Sunrise, sunset.
In 1994, Transformers was dead. Again! It died once in the United States (while it lingered overseas), and they tried bringing it back in 1993 with the original toys and characters. It didn’t work. It was antiquated and it didn’t speak to the new generation. Hasbro, who had recently acquired their former competitor Kenner, tossed them the rotting corpse of their once-golden property and told Kenner to have their way with it.
And for the first time in 10 years, Transformers was suddenly a top-selling toyline and a top-rated (Emmy award-winning) cartoon. The Beast Wars toys were the third-most popular boys toyline of its time, behind Power Rangers and Star Wars. The syndicated cartoon consistently ranked first in its local timeslot among the target demographic. It resurrected the Transformers franchise and saved it from the abyss. Why?
Because it was allowed to be different.
Still perhaps the most awesome Transformers toy ever, yesss.
Some things that made Beast Wars popular were ganked from the Transformers franchise’s recent history. Its incredible articulation, for one. Its willingness to resurrect older characters if needed. Its insistence on integrating weapons into the toys in both modes, so no accessories got left behind. But what it did innovate allowed Transformers to become a living, breathing, organic property. So to speak. Yes, everyone transformed into “real” animals. It was weird to the long-time fans, but it drew in children like crazy. For the longest time, Transformers had to be designed within a certain visual perimeter. Sort of Gundamy, sort of Robotechy… everyone had to have a normal face with a crest and maybe a visor, with blocky legs and arms. Beast Wars opened that up to toothy grins, bug eyes, and frightening mandibles. Sometimes arms ended in legs or claws. Sometimes feet didn’t end in giant blocky boots, but in talons. Transformations were more complex and more creative. Shapes were new. Faces were new.
Transformers had become stale, and its near-death allowed the powers that be to unchain it, let it go, and let it find its own way, free of the conventional wisdom.
Oh, and then Beast Wars Megatron totally friggin' killed G1 Optimus Prime in the head and all of time unravelled. Have I mentioned that?
The cartoon benefited from a similar Renaissance. Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio, the co-story editors of Beast Wars, didn’t know Transformers from a hole in the ground. But they knew how to write. And it turned out that was way more important. Financial and technological constrictions turned out to not be minuses, but pluses. Since Beast Wars was computer rendered, and this was 1995, the cast was tiny by necessity, starting with just five characters on each side, marooned on barren Earthlike planet. Instead of being agoraphobic, this allowed the writers to focus and explore the characters they had. Generation 1 started with 20 characters in its first season. By its second, there were more than 50. Some were lucky enough to get a line of dialog. A sparse few got spotlight episodes. But in Beast Wars, every character had time to shine. We knew these characters inside and out. They became real to us in ways that Transformers characters had rarely accomplished previously.
"So who wants to die first?" "Oh, totally you. I'll do it later."
And it helped that Optimus Primal was not Optimus Prime. By the time we met Prime, he was already a fixture, a living legend. Inspirational to a child looking for a faultless father figure, but not very conducive to storytelling. When we met Primal, he was a nobody. He was new to his crew, and they to him. He made mistakes, but he was obviously learning on the job. And the rest of the cast knew it. Rattrap gave him so much grief. This was something rarely seen before, a hint of dissent within the good guy robots! The things Beast Wars introduced that we take for granted today…
Better yet, this was not the status quo. Rattrap organically learned to begrudgingly respect Primal. Dinobot learned over several seasons what his place in the universe was, and what he truly believed in, and what that meant for him. (It meant he would die.) Blackarachnia evolved from a by-the-numbers femme fatale into a compelling three-dimensional character. The show would always find a way to take away something from the characters that would show us who they are, allowing them to grow. In Blackarachnia’s case, it was her autonomy. In Tigatron‘s case, it was his lover. In Dinobot’s case, it was his certainty.
