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Deadput wrote:Siege is a webseries not a proper tv show it's not even fair to compare the show

I want to pull this specifically out because of another Netflix original series that has aired and is airing a new season around the same time as the TFs: Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous.

Similar platform as a Netflix original show. Similar setup with seasons of 8 x 22 minute episodes. I would estimate a similar budget, considering both have running toylines with collector and kid oriented materials, and both have a sort of equal footing on live action films and games. difference is, this is the FIRST Jurassic park related TV series ever.

And that show was fantastic! Animation was ace. the characters were for the most part interesting, well designed, and the voice acting was great. Plot was good and the story rode out pretty dang well and made for a great story with lots of good stuff for a 2nd season. And it did this as a standalone while also being a great piece set within the actual events of the film universe.

And it did all of this while both being a "for all ages" series and also having some intense and pretty dark moments to it despite not advertising itself as such. People got eaten in the show. They even showed a kid falling to his "death". They showed a dino blown up and burned/scarred up close and with the painful animal noises that would accompany that.

Camp Cretaceous marketed itself differently than WFC did, but it essentially sort of fit the same bill and was DRASTICALLY better than it. It really says something when we are at the point where I would say, in the approximately last decade of TF TV show fiction, Cyberverse season 3 was the best on-screen fiction and the FIRST EVER Jurassic Park-associated TV show did a far better job in every area than the "adult-oriented huge tv show event" TF WFC show did.

To me, it's like Jurassic Park looked at what things like The Mandalorian were doing right and very well and used that rough sketch to make their own great content, while in TFs we looked at Prime Wars and decided to try it again with a larger visual production budget.

To me, it's obvious something about TFs is wrong when The Mandalorian, Camp Cretaceous, and even the Harley Quinn series are far better and significantly more enjoyable.

As with all things, that is also a matter of opinion. I found the Camp Cretaceous series to be quite "dumb" in the area of writing, as it seemed to try to play down the intelligence of it's target audience which was obviously children, despite the apparent danger they were often put in. I'm not saying it was totaly awful, but it was closer to the Kong Animated series, also on Netflix for me (which also is not great), in terms of sheer entertainment value then anything else. I mean I know I am not in the majority, but I found Siege far more entertaining than RiD15 or Cyberverse. I have no desire to revisit either of those series, but I have watched Siege a few times (in both English & Japanese), and will occasionally watch again.

I will say CC had better voice direction than Transformers, but that can be said of most animated series. I've heard 2 overall ideas about Siege which seem to ring true. 1. Most of the voice actors seem to be doing their best "Batman" impersonation, and 2. The script was written like a middle-school term paper, double-spaced just to meet the page-length requirement, thus the reason why the dialogue is so slow in its delivery.

Also, I want to preface this with saying Rotten Tomatoes is not the end-all-be-all for authority on whether something is good or not but... currently Siege has a 95% rating while CC has a 75%.

I've spoken often how it seems to be nearly a decade between Transformers series that are really good. The Budget for Prime was insanely expensive, think Clone Wars, (also animated by Polygon). It shares a place along side BW to be the only other TF show to win awards of any kind. Ultimately however, when you have something so great Hasbro thought it was "too expensive", so they pulled the plug on it, and it's been a downward spiral of budget releases ever since. Evidently they went with Boulder Media as it was less expensive to produce oversees, and you don't have to hire "Union" voice talent (which shows). And while The WFC show is not produced by Boulder Media, you can see that Hasbro is giving only a very minimal budget to work with. Thus non-union voice talent again, and, for what its worth, far better visuals than I expected, especially after the Prime Wars fiasco.

Thus far, the only actor to replace a BW character in fiction is Ron Perlman, and. I know fans would have 100% preferred Gary Chalk, but as stand-ins go it could have been far, far worse. I really do like BW, despite being in College when it was on. However I can't wait to see the adult fanbase who's First TF series was BW lose their minds when they see non-union actors portraying their beloved characters in Kingdom. It is going to be interesting.

D-Maximal_Primal wrote:

Deadput wrote:Siege is a webseries not a proper tv show it's not even fair to compare the show

I want to pull this specifically out because of another Netflix original series that has aired and is airing a new season around the same time as the TFs: Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous.

