[Netflix] Transformers: War For Cybertron Trilogy: Siege

[Scyla]

4 hours ago, peter said:

Watching it now, the finally Megs transforms.......

Ok, I didn't mind the voice acting in the first season, figured they're new at the job, they'll get better, but they clearly didn't.  These guys are just reading off the script with the volume turned down.

Megs to one of his peons when a communication comes in "Excuse me".....lol, so polite.

Anyway,  I'm out.  They lost my attention.  I'm here writing this instead of focusing on the show.  The voice acting is just way to crappy for me to get through this.....and way too many filler bots.

Someone PM me if they decide to redub the whole thing with some character, lol!

If you haven’t, you should watch Cyberverse. It’s good.

[technoblue]

I agree with @peter about the voice acting. It was notably deadpan for Siege, but Earthrise takes it a step beyond uncanny and I'm not sure what RT's intent was with the vocal direction. The deadpan.slow.awkward.pause laden dialogue trips the flow of the story, which is already traveling at Zombie Magnus pace. It's just that the effect is more obvious to me in this chapter.

Maybe I'm starting to tire of seeing the same G1 events retold over and over. I mean, like Scyla notes, there's Cyberverse. And even though Cyberverse has shorter episodes and is made for a younger audience, they somehow made their G1 reboot more entertaining. I feel like this whole WFC thing can't get out of its own way.

Oh well. If the toy line is any indication, we still have one chapter to go with the RT series.

Edited December 31, 2020 by technoblue
spelling

[kalvasflam]

The show was not too bad, a lot of call backs.  Hmmm, how the heck do you do the spoiler tag again?  The last scene was a lot more foreshadowing... wonder how they're going to weave that one into the continuity.

Edited December 31, 2020 by kalvasflam

[tekering]

I've just completed the six Earthrise episodes, and I'm sorry to say whatever potential Siege might've had is completely squandered here.  The dialogue is even more banal and insipid, the stories have been done better in previous comics, novels, and video games, and the voice direction is poor, even by Transformers standards.  My wife, unable to see my computer screen, assumed I was watching a Star Wars cartoon, but soon remarked how EVERY cast member seemed to be doing a Darth Vader impression... and she picked that up despite not understanding a word of English. 

It just goes to show how stilted and false the vocal performances are (which is usually a problem associated with Japanese series hastily translated and dubbed for Western audiences, not a series originally written and recorded in English).  Whether Hasbro, Rooster Teeth, or Netflix is responsible, there's just no excuse for such amateur work here.  I mean, a group of random fans at BotCon could've done a better job; at least they'd know what the characters are supposed to sound like. 

It's ironic that one of the best-looking Transformers series to date is also one of the worst-sounding. 

 

Oh, and despite a cast of over fifty characters, I think only FIVE actually transformed... 

[Mog]

What transformations?  It seemed like all of them happened off-screen or in the clouds (with the accompanying transformation sound).

Yeah, I think I fell asleep through some of the eps.

And when did Prime become MMP (Murderous Movie-verse Prime)?

[Convectuoso]

I think it was Chromia, Jetfire, Red Alert and Megatron the only ones who transformed this season

[peter]

A few of the Transformer YouTube channels notes they had to watch the series at 1.5x speed to get through it.

[sh9000]

[Old_Nash]

Leaked Kingdon trailer

 

[Old_Nash]

All have a end....

[tekering]

If you watch this hoping it'll be good, you're an optimist...

If you watch this expecting it'll suck, you're a realist...

If you watch this knowing it'll suck, you're a masochist.

 

Guess which one I am? 😅

[derex3592]

Ok, I'm gonna have to watch the whole trilogy once this comes out. That was a pretty darn good trailer.

[sh9000]

[mikeszekely]

6 hours ago, tekering said:

If you watch this hoping it'll be good, you're an optimist...

If you watch this expecting it'll suck, you're a realist...

If you watch this knowing it'll suck, you're a masochist.

 

Guess which one I am? 😅

Dunno about you, my friend, but I'm apparently a masochist.

[sh9000]

 

[technoblue]

Ok. I have to walk back my criticism of WFC: Kingdom. Even though the trailer didn't impress me, the series itself has been fun.

I'm still getting used to the new voice actors, though. HaHa! I guess I have too much G1 nostalgia running through my veins. 

