Beast Wars opens at an unspecified time and place, where two warring factions of robots have crashed on a strange planet populated by animals like those on Earth. The planet abounds in mystery, with vast deposits of raw energon and evidence of alien activity. The Energon forces the newly arrived Transformers to take on protective beast forms to shield themselves from the ambient Energon radiation. And so begin the Beast Wars...
Executive producer Christopher Brough recruited television writers Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio as story editors for Beast Wars, which the two were initially disinterested in due to not being fans of giant robots. Nonetheless, Forward and DiTillio were willing to meet and talk with Brough, who wanted the two for their adept storytelling prowess and was willing to give them total creative control. Since neither Forward nor DiTillio had been familiar with the Transformers brand beforehand, the pair decided to create something completely new and different from the ground up. They found an appeal in the science fiction aspect of Transformers, with the characters themselves being technological lifeforms who were at war with each other. Thus, they sought to create a science fiction show first and foremost, one that explored the nature of the robotic characters and the greater world they inhabited. Limitations of the CG animation forced the cast to be kept relatively small in number, which led Forward and DiTillio to write more character-driven plots with enhanced interpersonal drama between the characters. As the series progressed, Forward and DiTillio soon became aware of the Transformers internet newsgroups like alt.toys.transformers, where they began to interact directly with the fandom and learn more about the existing Transformers mythos, which would greatly influence the later story arcs of the cartoon.
The planet is found to be rich in deposits of raw Energon, in such extreme amounts that it proves to be poisonous to both factions' robot forms, forcing them to take on alternate organic forms for protection until their robot forms are needed. Thus the robots take on the beast forms of recognizable animals including mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, dinosaurs, and invertebrates.
Beast Wars was succeeded by Beast Machines, a new series with a new creative team in charge of production. The Maximals find themselves back on Cybertron, malfunctioning and trapped in their first beast modes (the ones they had at the beginning of Beast Wars). They were without memory of what happened previously, and fighting for survival against mindless drones called Vehicons. These were created and controlled by Megatron. With the whole planet empty, and all of the Transformers missing, Optimus Primal, Cheetor, Rattrap, and Blackarachnia begin a new crusade, this time to free the entire planet.
The Japanese series Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo were created to fill the gap while the second and third seasons of Beast Wars were being translated into Japanese (called Beast Wars: Metals).[1] The characters originate from the future that the Beast Wars teams left, but the events of the series take place in the far future. The series saw the return of Unicron. Unlike the original Beast Wars series, Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo used traditional animation and were aimed at a much younger audience.[1] Beast Wars II spawned a theatrical movie. The Beast Wars Neo toyline was created to cater to the Japanese market. Whereas the cybernetic transmetal Beast Wars Transformers sold well in Western markets, Japanese fans preferred more realistic looking beast modes; thus, Beast Wars Metals was not as successful with Japanese fans.[citation needed] The second and third season of Beast Wars and its toy line only lasted a few months before being replaced by Transformers: Car Robots in the following new year, in which several unused Transmetal 2 molds were used as Destrongers (Predacons).[citation needed] Beast Machines was also imported to Japan in 2004 under the title Beast Wars Returns, though it did not gain very much popularity.[citation needed]
A mini-series takes place parallel to the third season of Beast Wars and introduces characters who are not shown in the original series such as Magmatron, Razorbeast, and Injector. Other characters who appear are Grimlock in his Beast Wars body (a recolored Dinobot toy) and Ravage in his Transmetal II "Tripredacus Agent" incarnation.
The mini-series focuses on Magmatron, sent by the Tripredacus Council to capture Megatron after Ravage's failure. However, Magmatron has his own agenda - to create his own army from the stasis pods the Axalon ejected in the pilot episode of Beast Wars. His scheme is partially thwarted by the Maximal double-agent Razorbeast, who ensures the shell program used reconfigures many of the protoforms as Maximals rather than Predacons. The two sides clash in an attempt to stop Magmatron from returning to Cybertron with a captured Megatron, with some unexpected aid from Grimlock ensuring Magmatron is sent back to Cybertron empty handed. However, Razorbeast's Maximals and many Predacons (led by Ravage, resurrected in a Transmetal II body) are left on Earth, opening the way for future series.
