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Was Beast Machines a worthy follow-up to Beast Wars?
- Thread starter Uzumaki Goku
- Start date
Bigboss242
Banned
I used to hate it but I can't nowhere near the quality of east wars but still good in its own way.
Ban Puncher
Member
"Well, we just finished making Beast Wars. There's no way we could make a worse show."
"Hold my energon cube."
"Hold my energon cube."
Uzumaki Goku
Junior Member
Well, it seems people still think Beast Machines was bad.
Fbh
Member
Couldn't get past the new designs myself, I never even watched the first ep after I saw the trailer. I did watch it a long time after the fact and...meh.
Yep.
Everything else about it is just ok (not great, not terrible).
But the new designs were fucking trash.
Tritroid
Member
I loved Beast Wars, didn't like Beast Machines quite as much, but watching it start to finish, it had some really cool ideas that just ended up poorly executed.
I really liked how they tried to tie-in some Generation 1 concepts into the story, like the key to vector sigma, the oracle, the allspark, etc. It also was really cool how the story was insanely dark compared to BW, where Megatron was literally consuming the sparks of other transformers to gain power.
But like others have said, it was really slow to take off. Also, the 'reformatted' designs actually looked and felt weaker than the BW counterparts, and the Mass Effect-ish storyline about merging organics and robotics was pretty lame.
I really liked how they tried to tie-in some Generation 1 concepts into the story, like the key to vector sigma, the oracle, the allspark, etc. It also was really cool how the story was insanely dark compared to BW, where Megatron was literally consuming the sparks of other transformers to gain power.
But like others have said, it was really slow to take off. Also, the 'reformatted' designs actually looked and felt weaker than the BW counterparts, and the Mass Effect-ish storyline about merging organics and robotics was pretty lame.
Rodney McKay
Member
I remember it being pretty dark when I was younger. The tank badguy's back story... spoiler:
.
I also was really into the Beast Wars toys, but Beast Machines took quite a while before the toys started to get good. The Cheetah dude could barely even stand upright in robot mode because of his tiny little feet.
being the Rhino dude being forcibly brainwashed and reconstructed into a bad guy was pretty fucked up
I also was really into the Beast Wars toys, but Beast Machines took quite a while before the toys started to get good. The Cheetah dude could barely even stand upright in robot mode because of his tiny little feet.
Mechanized
Member
It sucked. But I still watched it.
No.
Beast Machines spat all over the Transformers lore with all that techno organic bullshit.
Beast Wars was a great continuation of Transformers G1 that even worked in some of the wider Primus lore, then Beast Machines basically ignored it all.
It had some decent ideas, but the execution was utterly terrible and the good was buried way beneath the bad.
Beast Machines spat all over the Transformers lore with all that techno organic bullshit.
Beast Wars was a great continuation of Transformers G1 that even worked in some of the wider Primus lore, then Beast Machines basically ignored it all.
It had some decent ideas, but the execution was utterly terrible and the good was buried way beneath the bad.
KenzinFive
Member
Beast Wars was my jam growing up. Even as a young kid, I realized that Beast Machines was trash and that the drastic, pointless character changes were stupid. It might have been the first series I can remember thinking "No, this is dumb and totally doesn't count as a sequel. I'm going to ignore that it exists."
I can't imagine what G1 fans felt (though I'm sure some of them hated Beast Wars anyway).
I can't imagine what G1 fans felt (though I'm sure some of them hated Beast Wars anyway).
Principate
Saint Titanfall
Trash taste Beast Wars was great. Unlimited fucking trash trash taste.
yanipheonu
Member
Oh it's even worse. They eventually free him from the mind control. He simply remains evil of his own free will.
Which is about as terrible of a character assassination as you can get.
Not that I dont enjoy evil scheming Rhinox but notlikethis.gif
StrangeRoboMemory
Member
Beast Machines was visually awful and the story was limp. It has some cool atmosphere and a few good ideas down the road, but overall, a huge step down from Beast Wars.