[peter]

3 minutes ago, technoblue said:

Ok. I have to walk back my criticism of WFC: Kingdom. Even though the trailer didn't impress me, the series itself has been fun.

I'm still getting used to the new voice actors, though. HaHa! I guess I have too much G1 nostalgia running through my veins. 

Did the voice acting improve or did you just get used to them?  😁

 

[peter]

On 7/6/2021 at 5:24 AM, tekering said:

If you watch this hoping it'll be good, you're an optimist...

If you watch this expecting it'll suck, you're a realist...

If you watch this knowing it'll suck, you're a masochist.

 

Guess which one I am? 😅

No 4th option? 

If you don't watch this..........

Haha, I wasn't going to but technoblue has be curious

[technoblue]

16 minutes ago, peter said:

Did the voice acting improve or did you just get used to them?  😁

 

I might be getting used to them. 

But this part of the series also introduces the Maximals and the Predacons. I don't have as much of a connection to the original Beast Wars voice actors since the show was running when I was an undergrad. I only caught bits and pieces of it with friends back then. I didn't watch the full BW series until much later.

[Negotiator]

Just finished it…why does this and cyberverse have/had the same plot point. Cyberverse has switched it up to the matrix (the Keanu matrix) though.

still suffer from the voice acting, the worst is Dino megaton. I’m mentally trying to replace primal, bw megs, and Dinobot/rattrap dialogue with Gary, David, and Scott.

Are we supposed to get more from this storyline?

[M'Kyuun]

Binged Kingdom today:  as for the voices, more of the same slow stilted deliveries, especially Prime, and to a slightly lesser degree, Megatron. Some of the VA's try to sound like the original VAs, and some don't try at all and don't sound even close (Ironhide come to mind immediately). Ron Perlman, a veteran, gives a good performance as Primal; he doesn't sound like Garry Chalk, but he gives a good line delivery, and gives the character gravitas. There's little in the way of the sense of humor from Beast Wars here. Kingdom Megs ends a couple statements with 'yes', but it's not played to the same tongue in cheek manner as David Kaye's original performance. Story-wise, they brought the overarching plot to a decent conclusion.  I thought the CG models were fine, and on the whole, I thought it was a good looking show with a lot of atmosphere. The voice work and writing holds it back from being great. Some of the dialog is pedantic, cliched, or  odd (why would Cybertronians ever use any form of the word, 'damn'?).  Too, the writers fall back on a lot of metaphysical mumbo-jumbo concerning the Allspark, and to a lesser degree, the Matrix.  While a little  metaphysics is ok to add an air of mystique, I think those elements should be kept mysterious while the focus should be more on a straight story with good old greed, ambition, and psychopathic indifference on the parts of the Decepticons to achieve power and authority, with some Machiavellian plans at play, and the Autobots trying to preserve their peaceful way of life in light of Megatron's ambition.  

The Ark was cool.  I noticed they rendered it with all five engines and the aft quarter panels complete and filled in, unlike the toy. The rendered hands looked better than the toy's dishwashing rubber gloved look. For all the buildup, though, the way they used him was a bit underwhelming.

Transformations were pretty minimal and rarely depicted on screen, although the old transforming sound effect is employed to indicate that it's happening.  I guess, since the renders are based on the actual toys, making them transform like the toys on screen would have been too expensive or too laborious to render accurately (they should have hired Polesdru to do stop-motion of the toys and used those as templates). Anyway, for a show about transforming robots, they don't transform as often as you'd think. Too, gone is the 'too-much energon' excuse for the original BW characters' alt modes. No other beasts are shown, either, as a reason for disguise, although at the same scale as the regular Cybertronians who take on vehicle alts, they would dwarf the real animals. So they exist purely as nostalgic callbacks and reasons to make toys, but make little sense in context. 

I could probably keep nitpicking things, but I won't.  If you've slogged through the first two seasons, you'll want to watch this season just to tie it all up.  Even with the slow pacing and awkward voice acting, the story is coherent across all three seasons and comes to a nice conclusion, with a loose string to form the basis of the next iteration. If you haven't watched it, or just couldn't hang after an ep or two, this offers nothing new or better.

3 minutes ago, Negotiator said:

Just finished it…why does this and cyberverse have/had the same plot point. Cyberverse has switched it up to the matrix (the Keanu matrix) though.

still suffer from the voice acting, the worst is Dino megaton. I’m mentally trying to replace primal, bw megs, and Dinobot/rattrap dialogue with Gary, David, and Scott.

