Main Voice Cast for Transformers Earthspark Revealed with Alan Tudyk as Optimus Prime

Evil Eye wrote:Earthspark details revealed.

Oh dear. The character designs still look hideous, and making your only major white human character a villain is not a good look. On the plus side Megatron is going to be a tiltrotor, but that aside...oof.

You do realise this is just the main cast, right? Still plenty of opportunity for good and bad representation on both sides. Heck, as far as I can recall we never knew Fowler or Silas even existed when they first announced Prime, and they were pretty significant characters.

So, is the preview clip region-locked? Because I can't see it.

Also, minor pet peeve, but why do we get the name of every human character - even the Terran Transformers get a human last name - and the human villain only gets a "code name"?

More humans than bots. Gee...where has that happened before?

Just watched the trailer. For a kids show the animation is far superior to Cyberverse, so that is a huge plus. Still not too keen on the acting though. I'll probably give the show a chance fully acknowledging however it is not for me.

First-Aid wrote:More humans than bots. Gee...where has that happened before?

Masterforce?

Megatron: "Holy CRAP, what is happening on Nickelodeon?"
Starscream: "A good Transformers cartoon?"
Megatron: "A.... a GOOD Transformers cartoon!? Something decently written with a well-paced plot and an interesting cast of characters, broadcast on a non-exclusive platform entirely from within your KITCHEN?"
Starscream: "Yes?"
Megatron: "May I SEE it?"
Starscream: "...No."

So, Optimus and Bumblebee look based their evergreen designs, Megatron's got a copter altmode like Animated, Elita-1 is a tough-looking offroad truck, Wheeljack looks a LOT like his Studio Series Bumblebee movie toy, Swindle seems to have a mostly original design, and Bombshell looks based on his Combiner Wars Legends class toy.

Region locked video.

Why it's still a thing?

-Kanrabat- wrote:Region locked video.

Why it's still a thing?

There was another one on YouTube a bit ago, but Paramount flagged it immediately.

So quick Google on some of the actors. We basically have Sandor Clegane as Megatron and Wash (or Dutch to keep it purely Transformers-related) as Optimus.

...now I want to hear Optimus say "I'm a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar".

Show looks like it could be fine, the budget is certainly at it's largest since TF-Prime but a decent budget alone does not make a show great, so we'll see how it ends up.


The only thing that actually bothers me about this show from what we know about it is literally the entire head design of the female-child, it's literally an uncanny hell-spawn of Unicron with the size of the eyes and the head and well everything compared to the other human designs in the show which look fine.


Ah and it being behind Paramount + so I'll never watch this show legitimately since I'm in Canada and we don't have that service here.

First-Aid wrote:More humans than bots. Gee...where has that happened before?

Please count again and tell me how many humans vs how many bots there are.

As much as Alan tudyk is awesome he forgot to act as a human in the rookie recently and seemed stuck in his resident alien role :p more cast of powerless is never a bad thing tho.

MaximalNui wrote:

Evil Eye wrote:Earthspark details revealed.

Oh dear. The character designs still look hideous, and making your only major white human character a villain is not a good look. On the plus side Megatron is going to be a tiltrotor, but that aside...oof.

You do realise this is just the main cast, right?

Yeah, hence why I said "major" character.

Evil Eye wrote:Oh dear. The character designs still look hideous, and making your only major white human character a villain is not a good look.

Sometimes I almost miss the days when we were so smugly secure in our privilege that we weren't wringing our hands over representation in media and expecting every cartoon family to have a token white man in it. But then, I guess most of us aren't.

I am disappointed that the main villain is human though. On first read I thought he was a Transformer that hated Transformers, which sounded really interesting. Kind of like IDW Sandstorm.

I'm really interested to see what Megatron's role is going to be.

As far as humans' involvement in war as passive observers versus active participants, one thing the Bay movies did get right was the weapons. Budiansky's bios back in the day mixed sxifi tech with conventional weaponry, calling out machine guns, missiles, and bombs, especially for the Decepticons. They used high-end versions of weapons that are standard fare for Earth military vehicles. Their armor, when called out as exceptional, was still made of familiar materials, and it wasn't usually called out as exceptional.

The cartoon bent more scifi, though no more so than G.I. Joe - Transformers had laser guns and scifi shenanigans, but so did humans - who were frequently inventing things advanced enough that the Decepticons needed to steal. Bots could also be repaired oe outright built on Earth using resources available here, and your average Autobot could be roughed up a bit even with a traffic-speed collision, so they weren't usually supposed to be invincible.

Dr. Caelus wrote:so they weren't usually supposed to be invincible.

One was...



Anyway, region-locked video. Did we get a release date? As long as it isn't as sleep inducing as Siege, I'll at least give the pilot episode the benefit of the doubt.

Dr. Caelus wrote:

Evil Eye wrote:Oh dear. The character designs still look hideous, and making your only major white human character a villain is not a good look.

Sometimes I almost miss the days when we were so smugly secure in our privilege that we weren't wringing our hands over representation in media and expecting every cartoon family to have a token white man in it. But then, I guess most of us aren't.

Look at it this way- if it were the other way around and the only revealed main character who WASN'T white was the mad scientist villain, there'd be complaints. It works both ways; if you're claiming to be diverse, you need to be, well, diverse. And "Everyone is one race except the villain" is not that, regardless of what those races are. It could be that everyone was from Venezuela except the villain who was Mongolian and it would be equally ridiculous.

Prime, for all the things I found subpar about it, did it right. You had a white kid, a Japanese kid, a Latino kid, a black agent (also the best character incidentally) and it never felt forced. Likewise, Animated has the main human character be of Indian descent, and she's one of my favourite humans in Transformers. This? It just feels very much like pandering. Not even to black fans or even black kids- rather, to people who literally just want to see THEIR worldview given credit, THEIR egos stroked (even if they aren't black themselves) at the expense of everybody else, even though they can literally go to any other property for that already.

