Thursday, May 03, 2007

4 part Bruce Dickinsonian thought of the day: The Transformers cartoon only had four real characters

part 1) There were only four well developed robot characters in the original Transformers cartoon. Every other robot was either a plot device or an everyman that could have been replaced with any other robot.

part 2) Only Bumblebee, Starscream, Rodimus Prime and Sky Lynx stood out as unique individuals with personality.

part 3) Megatron and Optimus had stereotypical leader role cardboard cutout personalities and, like the majority of characters in the cartoon, were defined only by their allegiances. Megatron existed only as a reason to get Prime to go out and do heroic things, which were usually just different ways he stopped Megatron.

part 4) Grimlock, Soundwave and Wheelie didn't have character, they had bizarre speech impediments. Never confuse bizarre speech impediments with personalities.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I am curious on how you came to the conclusion that they had personalities? Is it because they were not good soldiers?

What I mean by that is that Bumblebee and Starscream did not tote their party's line. Starscream was the treacherous traitor always trying to take over because he knows he can do a better job.

Bumblebee was always screwing up and trying to prove himself. He tried to help when told no as opposed to staying put.

Rodimus Prime seemed to doubt himself and always lived in the shadow of Optimus Prime, who could do no wrong. He jumped at the chance to become Hot Rod again so he could go back to his immature ways.

Sky Lynx was a snob.

I guess they were different from the rest of the transformers since the rest did what was expected of good soldiers and that is what their commander says, they do. They do it without question and they do not look down upon their commander or disobey him. Other than those 4 you mentioned, I can not think of anyone else like that in the show except Spike who was the human equivalent of Bumblebee.

I would say Grimlock had some personality but it is more like a kid who is strong and thinks that since he is stronger than most he should be in charge until he gets smacked by an adult who is just as strong and is a lot smarter than the kid.

Imagine if those characters did not exist. Everything would run fine and maybe the war would go on forever because no one would step out of line or mess up. It would make for an uninteresting show if you did not have the characters with personality to hate.

I hated those characters with personality with a passion. I did like Sky Lynx though. That was a guy who could be a snob and be right or wrong but you had to put up with him because he could fly your ass into space.

I wish they would have dwelt on one of my favorite characters more and that was Ultra Magnus. I liked him because he could lead and was strong but just did not want to. He seemed like he wanted to kick it but step up when times mattered.

Anonymous said...

I second Ultra Magnus for pretty mucht he same reason as the other commenter suggested.

Evil King Macrocranios said...

Um, those are good points. I am feeling really retarded right now!

Anonymous said...

wrong

 

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Evil King Macrocranios was voted king by the evil peoples of the Kingdom of Macrocrania. They listen to Iron Maiden all day and try to take pictures of ghosts with their webcams.