The Media Man Reviews: Transformers War for Cybertron Trilogy (Netflix)

Now this thing's an interesting piece of Transformers media to talk about.

Released in 2018 and concluding in 2022, the War for Cybertron Trilogy was a trilogy of toylines from the Transformers brand that was dedicated to releasing brand new toys based on classic G1 Transformers characters, and come the final section of the toyline they even branched out to the Beast Wars era with brand new updated toys based on characters from that part of the franchise. The toyline's three chapters were titled "Siege", "Earthrise" and "Kingdom" respectively and were by far the best time to be a Transformers collector. The toys were some of the best to ever come from this franchise with G1 accurate robot forms, complex transformations, detailed looks and great articulation. As a fan and collector myself, I have many of the toys from these three toylines and have loved collecting every single one. If you're curious, the prizes of my collection regarding these toylines include Siege Jetfire, Earthrise Sky Lynx and Kingdom Optimus Primal and Beast Wars Megatron. Those toys are all amazing and I'm proud to own them.

The trilogy must've been a big attention grabber, for not only did we get these three toylines, but Netflix made a cartoon based on said toylines. Usually the toylines would be based on the cartoons, but here, the cartoon is based on the toyline. Weird, eh? The show was produced by Hasbro and Rooster Teeth (yes, really) and animated by Polygon Pictures, the very same animation studio who animated Transformers: Prime back in the 2010s, so it was quite fitting they ended up animating yet another Transformers cartoon. The show also had F. J. DeSanto as showrunner, which was no doubt a red flag for many since he was the showrunner of the Prime Wars trilogy of shows. I say that because those shows are...not well received to put it mildly. Combiner Wars is even infamously said to "Make Energon look like a masterpiece by comparison". Ouch. Fancy being said to be worse than Energon!

Anyhow, the show came and went and people either thought it was passable or thought it was bad. So how do I feel about it? I checked this thing out mostly out of interest in seeing a new Transformers cartoon that wasn't going to be overly kid-friendly like most TF shows since Prime have become. So is this a war worth witnessing? Or is this a despicable trick from the Decepticons that we have to look out for? Let's dive in...

Section 1: The Story

The story focuses on the war for Cybertron, which is nearing its climax as Autobots and Decepticons are stuck fighting for what little is left of the planet. Optimus is pushed to make the riskiest decision of his life as he has to choose whether to send the AllSpark away from Cybertron to keep it out of Megatron's hands or keep fighting a losing battle. What follows after that is a chase through space and a climactic battle on an organic planet that sees some familiar beasts joining forces with the bots and the cons...

Right off the bat, the premise of this show sounds like a dream come true. We FINALLY have a Transformers cartoon that's set on Cybertron and is focusing on the war between the bots and cons. No Erath, no humans, only the Transformers themselves. While yes, Beast Wars did it first and there's media outside of cartoons that also have no humans at all such as the comics and the War for Cybertron video-games, but it's still refreshing to finally have a Transformers cartoon that's actually about the war on Cybertron itself and is focused ONLY on the Transformers. And before anyone says, yes, I'm aware that Cyberverse is also only focused on the Transformers and there are no humans, but that show loses points for still being set on Earth regardless. This is a show set mostly on Cybertron and is just about the war on Cybertron.

So with that in mind, the show must be fantastic, surely? I could tell you that...but I'd be lying.

As is the most important rule in story-telling, it's not the idea that makes it work, but the execution. You can have ideas that sound terrible in concept but are great in execution, and in this show's case, we have a great idea that is awesome in concept but ruined by the execution. So what went wrong? Three words:

NOT. ENOUGH. EPISODES!!!