Urban Scholar
Member
No. Honestly I like to think it doesn't exist.
A lot of the mythology and ideologies we believed watching Beast Wars was like deleted.
Beast Wars had an awareness to its plot because they had free range. Please see Cheetor gaining a new form. Tiger Hawk being the group's philosopher. Man forget everything and just watch all the episodes with Dinobot all Dinobot.
Beast Machines tried this weird earthy Cyberton needs to be organic plot. But it felt so forced. I think the plot is a little lost on me. But I still don't understand why they had to be organic anyway? Was it because their former forms were detectable by Megatron?
Another thing too, Megatron so how manages to escape and becomes a legit tyrant? After the spent years trying to stop his ass? It's like...nope he goes full on baddie.
Ok rant is coming to an end. Watch Beast Wars, its beautiful. Throw Beast Machines into a dumpster and set it on fire.
A lot of the mythology and ideologies we believed watching Beast Wars was like deleted.
Beast Wars had an awareness to its plot because they had free range. Please see Cheetor gaining a new form. Tiger Hawk being the group's philosopher. Man forget everything and just watch all the episodes with Dinobot all Dinobot.
Beast Machines tried this weird earthy Cyberton needs to be organic plot. But it felt so forced. I think the plot is a little lost on me. But I still don't understand why they had to be organic anyway? Was it because their former forms were detectable by Megatron?
Another thing too, Megatron so how manages to escape and becomes a legit tyrant? After the spent years trying to stop his ass? It's like...nope he goes full on baddie.
Ok rant is coming to an end. Watch Beast Wars, its beautiful. Throw Beast Machines into a dumpster and set it on fire.
Grizzlyjin
Supersonic, idiotic, disconnecting, not respecting, who would really ever wanna go and top that
I remember finding it disappointing. The whole "I am Transformed" stuff was just really weird. So much changed in the transition from Beast Wars to Beast Machines that it was hard to latch onto anything I liked about the former.
Sunset Samurai
Member
Couldn't get past the new designs myself, I never even watched the first ep after I saw the trailer. I did watch it a long time after the fact and...meh.
Holy crap I def remember the second one as a kid. I thought it was terrible
Couldn't get past the new designs myself, I never even watched the first ep after I saw the trailer. I did watch it a long time after the fact and...meh.
One of the bad things about the redesign is... people disliked the "organic" side of Beast Wars. Sure, the organic CG was ambitious (for people who weren't watching Reboot), and it allowed for more expression, but it was far from photorealistic (we still can't get there, I'm looking at you, Rogue One), and it didn't make sense for a show about robots. And robots are "easy mode" for making something in CG. A common slam against Beast Wars was "trukk not munky", and I don't think that sentiment was entirely about change, but more about change too far. But people seemed to get used to the Beast Wars characters because they were good, and they even introduced Transmetal redesigns which ditched the organic look of the beast modes.
But the robot modes in season 1 of Beast Wars reproduced the look of G1 Transformers. The way their faces looked, the way they "wore" parts of their disguise... robots can look like anything (just ask Michael Bay's Trashformers), but Beast Wars' robots looked like genuine Transformers.
Beast Machines threw out that robot mode connection to Transformers and threw out the Transmetal refinement that Beast Wars made. Beast Machines' redesigns only link to the franchise is a thin link to the worst part of Beast Wars. Beast Machines characters don't even transform, they morph. A light passes over them as they magically change from one thing to an entirely unrelated thing (I'm amazed that the toys even tried to make sense of it).
There's a reason why some people say "Well, I guess the Vehicons were kind of cool." It's because those were the only characters that looked anything like Transformers (George Lucas: "And the Jedi cut them down like butter. They really are pretty useless.")
It was terrible because that wasn't Megatron. The character was sooo badly off base, it felt like some random newly-introduced stranger, disturbingly wearing Megatron's skin.