These things were made possible by the incredible caliber of writers assembled by Forward and DiTillio. Their ranks included Len Wein (creator of Wolverine, Storm, and Colossus), Christy Marx (Babylon 5), Jules Dennis (Real Ghostbusters and Batman: The Animated Series), D.C. Fontana (so much Star Trek), and, yes, Simon Furman (everything Transformers ever). For the first time, a Transformers show was allowed to have an over-arching plot from season to season, still with room for individual adventures. Transformers for the first time in animation was sophisticated, intelligent, and three-dimensional.
Goodbye! Hope they don't make any crappy spinoffs!
Some critics at the time of Beast Wars scoffed at its existence, claiming that once it was over it would return to obscurity, never to be seen or heard from again. They’ve been proven wrong repeatedly. The influence of Beast Wars persists to this very day. Transformers Animated gave us an Optimus Prime that was very much like the untested Optimus Primal, and included characters such as Rattletrap, Blackarachnia, and Waspinator. Beast Wars showed us that Transformers exists outside of the exclusive realm of the original cartoon, and incorporated elements taken from the Marvel Comics, like Primus, a concept that still informs Transformers fiction. The very idea of the spark, the tangible “soul” of a Transformer, has existed in every single incarnation of Transformers since, including the live-action movie, as has the concept of the Matrix/AllSpark as the Transformers afterlife. The cartoon set the golden standard for what Transformers television fiction should be and aspire to, according to both the fans and the creators of current Transformers content.
Beast Wars is why Transformers still exists. It pulled me back into Transformers after having left it, and is the biggest reason this very webcomic about toy collecting exists. It’s informed my own storytelling in the past and will continue to inform it in the future. And there will always be a shelf in my house dedicated to its toys, as they portray a series of characters that will never, ever leave me. Characters that have taught me valuable things.
Beast Wars is awesome.
so you gonna call tom croom to get his side of the story? he’s got his number out there an everything…
Perfectly written. I’m not just saying that because I’m a fan of most of your work, but everything you just wrote pretty much sums up why I extremely enjoyed Beast Wars and found very few other shows to compare. I came into it a bit late and caught most of it in syndication, but the show definitely revitalized a once-dead property for me. My first and favorite Beast Wars figure was Transmetal Rattrap and that was it, I was hooked.
Beast Machines on the other hand…
Great Job, sir. Kudos.
This is a good blog and you should feel good.
OBJECTION!
Transmetal cheetor is still he best freaking transformers toy ever! The ultimate shining light of beast mode bots! And if Beast wars had ONLY been responsible for the radical, universe destroying transmetals it would have been fantastic!
Well said sir.
I agree. TM Cheetor has hideous hands, and yet still manages to be awesome in both modes. If he had been re-released for the 10th anniversary with a lesss scowly face, I would have sold my wife for a copy.
Franky, I never found TM Cheetor all that impressive a toy. The transformation was very simplistic, and it really bugged me that when you pulled out his rockets he had a giant hole in him. As far as the Transmetals go, I much preferred Rattrap.
I feel as if I should be standing and applauding or something.
Don’t forget the fact that the story editors, in a rarity for television, actually went to the fans to help get information about the mythos of Transformers, and participated in the fan community – to the point where they all got mentions on the show. Wonko The Sane, Hooks X and Tengu, we salute you.
You should include a picture of Waspinator getting killed, preferably that time he got crushed into a cube. That’s the only thing I can think of that would make this any better, yesss.
Quality characters and story telling are, IMO, the most important part of any Transformers fiction. Hell, Animated and Beast Wars could have been done with shadow puppets and it still would have been riveting, because the story and characters were compelling.
I think any time I come across anyone being a moron about BW (which thankfully doesn’t happen much nowadays as it did when the show was new) I’m just gonna post a link to this in response.
Unfortunately, the people who dislike BW don’t actually care about introspective recommendations. They always respond the same way: “Transformers with organic Beast Modes are dumb. I watched the first 4 episodes (the ones where the show hadn’t come into its own yet) and didn’t like it, so I’m not gonna bother wasting my time watching more of it, I know it’s bad!”
