Transformers mean a lot to me. I grew up watching so many things, and very few still hold a special place in my heart like Transformers. From the Bay movies, to Animated, G1, Beast Wars, and the Unicron trilogy. I’ve sort of slowly eased my way back into my love over the past couple of years, and these past few months I’ve gone full force with collecting again. This is a franchise that’s no stranger to awful pieces of media. Revenge of the Fallen is notoriously bad. Age of Extinction is a mess. The Last Knight is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen (literally, I kept falling asleep trying to watch it. It’s so boring.), and Rise of Beasts was a let-down. Not to mention the ebb and flow of the cartoons. Despite all that, during my fandom gap years, I heard whispers that the Netflix and Rooster Teeth collaboration series was really damn good. Even back then, I tried to watch this, and it always put me to sleep for some reason (subtle foreshadowing). So my girlfriend and I just finished it. She jokingly joined along halfway through, and we became trauma locked watching this. There’s no easy way to say this. I’ve seen some of the highs and lows of this franchise, and this trilogy is the worst and most disgraceful piece of Transformers media to date.
Over the course of 3 seasons and 18ish episodes, we are taken through the story of the battle of the Autobots and Decepticons on Cybertron. The Autobots are on their back foot as the planet is dying, and maybe the only hope is finding the Allspark. Then we’re taken on a journey across the universe in an attempted escape from Megatron and his Decepticons, stumbling into the dead universe. Then our cast finds themselves lost in time on a prehistoric/future/alternate timeline Earth during the days of the Maximals vs. Predicons. As Megatron is led by the knowledge of the golden disk, and the threat of Unicron looms.
Did that sound like a lot? Cause it is. I think they jammed almost every single Transformers thing they could into these 18 episodes. Nothing got the chance to breathe. Every season was something new. It’s like somebody watched a Chris Mcfeely video and decided to incorporate everything that’s ever happened in Transformers history into this mess. Here, slight spoilers, I guess. I’m going to list every concept off the top of my head that appeared in these 18 (normal length) episodes. Ready, set, go: the Allspark, cosmic rust, Alpha Trion, and potentially the other 13 primes, the dead universe, quintessons, titans, Unicron, the Maximals and Predicons, time travel and alternate timelines, Nemsis Prime, Galvatron, Dinobots redemption, and more. Now look, not all of these things need a full season to flesh out, but most of these need an episode or two. A chunk of them have taken multiple seasons to build up to, and they crammed all of it into 18 episodes that, despite having all of these things, feel like a slog because most of the time, nothing is actually happening besides awful dialogue and voice acting. Which is only slightly worse than the “action” scenes, if you can even call them that. For fucks sake, they barely transform! For what it’s worth, the story isn’t the worst part of this by a mile, it’s the characters.
Let’s go in order of least awful to awful. Among the toy fodder, some characters are fine, I guess. Not the biggest fan of the rebellious quasi chosen one Bumblebee, but besides being a bit annoying in season 1, he pretty much faded into the background until the finale. Starscream is Starscream, which is great. He’s one of the few characters I enjoyed when he was on screen. I will always enjoy seeing Elita-1, and I think she was okay as an almost equal to Optimus and a resistance leader. Sky Lynx, in this series, actually grew on me during his appearance. So different from his G1 self, but I think it works. On a side note, my girlfriend found his design so absurd that she became obsessed with him. If his figures didn’t cost so much, we might have two in our house as we speak. And Ratchet was there in season 1, I guess. A lot of characters have a tendency to appear and disappear for large chunks of the show. Not even showing up in the background. Okay, now let’s talk about the awful.
Megatron is so stupid. Before I watched this series, I kept getting recommended a video that had a thumbnail calling this Megs dumb, and I agree. He feels thoughtless and hollow throughout this entire series. Constantly getting tugged along and used. Letting base emotions dictate his actions. There was actually a moment in season one that gave him and this version of Cybertron some depth. It gave me hope that we’d see more of the not-so-much compassionate, but looking ahead, Megs is going forward, but we don’t. He sucks, but not as much as Prime.