I kid you not when I say that this show is absolutely CRAMMED with plot and characters, and when I say crammed, I mean crammed into a box that's too small to fit them all in, so the box just bursts open and makes a mess everywhere. I will never understand why on Earth Netflix thought six episodes per season was a good idea. This show should've been a full 20 episodes a season kind of show similar to what we got with shows like Prime, Robots in Disguise 2015 or even the Unicron Trilogy since this show has way too much plot to fit into a measly six episodes a season. It's like if Chris Chibnall wrote this show, because it has all the faults that made his era of Doctor Who frustrating to watch at times: too many ideas at once and not enough time to make use of them all. As such, the plot here feels incredible rushed because there's just not enough time to fully flesh out the story it's trying to tell here. As such, you get ideas and plot points that realistically could take several episodes to set up and pay off, but because of how rushed this show is, they often have to set up and pay them off in the same episode or immediately in the next one. Thus you have things that just don't pay off in a fulfilling way such as Bumblebee being factionless or Jetfire's sudden heel-turn or how Sky Lynx's entire redemption LITERLLY occurred offscreen and is just told to us or how even Dinobot's heel-turn felt rushed. And then you have ideas that had potential to be interesting, such as Galvatron going back in time to converse with Megatron and try to change his fate so he doesn't end up as Unicron's slave, but once again the rushed and crammed pacing of the story does this plot no favours, nor does it do any favours for the idea that Optimus will some day become Nemesis Prime. These are ideas that require a season's worth of story-telling to build up and pay off, but because this show feels more like a trilogy of mini-series than an actual season's worth of content each, they're not given the time they need to pay off. It's pretty sad when Hazbin Hotel has better pacing by comparison, and that show had eight episodes in its one season! Just goes to show even ONE extra episode can make all the difference with shows like these...

Hell, by the time we get to Season 3, the Kingdom chapter, the series essentially becomes a crossover between the G1 cast and the Beast Wars cast. That's an awesome idea! Yet because of the rushed storytelling and bad pacing of the show, what should've been an awesome idea just falls flat on its face and instead of feeling hyped up by the time we get there, I feel absolutely nothing. It's just meaningless fanservice when all is said and done and feels like the show's just trying to show off, like "Hey look, we've got the G1 cast meeting the Beast Wars cast! How cool is that?!" Yes, it is cool, but the story-telling didn't make it feel that way. You need good storytelling to make cool concepts pay off in a meaningful way, you can't just throw in ideas like this with no substance or proper care as otherwise, it feels like fanservice for the sake of fanservice.

What's worse is that because this show tries to do so much at once in such little time, some of these storylines either abruptly end or don't have a satisfying conclusion. Case in point: Elita-1's subplot in the Earthrise portion of the trilogy. That entire plot has nothing to do with the main plot of Optimus and his crew searching for the AllSpark and all that's achieved at the end is that Elita and her crew are all killed when their mission goes wrong. What was the point of that subplot if it was just going to end so abruptly? Just giving Optimus Prime something to angst about in the next season? The show's miserable enough as it is, we don't need more misery!

Speaking of misery, it also doesn't help how the story is punishingly unentertaining to watch as it is. Not only are you stuck trying to keep up with everything that's going on because of the crammed story and short episode count forcing the story to rush itself, but the tone is just so bleak and grim that it's not even a fun show to watch. Yes, I get it, it's a war story and it's going for a "War is Hell" type of story, but you can tell this kind of story and still make it fun! Transformers: Prime was able to be dark and gritty at times while also still being entertaining, so this show has no excuse. Just about everybody in this show is either super serious and a total killjoy or they're melodramatic and overly emotional and it just makes the cast unenjoyable to watch as a result. The bad voice acting and the slow delivery of the dialogue does them no favours either. Even the action scenes are boring in this show. The one thing you must NEVER screw-up on are the action scenes when it comes to this franchise, but this show did it. Anytime the Transformers get into a fight, it's pretty limp-wristed and one-sided or it's mostly just characters shooting at each other. There's no creative choreography or cool action shots or anything, it's just very bare bones action that further adds to how boring this show is to watch. It says a lot when even Robots in Disguise 2015 has better action scenes!

Oh, and if you're not a Transformers fan, then this show is NOT a good jumping on point for you. This show is incredibly inaccessible to newcomers as going into the show, we have all these characters that only die-hard fans will recognize, talks about the origins of the war that are alluded to but never shown and because there's not enough time to flesh out the story and characters, we barely get to know anybody in this series. It feels like this is a show that only fans can get into, and I wouldn't even recommend this show to fans given it's just not a good show at all. If you're someone who wants to get into the franchise, then don't start with this show, you'll just be totally lost and alienated.

So yeah, this show is pretty crap, I've made that clear enough. But is there anything good about it? Eh...not really? Aside from how refreshing it is to have a show with no humans in it, how the vaguely alluded to backstory of the series clearly references the backstory of Cybertron that has become the norm in the franchise since the Aligned continuity and how some of its ideas are intriguing in concept, there's very little praise I can actually give this story.

If the episode count wasn't so small, this story could've been the best we've ever gotten in the franchise. Instead, it ended up as one of the worst...

Section 2: The Characters

This cartoon went with quantity over quality here, so this may take a while...

There are a lot of Transformers who appear here from the fan-favourites to the obscure ones, but only a handful of them actually have developed personalities and defined characters, so I'm focusing entirely on them.

