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How long do you want TF: Prime to last?


Megatronus

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IMO Beast Wars was the best story EVER written for a Transformers TV series... bar none. Animated started off poorly -- Season 1 failed to grab me and I found it banal up till the very end when Megatron returned. Season 2 was haphazard -- some eps were great, others were cringeworthy (those human villains were just LAME... Meltdown's okay, but he's really a creature/monster). Season 3 on the other hand I quite loved... at LAST it started getting into telling decent stories and developing characters... then it ended!! And Season 3's never come out on DVD!! WHHAAAAAT???

 

I agree with you about Arcee not being a token female. It's also cool how she's not entirely PINK either! Although she has some pink highlights, but I can deal with that - it gives her a touch of femininity but without going over the top and making her look like Malibu Barbie-bot ;) She's a helluva lot better than Arcee in The Headmasters... she would be my least favourite Arcee, being relegated as Fortress Maximus' secretary. Freakin' hell...

 

I like Ratchet too -- he's not as overtly cantankerous as his Animated counterpart, but I don't dislike Animated Ratchet either. :) Bulkhead - I gotta say, I prefer TF Prime Bulkhead. Animated Bulkhead was a character that I wasn't fond of in Animated... he was more of a one-dimensional caricature instead of being a fleshed out developing character. The whole "big clumsy oaf" routine got old fast... who finds that funny?? It was annoying when they did it to Grimlock in G1 Season 3 (facepalm) and now they did it Bulkhead... that's just insulting to kids... come on, give us a character who's genuinely funny and not just because "He's fat and he fell down! Ha ha ha! What a KLUTZ!" ... I suppose it's funny if you find Jar Jar Binks hilarious. And suddenly making him a space bridge genius isn't character development - that's a plot gimmick. Prime Bulkhead isn't the best written character, but at least he's not all Jar Jar like Animated Bulkhead. Okay, comparing him with Jar Jar is a bit harsh... at least Animated Bulkhead did contribute to the plot unlike Jar Jar... or G1 Wheelie/Daniel...

 

Bumblebee... meh... I find both Animated and Prime Bumblebee to be annoying. One wouldn't shut up, the other can't freakin' talk. Two extremes of lameness.

 

A lot of people go on about Wheeljack, but I don't see what's so appealing about this character. Other than being a kick-arse fighter, what's so good about him?? Being a proficient fighter is NOT how you judge a character... for example, what makes Superman an interesting character isn't the fact that he's a freakin' god who can punch suns, but it's his character -- his strong and indomitable altruistic sense of truth, justice and honour... much like Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird (which is Clark Kent's favourite book). Atticus Finch isn't a super-powered alien, he's just a human lawyer, but both he and Superman fight for truth and justice in their own way. And what the hell does Wheeljack even transform into??

 

What I'd like to see are more characters based on more obscure G1 characters. They did this with Skyquake, but he didn't last long at all! Give us more lesser known characters -- or here's a wild idea - make ORIGINAL CHARACTERS!! *gasp*

 

That was something that made Beast Wars a lot cooler than all the rest; it gave us original characters that we loved. Dinobot, Depth Charge, Rampage, Inferno, Waspinator, Blackarachnia, Silverbolt, Rattrap, Rhinox etc. -- even though some recycled G1 names, they were NOT based on their G1 namesakes and were entirely different characters. I'd rather see more originality than more rehashes of same-old same-old thankyewverymuch. And good originality... we don't need more original "hardcore Munchkins" like Drift. (>_>)

 

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Jar Jar saved Padmes' life in the latest episode of Clone Wars. Where would Star Wars be without her?

Even annoying characters serve some purpose....

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That doesn't change the fact that you could have omitted Jar Jar from like 95% of his appearance in The Phantom Menace and nothing would change. The fact that Jar Jar is highly annoying isn't the main problem (although it doesn't help make him any more endearing to audiences) -- it's the fact that he absorbs so much screen time and audience attention, but yet hardly ever uses any of that time to contribute to the story. Almost every time Jar Jar appears, he's just wasting movie time and stalling the story. That's bad story-telling.

 

The Phantom Menace could have been written like this:

+ Naboo Royal Cruiser arrives on Tattooine.

+ Jar Jar stays on the ship and the two Jedi accompany Artoo Detoo and Padmé to Mos Espa. Thus all the stupid and useless scenes where Jar Jar's fumbling around, picking fights with locals, exhibiting poor table manners, getting his tongue numb, sniffing animal farts etc. never happen! What would change in the story? NOTHING!