Similar platform as a Netflix original show. Similar setup with seasons of 8 x 22 minute episodes. I would estimate a similar budget, considering both have running toylines with collector and kid oriented materials, and both have a sort of equal footing on live action films and games. difference is, this is the FIRST Jurassic park related TV series ever.

Hey

Pst

Just because their both Netflix doesn't mean they had the same budget or resources.

I don't even think Siege is great or anything, I'm just being fair to the show with the limits it has.

D-Maximal_Primal wrote: the "adult-oriented huge tv show event" TF WFC show did.

You mean simply the adult-oriented netflix show since that's all Siege was ever marketed to be, there was nothing huge about it in the first place, if anything made it "big" that would be self afflicted fan hype which usually does nothing but make shows worse for people due to ridiculous expectations.

D-Maximal_Primal wrote:To me, it's obvious something about TFs is wrong when The Mandalorian, Camp Cretaceous, and even the Harley Quinn series are far better and significantly more enjoyable.

And Mando has the gigantic Disney budget and care put into it way more then a children's toy marketing show, which is all Transformers mostly is, good fiction in the franchise has always been the exception.

Because as it is pretty much no one in an executive position considers Transformers to be some amazing franchise IP, rightfully so since it hasn't had any noteworthy milestones since the first few movies and maybe TFP's reception early on in the show before it died out.

Anyways no insult to the Jurassic Park show since I haven't watched it but those character designs are pretty damn uncanny (mostly the eyes), but even looking at a trailer for the show the animation only looks ok, not great or anything.

I watched some of Harley Quinn and it was enjoyable but I dropped it since the humor wasn't for me and started to grate on me. (I also despise the direction Harley Quinn as a character overall has been pushed towards meta-wise compared to her inception, much like most super-hero comic book characters they were at their best earlier on then otherwise.)

Seibertron wrote:Apparently the Quintesson's name is spelled "Deeseeus", according to the credits. I was expecting it to be spelled "Decius" or "Deecius" or something different.

deeseeus nuts

Lmao

Notsoalex did the pun before me...darn that Notsoalex

Just finished watching the show, here are my thoughts I guess...

As mentioned in the review, all the lines are still... so... painfully... slow. Not to mention how similar many of the voices sounded (especially Scorponok, who was either oddly generic or nigh-unintelligible during crucial exposition). The Quintesson faces laughing felt exceedingly half-hearted and stretched out, too. This team desperately needs a new voice director, or at least a new voice direction.

There were also some serious continuity/technical errors caused, IMO, by the painfully low budget for character models - Scorponok, who apparently isn't even a cybertronian, has a ? I think the animators just dropped the toy CAD model, pulled its tail out a bit, applied the included stickers as textures and called it a day. Also, Megatron had his full battle damage and in all the flashbacks, though his symbol's a bit more justified since the factions predate the war in this continuity.
Obviously there's the heavy reuse of character models, as seen in the trailer, and many new characters seemed to have poorer quality faces (looking at you, Doubledealer!) or textures (hi Galvatron! All I could think when he showed up was how much BETTER the 2d-animation from 30+ years ago looked than the effects used for him. If his presence wasn't spoiled by the trailers the relatively poor visuals would have been completely overshadowed by his surprising presence and unusually nimoy-sounding voice.) than the returning ones. I think only one new character was shown in more than one mode, and Elita, Wheeljack, and Bee still don't transform to hide their non-siege shame.

That all said, I did enjoy seeing the plot twists, cameos (such as they are), easter eggs, and occasionally baffling character reinterpretations. I'd rewatch this sooner than Siege, for sure. The WFC toy designs were a visual feast for me, and the show certainly made me rethink skipping Doubledealer for a few seconds. It certainly showed off the products it chose to place.

Although... Scorponok was criminally underutilized aside from being a set piece, and the more important characters seemed to literally forget he existed during their more important interactions. The baffling pacing and line deliveries robbed his "origin story" of almost all the thematic weight it should have carried, IMO, and there was NO EXPLANATION for the majority of his actions. The start of Episode 5 suffered from the same problems.

