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The man who killed Optimus Prime!
To commemorate the 25th anniversary of Transformers The Movie, we spoke with cartoon and video game writer Flint Dille about his work over the years, with such properties as Buck Rogers, Dungeons & Dragons, Transformers, GI Joe, and Ghostbusters. It was a lot of fun and he had a lot of great stories about Vin Diesel, Gary Gygax, Orson Welles, Robert Stack, and Chris Latta.
Topics discussed:
The Rodimus Prime controversy SOLVED!
The girls of GI Joe
How come we’ve never seen Don Bluth and Flint Dille at the same time in the same place?
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with AWESOME NAMES!
Frank Miller and the death of Optimus Prime
Unicron – Orson Welles’ swan song
Chris Latta – We miss him!
Megatron’s mullet
Knowing is half the battle!
Children of the 80s will immediately recognize this type face
Transforming the summer of 1986!
Woah, that certainly was a treat. I almost dropped the laptop when I saw the new post. You guys pretty much asked every question I would have asked him. I’m quite proud none of you guys mentioned Peter Cullen or Frank Welker and talked about everyone else. That movie had so many great actors, it’s unbelievable that it even exists in the first place. Whenever I think of Gi Joe or G1 Transformers I think of Chris Latta, he just had that voice that you can never forget. Bravo, so much knowledge it’s a little overwhelming.
Beast Wars is better then G1, at least from a writing and animation stand point. The only things that G1 does better is probably it’s legacy in setting up the franchise and the archetypes for the future. Also, G1 gave us the voice acting talents of legends like Peter Cullen and Frank Welker, actors who would voice the characters multiple times. Anyways, I prefer Beast Wars but I most definitely respect G1 for getting the franchise started.
Better writing my ass.
Beast Wars is G1 fan wank. Instead of building their own franchise, they built an entire story around making sure that the G1 continuity happens. And that’s in the GOOD season. The rest of the series is comprised of filler episodes that, structurally, are basically the same as what you would see in your typical David Wise written episode of G1. Even the notable episodes, such as the one that featured the ghost of Starscream, didn’t really go anywhere.
The only notable difference being the plight of Dinobot, which was done quite well. By the way, Dinobot was by far the best character in the series, but I liked him better the first time when he was called Vegeta. It’s not even that original of a character. I liked him. I liked Rhinox. The rest of the characters can die in a fire.
As far as the animation goes, the only way in which you could say that the animation is better is because there are fewer animation mistakes, but that’s mainly due to the nature of the different techniques. In terms of CG animation, Beast Wars was very primitive, and it was not even close to sharing the level of body language and character that you could get from G1’s traditional animation. As G1 got older, the animation quality certain did wane, but Beast Wars, from beginning to end, was like watching a PlayStation cut scene.
The biggest problem is that the Beast Wars characters couldn’t really go anywhere that wasn’t pre-existing, and they couldn’t meet anyone that wasn’t made specifically for the show. This made the show feel very static to me. And no, I’m not going to excuse the limitations of CG for that, because to me, it’s not worth seeing something in CG if it means that nothing is going to happen. Seriously, everywhere they go looks barren and lifeless. In he aforementioned Starscream episode, they couldn’t even spend the time to make the Starscream character model look good. If you freeze frame on the one shot in which he is facing the camera, he looks like shit. It’s like they used the Action Masters figure as a model reference.
Since split up your reply into 3 paragraphs, I shall do the same.
Beast Wars is not G1 fan wank, it’s not even close to being like that. Yes, it has refences to G1 and it takes place in the same continuity, but, like Transformers Animated, which doesn’t take place in the same continuity but has alot refences to G1, it tells it’s own unique. How good that story was can vary from person to person, but it had an ongoing story. It wasn’t like G1 which had standalone stories and sometimes randomly chucked in a multiparter to give the show some variety. No, it had continuity between each episode; whatever happened in one episode affected the next episode. Yes, like any TV show that has an ongoing story, it had it’s fair share of filler episodes, but, out of about 3 seasons, only one of those episodes was a G1 fan wank episode. Every other filler episode provided character development for one or more of the cast, something that G1 characters never got.
