[6.4/10] I like Ratchet. The notion of a person who wants out of the conflict and just wants to heal people, no matter what side of the war they’re on, makes him a way more interesting wildcard than Bumblebee’s “loner for loner’s sake” characterization. Likewise, the prospect of Impacter adhering to his oath to protect Cybertron, not one side in a war, despite his Decepticon origins, makes him a more interesting character.
But they’re both swallowed up in the sheer dull grayness of everything that happens here. The fights are weakly staged. The characters continue to largely look the same making everything a big muddle. And everyone continues to speak in such severe tones about everything that there’s no humanity or life in any interaction.
We’ve also gone from “the allspark is lost/a myth” to “We’ve got to get it off-planet!” which seems like a big leap. At least fixing the space bridge gives the Autobots a mission, but the “I swore I wouldn’t fight in this war, but I guess just this once” routine with Ratchet ends up being pretty stale, even before the bog standard fight that ensues.
I do like the exploration of the concept of honor among the decepticons. Starscream wants to take over not just because of his usual power-hungry characterization, but because he thinks Megatron’s WMD plan is dishonorable. Jetfire stops his fellow Decepticon from taking out the Autobot leadership because honor demands that they give their targets a chance to surrender. And Ultra Magnus gets caught flat footed because he refuses to shoot Megatron in the back, even after he’s been tortured.
We also get some solid details as to the dynamic with the Autobots and Decepticons from before the war, with the implication that the Decepticons were part of a slave caste and that Megatron’s uprising was at least partly justified. I think I caught a “Don’t become what we fought against” during the torutre scene, and there’s an interesting throughline of Megatron violating the principles of his own revolution out of a sense of pragmatism.
That’s the thing that bugs me about War for Cybertron. There’s some really interesting ideas here, but they’re executed in such a generic, faux-profound action movie sort of way that it takes all the oxygen away from them.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2020-12-27T19:47:17Z
[6.4/10] I like Ratchet. The notion of a person who wants out of the conflict and just wants to heal people, no matter what side of the war they’re on, makes him a way more interesting wildcard than Bumblebee’s “loner for loner’s sake” characterization. Likewise, the prospect of Impacter adhering to his oath to protect Cybertron, not one side in a war, despite his Decepticon origins, makes him a more interesting character.
But they’re both swallowed up in the sheer dull grayness of everything that happens here. The fights are weakly staged. The characters continue to largely look the same making everything a big muddle. And everyone continues to speak in such severe tones about everything that there’s no humanity or life in any interaction.
We’ve also gone from “the allspark is lost/a myth” to “We’ve got to get it off-planet!” which seems like a big leap. At least fixing the space bridge gives the Autobots a mission, but the “I swore I wouldn’t fight in this war, but I guess just this once” routine with Ratchet ends up being pretty stale, even before the bog standard fight that ensues.
I do like the exploration of the concept of honor among the decepticons. Starscream wants to take over not just because of his usual power-hungry characterization, but because he thinks Megatron’s WMD plan is dishonorable. Jetfire stops his fellow Decepticon from taking out the Autobot leadership because honor demands that they give their targets a chance to surrender. And Ultra Magnus gets caught flat footed because he refuses to shoot Megatron in the back, even after he’s been tortured.
We also get some solid details as to the dynamic with the Autobots and Decepticons from before the war, with the implication that the Decepticons were part of a slave caste and that Megatron’s uprising was at least partly justified. I think I caught a “Don’t become what we fought against” during the torutre scene, and there’s an interesting throughline of Megatron violating the principles of his own revolution out of a sense of pragmatism.
That’s the thing that bugs me about War for Cybertron. There’s some really interesting ideas here, but they’re executed in such a generic, faux-profound action movie sort of way that it takes all the oxygen away from them.