Also, I saw the comic where Willis poked fun at those guys for not getting their Con panel, and it was funny, but I never saw the comments section that explained the real story of those guys. I just noticed it tonight, after making this comment, so I was unaware that all of this BW stuff was in response to a bunch of amazingly ridiculous shit. I’ve now stayed up for over 2 hours reading all of it…
You should never let anyone talk down to you about your writing or the tone of your webcomic because this is possibly your best blog entry to date. Every point you touched upon I agreed with. Code of Hero still makes me tear up when I watch it. I remember being so frustrated with Terrorsaur died (he was my favorite) but I loved the character development behind Dinobot, Primal, and Silverbolt.
I remember thinking up my very own Transformer when I was little because of Beastwars. It combined elements from Gargoyles and Beast Wars, where the hero was a human bonded with a suit of power armor made of nanites that could also turn into a giant steel dragon. The suit was a lot like Optimus Primal’s first form, where it had wrist blasters that shot spheres of energy and could fly with jets.
And now that I’ve committed the carnal sin of geekiness in that I shared a character story, I’ll go to bed.
As someone who grew up with the original TF cartoon, I loved Beast Wars. I enjoyed it’s first season when I’d have long arguements with by college buddies as to if it was connected to the original series or something new. I loved it more when it became clear it not only was connected, but AFFECTED it, too. I still mourn it’s passing, as I would’ve loved to have seen another season of it on Earth, before they moved the characters to Cybertron and ruined Rhinox and Primal (for the record, I didn’t mind Beast Machines, as I loved the idea of Megatron actually winning and ruling Cybertron, but the technical vs organic aspect went too far, IMO).
This little blog post pretty much contains everything I loved about Beast Wars, save perhaps the fact that it doesn’t mention Depth Charge. Wolverine/Boba Fett rippoff that he was, I still love him.
Well said. Generic anti-Beast Wars fan? Your rebuttal?
“TRUKK NOT MUNKY!”
Hmm, compelling argument. Looks like this one shall remain a stalemate.
You know, War For Cybertron Prime looks remarkably like the Trukkmunky. What was that…
TransTech! It’s uncanny. Down to the shoulder-wheels.
http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Optimus_Prime_%28TransTech%29
Beast Wars came to me at a time where I felt ostracized at school and felt like I didn’t fit anywhere. It was a troubled time when my parents divorced and I moved to a new place after seven years or so in the same familiar place. I truly believe Beast Wars kept me from a dark place. It also forced me to learn English and got me into watching more cartoons (like Gargoyles). I had a wall filled with Beast Wars transformers I had drawn, they were my beacon so to speak and gave me something to think about… though they didn’t improve my drawing abilities one bit. I kept them up for quite a while but they ended up being ruined by water infiltration and I put them away. I still have many of them somewhere.
Beast Wars is awesome.
I only watched this series a few years ago in it’s entirety. And yes, I agree that it is a fantastic show, utterly phenomenal (sp?). One can only hope such quality can exist again (Animated came verrrrrrryyyy close, but maybe not quite.)
i didnt like beast wars because of the stupid minicons quest. pokemon much
hahahaha
Gotta restore them all should have been Armada’s tagline.
LOL.
I really hope you’re joking o.o
Well, now I can’t stop laughing. Nice job.
This is A+
I won’t lie: I cried when Dinobot bought it the first time.
Fucking badass.
I will admit to this at a later date.
Sorry Willis but you are wrong, Beast Wars was not awesome.
It was fucking awesome.
The G1 Transformers cartoon and toys hold a strong place in my memory, as I was an incredibly impressionable 3/4 year old when they first came out. Beast Wars on the other hand holds a SPECIAL place in my memory, as I was a just-as impressionable teenager trying to find my place in the world and a meaning to life (not in a OH MY GOD EVERYTHING IS MEANINGLESS way, in a “life is so wonderful, but what’s it for?” sort of way).
