Beast Wars Intro Song

[Karriem Drewery]

Formy second and third review in my Transformers cartoon review series, I will be redoing my reviews for Beast Wars and Beast Machines. For those that are new to my page, Beast Wars was the first ever review I did on the page back when I didn't quite find my true voice as a reviewer yet and felt more like a cringey copycat of AniMat in my mind, so I decided to bring it full circle and re-review Beast Wars and Machines better.

And Beast Wars definitely stands out as one of the more unique Transformers shows with its for-the-time out of the box way of doing a follow up of sorts to Generation 1 and one that has the huge cult in the years following its initial run and for me, is one of my favorite installments in the franchise....

The very unique way the show connects to Generation 1. Beast Wars in certain ways serves as like a sequel series to G1 but follows an entirely new cast of characters with the descendents of both the Autobots and Decepticons, the Maximals and Predacons respectively, locked in their own war with the latter wanting to forever change the events of the war and rewrite history from prehistoric Earth and the latter having to prevent those events for the sake of the greater future. It's a very clever and unique direction that expands on the lore of the series at that point with direct and subtle nods to the G1 series but takes it in a bold new direction as we're following new factions and Transformers that stand out from the originals with them donning the forms of animals and prehistoric beasts as opposed to the usual vehicles we've grown accustomed to. That and the overarching story the show tells throughout its three season run is an exciting narrative with twists and turns, some brilliant and for some tragic character moments, time travel elements in certain points and exciting action.

The driving force for this show being as good as it is are the protagonists and the antagonists. The Maximals are a fun group of ragtag Autobot descendents with unique personalities with Optimus Primal as the straight man leader of the group, Cheetor as the cocky but growing rookie, Rhinox as the old veteran tech expert, Rattrap as the sarcastically pessimistic jokester, former Predacon turned Maximal Dinobot, noble paladin Silverbolt and others that join later that add a great deal of entertainment and makes them protagonists worth rooting for and makes you feel for these characters especially when some of them bite the dust, it makes the action engaging and have stakes when you know that some of the characters might not make it and the fates of certain characters especially on the Maximals' side hit hard when you've grown attached to them and want them to make it by the end. And not far behind them are the Predacons who are each memorable and likeably evil with Tarantulas as the crazy rogue mad scientist, Terrorsaur who acts as the Starscream of the show, Waspinator as the injury prone soldier who gets most of the physical abuse, Blackarachnia who is like the femme fatale type and leading them all is Megatron, not G1 Megatron but a different character named after him, as he balances between being a serious threat when needed and a delightfully evil and theatrical villain who has a serious superiority complex. Almost all the characters featured are memorable and are portrayed to perfection by the voice cast of Garry Chalk, David Kaye, Scott McNeill, Ian Corlett, Richard Newman and others and they brilliantly bring about their personalities. And with the cast of characters being relatively shorter than the G1 roster, we the viewers are given more time to connect and get to know them each as characters through their interactions, arcs and actions, which adds to my previous statement that the shorter amount of characters, the more character they convey.

The music in the show is absolutely rocking and helps add to the mood of the moment in the episodes be it dramatic, exciting, intense or emotional for certain character deaths. And the main theme song, through the three different variations in the seasons, is a very metal opening theme with its rocking rhythm and badass guitar riffs.

While everything else in the show like the characters and the story still hold up today, the one element that hasn't aged the best in the show is the animation. Now for the time and as one of the first ever fully computer animated TV shows, the show as it was developed by Mainframe Entertainment alongside their other hit show Reboot, was considered revolutionary in terms of its visual style and the animation as it is still pretty good and is rather expressive for the characters. Its mainly the rendering of the animation in the show especially for the textures of the more organic assets like the animals and the protohumans looking, for a lack of better terms, primitive, especially compared to computer animation nowadays and how much it evolved since the 90s. The computer animation is still good and was impressive for its time, and it doesn't damage any of the other strong aspects of the show, but admittedly by today's standards, Beast Wars could easily benefit from a remastered update in the rendering, which is not the fault of the animators or the technology but mainly just the incidental evolution of the medium since the show's debut that dates it a bit.

Animation aside, Beast Wars still holds up in every aspect and still remains one of the best Transformers cartoons to this day. Its characters are phenomenal and brilliantly executed, the story and action is engaging, the music is amazing and the animation while primitive by today's standards is still impressive. Beast Wars is a definite recommendation to anyone who wants to get into Transformers or wants a new take on Transformers outside of the usual Autobot/Decepticon template and while it may be a bit dated in terms of the visuals, I still say that Beast Wars is a timeless classic of the franchise in my eyes.

What is the official name of this theme? Some people think it is the same as Trade Federation March but it is not. CC doesn't name it in his review. I read the reviews at JWFAN main site but they did not really shed light on this theme.

I actually think this is one of the best "military" themes of the franchise. I might say even the best one - this is clearly better than trade federation march and better than the march of the resistance. But what is it called? I believe it wasn't actually played in the scene it was meant for but used instead used in Ep 3 when Anakin marches on the Jedi temple.

Originally it was a set piece theme, a march to underscore the initial fight with the beasts in the arena in Episode II. Only when Lucas dropped it from the arena scene for the most part and then tracked a segment of it in RotS people came to associate with the clone army. I believe it didn't have any more far flung thematic meaning to it, sort of like the fugue march in Belly of the Steel Beast from The Last Crusade where Williams builds everything around the oppressive musical idea for the lumbering tank.

I remember having the OST for AOTC before seeing the movie. I listened to the music but didn't look at any track titles to avoid spoilers. When the arena track came on, I was convinced it was a Clone March theme, like the Imperial March. I was so excited! Then when I saw the movie, almost all of it was absent from the movie!

Yeah, I'd say it's not a theme at all, at least in the leitmotivic film-score-y sense. It's the theme (in the classical sense) that's introduced and developed in that one single cue, and then Williams never touched it again. No official name, and it definitely wasn't written to represent the Clone Army. If it represented anything, it would be the three creatures released into the arena.

It's sort of like how the music from when Lando rescues Luke on the Millennium Falcon's elevator in ESB was reused for when they blow up the Death Star in ROTJ. It then became known as the Heroic Lando Motif, but was never intended as such. It wasn't even composed for ROTJ.

I recall this being heard in The Arena (from Attack of the Clones), as well as The Battle of Kashyyyk and March on the Jedi Temple (from Revenge of the Sith). The AotC cue is on the OST, the two RotS are not but have been demoed and sourced plenty of places.

At this stage in my life, how a theme is used in a movie or what it is supposed to represent doesn't affect my appreciation of it as music. This is a standout piece, for what it is (a one-off march lacking development).

While we are on the topic of my first point, it is the same with something like the Adventures of Mutt--I really do not care if the theme "fits" the character. It is a fun piece on its own musical merits. The movies are a means to JW composing the music for me (and, I suppose, others) to enjoy listening to.

I have no opinion about that. I was just addressing Ghostbusters' point that there could easily have been any other music in that scene. And that the music they used worked just fine if only for the fact that otherwise that magnificent theme might have gone unused in the movies.

So for you, the word "theme" (in a film score setting) can refer to any melody that's heard more than once, even if it's only used in a single cue? That sure would make for a lot of themes, most of which would have really awkward and arbitrary names. It also doesn't distinguish between a melody that's heard two or three times in a particular scene and a melody that's heard dozens of times over the course of a film series. It seems to me that those are qualitatively different things, don't you think?

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