G1 characters were very stagnant and never really developed as the show went on, which is something that was true for any and all of the cartoons that advertised toys to kids in the 80’s. In Beast Wars, characters developed over time and were more 3 dimensional as a result. G1 made story secondary and instead focused on just selling toys, which is why characters either randomly appeared or disappeared with little to no explanation. Hasbro didn’t even consider them characters, which is why they had no problem killing off most of the cast from the first two seasons in the movie; they viewed them as props that could be easily interchanged. After the massive backslash they got after killing off Optimus Prime, they started to treat them like actual characters; an attitude that has since become the norm for new Transformers shows. Don’t get me wrong, G1 had some really good episodes like War Dawn and The Ultimate Doom, but, looking at the show as a whole, Beast Wars had better writing.
As for characters, I’ll be honest, I hated alot of the characters in G1. I hated Wheelie, Seaspray, Powerglide, Cliffjumper, Arcee, Red Alert, Huffer, Windcharger, Gears, Reflector, Tracks, Smokescreen, Hoist, , Cosmos, Skids, Abominus, Scorponok, Scourge, The Sweeps, Every Human with the exception of Spike, Sparkplug, Marissa Faireborn, Dirk Manus, Carly and Old Snake, Every Alien with the exception of the Quintessons, Blurr. With Beast Wars, I didn’t hate a single character. I actually liked all of the characters, which is an amazing feat for me because there always 1 or 2 characters that get on my nerves.
As for animation, I’ll grant you that the first season of Beast Wars did look like a PS1 cutscene. But, unlike G1, which got worse over time because of AKOM, the animation on Beast Wars improved as the show went on. The characters were emotive in both modes and the animation was better then shows that came in the 2000’s like Energon and Cybertron. Yes, it has definitely aged, but, it hasn’t aged as much as G1 has.
I could argue that Beast Wars pushed boundaries and introduced new concepts that would become intergrated into the greater Transformers mythos, like the concept of the spark as the heart and soul of a Transformers. But, G1 did as well so arguing that Beast Wars was more daring in that respect would be flawed. I will argue however that Beast Wars took risks with the stories it told. For instance, it had a three parter where the Megatron of Beast Wars, broke into the Ark and assassinated Optimus Prime. Yes, they eventually restored Optimus in the first episode of season 3, but it still doesn’t change the fact that they did something that G1 had never tried to do; they had a villain try to change history. That’s what I liked about Beast Wars, they weren’t affraid to tackle bold storylines like that. It wasn’t just a show about selling toys, it was a character focused science fiction show in which the Transformers were the main characters. It was everything I look for in a cartoon and still is, it’s in my top 5 of all time.
Anyways, to sum up, Beast Wars is a great show and my favourite Transformers show. G1 was good for it’s time, but it has aged considerably, at least in my opionion. It’s obviously not your favourite, but hey, we’ll just agree to disagree. Anyways, great interview and keep up the good work.
“Beast Wars is not G1 fan wank”
Yes it was.
I’ve never seen a show wink so hard at me with its G1 references. In fact, it’s not even fair to compare it to G1, because it IS G1. They made sure to solidify that fact in the most explicit way possible, by having the Beast Wars characters visit the ark.
Don’t get me wrong, I do love me some continuity bonuses, such as those in Star Trek Next Gen, like when Spock showed up. But TNG had solidified itself as a solid program by the time they did that. Beast Wars was dropping the G1 references before I felt that it had even earned its place in Transformers lore. Need I remind you that a major arc in the show is about making sure that the original series happens? That’s fan wank.
“Yes, it has refences to G1 and it takes place in the same continuity, but, like Transformers Animated, which doesn’t take place in the same continuity but has alot refences to G1, it tells it’s own unique.”
That’s actually one of the few things I give Animated credit for. It was a wink and a nod all the way through, but it did so passively. I don’t like the animation, but I had nothing against the story, and, as much as this is going to hurt to say, it undid a lot of the damage that was started with Beast Wars.
“No, it had continuity between each episode; whatever happened in one episode affected the next episode.”
The fact that Beast Wars was more linear does not mean that it has a cohesive story. Though the episodes had a linear progression, most of the episodes themselves were still very much skippable, stand-alone stories with only a small nugget of continuity that holds to a particular place in the show’s canon. And every bit of the toy mentality that G1 had. You had episodes like “Feral Scream,” which was a two-parter primarily done to introduce the Transmetal II Cheetor. It also had the estemed honor of introducing Dinobot II, but that was done and over with in the first five minutes of the episode and then completely wasted every opportunity to develop said character. Out of forty minutes, the amount of time dedicated to advancing the story was about five minutes.