And everything about that victory was wrong. The end of Beast Wars was kind of crap with a sudden, unearned defeat of Megatron, but the start of Beast Machines ruins even that crap with a sudden, inexplicable victory for fake-Megatron. His victory literally just fell off the back of a truck. Don't ask where it came from.
Cybertron in G1 had incredible depth (the clumsy, conflicting storytelling just added to that). The occasional hints and teases in Beast Wars were amazing (no other show could pull off what BW did with a simple "Hey look, it's a five second recorded video message from the original Megatron"). Cybertron in Beast Machines was such a hollow void, it was boring to look at, and actually painful to look at anytime you remembered how hyped you were before the show started.
IIRC, Megatron fell off the the hood of the Maximal shuttle (where he was tied to, for his undignified transport to jail on Cybertron). Then he somehow landed on Cybertron way earlier than Optimus and his gang (because Transwarp magic?).
Then Megatron used a virus to conquer all of Cybertron in an instant (because Transmetal magic?). He removed the sparks from all Transformers and kept them in a glass jar, and converted all of their bodies into Vehicon drones, because Megatron now hates free will and individuality, and he also hates himself and his own Beast Mode because he hates organic.
The Maximals then landed on Cybertron and caught Megatron's magic virus, which locked them into Beast Mode (and removed Transmetal) and made them dying, until the organic god at the core of Cybertron contacted Optimus telepathically and called them downstairs to be reformatted into full-organic (can't die from robo-AIDS if you're not a robot anymore).
The Beast Wars were all a ploy by the organic god of Cybertron to bring genetic samples back from Earth so that they could get rid of all this "Transformers" bullshit, cram those sparks back into squishy fleshling bodies, and turn Cybertron back into a "normal" planet with blue skies and grass and trees and flowers and shit.
ROUGE_BLOCK
Member
None of the original writers worked it and so many characters were written out of character or made choices, turned on old allies that they would have never done. The redesigns were lackluster compared to the 2nd and 3rd generation redesigns characters got in Beast Wars and worst of all (if I remember right) no Dinobot!
Though the death threats the main writer got the kept him from attending a convention was really fucked up, but that's crazy people for you.
Though the death threats the main writer got the kept him from attending a convention was really fucked up, but that's crazy people for you.
1st thing first, no, Beast machine was a total let down. They should have end the Beast War storyline there and make BM it own series.
They should had just dub the Beast War 2 and Beast War Neo. (lol)
EDIT: Also, its kinda weird how every time Japan make a Transformers series, they always put the Combine gimmick in the show.
They should had just dub the Beast War 2 and Beast War Neo. (lol)
EDIT: Also, its kinda weird how every time Japan make a Transformers series, they always put the Combine gimmick in the show.
redmetal86
Member
It's a clever way to sell toys. Make them combine so people will buy all of the toys necessary to create the giant robot.
Omega Prime was worth it.
AppleSeason
Member
Beast Wars was ok, but I had heard that machines tried to get too zen and phylosophical. I did not las for more than a few episodes, but mostly because I really disliked the designs.
I grew up with the Japanese G1 Continuity. Masterforce, Victory... Ginrai >>>>>> Optimus Primal.
I grew up with the Japanese G1 Continuity. Masterforce, Victory... Ginrai >>>>>> Optimus Primal.
The Japanese G1 is so good, Ginrai, Overlord, Star saber, the whole head master, Brain master gang. All of them are freaking great design.
Freeza Under The Shower
Member
Oh, it had ideas.
But as a follow-up? Nonononono, to quote one Shia LaBeouf. Dear god no. But it had an amusing premise given it was (and may still be?) the only TF show to take place entirely on Cybertron, all fucked up and under Meg's control. That part was at least somewhat interesting. The Tankor reveal was intriguing, if bizarre compared to the show it came from.