A mainstream cartoon having representation of other people in it? That's cool, no problem. A show aimed at a black audience? Why not? But mixing the two together seems incompatible- you're going for a show that's supposed to have as broad an appeal as possible specifically targeting a relatively niche audience.

Honestly I would have thought the classic Japanese approach of "Mukokuseki" would have been a better one- making race beyond basic skin colour pretty indeterminate and honestly utterly unimportant to the story or character's personality. To children- you know, the actual audience for these shows- even assuming they care about being "represented" beyond basic skin colour and sex, their main draw to a character will be "They're cool/cute/funny!".

Plus, quite aside from anything else, the character designs are objectively hideous.

AllNewSuperRobot wrote:

Dr. Caelus wrote:so they weren't usually supposed to be invincible.

One was...

Yes! Literally the exception that proves the rule! THE big bad, resurrected by an evil god of destruvlction to be his ultimate warrior SHOULD be nigh unstoppable, and that loses a lot if everyone down to Bumblebee is essentially made of immortal playdoh that just soaks damage like a sponge.

Evil Eye wrote:Look at it this way- if it were the other way around and the only revealed main character who WASN'T white was the mad scientist villain, there'd be complaints. It works both ways...

It doesn't actually work both ways.

I'm new here so forgive me for not knowing how to respond properly, but to the gentleman Evil Eye; youre reasoning for your first comment mentioned that black fans wouldn't even want this. Now I know I am paraphrasing so I do suggest you all read his comments fully, but, unless you are black what place or right do you have to speak on our behalf? Even if you talked to 100 black fans you still don't get to speak for what we do and don't want. I was born in 1995 and while most of the older stuff I watched was secondhand, one show I really loved was armada and animated. Carlos was a brown character and so was Sari. Also the villains of animated were all white and that wasn't an issue, so why now? I grew up with two loving parents and a younger brother and this show finally give me a chance to see characters who look like me join in the adventure. Yes I am happy that a black family is the lead cast because representation matters. This show paints us in a positive and non stereotypical way and that's all I've ever wanted. It already hurts enough when I get discriminated against in real life but to come here and see it?

Like dude, it's not woke or an agenda. We just want a chance to be represented and to join in the story. Why do some of you get so upset for that? And you complain about the only villains being white bothers me even more. Transformers isn't suddenly about to demonize all white people by making them villains. And NO. This show isn't just aimed at black people. If I can enjoy Generation 1 even though the main cast is white there's no reason you can't look past the main characters here being black. Let us have a chance to be the lead without making us feel terrible for it. We're not a political device, we are human beings and when we read other fans saying stuff like this it hurts us and makes us feel like we'll never be truly accepted by the Fandom. I've always wanted to draw transformers comics and be involved with the brand but comments like Evil Eyes make me think that might never happen. You can not like the designs, that's fine, but the whole Black comment and White villains comment was unnecessary.

Evil Eye wrote:Plus, quite aside from anything else, the character designs are objectively hideous.

I found some photos of the trailer.Talking about design:Mandroid is the best looking one to me.Between humans?Nono!He reminds me vaguely of the professer Mortum.

No one will be surprised if the two terrans "pets of death" get buffed at some point.

Evil Eye wrote:Look at it this way- if it were the other way around and the only revealed main character who WASN'T white was the mad scientist villain, there'd be complaints. It works both ways; if you're claiming to be diverse, you need to be, well, diverse. And "Everyone is one race except the villain" is not that, regardless of what those races are. It could be that everyone was from Venezuela except the villain who was Mongolian and it would be equally ridiculous.

Prime, for all the things I found subpar about it, did it right. You had a white kid, a Japanese kid, a Latino kid, a black agent (also the best character incidentally) and it never felt forced. Likewise, Animated has the main human character be of Indian descent, and she's one of my favourite humans in Transformers. This? It just feels very much like pandering. Not even to black fans or even black kids- rather, to people who literally just want to see THEIR worldview given credit, THEIR egos stroked (even if they aren't black themselves) at the expense of everybody else, even though they can literally go to any other property for that already.

A mainstream cartoon having representation of other people in it? That's cool, no problem. A show aimed at a black audience? Why not? But mixing the two together seems incompatible- you're going for a show that's supposed to have as broad an appeal as possible specifically targeting a relatively niche audience.

Honestly I would have thought the classic Japanese approach of "Mukokuseki" would have been a better one- making race beyond basic skin colour pretty indeterminate and honestly utterly unimportant to the story or character's personality. To children- you know, the actual audience for these shows- even assuming they care about being "represented" beyond basic skin colour and sex, their main draw to a character will be "They're cool/cute/funny!".

Plus, quite aside from anything else, the character designs are objectively hideous.

Dude your comments about the race of the characters is utter nonsense, families are usually comprised of one race, who cares if the villain is white or any other skin color, who cares if the family is black, you bring up Animated who's main family was both also one race and the human villain's in that show were also mostly white but you ain't saying nothing about how that show did it huh? TFP was diverse in it's cast because guess what it's human cast wasn't a family! Turns out that's a pretty different god damn dynamic.


You act like we know the whole cast for the entire show but we don't, and even if these are all the humans why does it matter?


What's even different here? What's different to having the black family this time as opposed to the white family in RID or in the OG G1 cartoon? (which had other characters of other skin colors as occasional allies which can also be the case here.)

Just straight up, your worldview here from how you present it is just straight up wrong and backwards thinking, why is it only that people say stupid stuff like this when the main characters are anything but white.

Dr. Caelus wrote:Sometimes I almost miss the days when we were so smugly secure in our privilege that we weren't wringing our hands over representation in media and expecting every cartoon family to have a token white man in it. invincible.