Now, having a story that takes its time doesn’t mean that what Beast Wars was necessarily bad, but it also doesn’t necessarily mean that it was good, either. We have two different styles of storytelling here, but I’m not going to argue that one is better than the other. The fact that you even brought it us is a non sequitur, really. My problem with Beast Wars is mostly in the finer details. I found the character writing to be dry, derivative, and lacking in subtlety.
Your point seems to be that G1 didn’t do a linear-style series the way Beast Wars did, and therefore it’s not good storytelling (or not as good). I hardly see how that’s relevent, though. Either format could be good if done right.
Be careful that your argument doesn’t reduce itself to, “It’s bad because it’s different.”
“Hasbro didn’t even consider them characters, which is why they had no problem killing off most of the cast from the first two seasons in the movie; they viewed them as props that could be easily interchanged.”
Uh, no. Don’t confuse Hasbro’s part in the show with Sunbow’s. (And yes, I know that Sunbow was part of Hasbro.) The show did not treat the character as calously as you’re implying.
And don’t forget that a lot of the development of the characters in G1 did not come from the script but rather from the actors themselves. In G1, I really could feel the characters developing, but it was the sort of development that happens as an actor settles into a role. Beast Wars seemed too intent on writing the development into hackneyed stories to really allow this sort of development to take place.
True, certain characters came and went with little fanfare in G1. That was the nature of the product, though. For the ensamble cast that it had, yes a lot of characters didn’t get much development time. But there was a core group of characters that mattered and were the main focus of the show were very well developed. So much so that they’re the archetypical characters to this very day. That is to say the very BEST of the Transformers canon comes from the G1 cartoon, and everything since then has been aping it.
I would almost give Beast Wars credit for not doing this. It seemed intent on doing its own thing by wading out into deeper waters, but then it raced right back to the shallow end by connecting itself to the G1 continuity as quickly as possible. I really felt that this was one of Beast Wars’ biggest weaknesses.
Beast Wars felt to me like this weird G1 gaiden storyline that is almost (but not quite) a major story in the G1 timeline.
“As for characters, I’ll be honest, I hated alot of the characters in G1. I hated Wheelie, Seaspray, Powerglide, Cliffjumper, Arcee, Red Alert, Huffer, Windcharger, Gears, Reflector, Tracks, Smokescreen, Hoist, , Cosmos, Skids, Abominus, Scorponok, Scourge, The Sweeps, Every Human with the exception of Spike, Sparkplug, Marissa Faireborn, Dirk Manus, Carly and Old Snake, Every Alien with the exception of the Quintessons, Blurr.”
The vast majority of these characters were minor characters. Watching Beast Wars is like watching a show in which all of the minor characters from G1 became major characters. Come on. Rattrap practically IS Huffer. Cheator was a bigger idiot than Bumblebee on his worst day. Primal was was like Ultra Magnus, if Magnus wasn’t a badass. And Waspinator’s speech impediment was far more annoying than the worst G1 had the offer, and he was in practically every episode.
Quite the opposite, I felt like the Beast Wars characters were the stagnant ones. For the type of story that Beast Wars was trying to tell, Cheetor’s idiocy went on just a bit too long. For as great a character as Dinobot was, anyone could see his plight coming from episode 1, and it was a dull, dull trek to get there.
“With Beast Wars, I didn’t hate a single character.”
Did you have the Spanish language track on or something?
“As for animation, I’ll grant you that the first season of Beast Wars did look like a PS1 cutscene. But, unlike G1, which got worse over time because of AKOM, the animation on Beast Wars improved as the show went on. The characters were emotive in both modes and the animation was better then shows that came in the 2000’s like Energon and Cybertron. Yes, it has definitely aged, but, it hasn’t aged as much as G1 has.”
The best of G1’s animation still holds up pretty well today, albeit with some wrong mouth flaps and color mistakes with the Decepticon jets. There was still quite a bit of it that was stellar. The movie. Most of season 1. Two thirds of season 2. Some of season 3. Beast Wars did get better, but the best of it is still pretty raw and hard to look at.