This is by far and away the worst version of Optimus Prime ever. When I think of Optimus Prime, I think of a leader, someone heroic with strong morals, but also isn’t afraid to admit his faults and make them right. Someone with a plan and the ultimate trust of his people. Optimus Prime is both a war general and a peace-time leader due to his virtues. And no matter what situation he’s been in in other series, whether he’s been depicted as a rookie or a veteran. He still attains and or gains these attributes. Really, none of these things can be said for this Optimus. I don’t see how or why any of the Autobots would follow him. With their world and kind on the brink, he has no plan; he barely has any will. This is not Optimus Prime.
Okay, let’s dig in some more. Animation is so meh. I’ve watched a lot of anime and seen how good CG models can be, and these are just eh, most of the time with some moments of looking horrible. I felt like they tried to conceal it by making the show so dark, but it still shows. These are pretty much just G1 character designs with some tweaks. And in terms of design, they actually look good. A lot of the toys from this series are some of the best that each character has gotten. I’m not a fan per se, but I see why. It does annoy me, though, that they look like toys in the show. So much so that I swear some of them have 5mm ports, which is wild. Also, why does Starscream have an Earth robot mode but his tetra jet alt mode? It makes no sense. One of the key things that makes Transformers designs so good is seeing what goes where in each mode.
I guess it doesn’t matter too much because these transformers don’t transform. They pretty much stay in robot mode for the whole show. You know how many times I had to watch these robots that transform into vehicles with wheels, aircraft, animals with high dexterity, and that can fly, just run away from things? It drove me insane, especially being a fan of some of the movies and coming off of Transformers One, where they incorporate fighting and alt modes so damn well. It’s like this show is a kid playing with their toys and they’re too lazy to transform them. That would explain why there are really no stakes, no one really dies (on screen). Everyone has stormtrooper aim, and whenever anyone walks or clashes with something/one, it sounds like the cheapest pieces of metal clanking together. Seriously, the soundscape of this show is awful.
Last but certainly not least. The voice acting. As a fan of this franchise, we have been blessed with icons. Frank Welker, Peter Cullen, Orson Welles, Steve Blum, Tom Kenny, Cree Summer, just to name a few of the greats who have voice acted in this franchise. This series, bar none, has the worst, most amateur voice acting I have ever heard, and if amateur was all it was. If I had to hear Megatron be mellow dramatic while he purses his lips for 18 episodes, then I would dislike it, but there is one voice in this show that made me despise it.
The voice acting and direction for Optimus Prime is god awful. Awful actually isn’t a strong enough word; this is the worst voice performance I have ever heard in my life. It genuinely made me and my gf angry every time he talked. I thought at first it was just a thing everyone did to be dramatic, but no, even though other characters do this as well, Optimus Prime does it every single sentence. He…. Talks…. Like this…. Every…. Single…. word…. has…. A pause…. After…. It. I’m not joking, I swear to god it is as bad as it sounds, and it’s every episode, 98% of the time he talks. It is mentally taxing to listen to him speak. And when he’s the main character, and so much of the runtime is boring ass dialogue. There’s a reason it took over a month for me to finish this shit. Even when he’s not talking like that, he sounds so unconvincing. His voice even cracked in one episode. I should never hear Optimus Prime’s voice cracking.
So yeah, look, this series is a piece of shit. Like it’s awful. After I finished season 1, I was so shocked by the high scores it had on some websites until I realized there were so few reviews because nobody watched it. Which I’m happy that more people were saved from this piece of hot buns. This is the worst of the worst when it comes to Transformers media and the worst thing I have watched in a long time, if not ever. Skip it, skip it, skip it. If you like the toys, then all power to you, but the show is an awful mess.
Transformers: War For Cybertron Trilogy – 1/10