I had a bit of resistance to G1 characters being reimagined and actually preferred entirely new characters, but after a bunch of episodes I got over that too, and find Beast Wars Megatron incredibly preferable to G1 Megatron (and is probably the best Megatron ever, really). Even Primal is up there amongst my favourite Optimuses. The rest of the cast I loved from the get go since they had more baggage, and new comers like Dinobot are still some of my favourite characters in the whole TF franchise.
Everything you wrote up there I wholeheartedly agree with, and then some. Beast Wars is essential to Transformer’s current identity, in almost every way.
They had NO baggage, I mean.
Beast Wars Megatron incredibly preferable to G1 Megatron (and is probably the best Megatron ever, really)
…Yeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssssss…
Preach on, brother!
Don’t think anyone could’ve put it better!
If not for Beast Wars, I wouldn’t have ever cared about Transformers. Being a mid-80s baby living in Canada, other than the random G1 episode here or there, I never really saw any neat robots that weren’t Zords. So, y’know, for a certain age range, Beast Wars IS Transformers.
Seconded. I watched a bit of one of the G1 series as a very young kid (whichever one it was that had a CG Prime talking to a live-action kid at the end), but it didn’t really stick with me. It wasn’t until Beast Wars that I truly got interested in Transformers in general, and Beast Wars is still the setting, the characters and the story that’s stuck with me the strongest.
And of course I vastly prefer BW Megs over G1 Megs, yeeessssssss.
Primus bless you, Willis- this is the Henry V’s St. Crispin’s Day Speech of Transformers fandom. I will always have a small spot of mercy for thosepanel-denied BotCon douchebags– who clearly would otherwise not have deserved it– because they prompted you to release this inspiring and passionate defense of Beast Wars and why it is, objectively and demonstrably, brilliant.
I really think the CG animation– horrifically dated by modern standards though it may be– was the primary catalyst to the show’s greatness, because as you pointed out it forced them to have a small cast, and that meant the available character development time had a far smaller denominator. And when the cast includes undeniable genuises and masters of their craft like Scott McNeil, they can turn that time into pure magic. Who would have even noticed if G1 or G2 had an entire episode voiced by one actor in four completely different roles, much less given a slag about it? You have to be able to care about the characters first. I had a handful of (pre-movie) Transformers toys as a kid, but they were just toys; Beast Wars made me care. It was the Batman: The Animated Series of Transformers– it came out, and suddenly everything that had come before it sucked. I stopped caring about Transformers when it went off the air, and didn’t get back into it until Animated, originally because Wyattron was the Art Director and after Teen Titans I’d watch the frakkin’ Weather Channel if he designed the graphics, but I stayed with it in large part because it reminded me so strongly of Beast Wars.
Think about it: If Robots In Disguise had popped in 1994 (with ’94 animation quality), would anyone have cared even a little? Would IDW have ever picked up the franchise in comics? Would Michael Bay have gotten a bajillion dollars to make an All Explosions All The Time live action Hollywood movie? Would we have had the triumph of Western Literature which is Transformers: Animated? Truly, Beast Wars is the foundation upon which the entire modern franchise was built.
Thank you for this.
I agree with everything in this post. I agree with 90% of these comments.
The only heresy that keeps me from joining the BW church of Willis is my belief that TF:A was superior. (This is, of course, only because it ripped its core material straight from BW and built upon it).
I only wonder what could possibly have driven you to such lengths that you must post this Truth. Nothing above is debatable. It is what is true and what happened. But the effort you have shown in writing down the self-evident indicates that there are nay-sayers and idiots out there who have earned a place in your cross-hairs.
So who pissed you off by being a douche?
Some guy who has a panel about why Beast Wars sucks nerd raged about BotCon rejecting his panel.
Walky made a comic mocking this person.