The fact that Beast Wars got better is something that we’ve talked about either on the show or at least on one of our upcoming outtakes shows. (I honestly don’t remember whether it made it into an episode.) Later Beast Wars episodes certainly did look better, but only better when compared to earlier Beast Wars episodes and Reboot. I really don’t feel that CGI animation was ready for television until at least the late nineties or, at the latest, by the time Jimmy Neutron first aired. Ben and I agree that these steps had to be made to progress the technology for CG on television, but I certainly didn’t enjoy looking at it then, and I can’t seem to find anyone under the age of 20 who can stand looking at it now. It’s just way too primative.
Rough animation can improve and still be rough animation. I usually refer to such shows as “tech demo shows”, because they push the technology along, but they are still themselves an example of technology in its infancy.
“I will argue however that Beast Wars took risks with the stories it told. For instance, it had a three parter where the Megatron of Beast Wars, broke into the Ark and assassinated Optimus Prime. Yes, they eventually restored Optimus in the first episode of season 3, but it still doesn’t change the fact that they did something that G1 had never tried to do; they had a villain try to change history.”
Again, I’m not sure why this is better. What killed it for me was that it was the G1 history that was at stake, and I don’t think there was any point at which the history of G1 was ever in any danger of not happening.
I hope I didn’t skip over any important details. I mainly just picked out the pertanent quotes and responded to them.
“Yes it was.
I’ve never seen a show wink so hard at me with its G1 references. In fact, it’s not even fair to compare it to G1, because it IS G1. They made sure to solidify that fact in the most explicit way possible, by having the Beast Wars characters visit the ark.
Don’t get me wrong, I do love me some continuity bonuses, such as those in Star Trek Next Gen, like when Spock showed up. But TNG had solidified itself as a solid program by the time they did that. Beast Wars was dropping the G1 references before I felt that it had even earned its place in Transformers lore. Need I remind you that a major arc in the show is about making sure that the original series happens? That’s fan wank.”
It is established from the very first episode that the Maximals and Predacons are the descendants of the Autobots and the Decepticons, pretty much making Beast Wars the future of G1. So from the very start, Beast Wars was in the G1 continuity. It wasn’t like they randomly decided to connect them or anything, it was done like Batman Beyond and was established from the very beginning. It wasn’t until Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio discovered the Usenet newsgroup alt.toys.transformers and discovered that G1 had a massive fan following, that they decided to solidify the connection between Beast Wars and G1 by throwing in references and revealing that Beast War was set on prehistoric Earth. It wasn’t complete fan wank like you say though. There multiple episodes that do not reference G1 in any way shape or form. If G1 was complete fan wank, it wouldn’t have told its own story and would have references to G1 in every episode; things that it obviously didn’t do. Oh, and not to burst your bubble or anything, but, DeForest Kelley camoed as Leonard McCoy in the first episode, long before it had solidified itself as a solid program.
“That’s actually one of the few things I give Animated credit for. It was a wink and a nod all the way through, but it did so passively. I don’t like the animation, but I had nothing against the story, and, as much as this is going to hurt to say, it undid a lot of the damage that was started with Beast Wars.”
Funny thing is, Animated had way more references to G1 then Beast Wars had and yet you accuse Beast Wars of been total fan wank. Beast Wars’ references to G1 were also passive at times, though that is discounting episodes like “The Agenda”, “Nemesis”, “Master Blaster”, and “Possession”.
“The fact that Beast Wars was more linear does not mean that it has a cohesive story. Though the episodes had a linear progression, most of the episodes themselves were still very much skippable, stand-alone stories with only a small nugget of continuity that holds to a particular place in the show’s canon. And every bit of the toy mentality that G1 had. You had episodes like “Feral Scream,” which was a two-parter primarily done to introduce the Transmetal II Cheetor. It also had the estemed honor of introducing Dinobot II, but that was done and over with in the first five minutes of the episode and then completely wasted every opportunity to develop said character. Out of forty minutes, the amount of time dedicated to advancing the story was about five minutes.”