Also, just pointing out that no matter of your gender or race, living in any 1st World country comes with a buttload of privileges. Many that we are not even aware of because of how comfortable our lives are.

Having the luxury to worry about toys and cartoons is proof enough.

Deadput wrote:

Evil Eye wrote:Look at it this way- if it were the other way around and the only revealed main character who WASN'T white was the mad scientist villain, there'd be complaints. It works both ways; if you're claiming to be diverse, you need to be, well, diverse. And "Everyone is one race except the villain" is not that, regardless of what those races are. It could be that everyone was from Venezuela except the villain who was Mongolian and it would be equally ridiculous.

Prime, for all the things I found subpar about it, did it right. You had a white kid, a Japanese kid, a Latino kid, a black agent (also the best character incidentally) and it never felt forced. Likewise, Animated has the main human character be of Indian descent, and she's one of my favourite humans in Transformers. This? It just feels very much like pandering. Not even to black fans or even black kids- rather, to people who literally just want to see THEIR worldview given credit, THEIR egos stroked (even if they aren't black themselves) at the expense of everybody else, even though they can literally go to any other property for that already.

A mainstream cartoon having representation of other people in it? That's cool, no problem. A show aimed at a black audience? Why not? But mixing the two together seems incompatible- you're going for a show that's supposed to have as broad an appeal as possible specifically targeting a relatively niche audience.

Honestly I would have thought the classic Japanese approach of "Mukokuseki" would have been a better one- making race beyond basic skin colour pretty indeterminate and honestly utterly unimportant to the story or character's personality. To children- you know, the actual audience for these shows- even assuming they care about being "represented" beyond basic skin colour and sex, their main draw to a character will be "They're cool/cute/funny!".

Plus, quite aside from anything else, the character designs are objectively hideous.

Dude your comments about the race of the characters is utter nonsense, families are usually comprised of one race, who cares if the villain is white or any other skin color, who cares if the family is black, you bring up Animated who's main family was both also one race and the human villain's in that show were also mostly white but you ain't saying nothing about how that show did it huh? TFP was diverse in it's cast because guess what it's human cast wasn't a family! Turns out that's a pretty different god damn dynamic.

Because having the entire main character cast be from one family is not great. And let's be real- if it were a white family we'd be having people accusing it of "white supremacy" and demanding the husband be made black or something.

You act like we know the whole cast for the entire show but we don't, and even if these are all the humans why does it matter?

They're clearly the MAIN cast, hence why they've been shown to us. As for why it matters...did you read my post?

What's even different here? What's different to having the black family this time as opposed to the white family in RID or in the OG G1 cartoon? (which had other characters of other skin colors as occasional allies which can also be the case here.)

If it doesn't matter, why are you so adamant in defending it? But I'll tell you why it's not great.
1: America (where this is presumably set) is a majority white country. If it were made in, set in and made for Jamaica, I'd be a bit surprised if the characters were all white, or Hispanic. There are bits of America that are more black, but even so, setting the series in such a specific environment limits appeal. If they want to go for "realistic representation" then for a children's toy-promoting cartoon, which NEEDS as wide an appeal as possible, it DOES NOT MAKE SENSE to aim solely at a minority. It'd be like if the target audience were Mormons; the majority of children in America buying Transformers and watching the cartoon are not Mormons. It isn't going to work.
2: Why does the whole main cast of humans need to be from the family? Why can't it just be the brother and sister, with the parents as incidental characters, and the other two main kids being, I dunno, Christopher (a white boy) and Lailani (a Filipina girl)? That's how you do GENUINE diversity- you know, having MORE THAN ONE GROUP REPRESENTED.
3: It's obvious WHY they've done this. It's partly to gain kudos from the (probably childless and white) people on Twitter that want every single media property on Earth to conform to their (patently stupid) personal politics, and partly so when it inevitably fails they can blame its failure on "racism" and call everyone who criticized or just didn't watch it as a "white supremacist chud" or whatever. Which is bad enough with a franchise for adults, but for a kid's show is downright grotesque. This has nothing to do with wanting positive representation for black people or whatever, and everything to do with wanting to shield their pet project from criticism in the worst way possible.

Want a similar example? Look at the upcoming LOTR Amazon series. It looks...bad. Very bad. But because it has a black Elf in it (which makes zero sense in a setting based on old England and written by a man who extensively studied Anglo-Saxon history) you can't criticize it without being smeared as a proto-Klansman. Which seems especially pointless with a fantasy work- if you want to make an LOTR-like fantasy story similarly inspired by IRL mythology, but wanted a black main cast, you can! There's SO many fascinating mythologies and cultures to draw upon- Africa alone has thousands, and then you have Aboriginal culture which is absolutely incredible. In fact, that's FAR more doable than trying to make what is, at the end of the day, a vehicle to sell toys to American children, but using an almost entirely black cast. But no, the greedy, lazy gits in charge of the Rings of Power production didn't WANT to make a new story, that would take effort and time- they wanted a quick buck with a gimmick to sell the product and also use as a shield against critique. Hence why they just took an existing and comprehensively explored setting like LOTR and wore its skin like a suit.

Also there's the fact that having the sole main-cast white person be a villain is classic nu-media virtue signalling/anti-white dogwhistle but that's a whole other story.

Just straight up, your worldview here from how you present it is just straight up wrong and backwards thinking,

Because...? What's wrong and backwards thinking about saying "this won't appeal to the average kid"?

why is it only that people say stupid stuff like this when the main characters are anything but white.

I mean that's patently wrong. Just talking about things I found annoying, look at Avatar The Last Airbender's original live action movie. They took a really interesting world with fascinating cultures inspired by Asia, and made everyone white. That sucked. As for stupid criticisms, look at Overwatch, which I genuinely enjoyed until Blizzard came out as essentially stooges for Communist China and its despotic tyrant. People had a fit every time a new character came out that wasn't black (especially if they were white, poor Ashe!). And when they DID bring out a new black hero- Baptiste- they got mad because he wasn't a black WOMAN. So yeah, saying "people only get mad about non-white people appearing in media" is completely incorrect on every level.