+ Everyone returns to Naboo and Jar Jar arranges liaison between the Naboo and the Gungans <---this is the ONLY pivotal role he has in the entire story and is the only reason why I wouldn't entirely delete him from the story.

 

I'm not saying that Jar Jar was utterly useless, but he did NOT need to be hanging around the Jedi the entire time on Tattooine and hogging up all that audience attention. And Lucas clearly realised this after he made The Phantom Menace because if you look at Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, Jar Jar only appears briefly and often only when he's needed.

 

For example, in Attack of the Clones:

+ We see Jar Jar with Padmé and they are reunited with Anakin and Obi-Wan. Jar Jar starts prattling but Padmé diplomatically tells him to STFU.

+ Jar Jar has another brief scene when Palpatine convinces him to help push for that legislation to start the Clone Wars.

+ Jar Jar does this.

...and that's it! Short and sweet.

 

In Revenge of the Sith it was even shorter and sweeter. Jar Jar appears when:

+ Padmé's body is paraded in a public funeral. We see Jar Jar, Boss Nass and other Gungan and Naboo dignitaries paying their final respect to Senator Amidala.

...that was it!

 

You can have annoying characters, but they ought to be doing something to contribute to the progression of the story or plot... and if you want to let them make a slight deviation as a "pause" or "punctuation" in the story, fine, make it brief. e.g. the "tighter shirt" joke in ROTF... it contributed nothing to the story and if you omitted it nothing would change, but it was short and sweet and helped to break the tension. See Threepio is a pretty annoying character when you think about it (being so uptight and all), but fans were far more forgiving because unlike Jar Jar Threepio didn't waste copious amounts of screen time derailing the story with his whinging and nitpicking.

 

The whole "clumsy oaf" gag was just overdone, much like Jar Jar's "He's clumsy!" joke. Recurring jokes can be funny when they're done intermittently -- cos you know, a key factor with delivering a joke is timing, and often a punchline is funny when delivered with subtlety rather than in-your-face. Look at Monty Python and the Holy Grail, things like:

+ King Arthur's innumeracy (he can't count to 3)

+ Sir Galahad's chastity not being one of deliberate choice!

+ The majority of commoners living absolute filth with horrible diseases, disabilities, death etc. - which is actually historically accurate, but the joke is that movies often don't show this. The Life of Brian also showed this too - especially where the Roman governors (Pontius Pilate and Biggus Dickus) have speech impediments - because no matter how rich and powerful you are, there was no such thing as speech therapy 2000 years ago! :D (or that guard who only stutters when speaking to other people, but speaks fine when talking to his mate :P).

,,,and so on and so on. :)

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Blah blah whatever. Eliminate Jar Jar 100% and Luke and Leia cease to exist. Then where would you be?

You take the bad with the good.

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Folks will always complain about Jar Jar, because he's there to remind them that the studio is trying to appeal to kids more than them.

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i would have rather animated continued and not gotten prime honestly....though i will admit i enjoy prime...and hope it last longer than animated..

I agree with you 100%. I like TF Prime but by the end of season 3 Animated had really hit its stride and evolved in an epic show. The only down side would've been having to put up with Sentinel Magnus. Hopefully Ultra Magnus would've gotten off of spark support quickly and put Sentinel back in his place....

I still firmly believe we're not far off from a comic continuation of Animated at least. Derrick J. Wyatt is on board for it.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I just watched most of season 1 of it on youtube and i gotta say i wasnt fond at first but i came to love it, i hope it gets a third season

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I just watched most of season 1 of it on youtube and i gotta say i wasnt fond at first but i came to love it, i hope it gets a third season

 

I felt the same way about Animated. I wasn't a fan of it at first because of the childish cartoony look. So I decided to check out episodes on youtube before I pass final judgement. It was different and I grew to really like it. I ended up watching all 3 seasons and managed to collect all the figures (except for the botcon exclusives) at a very cheap price.

 

I mentioned before early on this thread that I like the Prime series. Now I'm really liking it and on the verge of loving it. I really hope that Prime lasts for a long time and they expand on it. It has a more mature feel that I like and has alot of potential. I do agree that more characters do need to be introduced, Bumblebee's voice is stupid and they need to shift even more focus on the autonomous robotic organisms and less on the humans. Other than that, I really like Prime and am looking forward to the new line of figures.

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