Prime and I just watched the entirety of Transformers: War for Cybertron: Kingdom last night. As is the case with the previous entries in the trilogy, this is fairly short and can be tackled all in one night. As you might expect, I have a few thoughts on the show and yes, there will be spoilers. So if you’d rather not be spoiled, don’t go past the jump. Everyone else? Let’s get into it!
-Rooster Teeth made some choices with the vocal cast. BW Megatron sounded far too friendly to be a villain. Optimus Primal lacked command in his voice. Dinobot was good, as was Airazor and Blackarachnia, but the others lacked something. I get that Rooster Teeth doesn’t hire union voice actors, but it cost them this time around.
-BW Megs was a sycophant. Talk about shameful. That really diluted the character.
-Dinobot was still fairly decent. He might not have been voiced by Scott McNeil, but he’s still hands down my favorite character from Beast Wars.
-Really disappointed that this turned into “fetch the Allspark 2.0”. That story has been done. Multiple times.
-I hate to say it, but I found this chapter to be lackluster. There was a great setup, but we really didn’t get a good payoff. I mean, Optimus Prime and Optimus Primal teaming up together? Sounds like a recipe for awesome-sauce but we got watered down ranch dressing instead. That’s really upsetting. Hope this is corrected in the upcoming live action movie.
-Sorely disappointed in the lack of survivors on Cybertron. I really thought we should have seen at least some surviving Cybertronians; how would Optimus Prime have handled the starving survivors of a war that outright blamed him for their planet going to shit? Something tells me not well and it could have added a nice layer to the narrative. But it didn’t happen. Instead, the only survivors were the ones who left the planet.
-Okay, the peck on the cheek that Blackarachnia gave Airazor for saving her life? That was adorable. More of this, please.
-Seeing the Ark transform and gain sapience was awesome.
-Starscream deciding to join up with Blackarachnia was interesting. Also, having Starscream as the one who hears Unicron was pretty cool.
-Sometimes I think the only Autobot with any sense is Bumblebee. He’s the one who talked sense into Optimus Prime and he’s the one who broke the Golden Disk. I’m glad he survived everything because the Autobots need someone like him.
-After all that, we still lost Elita-1 and Jetfire. Great. Way to twist the fucking knife.
-Nemesis Prime felt tacked on at the last minute. We should have had him popping up from the start, causing trouble and sowing the seeds of doubt and distrust but of course that would have made for a great story so it didn’t happen.
All in all, this was good, but it could have been much better. Compared to the prior two instalments, this felt weak and more than a bit rushed. It’s an ending, but that’s about it. If you’ve seen the previous entries in the series, you’ll want to catch this. But if you’re not invested in it, it’s best to skip this, which is a shame. It could have been so much more than what we got.
Iacon East 