I miss the 80’s.
The black hole doesn’t seem as bad as they think
I know that there is a fanbase out there for Transformers, as I am a huge fan. Growing up in the 80’s (and I mean from 1980 until 1989) I experienced the full force of the Transformers and G.I. Joe era. I knew how great the cartoon was and how beautiful the first (and still original) film for the Transformers turned out to be. Transformers: Cybertron is nothing like these old relics of the past that seemed to work well. It is quite the opposite.
The story begins as the autobots have just met an ancient Transformer from the past called Vector Prime. He has come just at the right time because after the destruction of Unicron (see original 80’s movie for detail) a gigantic black hole has been opened up that threatens Cybertron’s very existence (that’s the planet they live on). According to Vector Prime, to stop the black hole the autobots must find cyber planet keys that, when combined with a lock, will give the transformers power to close the black hole and stop the destruction of their home planet. Also, the combination will create such great power to rule over everything in the universe. That little diddy at the end of the last sentence gives the decepticons enough reason to go after the keys as well, which would prevent Cybertron from being saved.
Let me just say that I love the set-up in the story. It truly is throwing homage to the classic cartoon, especially with the connection of Unicron’s destruction (happened in the movie). I thank them for connecting those dots and once-in-awhile connnecting them throughout the series as a whole. I have to condemn them for making viewers wait nearly 50 episodes before wrapping this thing up. We’re talking about 50 twenty-two minute episodes before concluding. Anyone who is dedicated to that type of storytelling has to be the most patient person in the whole darn world. This type of stringing along never occurred in the previous incantations of the cartoon. Again, like I mentioned above, you would have stories in either Transformers or G.I. Joe (in the 80’s) that would last an entire week (see Weather Dominator for example), but no more than that. You, as a child, could sit through that many days and know that it concludes by Friday. Making someone sit through what could be described in the normal television world as three years before concluding the story… that’s just painful.
Add to this the animation which just seemed too raw for 2005, it didn’t help the series at all. If they had scratched the computer generated garbage, who’s mouths don’t even work well with the dialogue, and went with the hand-drawn anime for the human characters on earth (I understand the need for visual separation, but come on!) than it would have been much better in the long run. What happened to those days of hand-drawn goodness! I would pay money for that again, but this series just seemed too odd, too long and too raw to be successful.
This is only my opinion and maybe there are some kids out there who like and appreciate it, but I think it could have been done better and certainly looked better in the long-run.
Judge for yourself though.
Features for a cybercube?
While I’m not sure of the popularity of this phase of Transformers, I’m very sure that no features are on this disc set. I would have loved a bit more insight from the creators of the series, something that explains how they could have strung a story out so long. Alas, nothing.
Let’s roll!!!
If you’re a diehard fan of this series, kudos to you. You will love what has been packaged for you, though you might be disappointed by the lack of features. As for me, I think that there are better Transformer series and films out there on the market already. If you want something really good, check out the movie that Paramount brought out in the 80’s or even more recently. Those alone are far more entertaining than this series, again unless you’re fan of this particular series.