Season Review: Transformers Combiner Wars Season 1

To quote a famous Decepticon: “Don’t bother me again.

Spoilers Below

And so, Transformers’ first foray at a web series draws to a close…to Hindenburg-like results. This franchise has no shortage of follies in its 30+ year history, but this one certainly does its best to distinguish itself. From the rickety CG animation, to the animatronics level acting, and the Shyamalan style writing, this gives the Michael Bay movies a run for their money. It’s helped only by the fact that the overall run-time for this season is only about a third of the shortest Bayformers flick, but even that’s negated by experience of watching this whole thing in one sitting, which feels more akin to the Star Child scenes from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Now, we have the corpse, but what is the diagnosis of the autopsy? The behind the scenes videos didn’t exactly give the best of assurances, but it still at least felt like the people involved cared about what they were doing, or at least had a plan. How did things turn out so wrong so fast?

The first thing to point to would probably be Hasbro’s insistence on marketing the show as “more adult”. That’s, more often than not, a dangerous line of thinking when applied to revamping a property that was originally made for children. That’s not to say things made for younger audience shouldn’t be allowed to delve into more mature topics if they so choose, but the problem is that when a company wants their product to be “more adult”, this doesn’t typically line up with being more MATURE. As an example, a recent animated movie based on DC Comics characters titled “Justice League: Gods and Monsters” came out in 2014. To garner hype for the release, DC put out three animated shorts through Machinima (the same channel advertising and sponsoring Transformers: Combiner Wars). This gave viewers introductions to alternate interpretations of characters like Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Harley Quinn, Brainiac, and so on. The first short focused on Batman, now a vampire, going after a version of Harley Quinn who chopped up body parts, propped up corpses for life sized dioramas, and swung an axe around while ranting and raving. After Batman saves the one living hostage, Harley submits to arrest, but Batman decides to drain her blood, implying he kills her. This short did quite well for itself, seeing how it has garnered nearly 3.8 million views at the time of this writing. However, something changed within the few days between the releases of the other two shorts, as the following videos about Superman and Wonder Woman only have 1.8 and 1.5 current views, respectively. With all this in mind, it’s not hard to see why Gods and Monsters, despite being a decent story in my opinion, became the lowest selling DC Comics animated movie release to date. To sum up, the idea of marketing more “adult” aspects such as blood, sex, and killing ironically comes off more adolescent.

Luckily for us, Transformers don’t tend to bleed, and as far as I know, “cybering” probably means something different on a planet of robots with no genitals, so at least we don’t have to worry about that. It turns out the adult ideas they planned to go with were those associated with wartime struggles, something that fits right at home with this franchise. So, what’s the problem? Well, these ideas are really only given a fair amount of lip service before devolving into mindless action. We’re given insight into certain character’s minds that offer potential for complex and layered explorations of adapting to peace after knowing nothing of war, or finding ways to unite groups of people when they’ve only ever been divided. But the series itself doesn’t really find any use for this. There’s talk of how this series has “evolved” from the 1984 kids series to be something with “moral consequence and emotional arc” with “subtext and subtlety”, and maybe that was the case in the comics this story was loosely based on, but it’s entirely lost when all political intrigue is discarded in exchange for fighting a screeching purple fart.

The quality and potential of this series started out fairly decent with its initial three episodes. We were introduced to a new conflict from the perspective of Windblade, a relatively new character who found herself forced into a quest for vengeance against political superiors who had no comprehension of the damage they were causing, even with the best of intentions. In her objective to destroy the instrument that created the Combiners who destroyed her way of life, she is stopped by the former heroic and iconic leader of the Autobots, Optimus Prime, who is now in exile. In his haste, he accidentally makes her injure leader of the still forming political structure of their budding peace. Oddly enough, that leader is Starscream, formerly notorious for being a traitor and the second in command to the enemy that threatened stability throughout the franchise’s history, but now this former lackey is trying to go straight by laying the foundation for a new union for their people. This is interesting stuff!

But then it all goes to shit when Optimus suggests recruiting Megatron to help them destroy the Combining Macguffin. Not only does this not make any sense, it downgrades Optimus from exiled leader to senile idiot, and Windblade from vengeful but well meaning survivor to asylum patient. But it’s okay, because Starscream was actually the bad guy all along anyway! So much for nuance and character growth! And then Victorion shows up out of nowhere to get assimilated and Windblade summons a giant hand out of the ground to hold ScreamFart so Optimus can shoot it. Our heroes.