Let's start with the Autobot leader himself, Optimus Prime (voiced by Jake Foushee). As much flack as I give this show, I actually liked the way Optimus was characterized here. He's depicted as the usual compassionate and courageous leader that we all know and love, but as this story takes place during the war on Cybertron itself, we get to see a more challenged and vulnerable Optimus. It really does feel like he's at his wit's end here and that the war is taking a toll on his mental well-being. As a result, he's pushed to make some incredibly risky decisions, one of which involves ejecting the AllSpark from Cybertron to make sure Megatron never gets it, and it does cause his comrades to question him from time-to-time. This show may suffer from questionable writing as a result of its rushed pace and crammed story, but at least they got Optimus's character right here. That said, Jake Foushee's performance as him is one of the examples of how the voice-acting does this show no favours. He just constantly sounds like he's doing a bad Peter Cullen impression instead of just doing his own Optimus voice, and while he sounds just fine speaking normally, it sounds REALLY bad whenever he has to raise his voice. They should've let Jake do his own take instead of telling him to sound like Peter, because it just didn't work here.

And of course, where there's an Optimus, there's a Megatron (voiced by Jason Marnocha). Like Optimus, I have no problems with how Megatron is characterized here. On the contrary, I'd even say this show's version of Megatron is one of the best things to come out of it. He really lives up to his reputation as a cunning and devious leader with how effortlessly he manipulates the truth or twists the events of the war in a way that villainizes his enemies and makes himself sound heroic. He also proves to be opportunistic too for he actually manages to steal the Matrix of Leadership from Optimus at one point and uses it for his own gain. Not even Animated or the Aligned Megatrons ever capitalized on such an opportunity, but this Megatron managed it. I also like how this Megatron has his own twisted way of showing respect to enemies (one example being how he gives credit to Wheeljack for at least choosing a side and wearing his symbol with pride while the "cowardly" Bumblebee goes factionless) and how he's willing to do what it takes to win the war, yet he won't resort to overly extreme measures unless pushed to the limit. Case in point, Shockwave's virus idea. Megatron's hesitant at first to go through with such an idea and only goes with it once he's pushed to the point he feels there are no other options. I only wish that the plot with him meeting Galvatron was better executed as that was such an intriguing idea that was let-down by the execution due to having no room to develop it properly. Oh and telling Jason Marnocha to speak up and not talk so slowly when delivering his lines would've helped too.

In terms of major characters, we have Bumblebee (voiced by Joe Zieja). He is the quintessential example of how the truncated episode count does this series no favours at all. Here, he's in a particularly interesting situation where he's factionless and is told that he'll have to "choose a side". That lasts for all of four episodes before Ultra Magnus is killed and the Alpha Trion protocols end up in Bumblebee, thus the decision is pretty much made for him. In those four episodes, he only appears in three of them and the whole "choose a side" thing never really comes up again after Episode 1. What a waste of an interesting new take on the Autobot scout! If this plot had any weight to it whatsoever, then Bumblebee should've remained factionless until Season 2 and more time should've been devoted to him having to make his decision instead of outside forces kinda forcing him into the direction the plot needs him to head into. Also, can I just say this is the most boring incarnation of Bumblebee ever depicted in this franchise? Say what you will about other Bumblebees, at least they remembered to have a personality! This guy, they just forgot to give him one and made him a one-dimensional Lone Wolf archetype. It just goes to show that Bumblebee being serious does him no justice at all.

The next major character is Elita-1 (voiced by Linsay Rousseau). She's Optimus's second in command and throughout her time on the show, she spends most of it just arguing and disagreeing with him and basically sounding whiny half the time. Season 2 improved her a little by giving her her own team of Autobots to lead on Cybertron while Optimus is in space looking for the AllSpark, but this plot is largely disconnected from the main plot and is just abruptly brought to an end when she and her comrades are just unceremoniously killed off because...this show needed to show how dark and edgy it is, I guess? I have no idea why they felt that needed to happen. Her spirit form does appear and act as a guide to Optimus in Season 3, but that doesn't make things any better. If anything, it feels like a nasty case of the infamous "Women in Refrigerators" trope since she, a female character, was killed off just to develop Optimus's character and give him something to angst about. Such a pitiful way to handle the Prime's love interest if you ask me. Thank god Transformers One improved the character and better used her.