It's worth a watch, just to see what happens when that 90's edge got waaay outta control. As a sequel it's a goddamn nightmare, but it makes a really good 'don't do this' educational relic for anyone with an interest in serial television.
Seriously, next time someone says: "the 90s were cool", remember this, and all the other 'radical! ' things like it.
But as a follow-up? Nonononono, to quote one Shia LaBeouf. Dear god no. But it had an amusing premise given it was (and may still be?) the only TF show to take place entirely on Cybertron, all fucked up and under Meg's control. That part was at least somewhat interesting. The Tankor reveal was intriguing, if bizarre compared to the show it came from.
It's worth a watch, just to see what happens when that 90's edge got waaay outta control. As a sequel it's a goddamn nightmare, but it makes a really good 'don't do this' educational relic for anyone with an interest in serial television.
Seriously, next time someone says: "the 90s were cool", remember this, and all the other 'radical! ' things like it.
AppleSeason
Member
Heck, I loved Leozack. It was like a Stars team that did not have a chronic backstabbing syndrome and actually tried to succeed. And Liokaiser could actually stand to Victory Saber. But apparently the TFW comics turned Saber on some sort of Religious Zealot.
I remember being hooked to Beast Wars mostly because I had not seen Transformers in years and we were on the early CGI craze. But some things always felt kinda weird, like the split mouthplate of Optimus. But the series has the merit of creating / solidifying so much of the Transformers lore. And a tape transformer making a cameo.
And Megatron was so awesome. But Beast Machines... Those redesigns.
Wtf were they thinking? Rattrap could sing "I have no legs" like in Kids. I wonder if they were trying to to a character that appealed to kids on wheelchairs or something.
hydragonwarrior
Member
NO.
Changing the appearance of the transformations was my biggest beef - it looked too fluid and not as robotic (which i actually liked). And adding this organic aspect wasn't as good either. And agree with everyone else above - hated those designs.
And WHO THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO MAKE RHINOX A BAD GUY??? The guy who was a perennial favorite to be your backup good guy all the time. Aghhhh
Changing the appearance of the transformations was my biggest beef - it looked too fluid and not as robotic (which i actually liked). And adding this organic aspect wasn't as good either. And agree with everyone else above - hated those designs.
And WHO THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO MAKE RHINOX A BAD GUY??? The guy who was a perennial favorite to be your backup good guy all the time. Aghhhh
Frankie Williamson
Member
We got a pretty neato Megatron head toy out of it. Always dug it.
I remember absolutely hating it when it first came out. First season felt so bad how they redesigned characters design and personality.
Second season and beyond were great though. Never missed an ep from that point.
I draw the parallel to Starship Troopers CGI. Fantastic to watch second season on wards.
Second season and beyond were great though. Never missed an ep from that point.
I draw the parallel to Starship Troopers CGI. Fantastic to watch second season on wards.
redmetal86
Member
Even weirder about the Rattrap redesign, the toy had flip out legs.
Maximus.
Member
It was such a shitty sequel to such a great show. The fact that the people in charge let this happen is mind blowing. I understand they wanted something a little different, but went around it in the worst way. Such a shame. On top of that, the figures for Beast Machines at launch were so bad.
The Sum of Zero
Member
At the time, it was probably one of, if not the worst piece of Transformers media ever created.
Then things got worse.
Never saw Beast Wars or Beast Machines, but I can understand the sentiment of loving the first series, being excited for the sequel, then finding it to be utter trash because of this right here.
Only good thing from this shit was Megatron's new design, made for an awesome figure.
As a g1 fan your comment reminded me of how I viewed the g1 series after the movie came out (I only liked before the movie).
I liked beast wars though but I saw it way after it was new and I think when I originally heard of it I was closed minded cause transformers should be cars and planes damnit. I really liked it when I started watching it. And I could never get into beast machines and I think some comments here clarified what exactly really made me not be able to get into it.
