Starring: Jake Foushee, Jason Marnocha, Frank Todaro
Netflix’s Transformers War For Cybertron trilogy has certainly been a giant nostalgic shout out to fans of the original toy line (Generation One or G1) and of the ’80s cartoon. Here we’ve seen those G1 designs translated into a more modern animation style, and a subsequent toy line which is linked with the show. As gratifying as it is to see those tweaked designs, has the more serious tonal update warranted the reboot, and does the final series in the trilogy deliver on what has been set up in the previous two seasons (Siege, Earthrise)?
Transformers: War For Cybertron: Kingdom sees the Autobots and Decepticons crash landing on Earth in their search for the Allspark. However in this primordial world, they encounter more inhabitants of Cybertron, the Maximals and Predacons, with their strange beastial alternate modes.
Kingdom, like the rest of its War For Cybertron trilogy brethren, is patchy fare. It does a lot that’s good for the franchise leading to some high points, but they are scattered among some terrible lows. In truth, this is probably the best of the three, making sense of some of the issues that plagued the story telling in the previous sections, especially Earthrise.
On the positive side, the War For Cybertron series has taken much of the mythos that has developed in other media and shifted it to the forefront. There’s a suggestion of Cybertron’s pre-war history (and the background of Optimus and Megatron) that matches up with the work done by the IDW comics, and given the depth of that series’ storytelling, that is a big positive. Kingdom develops those ties to other properties by bringing Beast Wars into the mix, but this time allowing the G1 cast to interact with their Cybertronian descendants (spoiler for a 30 year old series, but this time they’re more than just in stasis, ghosts, recordings on a golden disc etc…).
There’s a certain fanpeep joy triggered by seeing the Autobots and Maximals, Decepticons and Predacons, interacting, and Kingdom seems to have captured a genuine sense of the relationships. Seeing Rhinox interacting with Wheeljack and Ratchet as they attempt to repair the Ark is perfect, given the character’s comparison to both the G1 technicians. Similarly seeing Black Arachnia (Jeanne Carr is easily the standout voice actor of the series) and Starscream scheme together just seems perfectly natural for both of these duplicitous characters. That fanpeep joy is exactly what Kingdom is catering towards, with a number of deep cuts scattered throughout for those that know the history of the franchise (both animated and toyline).
As great as tasting memberberries is, that’s not enough to sustain a show, and Kingdom has more than a few issues. It does wrap up some of the dangling plot threads from previous seasons, but it’s in a similarly ham-fisted way to the writing that has plagued Siege and Earthrise. There seems to be a mindset within the writing staff that additional elements equal plot complexity, and they just pile up to ridiculous levels, developing few of them satisfactorily. Still, if any show has an excuse for a literal Deus ex Machina then Transformers would probably be it, as they’ve had a string of cyber-spirituality since Rodimus gained the matrix of leadership (cue Stan Bush’s The Touch).
Then there’s the voice acting. War For Cybertron has been characterized by some atrocious voice work, with a seemingly deliberate stylistic choice to deliver every line in a slow and portentous manner. Unfortunately with everything delivered with such gravitas, nothing has any importance. There’s no nuance and shade to grant meaning to the content, and as such it all comes across as flat and overly earnest. The newly cast Maximals and Predacons fare better than older brethren, but still occasionally fall prey to this.
In the end we’re left with some beautiful animation that’s inspired a great range of toys, that certainly presses the old nostalgia button, in a show that’s not entirely up to scratch. Kingdom is certainly the best of the trilogy, but that’s faint praise.