And of course, I must talk about Jetfire (voiced by Keith Silverstein). In most TF media, we don't usually explore the part of Jetfire's character in where he's a former Decepticon turned Autobot. Revenge of the Fallen mentioned it, G1 made it very brief and the Unicron Trilogy had him as an Autobot from the start, so it's VERY refreshing to see Jetfire as a Decepticon at first before he turns to the Autobots. The only problem is the execution sullies what should've been an interesting idea. Because there's not enough episodes, this plot point is incredibly rushed and makes Jetfire's change from villain to hero feel too sudden. When we first see him, he's a pretty ruthless warrior with a clear sadistic edge who loves to throw his weight around as the leader of the Seekers, but then he catches wind of Megatron's plan to wipe out the Autobots and he's just...not evil anymore. I love Jetfire, that much is obvious from last week's post about my Top 10 Favourite Autobots, but his story was done so dirty here. We needed a slower, more gradual change in his character instead of rushing his redemption like they did here. The fact he ends up dead alongside Elita and her group doesn't help either. Way to do my boy Jetfire dirty Netflix! X(

Naturally, we have a Starscream in this show (voiced by Frank Todaro) and he wasn't too bad, to be honest. He's as bare bones as Starscreams can get in this franchise, but at least he still feels like Starscream. I actually thought it was a neat twist on the character in how he has a rivalry with Jetfire at first and wants to take over the Seekers and then once he becomes leader of the Seekers, he wants to take over Megatron's position. Pairing him up with Blackarachnia (I don't mean that in a shipping way before you ask!) was also a stroke of genius. If there's a crossover with G1 and Beast Wars, of course you've got to have those two team-up and try to backstab their respective Megatrons! Even this show knew not to waste such an opportunity. XD

As for the rest, there's not much else to say about them. Most of the characters are either one-dimensional tropes or just the most bare bones incarnations of the characters you'll find, and that's if they're lucky enough to even GET a personality! Ultra Magnus (voiced by Edward Bosco) exists solely to die, Sky Lynx (voiced by Sean Wright) has his entire backstory explained to us and his redemption happen offscreen so there's nothing interesting to do with him and he dies in the same episode he appears in so his appearance feels wasted, Impactor (voiced by Brook Chalmers) as the exact same arc as Jetfire, only more rushed since he doesn't even make it past Season 1, the Beast Wars cast have none of the charm or depth that made them such beloved characters in their original series (Predacon Megatron is especially embarrassing as he acts more like a sycophantic fanboy than the ruthless, charismatic and devious Predacon leader he's supposed to be) and either have little personality or rushed developments (Dinobot's especially guilty of this) and Deseeus was a pointless villain and I question why they even existed in this show at all.

And finally, there's Galvatron (also voiced by Jason Marnocha) and Nemesis Prime (also voiced by Jak Foushee). A team-up like this is an awesome idea for a climax for a show like this and these two would've been great final bosses for Optimus and Megatron to overcome. Instead, Galvatron just basically acts like a devil on Megatron's shoulder trying to guide him to a certain spot so he can avoid being enslaved by Unicron and Nemesis Prime literally doesn't show up until the final episode. And when the two do show up, we barely get an actual fight with them, Optimus and Megatron and they're defeated rather anti-climactically. Just...I can't even with this story-telling I swear. How do you take such an awesome idea and make it suck?

This show had potential to give us great incarnations of the Transformers, and sadly they only really nailed it with Optimus and Megatron and maybe Starscream as well. Everyone else was just not done justice here and I imagine many fans were disappointed with how their favourite characters were handled here...

Section 3: The Animation

Now for the one thing that doesn't suck about this show: the animation.

Given this show was animated by the same studio that animated Transformers: Prime, it really is no surprise that the animation looks as good as it does here. Heck, it even surpasses Transformers: Prime's animation in terms of graphic quality. If I were to compare these shows to video-games in terms of graphic quality, I'd say Prime is comparable to the Xbox 360/PS3 levels of graphics while this show is PS4/Xbox One quality. Polygon Pictures really went all out in giving us a show with all these colourful and intricately detailed looking Transformers where you can see every tiny mark or grove or rivet on them. And yet looking at these characters looks kinda funny at the same time because for the character designs, they LITERALLY just used the toys when designing them. No seriously, the character designs are basically the toys from the War for Cybertron trilogy toyline but redesigned slightly so they look more robotic and less like action figures. Here's a quick comparison:

See what I mean? I know the cartoons are essentially over glorified toy commercials, but no need to be THAT obvious about it! I'm not saying that as a criticism, mind you, I just think it's pretty amusing how they made the characters look so much like their toys here. And yet the toys do translate well into CGI models and make for good character designs for the cast here. Everybody is recognizable as the character they're supposed to be from Optimus to Megatron to Bumblebee to Starscream to Elita-1 to Soundwave and much more, and anytime they're onscreen, they look so cool. It was especially awesome getting to see the Beast Wars cast depicted here as now we finally get to see what they look like in modern, improved, up-to-date CGI. They still look recognizable as the characters we remember from Beast Wars, but thanks to the improvements and advancements in technology since then, they look better than they've ever done before and it was so great to see them looking so cool here.