The two sides wage battle in every episode, using laser blasts that cause explosions and sometimes injure those involved. In their beast forms, they use the animals' special features ( a rhino's horn, a cheetah's bite, etc.) against the enemies. What injuries do result typically don't last long, though.
The comic follows Optimus (now a bat instead of a gorilla), Cheetor, and Razorbeast in their quest to destroy a Predacon genetics lab, only to be jumped by Megatron (who is a crocodile rather than a T-Rex), Waspinator, and Tarantulas.
Maximals
The four Maximals featured in Rise of the Beasts are Airazor, Cheetor, Optimus Primal and Rhinox. All four characters take inspiration from their animated counterparts featuring similar beast modes and a "techno-organic" look that is most obvious with certain features such as the "skin and fur" on Optimus Primal's shoulders or Airazor's feathers. Like the 90's cartoon, Optimus Primal is the leader of the Maximals. Cheetor is an ultra fast warrior while Rhinox is a tank on four feet. Airazor serves more of an advisor role in this film, but she does have a fierce beast mode attack that made me think of her introduction in the series where she took out Terrorsaur by herself, leaving him in pieces on the battlefield!
Besides rehashing the ancient tale of Autobots versus Decepticons, the latest chapter in Way for Cybertron brings us back to the late '90s when beasts roamed the Earth. Or at least some fictional planet that for whatever reason had rhinos, gorillas, and velociraptor all hanging out at the same time.
Called "Transformers: War for Cybertron Kingdom," the new toy line leans heavily on Beast Wars, the world's first CG-only Transformers cartoon that chronicled the war between the Maximals and the Predacons. As the names imply, the Maximals were all fun-loving mammals, while the Predacons were all predatory beasts. Except for Waspinator, which is more of a eusocial scavenger collective, but that's neither here nor there.
In order to survive after crash landing on an alien planet, both the Maximals and Predacons needed to take on organic forms that could shield them from the amazing quantity of Energon that littered the landscape. This meant everyone turned into cute little beasties until it was time to fight, at which point the skin came off and the guns came out.
Tasmania Kid and the rest of the Legacy United Wave 1 Core figures (Energon Megatron and Bouldercrash) have showed up in Canada. Tasmania Kid is a very nice robot, pretty articulated for his size and well sculpted. His gun attaches only the side of the arms, but this is how he used it in the Beast Wars II cartoon. Tamanian devil beast mode looks nice but the front legs are molded parts. We also have comparison shots next to other Legacy and Kingdom figures for those wondering about scale.
These figures are redecos of the Kingdom Tigatron and Blackarachnia molds, now featuring special cartoon accurate deco and extra paint apps. We have a look at each bot in robot and beast mode as well as the packaging and the collectible cards included.
On the toy side, the toys made much larger use of ball-joint technology than the Generation 1 toys did, and this meant the Beast Wars-era toys were a huge leap above the originals in playability; they had much better articulation, their joints were less prone to damage, and since the toys were being made with intent to tie into the cartoon this time instead of Hasbro creating a cartoon based on pre-existing toys, the characters looked more similar between the two formats. The toyline was not without its problems, though. "Shell-formers" is a fan term used for Transformers where their alt mode just opens up and the robot climbs out with their alt-mode pieces folding up and hanging off of their limbs, and the fandom generally dislikes this. These kinds of toys existed before Beast Wars but became much more prevalent here due to the wide variety of beast modes among the cast. In the name of looking convincingly like real animals the toys often had large, sculpted pieces that tried to cover up the robot mode parts as much as possible, so when it came time to transform them into robot mode, it wasn't always possible to find a way to gracefully integrate these pieces into the robot, so they often just folded up on their backs and chests to compress them as much as possible.
The new trailer introduces audiences to Maximals, Autobots, Predacons, Decepticons, and Terrorcons, but what actually are all these beasts? Scroll onward to learn the Transformers lore before Rise of the Beasts hits theaters June 9th.
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