STL: I find it amusing that you're far more forgiving toward Animated compared to your far less forgiving appraisal of Furman's work at IDW.
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STL: I find it amusing that you're far more forgiving toward Animated compared to your far less forgiving appraisal of Furman's work at IDW.
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I hope I'm not going OT. If I am, feel free to move it mods.Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime
STL: I find it amusing that you're far more forgiving toward Animated compared to your far less forgiving appraisal of Furman's work at IDW.
The reason I'm less forgiving of the Animated concept is because I can understand the audience it's generated at and hence the limitations that I expect to impair it. It's like when you walk into McDonalds you don't expect the same service as you'd be when dining on Collins Street. I'm a harsh critic of today's cartoons for kids but when I measure TF Animated by those standards, I can accept the corny elements with Halloween, birthday parties etc b/c there's another audience they're evidently catering too. I'm not thrilled but I know that coming in. If I had it my way, the brat would be gone. Megatron would've exterminated her and her daddy. We'd be in the middle of an all out war between the Autobots and Decepticons with the hordes of both alliances converging on Earth. There wouldn't be thanksgiving or halloween or a birthday party. It'd be war. But of course, that's not animated. It's probably closer to IDW's G1.
Furman's IDW work on the other hand is directed to mature, devoted fans of G1. He is supposed to be a master of his craft. I think he's underperforming and hasn't adopted well to the serialised format. To him its still one ongoing series between his minis and his spotlights. However the retail reality isn't the same. They are minis. They need to be written like they are. I, hence, expect better.
That said, I've constantly said I'm a big fan of the IDW universe. It's the execution that has frustrated me. And there have been issues that I've liked and been glowing about like the Stormbringer mini, Escalation, Optimus/Blaster/Magnus/Nightbeat/Shockwave spotlights.
Anyway, if you saw Furman's run incorporating half of the Halloween, birthday, dumb professor, righteous brat (wait, didn't he do that with Verity) stuff, then if you think I'm harsh now, you'd be in for one heck of a surprise.
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The thing that continues to irk me with Animated is how it fails to adequately engage me as an adult audience member. While I appreciate that the show's target demographic audience is children, I don't see why it cannot be written at multiple levels where it can also simultaneously appeal to adults like Beast Wars.
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That would require more effort though.
I seriously believe that the writers believe themselves to be doing enough for the older viewers with all the G1 nods and Easter eggs...
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G1 nods are not enough I reckon. To me having random nods like that with no purpose to the world and story feel forced and annoy me more than it pleases me, specially when its done as often as in animated.
Beast Machines tried throwing in random but pointless G1 tributes in places but it didn't do them any good because they were useless when it came to the context of the story and felt rather forced and random, particularly when the overall story was trying very hard to 'revolutionize' transformers into something radically different.
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Last edited by kup; 22nd March 2011 at 03:38 PM.
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I disagree - Beast Machines did try to blend itself into G1 and enhance G1 just as Beast Wars did. Arguably it wasn't executed as well, but they did make a similar attempt. For example:
+ Sparks, the AllSpark Matrix - again, continues on from canon established in Beast Wars which itself harks back to G1/G2. In Beast Machines we see Sparks making a journey back to the Matrix, which we also saw in G1 when Transformers ventured into the Matrix. Beast Machines establishes that all Sparks are destined to return to the Matrix, which harks back to Optimus Prime's famous words, "Till All Are One."
+ Technorganism: In the G1 episode "Dweller in the Depths" Cybertron is shown as having a technorganic core and the ancient inhabitants of Cybertron (creations of the Quintessons) being technorganic in nature. The G1 comics also showed an ancient race of "technorganic" looking creatures who also dwelled in the depths of Cybertron who surfaced when Cybertron was being "reborn" - they killed Battletrap and Runabout and got trounced by the Dinobots (the fight was Grimlock's first as a true Action Master).
+ The Oracle - who was later revealed to be a remanifestation of Vector Sigma - who in turn has been retconned as an "embodiment of Primus."
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I understand what you are saying but I disagree. These 'tributes' were indeed present in Beast Machines as part of the plot but they were so freaking different in concept and execution (with the exception of the Allpark) that they may as well have called them anything they wanted and no one would have been able to tell the difference.
However when I made my comment before, what I had primarily in mind were the seemingly random tributes such as the numerous sparkless bodies of what looked like Soundwave, the Optimus Prime statues inexplicably holding the Golden discs and so on.
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Last edited by kup; 22nd March 2011 at 03:38 PM.
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