If Dinobot had transformed at the end, even if he was a wierd/lower-poly 'bot like Galvatron, that would have made Kingdom SO much more hype-worthy. Yes, I know every BW character will sound like Batman on Xanax. I resigned myself to it months ago.

Huge thanks to anyone who read all this - let me know if you disagree with my sleep-deprived hot takes

o.supreme wrote:As with all things, that is also a matter of opinion.

Also, I want to preface this with saying Rotten Tomatoes is not the end-all-be-all for authority on whether something is good or not but... currently Siege has a 95% rating while CC has a 75%.

I am aware of the opinion, but I am also speaking for the Jurassic Park fanbase, which in the past 18 months I've become deeper in. when I saw Camp Cretaceous was very pleasing to that fanbase and casuals, I speak as both a casual Jurassic Park fan and as someone who is involved with that franchise and has friends who are in the hierarchy (so to speak) of that fandom, similar in positions to Seibertron of this site.

I don't take Rotten tomatoes seriously at all. I would guess that Megatron killing Magnus and the first 2 episodes of CC being more "day to day" than "main event" would easily account for that difference.

Deadput wrote:

D-Maximal_Primal wrote:

Deadput wrote:Siege is a webseries not a proper tv show it's not even fair to compare the show

I want to pull this specifically out because of another Netflix original series that has aired and is airing a new season around the same time as the TFs: Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous.

Similar platform as a Netflix original show. Similar setup with seasons of 8 x 22 minute episodes. I would estimate a similar budget, considering both have running toylines with collector and kid oriented materials, and both have a sort of equal footing on live action films and games. difference is, this is the FIRST Jurassic park related TV series ever.

Hey

Pst

Just because their both Netflix doesn't mean they had the same budget or resources.

I don't even think Siege is great or anything, I'm just being fair to the show with the limits it has.

No one knows the budget, I was merely making that comparison since they both are in similar positions in fan base, toy lines, and filmography. They could be nearly the same, or maybe CC was given a higher budget, but I am saying that it can be a fairly educated guess that their budget is similar.

Deadput wrote:

D-Maximal_Primal wrote: the "adult-oriented huge tv show event" TF WFC show did.

You mean simply the adult-oriented netflix show since that's all Siege was ever marketed to be, there was nothing huge about it in the first place, if anything made it "big" that would be self afflicted fan hype which usually does nothing but make shows worse for people due to ridiculous expectations.

Considering it was "the transformers Netflix experience" finally bringing TFs to a big streaming service and was hyped for a year and a half during its production, I would hardly call this a "sleeper" release. It even made the main Netflix "coming soon" page for a month prior to its release. Let's be clear: this was meant to be a big deal to TF fans, the "main media" for consumption until they figure out what they're doing with the franchise.

Deadput wrote:

D-Maximal_Primal wrote:To me, it's obvious something about TFs is wrong when The Mandalorian, Camp Cretaceous, and even the Harley Quinn series are far better and significantly more enjoyable.

And Mando has the gigantic Disney budget and care put into it way more then a children's toy marketing show, which is all Transformers mostly is, good fiction in the franchise has always been the exception.

Because as it is pretty much no one in an executive position considers Transformers to be some amazing franchise IP, rightfully so since it hasn't had any noteworthy milestones since the first few movies and maybe TFP's reception early on in the show before it died out.

Anyways no insult to the Jurassic Park show since I haven't watched it but those character designs are pretty damn uncanny (mostly the eyes), but even looking at a trailer for the show the animation only looks ok, not great or anything.

I watched some of Harley Quinn and it was enjoyable but I dropped it since the humor wasn't for me and started to grate on me. (I also despise the direction Harley Quinn as a character overall has been pushed towards meta-wise compared to her inception, much like most super-hero comic book characters they were at their best earlier on then otherwise.)

Comparing to Mando might not be the best comparison because of budget, but considering Star Wars was in a bad place last year, with TLJ being hugely divisive, Solo bombing, and then ROS being a disappointment to pretty much everyone, Mando kinda had a hard spot because it was the thing that needed to pick that franchise up and give it a win.

TFs desperately need some fictional wins.

Well, I watched episode 6 (I listened to the podcast and got what I need from 1-5)

I can honestly say, disappointment is real. Not that I had any expectation whatsoever.