Person comes into said comic’s comments being uppity or something.
Walky pretty much says “put up or shut up” and when person refuses to put up, Walky claims he’s “got nothing.”
Person claims he can’t put up what he’s got because that’s what draws people to his panel. Logic proceeds to shoot holes in his case. Person proceeds to claim he will put up “WHY BEAST WARS SUCKS” after people give X amount of money to the charity of his choice.
Walky counters by making a request people give money (no specific amount) to one or two charities and simultaneously says he will put up “WHY BEAST WARS IS AWESOME” a few days later regardless of the amount raised.
Tuesday night, Walky puts up.
Person has yet to put up, too soon to say if he’s shut up.
I’ve never actually been into Transformers (barring a brief love affair after the first Michael Bay movie that was largely ended by the second) but I do know that if I ever do decide to go see it, I’ll look into Beast Wars first. Your description of it sounds so much more engaging than the older generation stuff.
It sounds more engaging because it is.
BAD ASS
Huzzah for something that isnt a 30 minute toy add! (Sure, i like the G1 charecters, but Beast wars was something special.)
But Beast Wars WAS a 30 minute toy commercial.
Yes, the nature meant it couldn’t feature new individual toys every week, but it still existed to make kids want to buy the toys.
Note that in every new character’s debut episode, they were mostly invincible. Airazor, Tigatron, Blackarachnia, Inferno… and then in subsequent appearances they were backed down a bit. Gotta push the new toy!
I feel like you should be on a podium somewhere giving this speech infront of a assembly or something.
Now I regret not having watched this as a kid. Dammit.
I was aware of Beast Wars as a 11-12 year old, but I never got to see more than one, maybe two episodes. Transformers was hard to see on German TV at the time.
But I loved the toys. I remember finally saving up enough money to buy Tarantulas, whom I did not know from the show, but he was a cool spider!
I grew up with the later G1-toys, I loved the micromasters and my powermaster prime and I even had actionmaster Jazz (whose name I only know in retrospective. I remember his looks and the befuddlement of why he did not transform).
But the Beast Wars toys were so much cooler than anything G1 had to offer, for exactly the reasons Willis detailed here.
I am now in my 20s and with access to the internet, coupled with a grasp of the english language I went ahead to revisit some nostalgia and watch all transformers cartoons, in order of appearance.
G1 did not hold my interest AT ALL. I like the movie (86) for it´s cheesy glory and because I remember parts of that from my childhood, but all in all G1 does nothing for me at all.
Beast Wars however excited me. While it started a bit slow, it quickly found it´s pace and I gladly went along for the ride.
The characters really sold the show, but you already know that. Suffice to say they define tranformers to me.
Beast Machines was not bad, but paled in comparison to Beast Wars.
RiD to Cybertron were near unwatchable and I did not watch the shows in their entirety.
Animated was golden. It took some of the things that made beast wars great (Mr Willis alluded to this already) and was fun to watch.
But no character from animated managed to make as lasting an impression as the likes of dinobot or Rattrap have.
To make a long story short, beast wars is the gold standard by which I judge transformers, both in terms of fiction and toys.
Beast Wars is awesome!
I was 8 when Beast Wars came out. It didn’t matter how good the storylines were or how well articulated the toys were, I liked big robots and that was that. My point being maybe Beast Wars objectors just like big robots. Which I admit is stupid, but also beautiful in its own way.
It was made by the ReBoot people. Of course it was fantastic.
Wait, I thought ReBoot was started after Beast Wars was?
Either way, the same team did excellent work on both series.
Reboot had about two years on Beast Wars/Beasties.
Huh, I actually didn’t know that about Hasbro absorbing Kenner. Or the history of Beast Wars, despite growing up with the series. That actually explains a few things I’d been wondering about… Nicely said, the series also left poor villain-lovers like me praying that some day we’ll see a new incarnation of Tarantulas/Tarantulus.
I was 9 when G1 came out.
