fujishig

I forgot all about how goofy Psyche Out looked. But yeah I was talking about Dial-tone.

story

Which is more than anyone has really said about Dial-Tone in 37 years.

GuessWho

As far as pulling in M.A.S.K. to a Hasbroverse, that's not unheard of.

This 2008 figure merged the franchises together. File card reveals M.A.S.K. was partnered with GI Joe and V.E.N.O.M. was part of Cobra all along.

IBJoel

Waiting for this genre of Joe to be updated with the release of Cell Tower, 6G, and Brainbeam. And of course, Cobra needs their own guy: Tech Bro

Josh-da-man

G.I. Joe jumped the shark when they brought Sgt. Slaughter into the line. Then William "The Refrigerator" Perry. And then that Cobra-La nonsense.

And I do think that Hollow Earth, Lemuria stuff is kind of cool, but it was a bridge too far for something that was previously grounded (such as it was) like G. I. Joe.

fujishig

I mean Slaughter (at least originally) and Fridge were "mail in" figures, and it's not like the line didn't get ridiculous before that... I mean Zartan changed colors and had a spare face in his backpack, and Destro had a metal freaking mask and wrist rockets. Plus the cartoon and comic fleshed out the characters enough for a while... like I thought Shipwreck was a lame figure until I watched the cartoon, same for Bazooka. Post cartoon (particularly around and after GI Joe the movie, which was at least partially killed because of the lack of success of Transformer the Movie) now those guys didn't get much development. Like look at this geek:

https://www.yojoe.com/action/87/sneakpeek.shtml

He has a periscope. He's also named after Stephen King's son in return for King creating... Crystal Ball. I mean I have fond memories of Battleforce 2000 but they had definitely jumped the shark by then (and Hama infamously just slaughted all the toys he didn't care about in the comic).

I so look forward to the train wreck a crossover movie is going to be though.

Why So Blu?

Growing up, Croc Master was a "holy grail" type of figure if you could find him in stores.

tanman

This.

And also this.

Is very true.

They both express how I feel. That would be confusing talking about any movie except Transformers.

I think they just hit it out of the park with Bumblebee. It was just so grounded you really cared for the characters unlike every single other transformers movie. They tried with the guys brother. But it mostly just came across as forced. As for the real stars, the transformers, they were mainly ok. Unfortunately we didn't have the epic opener that Bumblebee had. Again they tried. But mostly failed. It just wasn't as faithful to the source material as the opener to Bumblebee was. The design was very much back to Bayverse transformers. Jazz Mirage was ok. Not particularly too annoying which is good but enough of a personality. Arcee was great, I really wish they featured more of her. The maximals were fine but not taken advantage of at all. They were basically just more characters with very little backstory. Kind of like the Dinobots. Did Cheetor or Rhinox even have any lines? The main saving grace of the movie was that it was a pretty tight 2 hours. Which IMO was the worst part about the later Bayverse movies.

It's way better than any of the other Bayverse movies except for the first one.

Here's the main problem with the Transformers movies IMO. They focus way too much on plot and not enough on character. We don't really care about the plot, it's always some world ending something or another. They should focus on the characters. That's why the Bumblebee movie works so well. You actually have a connection with Charlie, the girl, and Bumblebee because they actually spent time developing their relationship. In this movie when Bee died I felt nothing. There was zero impact at all. Because it was all plot driven. Versus in the last movie when he's being tortured and zapped you felt sympathy for the robot. They need to stop relying on stupid accents or other ridiculous character traits as that is just lazy writing and not actual character development. To me the more ridiculous the concept of a movie is the more grounded and relatable the characters need to be. Contrast this movie with Guardians of the Galaxy which despite their ridiculous nature, are well developed as a struggling adoptive family which is something everyone can relate to.

TheBang

OK, well, I watched this after rewatching Bumblebee last week. Unfortunately, it feels like a lot of this fell back into traps that the Bay movies did. MacGuffins, nonsensical logic or story progression, bad Optimus characterization. At least the action and transformations weren't incomprehensible.

But just stupid things like "we've partnered with the humans for hundreds of years to keep the Transwarp key". Why? What do the humans bring to this? They never say. And as soon as the Terrorcons show up, it's "protect the humans". Suddenly they're a liability and not helping protect the key in any way. And then they give the key to the new humans (why did they think that would be a good idea?), and it promptly gets taken away. Optimus' plan is terrible. "We'll lure Scourge here with the other half of the key, and then take the key from him when I kill him. There's no way this could go wrong, and Scourge gets the whole key and ends the universe, even though he kicked my ass in our last encounter." I also didn't like the fact that Scourge was basically invincible until he wasn't. All you need to do if find some lava for him, I guess?

Oh yeah, and why is there absolutely no way they can get back to Cybertron unless they use the Transwarp key? I mean, they all got to Earth without the Transwarp key, right?

I thought Pete Davidson was fine, but if you're going to make his personality like Jazz, why not just call him Jazz? He didn't even use his holographic powers in any meaningful way.

I thought the Maximals were some of the best parts of the movie, even if Rhinox and Cheetor were underused. And I am not even a Beast Wars fan. I more of a G1 guy. I also liked the human characters. I'd be fine with them continuing in the franchise.

Draven

Wasn’t Pete Davidson supposed to be this Mirage?

fujishig

Yeah the plot is entirely incomprehensible and only used so that they could film in cool locations. Like what changed between when Optimus and the autobots got their tails kicked and when he faced Scourge the second time? I kinda hate grumpy old man Optimus anyway but man he was a dick.

I also don't understand why the Maximals don't even transform until the battle, was that a budget thing? AirRazor doesn't transform at all.

mndtrp

I liked it more than the Bay movies, but less than Bumblebee. I definitely didn't like the mech suit, regardless of whether or not it's from the source material.

TheBang

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. When I first saw that suit going on, I got really excited, thinking that they were going to do Targetmasters or Powermasters or something. But then it ended up just being like the accelerator suits in the G.I. Joe movie, which was the worst thing (well, 1 of 10 worst things) about that movie.

RocShemp

Here's some G1-inspired Arcee goodness.