Another day, another Transformers show to watch on Netflix.
I think that it's no secret by now that the "War For Cybertron" trilogy has not exactly been successful with the fans. With "Siege" not leaving a good first impression, and "Earthrise" only compounding the issues with it's storytelling and characterisation, I couldn't find that many people who were entirely excited for the conclusion of this storyline; "Kingdom". As good as the toyline itself has been thus far (which, full discrepancy, has been excellent despite a few blunders), the main reason I would get excited for Transformers is with the accompanying fiction. If the show/movie doesn't work, then my enthusiasm for the toyline will only give so much leeway if I'm disappointed.
Unfortunately, although I had a glimmer of hope for what was essentially a "Beast Wars" revival, what we got was more along the lines of the quality of "Beast Machines" instead.
Let me just go over the plot and I'll get into my issues with this show.
Plot:
The story picks up immediately after the end of "Earthrise", with the Ark and the Nemesis landing on prehistoric Earth where the Allspark has taken residence. But upon arrival to the planet, they come across two other factions of Transformers; the Maximals, led by Optimus Primal, and the Predacons, led by Megatron (who is sadly NOT voiced by David Kaye). They are Transformers who ended up on the planet from the future, coming from a Cybertron that has gone desolate and is under the tyrannical rule of Galvatron and Nemesis Prime, who are in turn trying to escape the grasp of their master and creator; the planet devouring Unicron. Thus, the race is on to get the Allspark back to Cybertron, as both are symbiotically linked, meaning that one will die without the other if they are not reunited in time (despite that never being a factor until now).
Pros:
As per usual with these shows, the animation models themselves are really good; with the Autobot and Decepticons being spitting images of their current action figures for good and for ill. That said, however, I found it odd that the Maximals and Predacons, with exception to Rattrap, aren't based off of their toy designs; they instead opted for something more akin to the original show models with slight IDW influence due to the harsher angles and blockier aesthetics. They still look good on screen, and I wonder if that was done intentionally to contrast with the somewhat more slender WFC designs for the Autobots and Decepticons.
The action scenes themselves had a good energy to them, though I can understand when people say that the movement speed should be up to 1.5x. There are moments when the action tends to slow down a little, but never to the point of feeling like there's constant, unnecessary slow-motion to drag the pacing to a crawl. Besides, there's still a decent balance between the gunfights and hand-to-hand combat to keep things interesting, especially as the Maximals and Predacons tend to use more guerrilla-style dirty fighting during their action scenes.
I also felt that they more or less got the basics when it came to the personalities a couple of the Beast-Era characters, more specifically Dinobot and Blackarachnia. We still see the former eventually defect from Megatron and recognise the value of honour and integrity over simple loyalty to a cause in a war, all leading to his sacrifice to save the day and get the heroes to the Allspark. It's simple compared to his departure in the original series, but at least the intent was there and the voice acting for him wasn't overtly terrible. As for Blackarachnia, she begins the series as scheming and manipulative, until she eventually joins the heroes in fighting off against a common foe; although, I felt like it was kind of rushed and there wasn't much downtime to really get into her interactions with the characters beyond Dinobot and Starscream.
Cons:
As much as I appreciate small things like Dinobots' characterisation, many of the same problems from the previous two entries are repeated and compounded here, with the most notable example being the voice acting. While it was irksome in "Siege" and "Earthrise" with how the voices sounded off and dreary, it's even worse in this series in how almost NONE of the Beast-Era characters voices fit, not even remotely. Optimus Primal sounds less like a confidant commander type who puts his trust in the strength of his team, and more like a distrustful douchenugget with barely withheld anger issues. Dinobot is lacking the signature gravel in his voice to give the character his unique gravitas and making certain call-back lines feel half-assed. And of course, as many of your are probably aware of by now, there's Megatron:
Ignore the portion that dubs over the voice, and let's get to the main problem; this voice SUCKS. Not only does it sound NOTHING like Beast-Era Megatron, but everything about it is simply wrong. The inflections, the pacing, the tone, the intonations; all of it is awful. This is easily the worst acting in the series, which is saying a lot when you remember good ol' Jake Foushee and his Optimus Prime voice.