Uh, yes it does. G1 constantly contradicted itself with its “story”, and I do use the term loosely. It contradicted itself by having characters that had multiple conflicting origins (The Constructicons and their 3 separate origins), a planet that changed its location multiple times (Cybertron and whether it was in our galaxy), Transformers that can fly in the first three episodes and then suddenly stop flying for the rest of the series (The Autobots), Autobots flat out abandoning their plans to build a spaceship to return to Cybertron (The entire plot of “More than Meets the Eye” was pointless), Transformers that randomly start flying again (Some of the Autobots in Episode 5), Humans that don’t get injured in the first two seasons and then a human gets injured in the fourth season (Daniel Witwicky gets injured and yet Spike and Chip never do), Things randomly showing up that have supposedly been there the whole time (Optimus Prime’s Matrix of Leadership), Characters coming back from the dead without any explanation (Skyfire), and those are just a few. G1 has so many continuity errors it’s hard to name all of them. Also “Feral Scream” sets up the Transmetal 2 driver, a device that will be used by Blackarachnia in a later episode.
“Now, having a story that takes its time doesn’t mean that what Beast Wars was necessarily bad, but it also doesn’t necessarily mean that it was good, either. We have two different styles of storytelling here, but I’m not going to argue that one is better than the other. The fact that you even brought it us is a non sequitur, really. My problem with Beast Wars is mostly in the finer details. I found the character writing to be dry, derivative, and lacking in subtlety.”
As opposed to G1’s lack of character writing. G1 never really focused on the characters, except for the spotlight episodes that pretty much said “buy my toy”. Even then, any development to a character that was made was quickly forgotten or the character just disappeared.
“Your point seems to be that G1 didn’t do a linear-style series the way Beast Wars did, and therefore it’s not good storytelling (or not as good). I hardly see how that’s relevent, though. Either format could be good if done right.
Be careful that your argument doesn’t reduce itself to, “It’s bad because it’s different.””
That’s not my argument at all. My argument is, either do a continuity driven show or do a show with standalone episodes, don’t do a mixture of the two. G1 was a show that had standalone episodes that also tried and failed to have continuity between each episode. If you’re going to do a standalone show, do it like Batman: TAS. I have no problem with doing a show that has no continuity, but G1 didn’t do it the right way. If G1 wanted to do it the right way, it would have done it like Batman: TAS and had no continuity.
“Uh, no. Don’t confuse Hasbro’s part in the show with Sunbow’s. (And yes, I know that Sunbow was part of Hasbro.) The show did not treat the character as calously as you’re implying.”
Um, I’m not confusing or over valuing Hasbro’s part in the show. If Hasbro stops selling or manufacturing a product, like Optimus Prime or Megatron, they tell Sunbow to either write them out or, like what they did in the Movie, kill them off. At the end of the day, Hasbro is using the cartoon as a marketing tool, therefore they have final say.
“And don’t forget that a lot of the development of the characters in G1 did not come from the script but rather from the actors themselves. In G1, I really could feel the characters developing, but it was the sort of development that happens as an actor settles into a role. Beast Wars seemed too intent on writing the development into hackneyed stories to really allow this sort of development to take place.”
That’s characterization, there’s a difference between the two. Character development is what Cheetor underwent over the entirety of Beast Wars and eventually Beast Machines. He started off as an idiot and gradually grew up as the show progressed. Characterization is the starting point or the base of a character. For example, Optimus Prime is characterized as a brave and courageous leader. Every character in G1 had great characterization, what they lacked was character development.
“True, certain characters came and went with little fanfare in G1. That was the nature of the product, though. For the ensamble cast that it had, yes a lot of characters didn’t get much development time. But there was a core group of characters that mattered and were the main focus of the show were very well developed. So much so that they’re the archetypical characters to this very day. That is to say the very BEST of the Transformers canon comes from the G1 cartoon, and everything since then has been aping it.”
None of the characters developed at all. They were stagnant and never developed from their original characterization. The only character that got development was Hot Rod, but that was in one episode and was quickly forgotten and the status quo was restored. And every Transformers show that comes after G1 isn’t aping it. If it was aping it, they would be exactly the same and there wouldn’t have been any improvement or modernization. Most of the Transformers shows that have come after G1 have taken the original concept and improved on it.
“I would almost give Beast Wars credit for not doing this. It seemed intent on doing its own thing by wading out into deeper waters, but then it raced right back to the shallow end by connecting itself to the G1 continuity as quickly as possible. I really felt that this was one of Beast Wars’ biggest weaknesses.”
