I recently finished watching the first and second season of Transformers Prime on Netflix. This is one of the best Transformers series. It has engaging characters both good and evil, the humans manage to show some usefulness now and again despite being in way over their heads, and the plot makes sense even though situations change very quickly for both Autobots and Decepticons.
I would love to watch the third season, but it is not available on Netflix yet, just like the eighth season of Supernatural and the third season of The Walking Dead. I will be ending my subscription for Netflix soon and won't go back unless or until they update their seasons.
The original series of
Transformers set a staple for the franchise, but it had many flaws. For
instance, there were many very useful abilities that the robots had
shared in the first episode that they barely use if at all in the rest
of the series. It makes no sense for robots like Soundwave and Megatron
to transform into objects of much smaller size and can not move. The
humans in the series seemed to serve absolutely no purpose besides
showing the audience that this story takes place on earth. Also, there
were certain plot details that didn't make sense.
Transformers the Animated Series, was okay. You definably got the sense that the Autobots had it rough against the Decepticons, but the Autobots seem to be much too weak in comparison. The Autobots usually had hard times against numerous human enemies, and their abilities were by far too weak and not amusing at times. Sure Optimus Prime had an ax, but how often would spraying fire extinguishing foam be against lasers and missiles? Also, certain voices didn't seem that impressive, and were sometimes just annoying.
Beast Wars was an amazing show too. It was a follow up story arc to the original Transformer series set in the distant future with the ancestors of Autobots, Maximals, and Decpeticons, Predicons, traveling back in time to the era when the robots were asleep for a million years on Earth. They find themselves stranded on this planet with no hope to find their way back to Cybertron fighting a war against each other. Robots of this time era are much smaller and transform into creatures instead of vehicles. It opened up the story for alternative plots in some episodes besides fighting over Energon. It also gave the toy line some new directions to go in. Instead of making entirely new characters, they managed to change some of their forms.
The first two episodes of Beast Wars are very simplistic. The dialogue is very simple and the animation needed a lot of work. The series did develop very well over time.
This series had some awesome characters. Optimus Primal was a very strong leader, and this Megatron was especially sinister and diabolical which was fun. Rat Trap was funny yet awesome at times, Cheetor developed from an annoying youth to an awesome character, Rhinox seemed to be very reliable, it was hilarious to see Waspernator as everyone's punching bag, Rampage was creepy yet awesome, Silverbolt was interesting to see when he tried to do what he believed was right despite when he seemed to be fighting against his own comrades, and Taranchalus was a smart independent thinker. Dinobot was my character from the series. He was the poetic warrior who joined the Autobots after having a falling out with the Predicons. Dinobot was constantly arguing his points and wanted to lead. It was very sad when he died in the series, but he went out a hero. Even the Transmetal 3 clone of Dinobot was awesome. I think many people were a huge fan of Blackaracnia, since there have been similar characters to her in two other Transformer series.
One thing I do have to complain about is how often most of these characters have come to dying and yet they managed to put themselves back together. It was hard to take seriously at times when these characters were in danger, and when certain characters actually did die it raised questions. Though it did make sense at times since certain characters were not that interesting, or there were too many characters being added on.
I do not like the follow up series Beast Machines nearly as much as this one. It had some awesome fight scenes, but it lacked in certain areas.
(This image is from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformers:_Armada)
I only saw a little of Transformers Armada. The complex plot appeared to be interesting at times, but the animation seemed to be lacking a lot. These Transformers were still bulky machines that relied on firepower too often.
Micheal Bay's Transformer movies were not nearly as good as these series. Those movies concentrated on the humans of Earth way too much even though they are not that interesting, didn't concentrate on the robots nearly as much, had robots that were just not entertaining to watch, made the robots appear to be much more fragile than they should have been, and the movies were inconsistent. Sure there were a few good action scenes, but good movies require more. I did not even bother to see Dark Side of the Moon.
Overall, Transformers has had numerous series that have been entertaining generations for years.
