https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUHAObplk4k

It's out at last, and it's underwhelming.

Pros:
- Peter Cullen is back.
- Beast Wars gets its day in the sun
- Primal's beast mode looks impressive; what a Beast Machines Optimus should have been.
- Arcee's design is spot-on. Retro-futuristic, with the right balance of humanoid and alien. Possibly the best Arcee we've gotten.
- Transformers is back on the big screen, and poised to once again have an impact on the pop culture landscape.

Cons:
- Optimus's design looks less impressive than his Bumblebee movie incarnation. Same with Bumblebee.
- CGI looks unfinished (hopefully a timing issue and will be sorted by the release date)
- Messy group action scenes a la Michael Bay
- Yet another naif caught up in a Transformer who isn't actually driving, while being chased by the police...didn't we just see this in Bumblebee?
- Looks like Jazz, but has Hound's powers, is named Mirage, and voiced by the irritating Pete Davidson. Why.

Looks like another dumb, fun action flick. Maybe I'm getting too old for this, but I'll still see it, if only for the Beasts and Cullen. Between this and Netflix Kingdom, I feel like Hasbro doesn't understand why BW was popular in the first place. It's not about animal TFs, but about the characterization, the way it expanded the lore and the scope of the universe, how it venerated and recontextualized G1, and the incredible acting performances.

To that end, I propose, tongue partially in cheek, that we milkshake duck Mr. Ron Perlman, so that the studio has no choice but to have Garry Chalk come back and redub his lines. For Primus's sake, Chalk was the defining voice of Primal, as well as a generation's Optimus Prime through the 2000's. Bringing him back, along with Ian James Corlett and Richard Newman, would have been the right choice. I'm looking forward to seeing fandom edits of the trailer and eventually, the movie, with the original voices dubbed in.

#powerisprimal

On Friday, December 2, 2022 at 8:46:54 AM UTC-7, Codigo Postal wrote:

> - CGI looks unfinished

I watched a YouTube video recently talking about how the visual effects studios are so completely overworked and understaffed, and the reality is they have so many deadlines to hit that they often don't bother trying to finish the effects—they strive for "good enough" (or even "maybe the studio won't notice?") and then it's off to the races again. And there's evidence of this in finished mainstream films—actors staring at blank screens where graphics were supposed to go but didn't, or CGI that's less convincing and realistic than the sort of thing VFX studios were doing two decades ago for television commercials.

An additional problem seems to be that if you're a director filming a live-action film, it's not uncommon to do multiple takes until you get the performance you want. It used to be a tenet in cel animation that since footage took so long to produce and was too expensive to just leave on the cutting room floor, scenes had to be planned out very carefully so that the animators weren't wasting their time creating scenes that would end up not being used. For some reason, those sorts of ideals and sensibilities never carried over to the world CGI animation. Now you have directors giving the VFX studios six months to produce a finished sequence, only to change their minds in the eleventh hour and completely reimagine the characters and story, forcing the graphics effects artists to just scrap everything and then scramble like mad to meet the much tighter deadline.

So, I'm kind of two minds about this. As a consumer, I find unfinished CGI to be completely unacceptable, but as an artist and a creator, I completely understand why it happens.

> I feel like Hasbro doesn't understand why BW was popular in the first place.

They recognize on some level that the timing is (finally) right for some proper Beast Wars nostalgia. The kids who grew up on that show are now adults in their 20's with children of their own, who will buy movie tickets. That's honestly about as far as they thought about it, probably. If the Michael Bay movies have been any indication, Hasbro is largely hands-off when it comes to the creative process. They probably send a list of product placement suggestions like, "movie 2: have new types of Transformers—female robots, robots who combine together, etc." and then wash their hands of it.

I don't experience the schadenfreude that a lot of fans seem to, but we're at a stage now where people who love Beast Wars are about to watch it get utterly destroyed on the big screen in the same way that G1 was massacred with the first batch of live-action films. I'm not looking forward to the fallout.

> To that end, I propose, tongue partially in cheek, that we milkshake duck Mr. Ron Perlman

You mean the guy who... uh... screwed my sister? The same guy who... let me think... hit my car in a parking lot and then drove away laughing? THAT Ron Perlman? He's everything wrong with this world.

Now, that Garry Chalk fellow, on the other hand? Whatta stand-up guy. A hero to all. And he's in Hallmark Channel movies! What could be more wholesome than that?

Zob (what's more vulnerable than a peach?!)

On Saturday, December 3, 2022 at 12:11:22 PM UTC-5, Zobovor wrote:
> On Friday, December 2, 2022 at 8:46:54 AM UTC-7, Codigo Postal wrote:
>
> > - CGI looks unfinished
>
> I watched a YouTube video recently talking about how the visual effects studios are so completely overworked and understaffed, and the reality is they have so many deadlines to hit that they often don't bother trying to finish the effects—they strive for "good enough" (or even "maybe the studio won't notice?") and then it's off to the races again. And there's evidence of this in finished mainstream films—actors staring at blank screens where graphics were supposed to go but didn't, or CGI that's less convincing and realistic than the sort of thing VFX studios were doing two decades ago for television commercials.

I've heard the same thing - underpaid and overworked, and it's showing even in the big league projects like Marvel's She-Hulk.

>
> So, I'm kind of two minds about this. As a consumer, I find unfinished CGI to be completely unacceptable, but as an artist and a creator, I completely understand why it happens.

It's definitely not the fault of the VFX houses, but the way the studios/creatives are attempting to shift the blame onto those artists is shady: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFhRVzBeee4

>
> I don't experience the schadenfreude that a lot of fans seem to, but we're at a stage now where people who love Beast Wars are about to watch it get utterly destroyed on the big screen in the same way that G1 was massacred with the first batch of live-action films. I'm not looking forward to the fallout.

They've apparently learned nothing from the original live-action films. You can't just reassign names and personalities, replace beloved voice actors, and throw out the lore, and expect a hit.

Or maybe they've learned exactly the wrong lessons...

> > To that end, I propose, tongue partially in cheek, that we milkshake duck Mr. Ron Perlman
> You mean the guy who... uh... screwed my sister? The same guy who... let me think... hit my car in a parking lot and then drove away laughing? THAT Ron Perlman? He's everything wrong with this world.

[He] stole the stars from the sky!
[He] stole the light from our minds!
Vengeance now!

>
> Now, that Garry Chalk fellow, on the other hand? Whatta stand-up guy. A hero to all. And he's in Hallmark Channel movies! What could be more wholesome than that?
>

He was He-Man, and He-Man's mentor Man-at-Arms. He was Primal before he was Prime. The fandom rallied hard to pressure Bay into hiring Cullen, but nothing for Chalk? I'm ashamed to be a part of this fandom. Where's the passion that went into sending ill-advised death threats to the writer of Beast Machines?

In the spirit of Beast Wars, and monkey behavior in general, I propose we rally the Redditors, the Twitterers, and the various boards, and send copious bags of animal scat to Paramount until they replace Perlman with Chalk.

> Zob (what's more vulnerable than a peach?!)

The Paramount mailroom impregnated with the stench of animal excrement that, like the stain on the franchise that is the omission of Garry Chalk, will linger forever.