Earthspark will not work as a mainstream Transformers cartoon. It will not appeal to the average child. It won't appeal to the average adult fan even. It's just a poor decision all around. Adding non-white characters or even a main protagonist? Sure. Making the ENTIRE main protagonist cast one entirely black family in a country where less than 15% of the population is black? That doesn't make sense, like, at all.

The sad thing is that they're CLEARLY doing this to deflect any possible criticism as "racism" or whatever. And you're playing into their hands.

Evil Eye wrote:Making the ENTIRE main protagonist cast one entirely black family in a country where less than 15% of the population is black? That doesn't make sense, like, at all.

The setting isn't indicative of the target audience though. This cartoon (and subsequent toyline) aren't exclusive to the US, as far as I'm aware. There's a wider world and all that.

Secondly, what do real world percentages matter to fiction?

Lastly,

Evil Eye wrote:"this won't appeal to the average kid"?

What's the source/basis for that? What appeals to the average kid in 2022 isn't the same as their forebears from ten, twenty or thirty years ago.

This is looking pretty good so far. Some entertaining human characters, top-notch voice cast, our first human villain in a while, and Megatron in a non-tank alt mode.

Evil Eye wrote:Earthspark will not work as a mainstream Transformers cartoon. It will not appeal to the average child. It won't appeal to the average adult fan even. It's just a poor decision all around. Adding non-white characters or even a main protagonist? Sure. Making the ENTIRE main protagonist cast one entirely black family in a country where less than 15% of the population is black? That doesn't make sense, like, at all.

The sad thing is that they're CLEARLY doing this to deflect any possible criticism as "racism" or whatever. And you're playing into their hands.

This chunk right here explains quite enough.

Good job exposing yourself

Looks like somebody completely missed the part where the father is Filipino.

Sabrblade wrote:Looks like somebody completely missed the part where the father is Filipino.

Didn't catch that he was Filipino until reading the cast announcement stuff now, the character wasn't focused on in the trailer.

So there we go, it is a diverse family.

AllNewSuperRobot wrote:

Evil Eye wrote:Making the ENTIRE main protagonist cast one entirely black family in a country where less than 15% of the population is black? That doesn't make sense, like, at all.

The setting isn't indicative of the target audience though. This cartoon (and subsequent toyline) aren't exclusive to the US, as far as I'm aware. There's a wider world and all that.

There is, it's true- and the majority of places it's going to be shown on TV with the toys sold alongside aren't majority black either. if the goal of making the main family black is to appeal to a black demographic...well, that's corporate suicide. You're limiting the appeal of your MASS MARKET CARTOON to a small proportion of the world.

Secondly, what do real world percentages matter to fiction?

They matter because, as mentioned, if the goal is "authentic representation" or whatever, it's failed, and also as mentioned, because if you're appealing primarily to one demographic beyond "kids and TF fans" (already a bad move) you wanna pick one that's proportionately large.

Lastly,

Evil Eye wrote:"this won't appeal to the average kid"?

What's the source/basis for that? What appeals to the average kid in 2022 isn't the same as their forebears from ten, twenty or thirty years ago.

This is self-defeating logic. If the suggestion is that representation matters and that, in order to appeal to modern audiences (and specifically in this case black audiences) then it stands to reason that by having the entire main hero cast be one, entirely black family, you're alienating everyone else. If the suggestion is that kids will be able to relate to the characters regardless of race...why do we need to have black representation then? Why would a black kid have any more trouble relating to a white character than vice versa?

If you want to make people feel represented, then represent them. Assuming the audience are even old enough to understand race, making them an artificial majority is going to be confusing at best ("Gee, Tommy, why is everyone in this show black?" "I dunno Alex, seems weird to me!") or outright insulting at worst ("How come everyone in this show looks like me and not Alex? Why doesn't he deserve to be a hero on the show?").

Plus, you know, this is aimed at children. And the average well-adjusted child has barely any concept of race, unless in the 26 years since I was born there's been genetic modifications performed on the populace to make children develop prejudice at a biological level. When I was a young lad, I didn't treat my black friends any differently from my white friends, because I didn't see how their skin colour was even remotely important. I remember when we first had the concept of racism (via Apartheid) explained to us, and we were all completely confused. Heck, I remember thinking "Hang on, what's a black person and what makes them different from a white person?" and being completely bewildered when I was told it was LITERALLY a skin colour thing. So if the goal of this show is going to be to present racial issues to kids, for one thing it won't work (because kids are naturally colourblind unless conditioned otherwise, so most likely it'll just go over their heads) and for another thing, don't push your worldview on children, that's social engineering and NOT OKAY.

There is no good reason- marketing or moral- to make the show like this. It is CLEARLY someone either trying to pander to a group they shouldn't, or pushing an agenda. Either way it's poorly-thought-out at best and plain stupid at worst.

TLDR: If representation doesn't matter, there's no reason to make the show like this and it will sabotage its success. If representation does matter, this is a TERRIBLE way of doing it.

Evil Eye wrote:

Deadput wrote:

Evil Eye wrote:Look at it this way- if it were the other way around and the only revealed main character who WASN'T white was the mad scientist villain, there'd be complaints. It works both ways; if you're claiming to be diverse, you need to be, well, diverse. And "Everyone is one race except the villain" is not that, regardless of what those races are. It could be that everyone was from Venezuela except the villain who was Mongolian and it would be equally ridiculous.