As the series has given four characters special prelude videos, I’m going to assume they were designated as key players in this story, regardless of how they actually turned out. So, going by their development throughout the series so far, here’s all four.

Optimus Prime is a name even people who know nothing about Transformers will know right off the bat. He’s that synonymous with the franchise. While in most versions he’s portrayed as the usual typical upright leader/ideal potential step-dad, here he starts as a war hero without purpose, haunted by the inability to kill his mortal enemy and with seemingly no place to go. He’s seen the ravages war can bring, and while he’s accepted what he’s done in the sake of peace, he wouldn’t wish another conflict on anyone. At least, he’s like this at first, before he loses his goddamn mind and brings Megatron into some lady’s killquest for no reason. I guess he just lost the contacts to EVERY SINGLE ONE OF HIS FORMER SUBORDINATES? But yeah, to boil it down, like a lot of this show, he starts out with plenty of potential as an older, wiser Optimus, but this is stopped flat by the flat lining of the writing quality.

Victorion is…an anomaly here. In the Behind the Scenes videos regarding the series, she’s described as someone the showrunner was most interested in introducing, especially seeing as this was her first animated appearance. She’s also said to have been made solely by the Enigma of Combination, the thingie that fuses bots together to make Combiners. Her prelude video puts heavy emphasis on her drive to unite and save the galaxy by being a beacon of hope for a sustainable peace. A shame, then, that her screentime in the entirety of the series thus far has been under 2 minutes total with only 5 lines. Her introduction is literally flying out of nowhere and being sucked into the bad guy until the end. For a character billed more than nearly everyone else, it’s baffling she got so little involvement in anything. There’s just nothing to her as a character, and I really wish I had anything else to say about her.

Starscream’s prelude observes him in a moment of introspection, reflecting on his thirst for leadership that never came true until now. He seems burdened by the responsibility of his new role, is genuinely contrite, and passionately cares for the people he leads. In his initial appearances in the show itself, he actually seems like the more reasonable of the three council members. Rodimus wants to use the Enigma to make more Combiners in order to stop the bad ones, the Mistress wants to use it to destroy every Combiner regardless of alliance, but Starscream just wants to wait until they know all options. He even gets the sympathy angle by being shot a couple times for his trouble! But then the big twist comes, that he’s been playing everyone this whole time just so he could orchestrate a situation to gain control of the enigma, and become the greatest combiner ever! Mwahahahahahaaaaaaaa…ugh. Starscream as presented here is the greatest waste of a chance to portray a truly reformed and evolved character from his shallow puddle of personality from the 80’s. Instead, we get the aforementioned purple fart as our final boss, with not a hint of irony.

Lastly, Windblade, who seems to be the closest thing we have to a protagonist in this story. We begin the series on her planet, see through her eyes how her home is being destroyed and how her friends are being killed in front of her eyes by these monstrosities, we learn that she’s given up her peaceful ways because of all the destruction and death, so we’re meant to side with her in this conflict, right? Wrong! Because, just like everyone else in this show, she immediately plummets to caricature halfway through the show. What started as damaged former peace advocate turned justice-seeking revolutionary becomes…well, kind of a bitch. Her emotions go all over the place, she contradicts her motives within sentences, and a good portion of her dialogue is just screaming and hitting to the point of accidental comedy. You could say she completes an arc by admitting she was wrong about seeking revenge, but she’s then rewarded with a giant fly swatter she can use to crush her enemies. So really, nothing is learned at all.

This show is getting ripped apart by pretty much every corner of the Transformers fandom, and it’s not hard to see why. What might have been a cool, if overdue, idea for a new animated story has turned into one of the brand’s biggest flops in recent memory. Unfortunately, considering how little was likely spent on it, Hasbro has likely all the justification needed to make a sequel series as implied by the end of this season, but unless there are some major overhauls, it’s best to just chuck this back into the All-spark from whence it came. In case it wasn’t clear, this show was BAD, and the best thing it can transform into now is more money to revive Transformers: Prime.

Till all are one!