Netflix Kingdom episode 1 (spoilers)

[Irrellius Spamticon]

So it's out it's here now, and episode 1 starts right with the Nemesis crashing, and Galvatron reaches out through Subspace to give Megatron the golden disc. Or was it all a fever dream as Megatron wakes up in the wreckage with all of his Decepticons around him?

Then the Autobots, they've already crshed, Optimus tells Ratchet to help the others before him, but he's obviously injured and acting tough for everyone else's sakes.

They crashed, in to some kind of mountain, made of some kind of rock! filled with melted rock! It's really unstable! Yucky, an organic planet! They all have this sort of reaction to an organic planet. This is the kind of small details we need more of.

Teletran's screen fritzes to life long enough to show a cheetah on a hill outside, Bumblebee demands to know what it is and where it's going. , Wheeljack looks down by the floor under the panel and sees a rat. At first I thought it was chewing on wires but they didn't animate any wiring to be chewed, so it's a rat with a sparking face. Then a rhino charges down the hall, pushing Sideswipe and Prowl (or maybe Bluestreak) aside to be stopped by Hound, and a tiger jumps on Ironhide and then is tackled by Arcee. That Cheetah is suddenly prowling around inside the ship, and Mirage, Ratchet, and bumblebee are hiding behind a hologram, but it doesn't fool Cheetah. A few pushes and they get shot at by Prime, who gets jumped by a 2 ton gorilla nobody noticed in the room. Optimus gets pounded into the deckplates for a bit then lands a really good right cross sending the big ape flying, and transforming mid flip.

Now we get swords out and axe to answer, at least for posturing. Optimus is amazed, as the Maximals all transform like we knew they would. Bumblebee says "they're like us" which sets Primal off saying they're nothing like Nemesis, and asking if Megatron sent them.. Prime tries to convince Primal they're different, and Primal demands to see the Matrix as proof, but Prime can't, and collapses instead. Ratchet runs up to a prone Prime. For all of this we're still using the Siege Prime form, so maybe he's about to get repaired in to Earthrise....since they finally arrived on what is probably Earth. The Primal voice sounds really young, and surprisingly not like Gary Chalk or the movie Ron Perlman

Cut to a lush green forest with a dark stripe leading up to the Nemesis crash site. A falcon is watching it very closely, like from the closest tree. A falcon with some very advanced eyes. Inside Megatron is sitting in his captain's chair with the matrix strapped to his chest like Rambo wearing an ammo belt. He's demanding engines, even though there is a giant crack in the bridge and you can clearly see sky above him. Astrotrain says he can do repairs, but he's apparently not interstellar transport in this series, and he's smaller than Starscream now when I know he was bigger before. Starscream volunteers to scour the planet for Allspark and Megatron once again tells Starscream he's not allowed to go off on his own plans. Soundwave interrupts them to report the perimiter has been preached. It looks like only 1 of Soundwave's ship engines is on his robot back for this scene, now I will have to go back and see if it's always been that way.

Now the Decepticons stroll outside to find the intruders. They don't see anything, but then we get the Jurassic Park thuds, and I shouldn't need to explain that. We see all the Decepticons lined up in the lower right corner and a big purple foot moves in to the upper left. And then we get a big roaring purple dinosaur right in Megatron's cannon sights. Dinosaur Megatron charges forward accompanied by raptor mode Dinobot. Running right up to Megatron's cannon, but Megatron instructs everyone to wait.

Dinosaur Megatron speaks here, and he has a tone and subservience to the voice that reminds me of the original BW Scorponok. He reveals he has the Golden Disc, the one from Megatron's vision he had while tripping petro-shrooms and drinking bad Energon during the Nemesis crash.

Back at the Ark, Optimus wakes up, looks at his hands, and suddenly a random screen of quickly changing mages comes up. Is this what Optimus is seeing? I'm not sure, it's not clear.

The Maximals are looking around the Ark and bumblebee is pissed they're touching his stuff. Primal says the Ark doesn't have enough to bother stealing, but they should salvage they little they can and leave. Rattrap makes a quip, and rattrap sounds older than Primal. Rhinox's voice is spot on to his old self, and it's a really good match, but the other Maximals so far have been off. Tigatronis closer to the old Dinobot. Optimus tells the Maximals of the events of Earthrise, and Primal is pissed Optimus took the Allspark off-world then ran away from Cybertron to leave the planet in years of war. Tigatron interrupts the fighting with his out-of-place seeming non-cat-nose to notify them Airazor has spotted Megatron going for The Allspark. Then Primal reveals The Maximals are "from your future" in this super speech-worthy place that then delivered that silly sounding line.

Back in The nemesis, Megatron is telling Megatron how he retraced Megatron's steps through history to arrive there, on that planet, to give him the Golden Disk, and that it's the complete memoirs of Megatron. Predacon Megatron does some of the best groveling and worship of any Transformer in the 37 year franchise here, to the point Megatron feels he doesn't need Starscream anymore. Dinobot escorts Starscream outin to the hall, and Starscream starts bragging, but Dinobot has never heard of Air Commander Starscream. In this moment Dinobot's voice sounds all right, not too far off, but he only says "no" so it's not the biggest sound sample. Starscream skulks off muttering to himself and then a voice in the shadow starts teasing him. Blackarachnia's voice is different but it fits in well to the character. She quickly recruits Starscream against both Megatrons. It doesn't take much.