At the same time, basing the designs on the toys comes with a few setbacks, namely the fact that at times, pieces of the character's bodies just bend like rubber when they move, which breaks the illusion that these guys are supposed to be robots. The truck grill on Optimus's stomach or Jetfire's cockpit window on his abs are two such example. Anytime they twist their bodies, those parts just flex and bend as if they're organic beings and those pieces are like part of their skin or something, it just looks so weird! They should've articulated them like their toys and just given them waist rotation whenever they turn their torsos around, not animated them like that!

I also love the background work here too. Cybertron is shown in all its warn-torn glory and it really does look like a desolate, ravaged, dead place with all the destruction we can see no matter what part of the planet we're visiting. There's so much rust details, cracks, chunks of debris and such everywhere that it sells the image that this really is a world that's been torn apart by goodness knows how many years of warfare. And when it comes to organic looking planets, they look great to with this show's depiction of Earth looking especially beautiful.

As is, while the show can LOOK good, it never really fully takes advantage of the fact its animated. Compare that to other shows like Prime, Beast Wars, Animated or even the movies like Transformers: One and the Michael Bay films where they take full advantage of the fact these characters are animated and give us creative fight scenes that look awesome to watch. Here, the action scenes are very dull and not interesting, nor creatively choreographed, so they end up feeling boring as a result. Most of the show's animation consists of the characters just standing around and talking to each other, so we don't get a lot of interesting things to look at and because the cast have such little personality, we don't get anything visually appealing from them. The expressions are passable at best but feel limited, which is either down to the animation budget holding them back or the designs being too faithful to the toys. Compare that to Prime or Beast Wars where those shows don't look as good by comparison, yet their characters are way more expressive than the ones we see here. And then there's the fact that the visuals sometimes end up looking silly due to the execution of certain scenes or things in the show that don't make any sense. Take Skywarp's death in Episode 3 for example. Jetfire shoots him in one of his wings on his back and that...kills him somehow. Not only did the shot not look particularly powerful, but it didn't look as if it did that much damage to him, so how did that kill him? It comes off as laughable more than anything. Same goes for how Ultra Magnus comes to the Decepticons clad in a cloak and somehow they don't recognize him despite the fact the cloak barely even conceals his trademark shoulders. Come on Decepticons, even a five year old would've recognized him, so how did you guys fail to see it was him until he took his cloak off? As I say, maybe this show's budget was stretched thin and they couldn't execute some of these scenes any better, nor could they give us better looking action scenes and that's why we've got what we got here.

As is, the animation is one of the show's VERY few saving graces and if I ever watch it again, it's solely just to look at the visuals. They can give me something to enjoy, while the story-telling can't...

Overall

Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy easily ranks up there as among the worst Transformers cartoons ever made. The story is incredibly rushed due to the short episode count, the tone is dull and dreary so it makes for an unentertaining watch, the characters don't have the space to have proper fleshed out arcs, the action scenes are pathetic and the voice acting is salt on an open wound. The animation is the only thing that keeps this thing away from being completely terrible, and even then it's not worth putting up with the bad pacing and low-energy voice acting just to see it. I wouldn't recommend this show to anyone, not even Transformers fans. Just stick with Transformers: Prime or Beast Wars or Animated or heck, I'd recommend the Unicron Trilogy and Robots in Disguise 2015 over this pile of scrap! If you're like me and collected some of the toys from the War for Cybertron trilogy toylines back in the late 2010s, I bet you, the person reading this review, could tell a better story just by playing with them. If this show had better voice acting and more episodes to tell its story, then we could've had something great. Instead, we got something that felt like a waste of everyone's time in the end...

And that's it for this review. I hope you enjoyed it and I ask you all to leave a comment down below telling me your thoughts. Do you like this cartoon? Do you not like it? Do tell me.

Next week, I'll be giving out another romantic retrospective for Valentine's Day as I talk about my OTP: TailsXCosmo. See you then media fans!