Prime, for all the things I found subpar about it, did it right. You had a white kid, a Japanese kid, a Latino kid, a black agent (also the best character incidentally) and it never felt forced. Likewise, Animated has the main human character be of Indian descent, and she's one of my favourite humans in Transformers. This? It just feels very much like pandering. Not even to black fans or even black kids- rather, to people who literally just want to see THEIR worldview given credit, THEIR egos stroked (even if they aren't black themselves) at the expense of everybody else, even though they can literally go to any other property for that already.




A mainstream cartoon having representation of other people in it? That's cool, no problem. A show aimed at a black audience? Why not? But mixing the two together seems incompatible- you're going for a show that's supposed to have as broad an appeal as possible specifically targeting a relatively niche audience.

Honestly I would have thought the classic Japanese approach of "Mukokuseki" would have been a better one- making race beyond basic skin colour pretty indeterminate and honestly utterly unimportant to the story or character's personality. To children- you know, the actual audience for these shows- even assuming they care about being "represented" beyond basic skin colour and sex, their main draw to a character will be "They're cool/cute/funny!".

Plus, quite aside from anything else, the character designs are objectively hideous.

Dude your comments about the race of the characters is utter nonsense, families are usually comprised of one race, who cares if the villain is white or any other skin color, who cares if the family is black, you bring up Animated who's main family was both also one race and the human villain's in that show were also mostly white but you ain't saying nothing about how that show did it huh? TFP was diverse in it's cast because guess what it's human cast wasn't a family! Turns out that's a pretty different god damn dynamic.

Because having the entire main character cast be from one family is not great. And let's be real- if it were a white family we'd be having people accusing it of "white supremacy" and demanding the husband be made black or something.

You act like we know the whole cast for the entire show but we don't, and even if these are all the humans why does it matter?

They're clearly the MAIN cast, hence why they've been shown to us. As for why it matters...did you read my post?

What's even different here? What's different to having the black family this time as opposed to the white family in RID or in the OG G1 cartoon? (which had other characters of other skin colors as occasional allies which can also be the case here.)

If it doesn't matter, why are you so adamant in defending it? But I'll tell you why it's not great.
1: America (where this is presumably set) is a majority white country. If it were made in, set in and made for Jamaica, I'd be a bit surprised if the characters were all white, or Hispanic. There are bits of America that are more black, but even so, setting the series in such a specific environment limits appeal. If they want to go for "realistic representation" then for a children's toy-promoting cartoon, which NEEDS as wide an appeal as possible, it DOES NOT MAKE SENSE to aim solely at a minority. It'd be like if the target audience were Mormons; the majority of children in America buying Transformers and watching the cartoon are not Mormons. It isn't going to work.
2: Why does the whole main cast of humans need to be from the family? Why can't it just be the brother and sister, with the parents as incidental characters, and the other two main kids being, I dunno, Christopher (a white boy) and Lailani (a Filipina girl)? That's how you do GENUINE diversity- you know, having MORE THAN ONE GROUP REPRESENTED.
3: It's obvious WHY they've done this. It's partly to gain kudos from the (probably childless and white) people on Twitter that want every single media property on Earth to conform to their (patently stupid) personal politics, and partly so when it inevitably fails they can blame its failure on "racism" and call everyone who criticized or just didn't watch it as a "white supremacist chud" or whatever. Which is bad enough with a franchise for adults, but for a kid's show is downright grotesque. This has nothing to do with wanting positive representation for black people or whatever, and everything to do with wanting to shield their pet project from criticism in the worst way possible.

Want a similar example? Look at the upcoming LOTR Amazon series. It looks...bad. Very bad. But because it has a black Elf in it (which makes zero sense in a setting based on old England and written by a man who extensively studied Anglo-Saxon history) you can't criticize it without being smeared as a proto-Klansman. Which seems especially pointless with a fantasy work- if you want to make an LOTR-like fantasy story similarly inspired by IRL mythology, but wanted a black main cast, you can! There's SO many fascinating mythologies and cultures to draw upon- Africa alone has thousands, and then you have Aboriginal culture which is absolutely incredible. In fact, that's FAR more doable than trying to make what is, at the end of the day, a vehicle to sell toys to American children, but using an almost entirely black cast. But no, the greedy, lazy gits in charge of the Rings of Power production didn't WANT to make a new story, that would take effort and time- they wanted a quick buck with a gimmick to sell the product and also use as a shield against critique. Hence why they just took an existing and comprehensively explored setting like LOTR and wore its skin like a suit.

Also there's the fact that having the sole main-cast white person be a villain is classic nu-media virtue signalling/anti-white dogwhistle but that's a whole other story.

Just straight up, your worldview here from how you present it is just straight up wrong and backwards thinking,

Because...? What's wrong and backwards thinking about saying "this won't appeal to the average kid"?

why is it only that people say stupid stuff like this when the main characters are anything but white.

I mean that's patently wrong. Just talking about things I found annoying, look at Avatar The Last Airbender's original live action movie. They took a really interesting world with fascinating cultures inspired by Asia, and made everyone white. That sucked. As for stupid criticisms, look at Overwatch, which I genuinely enjoyed until Blizzard came out as essentially stooges for Communist China and its despotic tyrant. People had a fit every time a new character came out that wasn't black (especially if they were white, poor Ashe!). And when they DID bring out a new black hero- Baptiste- they got mad because he wasn't a black WOMAN. So yeah, saying "people only get mad about non-white people appearing in media" is completely incorrect on every level.

Earthspark will not work as a mainstream Transformers cartoon. It will not appeal to the average child. It won't appeal to the average adult fan even. It's just a poor decision all around. Adding non-white characters or even a main protagonist? Sure. Making the ENTIRE main protagonist cast one entirely black family in a country where less than 15% of the population is black? That doesn't make sense, like, at all.

The sad thing is that they're CLEARLY doing this to deflect any possible criticism as "racism" or whatever. And you're playing into their hands.