Are we supposed to get more from this storyline?

I haven't watched Cyberverse, but I'm beginning to feel like I missed out. I enjoyed Prime, so I imagine I'd like that, too. At least the voice acting was better.

I think Optimus is the worst, with his extremely stilted delivery, over-enunciation, and lack of contractions, his delivery consistently sounds very unnatural, and diminishes the appeal of such a storied character.

I think they're building up to the next chapter with Galvatron, or some semblance thereof.  Not sure, but I'd wager they're going to move into Unicron Trilogy territory, which would make sense given how it wrapped up.

[Hikuro]

Ron Pearlman was not in Kingdom. Primal was voiced by Justin Luther.

[mikeszekely]

6 hours ago, Hikuro said:

Ron Pearlman was not in Kingdom. Primal was voiced by Justin Luther.

Yeah, Pearlman's going to be Primal in the new live action movie.

Anyway, I finished it this morning.  And... meh.  I mean, the voice acting was still not up to snuff.  Some of the voices, even when they were read well, were just so off from the originals that it really took me out of it at times.  And the plot was getting pretty bananas.  But, I don't know, I guess by now I'm more accepting that this is G1-ish, but not actually G1, so some of the differences in personality and continuity bother me less.  And maybe Earthrise lowered my expectations to the point that mediocrity was pleasantly surprising, but in the end I think I liked Kingdom the best of the three trilogies.

But yeah, Cyberverse is better.

[M'Kyuun]

I stand corrected, then. It sounded like Ron to me, but I never looked to see who voiced who.

I'd have to go back and watch all three series consecutively for a refresh, and honestly, I don't think I'm up to all the stilting dialog, to get a clearer picture of the plot from start to end, but  I recall the basics concerning the MacGuffin, I mean Allspark. 

Spoiler

That a large majority of events that transpire throughout the three parts are orchestrated by Unicron, who's using time and space to his advantage to manipulate events and certain bots is interesting unto itself.

 I think the pacing and the voice acting diminish the experience, though. I know I started dozing off any number of times during the different parts. That could just be me, though- I have a bad habit of getting sleepy when I watch tv. Anyway, I think the differences in the voices also proves challenging to those of us who grew up with G1.  Those original voices are imprinted in our psyches, and it's difficult to hear another voice coming from a very G1 looking character. It takes a deliberate effort to mentally divorce the images from the voices and personalities, the latter of which I think they did a better job of preserving than the former.  I tried to enjoy it for what it is, and isn't. I do really wish they'd had better voice direction, though- I don't know what they were thinking with those slow stilted deliveries (I'm sure the VA's could do a more natural delivery, but I'm thinking the director/ voice director wanted  what we got. ) Alas, I don't think this series is going to be one of the more memorable ones, at least for us older fans. For the younger audience, who knows. This may be their G1. Poor kids.  

Guess I need to give Cyberverse a watch. Hopefully it'll cleanse the palate of the bad taste WfC left  behind.

[Lexomatic]

I'll add a recommendation for Cyberverse (available on Hasbro's YouTube channel). The three seasons differ in tone, and it's not perfect, but it conveys enthusiasm that we haven't seen since Robots in Disguise (2015) -- certainly not in the Machinima trilogy or War for Cybertron. You'll have to accept that some of the characters look like G1, but their personalities have been modified -- sometimes for the better (belying his name, "Grim"lock is basically jovial-Aquaman from Batman: The Brave and Bold). There are no human characters, even during the season set on Earth (which is a plus for some viewers), but there's also a dearth of human crowds where they should exist (which has long been a problem in CG-animated TV -- if TMNT (2012) is set in NYC's Chinatown, why is it always deserted?). The third season feels truncated and has gaps in its plot arc, but the back half has some fun standalones.

[Fortress_Maximus]

Enjoyed Kingdom far more than the others. The voice acting was weird to me, many times it seemed like they were trying to read Shakespeare, but with more feelings.   Not sure if it bothered anyone else but the switching of Cullen's voice to another was annoying, but not a deal breaker. The animation throughout the trilogy overall was decent, though really wish we could've seen more transformations on the screen. One thing that bothered me the most was Prime had far too many Hamlet moments, which nearly killed him more than once. Grow some brass balls.