Oddly, the other transformers I liked was a series a lot of people hated for some reason, Transformers the animated series (I still don't understand the hate. As a g1 fan I even liked all the nods they did to g1).
Oh, and I tried to rewatch g1 a few years back. It really pains me to say it but I have to admit, it was not good and even nostalgia didn't save it *cry*. I think I understand now why while the toys were my favorite toys, gi joe was my favorite tv show at the time (though I loved both). GI joe actually was kinda coherent and sometimes even clever for a typical 80's show just there to sell the toys.
Man I didn't expect these types of responses in this thread after I left my comment in a much more muted on. Didn't think Beast Machines rubbed people the wrong way so badly.
It's just really weird cause I liked it a lot as a kid even knowing the designs were "off" and some of them were hard to get used to. I think the premise and set up just really intrigued be regardless of how left field it is and also how dark the show sort of started of.
It's just really weird cause I liked it a lot as a kid even knowing the designs were "off" and some of them were hard to get used to. I think the premise and set up just really intrigued be regardless of how left field it is and also how dark the show sort of started of.
Pop-O-Matic
Banned
Even weirder about the Rattrap redesign, the toy had flip out legs.
Beast Machines is the show where the concept of "show/toy accuracy" gets beaten to death with a baseball bat. Mainframe apparently based the character models of the concept art rather than the actual toys, leading to a LOT of differences between the show and the toys, especially at the start.
For example, here's Optimus Primal in the cartoon:
And here's what the first Optimus Primal toy looked like:
More show accurate toys showed up later, but by that point the show had already ended it's run, with a couple of them even winding up in the RiD 2001 toyline.
The art style (CHINS!!!), the presence of human villains in place of having the Decpticons as the villains in every episode and all the more comedic tone turned some people off, but I enjoyed a lot, and the impression I always got was that, like Beast Wars, the haters were just a vocal minority.
TFA was very well received by the fandom at the time, and the toys are still well regarded, but after the novelty of a well-produced show that wasn't Unicron Trilogy level dreck wore off, people had trouble ignoring that the G1 nods were pretty much the only consistent appeal of the show. Other than that it was a formulaic series that spent most of its time running in place, leaned way too hard on human villains, and when it finally started going somewhere it got cancelled.
It gave us Bulkhead, and for that I am grateful, but overall it's kind of the Ready Player One of TF shows.
hydragonwarrior
Member
I am guilty of being said G1 fan gahaha. But pretty understandable - I didn't really like the change to clunk CGI. But again, it grew on me - in particular the Story and Characters are the real winners for pulling me in. In fact the show would be fine without the CGI but who knows.
Just to elaborate on it a bit (okay, a lot, I sometimes get very wordy)...
In Beast Wars, it seems to be established that the Autobots won the Great War (aka G1). But being the good guys, they tried for peaceful coexistence with the defeated Decepticons. The wild nature and need for violence among the descendant Predacons seems to be "tolerated" by the Maximals, within certain socially-acceptable limits and guidelines.
On Cybertron, Megatron is a low-importance rabblerouser. He spits on the idea of Maximals ruling over Predacons, and likens it to slavery. He calls the Predacons to arms and seeks to overthrow the Maximals, but the Predacon leadership finds him a nuisance and wishes he would shut the fuck up, because they're slowly and silently working towards the exact same thing (but on a larger scale), and they would like to draw less attention. So, as little more than a madman yelling on the street corner, Megatron can only gather a handful of followers.
Incidentally, the Maximal leaders aren't all flowers and sunshine themselves. They know that the Predacons are gunning for them, and they plan on gunning back. They created a psychopathic monster in their efforts to create an immortal super-soldier, and Optimus Primal's real mission at the start of Beast Wars (before he was called away to chase down Megatron) was secretly a mission to hide the bodies.