Evil Eye, you can go find my first response to your comments. I was gonna a keep responding but the fact kne of your reasoning for your comments was "they only represent 15 percent of america" line irritated me. You can't identify with me because of .y skin color. You're trying to act like you aren't but your reasoning are jusy so bigoted. I grew up in a military household in the burbs and have two parents, a dog, a brother, fenced in yard; I had the most text book american experiences and I'm black but your saying non of that matter because I'm black and people can't identify with me? People like you make fans like us so unwelcome. I come here happy because the show I grew up with has some characters that finally look like me. No agenda, no pro black message, just positive representation of us as normal American people and you pick that apart and then try to say what minorities want? I have to deal with this in real life and now my favorite Fandom I've loved as a kid is filled with guys disapproving of a show solely based on the fact they aren't white. You are incredibly racist and you just remind .e that no matter how hard I try to be an upstanding guy, there are people like you who will never give me the credit or equality we strive for. This who exchange and your responses just made me majorly upset. You just solidified the idea that we (minorities) will never be fully accepted in this Fandom. Jeez man, what made you like this?

Deadput wrote:

Evil Eye wrote:Earthspark will not work as a mainstream Transformers cartoon. It will not appeal to the average child. It won't appeal to the average adult fan even. It's just a poor decision all around. Adding non-white characters or even a main protagonist? Sure. Making the ENTIRE main protagonist cast one entirely black family in a country where less than 15% of the population is black? That doesn't make sense, like, at all.

The sad thing is that they're CLEARLY doing this to deflect any possible criticism as "racism" or whatever. And you're playing into their hands.

This chunk right here explains quite enough.

Good job exposing yourself

Exposing myself as...what? Someone who understands what the much-vaunted "diversity" and "representation" actually mean and can see this project has done a TERRIBLE job at it? Someone who is aware enough to see that companies will sink to any level to shield themselves against critics, up to and including demonizing them as racists?

As for the father I genuinely didn't know he was supposed to be Filipino, so that's an absolutely fair point- however I would also point out that the character designs are so BAD that I couldn't actually tell him apart from the other members of the family, certainly not to the point I'd go "Ah, he's Filipino!". So whilst mildly less bad than I initially thought, it really just changes the problem from "The entire main hero cast is one race" into "The character designers are so bad at their job they can't make a Southeast Asian character look distinguishable from a black one", which whilst a different issue is still pretty bloody bad. Like, I have a lot of Pinobros and Pinaypals- they're pretty distinctive looking ethnically speaking. Like, genetically they're the result of crossbreeding of Southeast Asians with Latin European (specifically Spanish) people over many generations. Meanwhile, the dad in the family looks like a slightly lighter shade of black, and physically is just as Mars Needs Moms as the rest of the cast.

*walks in to make a comment about a very short snippet of the new cartoon*
*sees all the bullshit happening*
*walks out*

Burn wrote:*walks in to make a comment about a very short snippet of the new cartoon*
*sees all the bullshit happening*
*walks out*

Because you're obviously ignorant and biased. You're a racist and everyone is trying to tell you what's wrong with your statement yet you keep ignoring points and stuck to your outdated worldview. Plus, I responded to you and broke down what was wrong with yourstatement. I'm a black fan and your whole statement jusy absolutely craoped on all of the black fans in this Fandom. Transformers is supposed to be a Fandom welcome to all and we're supposed to be above it yet fans like you come and shut your racist nonsense. You haven't been able to refute one thing I said. Just admit you don't wanna see black people in the lead of things. "You're only catering to one demographic" bs. You don't have to be the same color to identify with someone. I watched g1 and there's no excuse why someone can't do the same. I hate that I have to keep arguing with you but I jusy can't let this stand. Your words are more problematic than you think. No one else brought up race but you so it's obvious race isn't going to be an issue. It's self defeating logic.

My only worry about the show in terms of the makeup comes from what they seemed to be pushing in the promo. They were yammering about how they want to use the show 'to redefine what it means to be a family'.

And whenever Hollywood gets excited about using a show to lean on the scale of social norms, I wince. Not because of any weird agendas they might have - but because it means that entertainment is no longer the main focus of that show. It becomes more about pushing the message, whatever it might be.

A Transformers show needs be about making a good story, with believable characters, a cohesive plot, and thrilling action. At it's most basic level, it should be a story about good vs. evil between two warring factions of sentient robots. If the plot and writing of Earthspark instead becomes subsumed in some crusade to 'redefine the family', then the show will be mediocre at best, cheesy and eye-rolling at worst. It remains to be seen.

This video plays in Canada, at least:

Sabrblade wrote:This video plays in Canada, at least:

Works for me as well.

Even though I'm far from the intended target market it does look to have potential.

DeathReviews wrote:A Transformers show needs be about making a good story, with believable characters, a cohesive plot, and thrilling action. At it's most basic level, it should be a story about good vs. evil between two warring factions of sentient robots. If the plot and writing of Earthspark instead becomes subsumed in some crusade to 'redefine the family', then the show will be mediocre at best, cheesy and eye-rolling at worst. It remains to be seen.

I often disagree with you.
But here, it's AMEN, BROTHER!

I sincerely hope that show will be on Prime level and not suffer the Get Woke Go Broke curse.

-Kanrabat- wrote:I sincerely hope that show will be on Prime level and not suffer the Get Woke Go Broke curse.

This tends to happen because people like YOU look too deeply and see things that aren't really there.

Can we return to topic, please? Thanks.

The initial list of main characters showed more humans than bots, hence my concern. Seeing more bots in the promos makes me feel better but only marginally. This once again looks like G1 Redux...I'll wait until the first episode to decide whether this is worth it. I'm still waiting for TransTech...

First-Aid wrote:I'm still waiting for TransTech...

Funny you should mention that.

Sabrblade wrote:

First-Aid wrote:I'm still waiting for TransTech...

Funny you should mention that.

I hate you. You posted this and I got all excited that maybe....MAYBE, against all odds, we were finally going to get something new.