The final 15 seconds of the show were better than the entirety of Siege and the rest of Earthrise combined. It gave me some small slim hope of a better Kingdom

Good grief ... shouldn't watch this show when you're getting tired, listening to Megatron will completely put you to sleep, only to be jarred awake by a screeching angry Optimus Prime.

Seriously ... angry Prime's voice just becomes someone else entirely.

Did Jetfire sound like Starscream in Siege? Because he sounded like Starscream this time round and it just didn't work.

The pacing was just terrible. From certain characters just monologuing until the cows come home and then things jumping to compensate for the monologuing it was just badly paced.

The constant re-use of character models was a little annoying. Yeah, I get it saves on the budget but it's just annoying.

So much potential, slight improvement over Siege but but in the end it's still a let down.

FYI, no need for spoiler tags, the show is out for all to see. This is a discussion thread, please discuss to your heart's content

Well, I guess I can say it was neat to see Doubledealer in a TF cartoon for once if you discount Doubleclouder from Masterforce, and to his credit, he didn't seem as somewhat out of character as Impactor.

Burn wrote:Did Jetfire sound like Starscream in Siege? Because he sounded like Starscream this time round and it just didn't work.

Yep, same sinister voice.

Where the first season felt like one decent-length movie needlessly stretched out to accommodate the runtime of six TV episodes, this season instead felt like one long full-length TV season needlessly chopped up and condensed down to just six episodes.

It felt so rushed and yet was somehow still a slog to sit through.

Sabrblade wrote:

Burn wrote:Did Jetfire sound like Starscream in Siege? Because he sounded like Starscream this time round and it just didn't work.

Yep, same sinister voice.

Just to clarify, they are not the same voice actor though.

william-james88 wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

Burn wrote:Did Jetfire sound like Starscream in Siege? Because he sounded like Starscream this time round and it just didn't work.

Yep, same sinister voice.

Just to clarify, they are not the same voice actor though.

Further clarification:

Keith Silverstein voices Jetfire, Frank Todaro voices Starscream, and they each voice their respective characters in both Siege and Earthrise.

By "same sinister voice", I meant Jetfire's voice is the same in Earthrise as it was in Siege.

william-james88 wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

Burn wrote:Did Jetfire sound like Starscream in Siege? Because he sounded like Starscream this time round and it just didn't work.

Yep, same sinister voice.

Just to clarify, they are not the same voice actor though.

Makes sense, obviously Siege wasn't as noticeable. This new one just didn't work at all.

Just finished the series and found it highly enjoyable. One lesson I learned form Siege. It's no longer important to be "first", as in disrupting sleep to see it as soon as possible, it is more important to enjoy something at your own leisure, and this would not be more true with Earthrise.

I am going to try to get my criticisms out of the way, but make no mistake, I really did enjoy this series.

1.The voice acting and voice direction direction (I cant say anything that hasn't already been said).

2. Lack of appearances of ER characters. I understand for the sake of story there are limits, but Siege seemed to include most of the toyline surprisingly, ER did far less so.

3. Scorponok and Skylynx were too small - Although as someone else mentioned, for the parts they played in the story, I guess it wasn't too much of a distraction.


Some things I specifically liked:

1.New characters such as Doubledealer, Deeseus, Skylynx and Galvatron were pretty well portrayed. I especially liked the actors who voiced Skylynx and Alpha Trion (new VA talent seems up a notch, can't say that for most returning Actors).

2.Not sure what was going on with Cog in that last episode, but he might be my new favorite character.

3.While Siege ended with and obvious hint that the story is going on, it was mostly all wrapped up. ER ends with so many unanswered questions...which I like, I just hope Kingdom can answer them all.

There is a LOT to unpack with this, and I look forward to the discussion in the coming weeks. For now I just leave with this question - Unicron's one line sounded a LOT like Orson Welles. Does anyone think this was recycled dialogue, or perhaps his voice run through impersonation software of some kind? Or there is some VA out here that has a gift for sounding like him?

Anyway, I look forward to Kingdom. Hopefully in the end of June (just going off what's been established so far, nobody knows for sure). Between now and then, I just hope Hasbro announces something for a new main line animated series, I just hope it's not Boulder Media producing it (They can have Botbots, but give a better studio a chance to make a decent TF series).