Back on the Ark (again) the 2 crews split off to talk amongst themselves, only Prime wants to believe and help the Maximals, and Tigatron with his wrong nose is advocating to help the Autobots. Rattrap is worried about causing time paradoxes, and Rhinox informs them it's already too late. Airazor use the call-sign "Falcon" to call in to "tiger" which is Tigatron's call-sign. Uncrackable code. Despite her future tech Airazor is no match for Laserbeak, and is shot down and taken by Soundwave. She's brought before the Megatrons, and they plan to use her to lead them to the Autobots and Maximals.

I'm sure a lot of my gripes with this are along the lines of not what I grew up with, and using nobody voice actors, but so far it's better than large chunks of previous Netflix series and we're only on episode 1. I'm wondering if any Autobots or Decepticons are going to get Earth modes since we've seen 0 sign of human life to disguise themselves from. Or will we get a different reason? Or will they stay in Cybertronian modes forever and never attempt to bring disguise in to this or explain the Maximal and Predacon alt modes? let's see.

[Zobovor]

On Friday, July 30, 2021 at 8:01:44 AM UTC-6, Ob1k...@att.net wrote:

> I'm sure a lot of my gripes with this are along the lines of not what I grew up with, and using nobody voice actors, but so far it's better than large chunks of previous Netflix series and we're only on episode 1.

Really? I feel like it was the worst out of the three mini-series.

Without getting too much into it, I feel like the story was way too convoluted. There is way too much going on and far too many character arcs trying to be addressed. It's so busy. It's like a guy wearing plaid pants and a Hawaiian shirt.

I get that this is an alternate telling of Beast Wars and it's not really meant to jive with the 1990's series. But the characterization and voices and everything about them was just awful. I was accepting of the replacement actors for the G1 characters. There have been so many retellings and so many actors playing the G1 characters over the years that I've come to accept it. But this is the first time they've done Beast Wars without the writers who created the personalities and voices for these characters and it feels hollow and cheap. I'm judging these actors by how closely they sounded to David Kaye, Scott McNeill, etc. and nobody really even got close.

Netflix Airazor is more interesting and has more of a personality than original Airazor, though, so there's that.

Maybe shoehorning the Beast Wars characters into the show was a mistake.


Zob (it was still better than He-Man: Revelations, but not by much)

[Gustavo Wombat]

Zobovor <zm...@aol.com> wrote:
> On Friday, July 30, 2021 at 8:01:44 AM UTC-6, Ob1k...@att.net wrote:
>
>> I'm sure a lot of my gripes with this are along the lines of not what I
>> grew up with, and using nobody voice actors, but so far it's better than
>> large chunks of previous Netflix series and we're only on episode 1.
>
> Really? I feel like it was the worst out of the three mini-series.
>
> Without getting too much into it, I feel like the story was way too
> convoluted. There is way too much going on and far too many character
> arcs trying to be addressed. It's so busy. It's like a guy wearing
> plaid pants and a Hawaiian shirt.

It was also the only one that tried to do *anything* thematic. The other
two stories were just kind of there, moving toys around for no reason.

There was a lot I didn’t like about this, and it had more plot than really
fit into the show, but it was less worse than Siege or Earthrise. What was
the point of Skorponok, Sky Lynx or the Quintesson adventure? Did it lead
anywhere, or explore characters in any way?

> I get that this is an alternate telling of Beast Wars and it's not really
> meant to jive with the 1990's series. But the characterization and
> voices and everything about them was just awful. I was accepting of the
> replacement actors for the G1 characters. There have been so many
> retellings and so many actors playing the G1 characters over the years
> that I've come to accept it. But this is the first time they've done
> Beast Wars without the writers who created the personalities and voices
> for these characters and it feels hollow and cheap. I'm judging these
> actors by how closely they sounded to David Kaye, Scott McNeill, etc. and
> nobody really even got close.

Without getting into the details, as I expect our dear Ob1k hasn’t seen it
all yet, I think the Beast Wars guys would have benefited from being
further from the original.

I’m letting my thoughts percolate for a few days. My first reaction was
like yours, that it was all just wrong. BW Megatron’s ambition for his own
glory being eliminated in favor of making what had previously been a last,
desperate die roll his plan all along… not great. He goes from power hungry
in BW to being introduced as a subservient fanboy in the first episode of
Kingdom.

And I don’t even think it serves the themes that the show is trying to play
with well.

> Netflix Airazor is more interesting and has more of a personality than
> original Airazor, though, so there's that.

Yes. She is just better. Much better. I have a few issues with her,
plot-wise, from a later episode, but she was not a cardboard cut out of a
character.

> Maybe shoehorning the Beast Wars characters into the show was a mistake.
>
>
> Zob (it was still better than He-Man: Revelations, but not by much)
>

Well, actually, it was Masters Of The Universe: Revelations… I thought it
was ok. The recent She-Ra series was much, much better, but MotU:
Revelations was ok.