Beast Machines: Character Assassination: The Series

[Winter]

As you can no doubt tell by the title I don't much care for the sequel to Beast Wars and I personally see it as one of the worst sequels of all time. It ignores or outright breaks lore throughout the series, it's anti-tech and pro-organic mindset is as bad as Star Trek: Insurrection and Dear God the Poor characters.

Pretty much the only thing that remains the same about these characters from BW is their names, other then that they're completely different from who they were before with no sign of ANY of their former characterzation or development from the original series. Rat Trap is a idiot and coward with little to no snark, Blackarachnia lacks all her cunning and wit, Optimus Primal has turned into a preachy hippy who's as bad as the Baku were in Star Trek and poor Silver Bolt. He went from a noble, if naive, knight in shining armor this annoying jack-@$$. It's honestly as bad as what was done to Luke in The Last Jedi, taking an otherwise noble character and stripping away what made likeable in order to make him more "interesting".

The only characters who come out of this series relatively unscathed is Cheetor and Megatron. Cheetor's overall characterization generally feels more like a continuation of what we got in BW with him still being rather impulsive yet he is more clever and resourceful. It's still not perfect but out of all the Maximals. And Megatron is still as egotistical and manpilituive as ever. Sure, he now has this anti-organic mindset that makes no sense and he keeps seems to have forgotten that transformers can just scan something else to change but what you gonna do, everyone forgot how the lore in this series works.

I will admit that I do like the look of the show, one or two issues aside I think this is some of Mainframe Studios' best work and still holds up today and the show is very cinematic with a lot of great angles and camera moves. Also... this music video is awesome.


youtu.be/vUH4qfS1xRc

Seriously this is one of the best music videos/trailers for a series I've ever seen and I watch it whenever I get a chance. Honestly, the first real sign that the series itself was in trouble was when this song WASN'T in the show. Sure, they couldn't include the whole thing but you can work around that (Pokemon's original theme song is actually 2 and a half minutes and that was trimmed down to 1 minute). And... that's it for positives I REALLY don't like this series and it's honestly best to pretend it doesn't exist IMO.

I've talked about my interest in the upcoming She-Ra live action series and regardless whether it is good or bad I'm more interested to see what elements from the original series and the reboot will be included. Beast Wars added a lot of new elements to Transformers that have now become a big part of the lore of the series. Sparks, adding to the nature of the Matrix of Leadership, and greater emphasis on characters. Beast Machines, by contrast, has added nothing knew and, in fact, warps older lore to try and fit what the show's writers wanted to turn the series into.

[phantom000]

Personally, I like Beast Machines because it feels even more like a tribute to original cartoon. I actually like how they played around with bits of Transformers lore and reinvented them. The organic vs. technology theme is both interesting and well handled as it was intended as an examination of the role technology plays in our daily lives. I also like how the conflict was resolved, with a balance rather than one outright replacing the other.

Optimus's character arch is, well, different. It kinda reminds me of G'kar said to Ta'lon when he made him ambassador of the Narn; about how G'kar had become 'more priest than warrior.' In Beast Wars Optimus was very much the commanding officer, leading his men into battle. Here he is more like a prophet, guiding his followers into a new age.

The only character that really annoyed me was Ratrap because it seems like he went beyond just regressing. In season 1 of BW he was the least respectful of the Maximals but he was still very capable, he saved their butts more than once and you can see him growing into a competent subordinate. In BM he seems to have forgotten everything because he starts the new series as both useless and incompetent. He does eventually grow out of it, but very slowly.

[Beastro]

There was a bad shift in Mainframe around when this came out and I find it interesting. Shadow Raiders was about the last good thing they produced that I saw.

Reboot faced a similar odd, inexplicable shift in breaking characterization with Bob suddenly always being a reformer of Virus', Matrix being painted as a bigoted asshole for hating them, etc. It's odd and so shocking because it goes against everything the show's world building has done to establish up until then. Part of what made Reboot interesting was that it showed a very deterministic world with people formatted to function.

[Nealithi]

I have a love hate opinion of Beast Machines. The story was as stated some hippie level commune of nature thing of technology and seemed to ignore any and all previous lore.
Rattrap seemed like he lost his rogue ways and became the kid character that Cheetor had been. Except he was the older and experienced one.

There is the hate. Now the love. I liked the Vehicon designs and that trooper drones would carry the same design. Whether they were fliers or tanks. Only commanders with a proper spark were different. And In my opinion this did flesh out lore. They had mentioned in BW that one emerged bot had the mentality of a drone. But never got into what drones were. So this and later series could annihilate bots left and right to show how tough they were. And it was okay because they were not sentient Cybertronians. But the ones with sparks were the tough ones. That I liked.

[Sir Will]

There was a bad shift in Mainframe around when this came out and I find it interesting. Shadow Raiders was about the last good thing they produced that I saw.

Reboot faced a similar odd, inexplicable shift in breaking characterization with Bob suddenly always being a reformer of Virus', Matrix being painted as a bigoted asshole for hating them, etc. It's odd and so shocking because it goes against everything the show's world building has done to establish up until then. Part of what made Reboot interesting was that it showed a very deterministic world with people formatted to function.

I still thought Daemon Rising was great. My Two Bobs was... not. Some cool aspects to it, but a lot of problems with characters, pacing, and the ending.

As for Beast Machines, yeah it has a lot of problems. I hate what it did to a lot of characters outside Cheetor and some aspects of Black Arachnia. The Optimus stuff got too hippy and religious and stuff. And Rhinox... my poor, poor Rhinox.... Silverbolt too, but at least he had a chance to be good again, if extremely annoying about it.

[Rocketboy1313]

I am legitimately surprised to see anyone saying they like it at all.
It is non-canon because of its wild nonsense.

I enjoy when franchises decide to go in new directions, "Let's kill He-Man" for instance. But this series was so slow and devoid of humor that it could not hold my attention.

The logical thing to do with the series when returning to Cybertron was to have them get back and there be a trial for Megatron, have many Predacons start terror attacks on world, and then in a massive twist, have the Maximal government be corrupt and try to sell out the heroes for being reckless.

Having Megatron win off screen and all of the action pivot on fighting legions of mindless drones just robbed all the personality from the show.