War For Cybertron: Siege -- That Sure Happened

[yvannairie]

(In the show's defense -- that could have definitely been worse.)

Y'all remember the first five episode starting arc of Transformers: Prime? Remember how dense and kind of aimless that felt, when the goal kept changing every episode and new information was constantly being established about the situation in a way that felt a lot like standing in front of an exposition firehose? And how you kinda got through that because the moments of character acting pulled you in, made you see these characters as people and got you invested?

WfC:S is... kinda that, but for more episodes, and with worse characterisation. Worst of all, since that is the entire season, that's all the arc we're gonna get for most of them.

It's not without inspiration -- the set-up is a pretty fresh combination of all the elements, with Optimus, Megatron and Ultra Magnus all having been Alpha Trion's... students? Followers? And there having been a confirmed war being fought to get rid of the previous corrupt government before the Autobot-Decepticon division. Ultra Magnus also clearly had a more active role in both Optimus' and Megatron's lives. There are better-established neutrals, and for once the phase and state of the war is very clear (although that creates other problems, actually, showing that knowing more isn't always a good thing.)

I also really loved the return of tired war vet Ratchet who has Given The Fuck Up. My dear, back from being banished to the Animated corner of the multiverse. Ratchet was the best part of the show, with a consistent characterisation and one of the stronger vocal performances. On a personal note, I'm gonna enjoy the Impactor/Ratchet that by rights should come out of their interactions.

Everyone else though... the biggest problem with the show in general was just how modular and rote it felt. It was less a satisfying narrative arc with rising and falling action and more of a summary of the events of a critical phase of the war, performed as a dramatic play. This meant that most characters only existed in scenes as far as it was necessary for them to deliver exposition, and the ones that got lucky managed to also portray character -- primarily through the few good vocal performances.

Everyone who was unlucky enough to not get that, though, might as well have not existed. The cast felt weirdly big and small simultaneously -- the clearer scale of conflict made it seem like the Decepticons were very bad at actually communicating anything with each other, but at the same time there were so many Autobots that there just wasn't enough time to give everyone established, rounded personalities. Jetfire and Impactor were both very disappointing, because both of them were going through parallel arcs, from different directions, but the show didn't set up meaningful difference between what they knew about the Decepticons, and didn't properly explain why they had a change of spark.

So, yeah, no -- Prime remains the gold standard for really taking this silliness seriously in an animated series and we're unlikely to get something that is as well-plotted from NWFC :( But it was decently entertaining, and I can see the theorising about what caused the falling out between Optimus & Ultra Magnus and Megatron and the fic spinning off from that being more interesting than the show itself. A lot of these characters, in the hands of a diligent fandom, can grow to be worthy additions, but mostly because the bare minimum is just inherently a good groundwork to start building on.

Even visually the show clearly had some thought and some interesting ideas put into it -- it's very dark and desaturated while staying clean and readable, and that's an excellent and rarified thing. However, the direction is stagey, there's a lot of characters holding static poses without even the camera angle bringing any life into the scene, and the action... goes from mediocre to comically bad, in a way that clashes with the tone the score and visual design is trying to set. It's not bad, but it has that "first-pass" kind of look -- not a lot of chances were taken, and a lot of the scenes were clearly planned out far before the plot was fully decided on. It just doesn't really enhance the plot or the characterisation at all.

All in all -- not bad! But only really "not bad": I can't see this getting popular or having a big fandom, because there's just not much here unless you're already into the franchise, and the things that are done differently aren't gone into enough detail to really sell them. This would be a bad place to start if you wanna get into TF, but as popcorn entertainment, it's plenty.

(I also still think the actual game of War For Cybertron also did the majority of these plot points better.)