Funny thing is, it still did its own thing. It wasn’t doing the G1 thing and fighting over Energon or any of the plot devices that surfaced in G1. No, it did its own and unique story. Saying Beast Wars didn’t do its own thing because it was connected to G1 is like saying that TNG didn’t do its own thing because it was connected to the Original Series; it’s an illogical and judgemental statement.
“Beast Wars felt to me like this weird G1 gaiden storyline that is almost (but not quite) a major story in the G1 timeline.”
It was a major story in the G1 storyline. Of course it had no effects on G1 because G1 was dead and buried by the time Beast Wars started.
“The vast majority of these characters were minor characters. Watching Beast Wars is like watching a show in which all of the minor characters from G1 became major characters. Come on. Rattrap practically IS Huffer. Cheator was a bigger idiot than Bumblebee on his worst day. Primal was was like Ultra Magnus, if Magnus wasn’t a badass. And Waspinator’s speech impediment was far more annoying than the worst G1 had the offer, and he was in practically every episode.”
The problem with G1 is, those minor characters got spotlight episodes. So, the only way to avoid them is to skip to the next episode. Rattrap is nothing like Huffer. Rattrap was a self-centred mercenary that didn’t want to die, but could hold his own in a fight when the situation required him to. Huffer was a whiny incompetent prick that never really did anything. Cheetor started out as an idiot that couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, but he developed as the show went on. Bumblebee was an annoying kid character the first two seasons and then was replaced by Wheelie in season 3 and 4, who was a 1000 times worse. Optimus Primal was more of a badass then Ultra Magnus, because even when the chips were down he would never surrender. Waspinator is not annoying and is actually a funny character, unlike Seaspray who sounded like he was drowning all the time.
“Quite the opposite, I felt like the Beast Wars characters were the stagnant ones. For the type of story that Beast Wars was trying to tell, Cheetor’s idiocy went on just a bit too long. For as great a character as Dinobot was, anyone could see his plight coming from episode 1, and it was a dull, dull trek to get there.”
The characters in Beast Wars weren’t stagnant; they were three dimensional and fully realized characters with goals. G1’s characters were two dimensional and never saw development. Cheetor’s idiocy only went for one season compared to Daniel’s which went for the entire latter half of G1. Dinobot’s plight I’ll give you, but it wasn’t that dull of trek to get to his end.
“Did you have the Spanish language track on or something?”
Wait, because I didn’t hate every character like you did I must have had Spanish language track on? Ever heard of having different opinions? Oh wait, I forgot. I’m on the internet, where some people think what they say is fact.
“The best of G1′s animation still holds up pretty well today, albeit with some wrong mouth flaps and color mistakes with the Decepticon jets. There was still quite a bit of it that was stellar. The movie. Most of season 1. Two thirds of season 2. Some of season 3. Beast Wars did get better, but the best of it is still pretty raw and hard to look at.”
The only two things animation wise that still hold up to me out of the entirety of G1 are the Movie and “Call of the Primitives”. Everything else is dated and shows its age compared to shows like Batman: TAS and Justice League. Later episodes of Beast Wars don’t look that raw and still hold up against some of the badly animated CGI shows that came out in the early 2000’s, like Jimmy Neutron, Energon, and Cybertron.
“The fact that Beast Wars got better is something that we’ve talked about either on the show or at least on one of our upcoming outtakes shows. (I honestly don’t remember whether it made it into an episode.) Later Beast Wars episodes certainly did look better, but only better when compared to earlier Beast Wars episodes and Reboot. I really don’t feel that CGI animation was ready for television until at least the late nineties or, at the latest, by the time Jimmy Neutron first aired. Ben and I agree that these steps had to be made to progress the technology for CG on television, but I certainly didn’t enjoy looking at it then, and I can’t seem to find anyone under the age of 20 who can stand looking at it now. It’s just way too primitive.”
I think you guys talked about on your Animation 101 show, but I’d have to double check that. Anyways, there are people out there over the age of 20 that can stand to look at it now, but that comes down to personal preference.
“Rough animation can improve and still be rough animation. I usually refer to such shows as “tech demo shows”, because they push the technology along, but they are still themselves an example of technology in its infancy.”