Burn wrote:

-Kanrabat- wrote:I sincerely hope that show will be on Prime level and not suffer the Get Woke Go Broke curse.

This tends to happen because people like YOU look too deeply and see things that aren't really there.

Money talk, BS walk. Just look at the numbers. Woke shows, comics, games, and movie fail hard while those that put ENTERTAINMENT first instead of the message have success and makes buttload of money.

TlDr; You said it yourself. Yes indeed, if people like ME decide a show lives or die, it mean WE ARE THE MAJORITY. We speak with our wallet. Money. The most powerful voice.

You'll notice once you decide, or will be forced to look outside your ever shrinking bubble.

¯\_( ͡°ヮ ͡°)_/¯

-Kanrabat- wrote:

Burn wrote:

-Kanrabat- wrote:I sincerely hope that show will be on Prime level and not suffer the Get Woke Go Broke curse.

This tends to happen because people like YOU look too deeply and see things that aren't really there.

Money talk, BS walk. Just look at the numbers. Woke shows, comics, games, and movie fail hard while those that put ENTERTAINMENT first instead of the message have success and makes buttload of money.

TlDr; You said it yourself. Yes indeed, if people like ME decide a show lives or die, it mean WE ARE THE MAJORITY. We speak with our wallet. Money. The most powerful voice.

You'll notice once you decide, or will be forced to look outside your ever shrinking bubble.

¯\_( ͡°ヮ ͡°)_/¯

Do us all a favour and take the tin foil hat off your head and shove it down your throat.

Burn wrote:

-Kanrabat- wrote:

Burn wrote:

-Kanrabat- wrote:I sincerely hope that show will be on Prime level and not suffer the Get Woke Go Broke curse.

This tends to happen because people like YOU look too deeply and see things that aren't really there.

Money talk, BS walk. Just look at the numbers. Woke shows, comics, games, and movie fail hard while those that put ENTERTAINMENT first instead of the message have success and makes buttload of money.

TlDr; You said it yourself. Yes indeed, if people like ME decide a show lives or die, it mean WE ARE THE MAJORITY. We speak with our wallet. Money. The most powerful voice.

You'll notice once you decide, or will be forced to look outside your ever shrinking bubble.

¯\_( ͡°ヮ ͡°)_/¯

Do us all a favour and take the tin foil hat off your head and shove it down your throat.

OK. I was trying to stay out of this mess I'd inadvertently created but you know what? No. No more.

You don't have to be looking "too deeply" into things to see the way media is going. You just have to have a functioning pair of eyes and NOT be deliberately obtuse. Whether you think it's a good or bad thing, whether you think it's down to "wokeness", a deliberate agenda or (as is my opinion) incompetence coupled with slimy attempts to latch onto "causes" (legitimate or otherwise) in order to make their product be more trendy/immunized against criticism, doesn't matter. It's OBVIOUS that things are changing. And guess what? People are allowed not to like it. For WHATEVER reason.

They might be silly reasons or they might be perfectly valid reasons- as DeathReviews mentioned, the choice to try and place "sending a message" over entertainment value, ESPECIALLY in a children's cartoon, is banal and pointless at absolute best. Personally I wouldn't care if it was a message I fundamentally agreed with- it doesn't belong in children's cartoons. Like I'm not gonna let any children I have play NieR Automata until they're of age, because quite frankly as amazing as that game and the themes within are, it's not suitable for- and TOO COMPLEX FOR- children.

Myself? I don't think this new cartoon is going to be very good, and I'm not going to watch it. I'm not going to boycott it or anything silly like that based on what I know of it, but I'm not gonna watch it and I don't think it's going to be particularly successful. Not even because GWGB, but just because whoever made it has clearly either placed their particular desires above making a widely marketable product, or not really thought about the latter at all. I don't think the people who made these decisions are evil or even stupid (as far as we can ever know with people that work in Western media anyway). But it is a weird and not very clever decision. And whilst I can't speak for anyone else in the thread, that isn't me wearing a "tinfoil hat". That's just a business observation from someone who's consumed a fair amount of media and watched a lot of projects crash and burn from similar moves.

Now, could Kanra have worded that better? Sure. But the basic idea- that shows (especially aimed at kids) that place some kind of social message (REGARDLESS of what that message is) above actually being fun to watch tend to not do very well and quickly fail- is NOT "tinfoil hat" thinking and CERTAINLY not grounds for telling someone to shove their nonexistent tinfoil hat down their throat. There is NO REASON to get that pointlessly hostile, ESPECIALLY over something as inconsequential as not liking a decision made by some corporate showrunner with regards to a Transformers cartoon. Are you personally involved with the production of this series? Is it somehow deeply offensive to you to see people not like the (trite and predictable) direction it's going in? Get off your high horse.

Like I say. I don't care what happens with this cartoon. Maybe it'll be better than I'm expecting. Maybe it'll be much worse. I'm probably going to buy some of the cooler figures, but that's about it. But I (and everyone else) has the right to voice displeasure at an aspect of the show they don't like- in my case the fact it's been made with zero regard for basic marketability, and also the fact the character models look like a Dreamworks animator took DMT with a copy of Maya open. I'm not personally attacking anyone- if people like it, that's fine. If people want to counter-argue, again, that's fine (as long as they're OK with me counter-counter-arguing). What's NOT fine is demonizing people for disagreeing with them and ABSOLUTELY not making aggressive personal attacks on said same people.

And even- EVEN- if you for whatever reason perceived that someone who disagreed with you said something out of order, there's better ways of making it clear to them than telling them to "take off their tinfoil hat and shove it down their throat". Be the better person. BEHAVE LIKE A DECENT HUMAN BEING. Heck, even looking back at my arguments with a certain X-rated user (now mercifully banned), even though I maintain my points were valid, I still have a fair bit of shame over how I conducted myself with him. Heck, Burn, YOU were the one who told me to be the bigger person and not let irrelevant nonsense get under my skin, even if I was right to be annoyed. And what X was saying was FAR worse than what's been said here.