Megatron comes across a long-buried plan from the original Megatron (future Transwarp technology will be able to create time travel, so please go back in time and assassinate Optimus Prime for me), and he decides on a better plan (go back in time and steal energon, then use that energon to personally lead the Predacons to a more satisfying victory against the Maximals). But when that plan doesn't work, he falls back on the original plan, and even tries to improvise new plans when that one fails too (if there's one thing Megatron has an abundance of, it's plans).
The Predacon leaders planted a mole in Megatron's ranks (Tarantulas). Megatron knows. Megatron don't care. Megatron sees right through Tarantulas' scheming, and even depends on it for his own schemes to work.
Megatron got locked in his own dungeon once. He chilled down there for a while, and then he let himself out when he felt the time was right, because every good King knows the secret exit from their own dungeon, because they know they will end up down there sooner or later. And that's who Megatron thinks he is, a King. He thinks of himself as the one true ruler of the Predacons, better than their current impotent leadership, and far better than the Maximals.
The idea of "what would Megatron do after winning" is a fine enough idea, but as it was presented in Beast Machines, it throws away everything that was building and interesting on Cybertron (and pretty much anything that was interesting on Cybertron in any continuity), as Megatron wipes the entire planet clean (of Predacons and Maximals alike). All of it, just gone, in seconds, offscreen. It's seriously the worst incarnation of Cybertron I've ever seen, and so much worse than anything I was prepared for. Even if we're talking about an empty wasteland, Transformers Prime's empty-wasteland Cybertron crushes this one. Michael Bay's Cybertron was probably even better than Beast Machines' Cybertron (I mercifully can't recall Michael Bay's one, but it was probably better).
And ruling over this nothing is Megatron, but he seems nothing like his fantastic Beast Wars character (beyond his voice, David Kaye is a treasure). Everything that made the Beast Wars Megatron who he was seems to be missing, replaced with entirely new traits that have come out of nowhere. A "what would Megatron do after winning" story can't work without Megatron. You can't take somebody else's story and find/replace their name with Megatron, it just doesn't work. Without a proper connection to the already-established character, it becomes a much less interesting "what would any generic bad guy do after winning" story (think "Megamind", but without the intro scenes), while attaching Megatron's name becomes an unwelcome distraction.
Which is why Hasbro shouldn't have told the new writers "You have an entirely clean slate, don't even bother looking at what came before."
Just gonna take this as a chance to plug David Kaye's tradition of a Christmas greeting as Megatron. I love this man.
Anyway, no, Beast Machines isn't worthy. I gave it a fair shot as a kid but it just went wrong. The designs, as touched upon, the overall changes to the story and characters...
Honestly its the designs most of all to me. They just looked so off.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
Beast Wars clearly had a lot of winks and nods that were meant for adult readers to. Rat trap in particular was just a goldmine for the stuff.
(Silverbolt after coming back from a secret meeting with predacon girlfiend Black arachnia)
Rattrap: Where you been bird brain
Silver: Scout Patrol
Ratrap: Oh i see, i see, scouting the enemey? Find any new positions? (in most condesending way possible).
Silverbolt *punch*
This flew way over pre-teen me beyond the obvious inferences the relationship.
redmetal86
Member
This is the perfect expression.
Optimus Primal, what happened with the toys and the show models?
Optimus Primal: *shrugs*
Principate
Saint Titanfall
The worst part is that Cyberton as was seemed extremely interesting and they just completely striped all of that. You had the tripedicus council that were still scheming to retake cyberton but ultimately subservient to the maxmials because the autobots won the great war. They agreed with Megatron's goal but did not fucking trust Megatron as far as they could throw him. You had Megatron himself the ever schemer. You have a political body in the maximals that sanctions the predacons for their bullshit with various diplomatic repercussions (the fact these repercussions were diplomatic seemed to make the tripedicus councils blood curl) and then you also have the optimus and his team themselves and how they link into the greater maximal hierachy.
There's fucking seasons worth of interesting plot material for a sequel and they destroyed all of it to make beast machines.
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