I also just finished the series, and enjoyed it as well. It was leaps and bounds ahead of Siege. The story was never slow, and I got to episode 6 before I knew it. I can honestly say this was a very good story, I wish it was longer.

I have a few minor criticisms, mainly the voice of Optimus and mainly in the last 2-3 episodes. Terrible. It sounded forced and strained, nothing how Prime should sound like. It was the only thing that took me out of enjoying the story thoroughly. Hopefully for Kingdom Garry Chalk will be brought back. Another small problem I had was Scorponok's characterization. Physically I had no problem with him, except maybe that he was too big. He wasn't big enough to be a Titan, but he was too big to even be commander class. But his character was wasted. He was just practically a mindless monster who attacked out of fear and hatred of what had happened to his race previously. No elaboration whatsoever. I hope that gets touched on in Kingdom. Lastly, the ending. Why was this series called "Earthrise?" It seems that will be what will happen in the next installment. Earth didn't even play a part until the very end. I thought the name was stupid even way back when it was announced, and here I was proven right. They should have called it something else. Both the toys and the show.

Overall, I give it a B+. I'm looking forward to Kingdom.

My thoughts having seen it (with no spoiler tags as requested):

PROS:
-The plot, while still not even close to the best we've ever gotten, felt much better this season when they actually did/were allowed to do unique stuff like the Mercs and space travel as opposed to "That one Cyberverse flashback but movie length"
-Space travel means more unique backdrops/scenery than just sparsely-populated Cybertronian wastes, and some of it is actually really cool/nice-looking (albeit still sparsely-populated)
-Scrapface finally has a reason to exist now! (Even though his plotline was kinda just Impactor but again)
-Shockwave's depiction was, in my opinion, possibly a highlight of the season, since they let him follow up on last season's sketchy "I have a virus" with full-on war crimes
-Megatron, while not as satisfying as Shockwave for me, does get actual development/depth as this goes on, there are visible elements of the fact that he is pushing his boundaries and morals in darker and darker directions, more so than last season (plus he gets to ACTUALLY DECEIVE others, a lot of TF media doesn't really show that despite the whole DECEPTICON name)
-The Mercs were entertaining/satisfying...mostly, and getting to see them do what they do and be snarky about it was fun
-Confirmation that the Fool's Fortune is in fact, the name of the Merc ship (but only if you're paying attention and knew that the name existed before hand)
-Wheeljack is still his great Wheeljack self
-I know some will disagree with this, but I actually approve of the usage of Scorponok as a large boss battle monster rather than a more involved cast member. It makes sense with his size and alt mode, and having him be ANOTHER evil deceptive power-hungry personality like G1 Scorpy usually is alongside Megatron, Starscream, Shockwave, the Quintesson, and Doubledealer (to a short extent) would have been a bit too busy (and I don't trust this show to handle that busyness in an effective way)
-Mirage's powers continue to be impressive in both scope and usage
-The Ark Autobots actually feel like a cohesive crew that actually listen to Optimus most of the time this season, as opposed to just being a bunch of people that happen to be there but don't believe in Optimus at all
-Soundwave does stuff this time!
-The last 2 episodes were the best episodes overall, especially in terms of visuals and references
-Oh hey Sky Lynx is in it AND manages to get character development kinda in the episode he gets, that's better than a large chunk of the cast
-Galvatron's entrance was awesome, speaking of those references
-Starscream gets to live up to his full Starscream-y potential, never gets old
-Cog
-Solid setup for the next part gets done
-I'm already really excited for Kingdom on the toyline front, as well as the fact that Hasbro is finally even doing a line like it again, so that last scene made me feel things (which was a first for this show other than feelings of befuddlement/annoyance/laughing at things that weren't supposed to be funny)