Technically, Reboot was a “tech demo show” because it was the first CGI television show, whereas Beast Wars was the second. Therefore Beast Wars wasn’t a mere tech demo and was more of tweaking and refining of the process.
“Again, I’m not sure why this is better. What killed it for me was that it was the G1 history that was at stake, and I don’t think there was any point at which the history of G1 was ever in any danger of not happening.”
It’s better because it created tension, something that G1 never had. Here’s the basic plot of most of the episodes in the first two seasons: Megatron comes up with plan to get Energon, Starscream tries to backstab Megatron, Megatron slaps Starscream on the wrist, Autobots discover Megatron’s plan, Autobots show up to stop said plan, Megatron retreats, Autobots win, everyone’s happy. There’s no tension at all. You knew the Autobots would win by the end of the episode, no matter what. In Beast Wars, it was unpredictable and there was actually tension. At the end of “The Agenda”, you had no way of knowing that Optimus Prime would survive. It was a great cliff-hanger and left you wanting more.
Anyways, we can debate this till we’re both blue in the face but were obviously aren’t going to convince the other that the other show is better, so I think we’ll just end it here. I’ve definitely had fun debating with you and I’m sorry that you didn’t enjoy Beast Wars like I did, but hey, were allowed to have different opinions. It’s what makes humanity so great.
I’m not even going to acknowledge your opening paragraph, because it’s completely outside the scope of discussion. You seem to be correcting me on points that I never brought into question.
“Funny thing is, Animated had way more references to G1 then Beast Wars had and yet you accuse Beast Wars of been total fan wank.”
I explained the difference. Animated, though with more frequent references, was much more passive. i.e., it never grafted itself onto the G1 continuity, and it never did any references that were vital to understand. Beast Wars WENT TO THE ARK. And the showed the Matrix. And then nothing exciting happened. This was Mainframe going out of its way to beat us over the head that this took place in G1 continuity. That’s the core of my gripe.
In fact, Ben made a good point about the fan wank thing. He said that without G1, there is no Beast Wars. Beast Wars is about making G1 happen. (And I’ll just add that Beast Wars basically IS G1.) Consider for one moment all of the criticisms that you have of G1 having a waffling continuity and then put into perspective the fact that Beast Wars is plugging itself INTO that waffling continuity.
It’s kind of why I have a hard time taking Beast Wars seriously. It tries to be this sophisticated television show, and yet it grafts itself onto an 80s cartoon. If you’re going to write a serious show, why on EARTH would you do that?
Now are you going to continue this semantic argument over the definition of “fan wank,” or are you going to acknowledge this point?
To my point about Beast Wars and it’s story arc, you said…
“Uh, yes it does. G1 constantly contradicted itself with its “story””
First of all, we’ve acknowledged on this show that Transformers G1 is a product of its time. I have made this point myself many times. Don’t bring this up like I don’t know.
Second, this digression into attacking G1 is entirely irrelevent. My point about Beast Wars was a response to your claim about whether or not Beast Wars had throw-away episode, and it absolutely DID. It had tons of them in season 1, with only the most peripheral attempt to make each episode fit into some kind of story. This does not necessarily make it a story arc. That was my point. Please do not take this out of context again. Throw-away episodes are still throw-away episodes, regardless of whether or not they have a chronological order.
And so what if G1 constantly contradicted itself? I’ve always been the first to admit that. There are certain sets of episodes that cannot be reconsiled with one another. Sometimes the best continuity connections happened on accident. If it wasn’t for two writers bumping into each other one day, Ariel and Elita-1 would have been separate characters. I fully acknowledge that that’s the way it was. I know damn well about the Constructicon mess. I know why it exists. There are actually different reasons that I’ll go into when we do the Transformers episode. I’m not going explain them away.
You can’t argue in favor of Beast Wars by simply attacking G1, though. There are lots of shows that have better continuity than either of these shows, but that doesn’t make them better. Family Guy has better continuity than Transformers. Smurfs had better continuity than Transformers. Later incarnations of Transformers, including the aforementioned Animated series (which I dislike for a completely different reason) have better continuity than the G1 Transformers.
Besides, you said that Beast Wars had better WRITING. Writing is more than just continuity. Writing means actual show scripts. Writing means dialogue. For a more individualized storytelling type show and character building, G1 wins hands down. You’re talking about a show which built the entire foundation for the franchise itself, establishing the vast majority of key characters that are still around today. Characters that are quoted and impersonated by fans regularly. You can’t just dismiss this out of hand.