I'll not be so hypocritical as to say all that and then get hostile myself. But that wasn't cool, like, at all.

Burn wrote:Do us all a favour and take the tin foil hat off your head and shove it down your throat.

Real classy, Burn. Real classy.

While DC, Marvel, and other "mainstream" comic books corporations struggle to sell anything, many like YoungRippa59 took matters in his own hands to create a comic that is pure entertainment, no wokeness, no message.

Maybe I just hallucinated the 2 3 millions dollars in preorder sales that happened in less than two weeks?
Yeah, I must be craaaaazy.





Yeah, forget it all. It was just some hallucination.

Evil Eye wrote:They might be silly reasons or they might be perfectly valid reasons- as DeathReviews mentioned, the choice to try and place "sending a message" over entertainment value, ESPECIALLY in a children's cartoon, is banal and pointless at absolute best. Personally I wouldn't care if it was a message I fundamentally agreed with- it doesn't belong in children's cartoons. Like I'm not gonna let any children I have play NieR Automata until they're of age, because quite frankly as amazing as that game and the themes within are, it's not suitable for- and TOO COMPLEX FOR- children

See, I reflexively wanted to take issue with your general disrespect for your own children's intelligence, but then I remembered two things:

(1) You obviously know your children better than I do, and if you think they're too dumb to understand a cartoon with a simple, sappy moral in each episode, then you would know better than anyone else. (And knowing is half the battle!)

(2) The disinclination to waste your time and energy trying to reach someone because you have a general lack of respect for their ability to grasp what you'd be trying to communicate is something I completely sympathize with.

Dr. Caelus wrote:

Evil Eye wrote:They might be silly reasons or they might be perfectly valid reasons- as DeathReviews mentioned, the choice to try and place "sending a message" over entertainment value, ESPECIALLY in a children's cartoon, is banal and pointless at absolute best. Personally I wouldn't care if it was a message I fundamentally agreed with- it doesn't belong in children's cartoons. Like I'm not gonna let any children I have play NieR Automata until they're of age, because quite frankly as amazing as that game and the themes within are, it's not suitable for- and TOO COMPLEX FOR- children

See, I reflexively wanted to take issue with your general disrespect for your own children's intelligence, but then I remembered two things:

(1) You obviously know your children better than I do, and if you think they're too dumb to understand a cartoon with a simple, sappy moral in each episode, then you would know better than anyone else. (And knowing is half the battle!)

(2) The disinclination to waste your time and energy trying to reach someone because you have a general lack of respect for their ability to grasp what you'd be trying to communicate is something I completely sympathize with.

To (mis?)quote Sentinel Prime, "I will ignore the condescending nature of your tone if you heed the gravity of mine".
(1) For one thing, contrary to popular belief, children AREN'T naturally racist (especially not if they aren't exposed to shame-based psychological manipulation by people with an agenda). For another, it's not television's place to teach children how to behave. It's their parents'. If children are judged as needing cartoons to tell them not to be racist, then I'd argue there are problems far beyond the scope of cartoons to solve.

(2)That is a terrible attitude to have, and also completely missing my point- namely, children do NOT need to be preached to by CARTOONS on how to behave. Parents are important for a reason.

Ok, in all seriousness, can we cut with the sh!t? Feel free to ban me or whatever, but Burn you are an admin and I would have expected something to be done about this thread sooner, not your participation in the extension of the mudslinging. The topic is completely off the f*cking tracks and needs to be reigned in. ENOUGH FROM ALL SIDES. I don't give a flying patootie about whether this is "woke" or not, whether there is racism or what not, whether someone is getting weepy because the bad guy happens to be a white dude (like Tomax and Xamot, Zartan, Dr. Archville, Sean Berger, Colonel Klink, and the Dude). I'm more interested in whether this will be on a par with previous TF series or if it's going to be a giant turd and I'd REALLY EFFING APPRECIATE IT if it returned to that topic rather than Great War 2.

I'd like to request somebody with some authority please reign in the children. Time outs all around. Don't make me go on you people.

First-Aid wrote:Ok, in all seriousness, can we cut with the sh!t? Feel free to ban me or whatever, but Burn you are an admin and I would have expected something to be done about this thread sooner, not your participation in the extension of the mudslinging. The topic is completely off the f*cking tracks and needs to be reigned in. ENOUGH FROM ALL SIDES. I don't give a flying patootie about whether this is "woke" or not, whether there is racism or what not, whether someone is getting weepy because the bad guy happens to be a white dude (like Tomax and Xamot, Zartan, Dr. Archville, Sean Berger, Colonel Klink, and the Dude). I'm more interested in whether this will be on a par with previous TF series or if it's going to be a giant turd and I'd REALLY EFFING APPRECIATE IT if it returned to that topic rather than Great War 2.

I'd like to request somebody with some authority please reign in the children. Time outs all around. Don't make me go on you people.

It's times like this that I really wish we had a "Like" button here.

Though, sadly, Burn retired some time ago. He's not on forum staff anymore.

First-Aid wrote:Ok, in all seriousness, can we cut with the sh!t? Feel free to ban me or whatever, but Burn you are an admin and I would have expected something to be done about this thread sooner, not your participation in the extension of the mudslinging.

Burn is no longer part of any staff. His "Forum Admin" title is just a... battle scar.


I simply wish for the show to not fall into the usual woke pitfalls and be entertaining. But for some strange reasons, that's a pretty offensive opinion is seems.



Let's wait and see for the first few episodes to roll in. If the show is good and fun, well, good. If the show try to be preachy, it will stick out like a sore thumb with no need to over-analyse anything. In the end, the ratings will be the final judge.