CONS:
-Majority of the problems from Siege aren't fixed: voice direction, Megatron's Overlord lips, etc.
-Whoever was concerned about if the show would represent the ER line well was pretty on-point in their concern: we got the Merc characters (2 of which were Selects, and 4 of which are inaccurate to their actual ER figures), Scorponok, Sky Lynx, a Quintesson, and that's it. Wheeljack and Arcee are only there because they were in Siege, and neither of them transform still (and Arcee isn't based off her ER figure still)
-With the exception of Shockwave, the stuff still on Cybertron were the lowlights for me, the fact that they were just more Siege but without most of the actually interesting characters was boring
-Oh hey look Steeljaw-oh, never mind
-The Quintesson stuff is...not good. The "consensus" scene was effectively shocking for less than a second, and then it was just annoying because it defeated part of the whole purpose of using Quintessons in the first place (especially since it took less than an episode for it to happen), they barely explained who/what Quints are to begin with, and then what they did in the last part not only didn't improve it at all, but also brought down the Mercs by removing all of what made them appealing
-Megatron's Lips 2: Doubledealer's face
-There's a whole line about the Quintesson "army"...but the ER Alicon isn't in the show at all, said army is just Ironhide recolors (which we'll probably get a figure of, but still)
-We get a whole bit about how Bee's officially an Autobot now...but Ratchet doesn't get the same courtesy, despite part of his whole thing in the first season was that he didn't actually want any part in the war
-The jump from "The Nemesis exists" to "oh look the Cons caught up to the Ark" felt WAY too quick
-Optimus doesn't even seem to think about Elita at all until Megatron mentions her
-...regardless of my previous Scorponok comment, if Scorponok was that willing to exposit his backstory/talk to them, why did it take an episode and a half to happen
-They never actually explained exactly WHAT about what happened caused them to end up in the Dead Universe, not even a nonsense psuedo-science answer
-If you didn't go into this knowing who Galvatron is already and don't have the subtitles on, you really have to infer his actual identity, he gets even less explanation than the Quint
-For a show promoting a toyline that DOESN'T have an Alpha Trion figure in it, I feel like they dedicate more time than they should to Alpha Trion flashbacks
-Nemesis-Prime-baiting
-Shockwave giving himself combat-based upgrades is a good concept, but they should have took that opportunity to incorporate his armor/drone that comes with his figure
-Why exactly did they need to have Chromia shoot Skytread Flywheels? It just made her seem kinda sociopathic
-Optimus gets dangerously close to Murder-Prime territory in the last episode, and his voice goes to Murder-Prime territory in most episodes
-The cliffhanger on Cybertron just means there's gonna keep being stuff with that crew in Kingdom too, huh....gross
-Once again, Astrotrain appears for one frame in the finale and does nothing (although he seemed to be better in scale this time)

Despite the length of that Con list though, I did enjoy this season significantly more than Siege, to the point I would actually say I enjoyed it as opposed to just "it was alright I guess", and am absolutely looking forward to Kingdom.

As for the title itself "Earthrise", I didn't expect Sunbow Season 1 or anything, but...the moniker that came very late with the Amazon Exclusives "Galactic Odyssey" I think would have been a much more fitting Title for the show at least.

Also I wonder if the idea about Runamuck stowing away aboard the Ark (The winning concept from last year's "fan vote") was ever even discussed? A rivalry between Mirage and Impactor seemed to be put aside for the friendship with Ratchet in Siege. Also, this may simply be because 2020 was such a bad year, but there was no fan vote for Kingdom at all.

Also for everyone who owns a Dead Optimus and Nemesis Prime, they got the same amount of screen time... . Oh wait...I have Nemesis...

Guys, y'all are thinking of the word "Earthfall".

The word "Earthrise" means this:



The Earth, in the distance, over the "horizon" of space.

"Earthfall" is what happens when one actually touches down and lands on Planet Earth from outer space.

Dear lord, started watching it to pass the time while i farm for arrows in Breath of the Wild and the voice acting is ..... sooo....sl...ow...

william-james88 wrote:Dear lord, started watching it to pass the time while i farm for arrows in Breath of the Wild and the voice acting is ..... sooo....sl...ow...

Great for insomnia.

Burn wrote:

william-james88 wrote:Dear lord, started watching it to pass the time while i farm for arrows in Breath of the Wild and the voice acting is ..... sooo....sl...ow...

Great for insomnia.

Indeed.

Some have suggested increasing the speed to x1.25 to make for a better viewing experience.