You claimed that they brought Optimus Prime back and only THEN treated him like a character. BULL! Kids demanded that they bring back Prime
because they made him a loveable character from the start. These are the characters that people adored, and it shows, because they keep coming back to them.
I did not argue that G1 had a fantastic story arc. We all know that G1 didn’t have good continuity. I’m simply saying that the writing (especially the characters) was MUCH better. And please don’t bring up minor characters like Seaspray.
And yes, I know that the whole middle of season 2 is a lot of garbage filled with spotlight shows. But they weren’t THAT bad. There were a few really terrible David Wise episodes, such as spotlights on Powerglide and his stupid girlfriend or the episode that had Omega Surpreme, in which they contradicted the first season origin of the Constructicons. There are about fifteen episodes in the middle that could be taken out and I wouldn’t miss them.
I said, “Be careful that your argument doesn’t reduce itself to, ‘It’s bad because it’s different.'”
You said, “That’s not my argument at all.”
The argument I was responding to was indeed treading into the territory of “It’s better because it’s different.” But never the less…
“My argument is, either do a continuity driven show or do a show with standalone episodes, don’t do a mixture of the two.”
And then you compared it to a different show that you just like better. In fact, if we go down a little ways into your comment, you said…
“I think you guys talked about on your Animation 101 show, but I’d have to double check that. Anyways, there are people out there over the age of 20 that can stand to look at it now, but that comes down to personal preference.”
And then in the very last paragraph, you said that we’re not going to convince each other. Then why did you even start arguing? I can’t stand it when people do that.
Now, to be fair, in the paragraph I just quote, you were talking about CG animation, but if we can apply this appeal to personal preference to animation, then one would think that we’d also be applying it to writing styles. So, why then would you be arguing that G1 writing is bad if it’s all just personal preference. I don’t think you can make a case for the animation without making the same case for the writing. And more importantly, if you’re going to say that personal preference counts, then you’re saying that it’s acceptable to say, “It’s better because it’s different.”
Now, I will acknowledge that you brought up Batman’s ability to have great continuity while still doing stand-alone episodes that didn’t hurt said continuity. I understand that Batman is the rosetta stone for good continuity. In fact, Timm’s continuity across the entire Timmverse is legendary. It’s what continuity should be for a serious show.
But the thing is, the reason that Transformers didn’t have the sort of continuity that Batman had was not because they didn’t want to but because they couldn’t. So why not go the other way and have NO continuity? Well, that would have been a disaster, because you need SOME continuity in a show like this. You couldn’t market it that way. But when you also have 40 episodes in a season, of course you’re going to screw it up. Especially in the 80s, before Warner Animation.
My view on Transformers G1 is that the good far outweighs the bad. If continuity was such that it could trump every other positive trait in a story, then I would have to raise the bar on a lot of classic stories as well. Besides, you need to ask people like Optimus Solo of Geekcast radio what I think of continuity apologetics. I’m not one to hold bad continuity against a story. In fact, I will defend a broken continuity against someone who tries to explain it away with his own fan explanation. The fact that some episodes don’t fit just doesn’t matter.
I look at G1 like a folk tale. Sunbow just took the ball and ran with it. They did the best possible show that they could make. They couldn’t make Batman. They just didn’t have it in the budget. The only way they could get the show on the air was to do a syndication deal and have gillions of episodes with a lot of filler. You make it sound like they had bad continuity on purpose.
I think that it’s just a terrible disservice to G1 to just handwave the brilliant writing as though it doesn’t exist, and then hold over it this other show, Beast Wars, which had a much higher priority on continuity but didn’t do anything nearly as interesting as what the original show was.
We all know that the continuity is garbage in G1 Transformers. The show is enjoyable regardless, and it’s because of the writing. The writing itself had character built into it. I think they did develop over the course of the show.
I think what YOU want is a show that has the character development mapped out from the very start and doesn’t allow for the characters to be molded as the show develops, which is what G1 did. I find that sort of show dull. It was a combination of the Sunbow writing staff and the voice talent themselves that made the G1 characters shine over everything else that has come in its wake.
I see that the rest of your email is just retredding on things you already said, so I’ll just end here.