individual character. That one dude, Kal-El, Clark Kent, the man from Krypton, he's Superman the brand name, the idea, the concept (and hey, even within that we still get crazy alt-universe iterations like Red Son).Case in point: Kevin Smith when he was writing the Superman movie. The producer wanted to make all these changes like Superman could fly, and he wan't bulletproof, and wanted to have a giant spider
Transformers though, simply refers to The Transformers: Those cool shape-changin' robots from Cybertron. The focus of the given fiction could be *any* of them, from any of the dozens of different factions they've used in the past, or brand-new ones created set by that precedent, transforming and changing in unique, interesting new ways. *That's* the beauty of the franchise, not its ability to show us Bumblebee turning into a car, *again*.
Dozens? You mean all 6? I'd hardly call that dozens: Autobots/Decepticons, Maximal/Predicon/Vehicon, Minicon, Predacon. And, only the last two of those weren't just offshoots of the original two.
All of which still referrenced those familiar characters and factions.BWprowl wrote:Beast Wars. Beast Machines. RiD.In the case of TF, that means at least a few familiar characters and Autobots vs. Decepticons.
I'll agree that the archetypes listed do make it sound like it'll suck, but I'm still gonna give it a chance.BWprowl wrote:We've only seen the three main characters at this point, and already two of them are overused jackasses in generic form, and the other is also a previous character rehashed as a tired cartoon element no one likes anyway! Make a point of using a forgettable Micromaster then turn him into the TF version of Orco? Yeah, this'll be great.At least with this new show it sounds like we'll get mostly new characters.
Well if all you saw was the first 12 episodes of season 1, then no wonder you feel kicked in the balls. I did the same thing with Armada and everyone keeps telling me I should go back and watch the rest of it. I got to the like, the 4th episode? The one where Optimus refers to his minicon as Leader-1 and the very next line of dialogue is not a second later Megatron also referring to his minicon as Leader-1. I was done after that.BWprowl wrote:By it being a shitty show? My initial distaste with TFPrime had little to do with its pedestrian setup and character choices, and mostly to do with its awful writing and general poor quality.And how exactly did you get "Kicked in the balls" with Prime?
Admittedly, Beast Hunters was everything I wanted in a toyline for a while, a pity it barely lasted a quarter of a year. But yeah, I bought almost all the Predacons and loved the shit out of them, I've still got them lined up on my shelf.That gave us all sorts of new characters, especially near the end with Beast Hunters giving is all new characters and alt modes we'd never seen before, even having their own faction!
This is mostly with regards to the cartoons and the prospective quality thereof, though, and I'm not watching through the rest of TFPrime (I gave up after about a dozen episodes) just to get to the Beast Hunters portion which, from what I understand, doesn't even feature any of those Predacons save Predaking.
They probably can't. Information about upcoming entertainment (movies, tv, games, etc...) is usually kept under huge wraps until it's released. You'll notice they haven't even given us a list of Decepticons yet.BWprowl wrote:Then why aren't they talking about that in the promo instead of just telling us "Bumblebee and his Autobots fighting Decepticons. *Yawn*"?And this picks up from that, so hey, that right there already opens the door for them to have more factions besides Autobots and Decepticons.
Well yeah, for the only 12 episodes that you watched. Although I wouldn't blame you for not watching the rest of it, I never went back and watched Armada.BWprowl wrote:There was very little new or different about TFPrime. The initial setup was cribbed wholesale from Armada (Three kids with the Autobots in an underground base with a bridge system that can teleport them anywhere in the world as they go on a global search for macguffins) and all of the characters were rehashed idiomatic versions of previous ones, most pulled from G1. Knockout was the one interesting one I saw before I quit watching, and while I enjoyed his inclusion, it wasn't enough to stop the rest of the show from being a boring, poorly-written slog of a series that I just couldn't bring myself to continue.Prime really did at some points deliver in the new and different dept and really did have some interesting high points.
This kind of circles back to the first thing. Your definition of what makes "Transformers" "Transformers" is too broad. Transformers isn't just "Robots turn into stuff". It's "2 factions of alien robots at war, in disguise on Earth". That's what distinguishes TF from "random robot franchise". This was something that we had to deal with in the early days of G1, when Transformers was so popular that eveybody and their dog was trying to copy it and the only thing that made actual TFs stand out from every other clone of it was the characters settings and factions. If it didn't have an Autobot or Decepticon logo, it was a knock off to be ignored. And the Earth disguise thing is what captured our imaginations back then. That sense of wonder of suddenly looking around and considering that any piece of technology could be a sentient living thing hiding in plain sight was astonishing. Without these elements, or at least some referrence to them, you don't have Transformers, you have some crappy knock off.BWprowl wrote:Like I said, I *wanted* to be positive about this initially. When we saw that first promo, that made it look like we might be getting a show set on Cybertron for the first time in a while? "Well that's something, at least" I thought. Maybe with the Decepticons theoretically taken care of, Bumblebee and a host of new, interesting characters would have to act as a security/police force for rogue Autobots or something, that could be cool. But then we get this: Bumblebee and Jerkswipe and R.O.B. on Earth fighting Decepticons. Whatever.Sure, it had it's low points too, but I personally would rather focus on the positive. I'd rather be an Optimist Prime. If you wanna be a Negatron, so be it.