And it certainly doesn't help that most of the Beast-Era cast are not only given very little to do in the grand scheme of things, but a lot of them have very little in terms of characterisation. Cheetor was more or less just there for the majority of the series, Rattrap only got a couple of attempts at any quips, Tigatron pointed a gun every once in a while, Airrazor was pretty much the token woman of the team, Rhinox only got to show off his scientific skills once, Megatron is just the G1 Megatron fanboy, and Scorponok was reduced to little more than the generic cannon fodder that the Maximals fought off in droves. I'm happy that my favourite characters, Dinobot and Blackarachnia, are at least given stuff to do and have actual personalities to work with, but not if it comes at the expense of the rest of the cast.
Speaking of, this show basically confirms that stuff happening back on Cybertron with Elita-One fighting against Shockwave was essentially completely pointless; because as soon as they're back on Cybertron, they find out that EVERYONE that stayed behind has died. Meaning that the following was a complete waste of time in the grand scheme of things and the time that it took up could've been used for more important aspects of the story:
Elita-One freeing the prison camps.
Jetfire lending a hand to the rebellion.
Seeing Megatron syphon most of the planet's populace to power the Nemesis.
Elita-One conflicting with Jetfire over their differing ideologies.
Megatron and Elita-One arguing over factional loyalty.
Imprisoned Decepticons helping Elita-One in the final battle.
The final battle itself.
Whatever Shockwave's plan was.
And finally:
The destruction of Kaon with Elita-One inside of it.
In other words, the very existence of "Kingdom" renders all of the stuff in "Earthrise" that focuses on Cybertron completely unnecessary to even watch. More than half of the previous show is easily skipped over because of how ultimately irrelevant it was to the grand scheme of things.
There also isn't really a smooth integration of the Beast-Era cast into the story itself; they kind of just appear in the story and only briefly explain that they are from the future where Cybertron is even more of a desolate Pit-Hole. It's never explained HOW they came from the future, nor is it ever established how long they have been there; just that it has been a long time and that they are fighting each other. Furthermore, we never really get an idea as to why Beast-Era Megatron is such a G1 Megatron fanboy or why he went after the Golden Disk. In fact, the Golden Disk is hardly ever a part of the main story beyond somehow connecting to Galvatron and Unicron.
Speaking of, Galvatron and Nemesis Prime are very one-note villains with little actual involvement in the story. They just appear in the final episode, start attacking the main cast, and are instantly defeated via Primus Ex Machina before somehow ending up back in Unicron's grasp. Frankly, given how generic their personalities are, they could've been replaced by literally any other creation of Unicron (namely Cyclonus or Scourge) and virtually nothing else would've changed. They tried to pull something similar to Thorin from the Hobbit movies with Megatron slowly going insane before redeeming himself, possibly as an allusion to him becoming Galvatron in the future, except it doesn't work as both his turn to insanity and eventual attempt at redemption happen in an instant and is given very little actual lip service beyond what I had just described. It was wholly superfluous to include Galvatron and Nemesis in this because of how little they tied in to the series from a thematic and narrative standpoint.
Conclusion:
To be clear; this wasn't the worst Transformers series I have seen. I don't even think it's the worst of this trilogy; "Earthrise" beats it to that with how more than half of it's story and cast was virtually pointless by the end. But it still continues the exact same problems that the other instalments has had without doing anything to mediate them. We still have characters we don't care about with little personalities to endear the audience. We still have sub-par storytelling with everything either having little elaboration or little reason to be included. We still have mediocre voice acting from people who seem to have a lack of direction or input as to how they should deliver their lines beyond "sound as miserable as possible, even when cracking a joke", with Jake Foushee as Optimus Prime and Marcus Bobesich as Beast-Era Megatron being the biggest sinners in this regard. All of this culminates in what I feel is the worst thing about this entire trilogy; wasted potential.
This trilogy of shows honestly wouldn't be as widely disliked or even ignored were it not for all of the potential storytelling and characterisation directions being wasted on the default status quo that people unfamiliar with the franchise associates with it; a story about giant robots who turn into cars and trucks fighting each other. If these shows at least used the ideas that it had presented in a more effective way, then Netflix could've had a new flagship property to excel with now that the Marvel shows had been cancelled and reactions to the new "Masters Of The Universe" show has been mixed across the board. But with all of the time wasted on needless sub-plots that get little development and a severe lack of character development, we now have the modern generations equivalent to the Unicron trilogy; it started off weak, got worse in the middle, and just barely limped to the end.
And it's because of that, that I can't really recommend "Kingdom" or any other part of the trilogy unless you are a completionist like me. Otherwise, this is an easy skip.
Overall rating: 5 out of 10 (basically skippable).
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But until next time, because there always will be one; this is Callum Lewis, the Media Hood, signing off!
