Onslaught Six wrote:
It's not really an old wound as I only genuinely came onto the scene a year or two later during RID & Armada, even though I'd seen BW and BM. Moreover, it's a "I think this thing is friggin' awesome and there are definite reasons for its awesomeness that you must be ignoring."
Fair enough.
Onslaught Six wrote:
I personally think BM is one of the top three TF shows ever, alongside RID and Animated, but to truly enjoy it, you need to view it in a vacuum--BM had a story to tell with specific character roles and ideas, and in order to carry that out, it had to change some of the things about G1 and Beast Wars. And this, to me, is perfectly fine. Fudge the universe as much as you want, damnit, because it doesn't *have* to fit. I mean, just look at TF continuity *now.* We've got thirteen G1s and half of them don't even remotely work together in any kind of form. I write fanfiction where Prime is a head and Jetfire leads the Autobots on a barren Cybertron with Skyquake on it. You can 'do that kinda stuff now.' These days, if BM came along, nobody would blink twice.
Also true. But Beast Machines was by all intent a direct sequel to Beast Wars, and it wasn't unreasonable to expect them to maintain a bit more of the characterization that fine series laid out. You can evolve the characters, but having them do nonsensical one-eighties negates the reason for even revisiting those characters in the first place. It felt like the creators conceived their show first, then shoehorned the Beast Wars mythos into it as a secondary concern.
And as far as nutty fanfics go, that's nothin'. My friend and I have maintained an ongoing storyline for the past thirteen years, wherein Rapido became Prime, had a kid who became Prime, Cybertron blew up, came back, and Primus and Unicron where revealed to have once been humans. Even Furman's head would explode.
Onslaught Six wrote:
The toys 'is' definitely the coolest part of BM. The Maximals are Different and screwy but have their own charm, and the Vehicons are simply constructed of the finest quality Win and Awesome that 1999 offered.
*looks at Beast Machines shelf*... Well, 1999 wasn't really a banner year for Transformers. I'll give you Night Slash Cheetor, Tankor, the Tank and Cycle drones, Quickstrike and Snarl as decent figures, most of the rest were only passable, and a few were downright horrible, including, but not limited to: Supreme Cheetor, Nightscream, Buzzsaw, and Geckobot. Megatron, Rattrap and Silverbolt saw easily their worst toy versions ever, and the Beast chariots and deployers, while okay ideas, were ultimately worthless.
Again, I have only myself to blame for buying these things. No one was holding a gun to my head or anything, and I could get rid of them if I want. But next to what had come before, and pretty much all of the lines that have come since, Beast Machines really stands out-- and not in a good way. At the end of the day, though, I'm a live and let-live kind of fan who recognizes that he's in the minority here, so I'll respect your love for Beast Machines.
Where were we? Oh yeah, Bumblebee. Yay, human drivers! Boo, permanent gun-hand. Still an epic win though.
