[6.3/10] This was a lot of stuff without much purpose or motivation. It’s basically one big third act action sequence, which isn’t totally unexpected given the way this season has basically been one chopped up movie rather than a series of episodes. Still, it gives everything a sort of formless quality.
It’s not as though the episode is wholly lacking in cool moments. Jetfire bursting in to save the day, replete with a skyward kick and hero pose, is pretty darn awesome. The gigantic guardian emerging from beneath the ground to hold off the Decepticons grabs your attention with visuals. Even Impacter’s sacrifice to save Ratchet has some juice to it.
But so much here is glancing and/or superficial. There’s a standoff between Optimus and Megatron, but they just exchange the same general recriminations they’ve each been declaring privately for the whole show. Most of the action is unavailing, with a race to the space bridge and efforts to get the Allspark away from Cybertron. It at least ties a bunch of things together, but bits like an attack from the Warlord hoarding the energon or the “sparkless” zombie transformers are dispatched with too easily.
There’s also very little juice to Elita staying behind, if only because it’s felt like a fait accompli. We’ve seen nothing but her (rightfully) challenging Optimus, never the two of them seeming to have an actual rapport, so their separation here is meaningless. The same goes for the deaths and skirmishes from dozens of undifferentiated robots. There’s some solid visuals to The Ark blasting off into the sky, but otherwise this is, to use an old standby, a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.
Overall, if this wasn’t supposedly the first volume of a stories that’s supposedly going to pay homage to Beast Wars in the second volume, I’d tell pretty much everyone to skip this. It’s fine, but the generic “serious take on a genre story” work here is really dull and the characters and conflicts are very scattershot and underdeveloped.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2021-01-01T21:45:24Z
[6.3/10] This was a lot of stuff without much purpose or motivation. It’s basically one big third act action sequence, which isn’t totally unexpected given the way this season has basically been one chopped up movie rather than a series of episodes. Still, it gives everything a sort of formless quality.
It’s not as though the episode is wholly lacking in cool moments. Jetfire bursting in to save the day, replete with a skyward kick and hero pose, is pretty darn awesome. The gigantic guardian emerging from beneath the ground to hold off the Decepticons grabs your attention with visuals. Even Impacter’s sacrifice to save Ratchet has some juice to it.
But so much here is glancing and/or superficial. There’s a standoff between Optimus and Megatron, but they just exchange the same general recriminations they’ve each been declaring privately for the whole show. Most of the action is unavailing, with a race to the space bridge and efforts to get the Allspark away from Cybertron. It at least ties a bunch of things together, but bits like an attack from the Warlord hoarding the energon or the “sparkless” zombie transformers are dispatched with too easily.
There’s also very little juice to Elita staying behind, if only because it’s felt like a fait accompli. We’ve seen nothing but her (rightfully) challenging Optimus, never the two of them seeming to have an actual rapport, so their separation here is meaningless. The same goes for the deaths and skirmishes from dozens of undifferentiated robots. There’s some solid visuals to The Ark blasting off into the sky, but otherwise this is, to use an old standby, a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.
Overall, if this wasn’t supposedly the first volume of a stories that’s supposedly going to pay homage to Beast Wars in the second volume, I’d tell pretty much everyone to skip this. It’s fine, but the generic “serious take on a genre story” work here is really dull and the characters and conflicts are very scattershot and underdeveloped.