Beast Wars initially didn’t do much for me since it wasn’t really “my” Transformers.
I never hated it though.
Once Beast Machines got me back into TFs finding out thanks to folks like Ben Yee that it was in fact connected to G1 and Fox showing it 5 days a week lead me to fall in love with the show.
It was just so damned good. Good writing, lots of character stuff, some really great voice acting.
I ended up pretty much getting the toys of nearly every character. I think only our two poor dead Predacons in S1 were missed by me in some form or another. (And if we count sculpts only Scorponok wasn’t had in some manner.)
They were brought to live and had empathy and charm.
Let’s do a quick test.
You have to have watched G1 and Beast Wars for it to work.
Don’t check the Internet.
Tell me the personalities of Vortex, Hot Spot, and Pipes.
I have all the Cybertronian guides and the collected Dreamwave guides.
I CAN’T TELL YOU.
I can tell you what they turn into, but… that’s about it.
Now let’s talk about Beast Wars Rampage, Tigatron, and Inferno.
Yeah. Thought so. Rampage is an enslaved project driven to madness and rage, with a small bit of his immortal spark making him incredibly lonely. He is a freak and he knows it. Causing suffering in others is his only solace.
Tigatron would prefer to explore the land and interact with the creatures upon it. He is a gentle knight of the tundra, driven more by his soul than anything else.
Inferno is a crazed pyromaniac who is completely loyal to Megatron (something few other of his Predacons can say) who he thinks is the queen of his ant hive.
Beast Wars brought their cast to LIFE. They all had personalities and quirks and more to them other than being a robot that turns into X.
In G1 maybe 10-15 Transformers on the cartoon actually had personalities of any note.
Nearly 100 episodes and most of the cast were archetypes at best.
And I say Season 2 and 3 of Beast Wars still looks great. On an upscaled DVD player to a 32 inch 1080p screen the show looks fantastic outside of maybe a slightly slower framerate. It was 95 and Mainframe was still a young company.
It still beats the god awful low grade animation G1 used. Everyone remembers how great the movie looked, but the original 3 seasons? Virtually unbearable, and even some anime of the mid 70s like Gatchaman (Battle of the Planets) blows it out of the water.
Outside of a few farmed out Macross episodes (which also predated G1), Robotech as a whole looks vastly better.
Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of love for G1, but my love comes more from the Marvel comics. Even Carwash of Doom with Ratbat the EVIL ACCOUNTANT.
This was a great post Willis. I’d love to see the G1 cartoon nostalgia freaks try to counter anything you said.
They really can’t.
“Tell me the personalities of Vortex, Hot Spot, and Pipes”
From the top of my head:
Vortex- Dizzy psycho that likes twirling people in the air and making them sick.
Hot Spot – Gung Ho forceful leader
Pipes – Geeky collector of Earthen gadgets
Yeah, your point still stands as a good one, I’m just a really huge Tf Geek.
Well yeah, but again, I have seen your name since the ATT days when Beast Machines was still in season 1.
You should sort of be expected to know such character traits. So should I, but I do not.
And thus my point (which you seem to agree with but I feel like repeating just because!) stands.
The people who bash Beast Wars and proclaim how great G1 is probably won’t be able to tell you many G1 character personalities out of the main movie characters, Prime, Starscream, Megatron, and maybe 3-4 others.
Its mostly half remembered nostalgia.
These same people if you actually sit them down to watch G1 now would probably end up lying that it was great except their faces would show the truth.
Outside of those few unfortunate souls with truly bad taste (like a nostalgia whore friend of mine who actually likes things like Twilight, and buys the most poorly reviewed licensed videogames and ENJOYS THEM) most people are gonna rewatch the shows of their youth and wonder why they liked such terrible things.
Stuff like original cartoon TMNT, Thundercats, He Man… they don’t hold up at ALL.
Even some of the better 80s cartoons like Robotech are pretty painful to watch, and it was probably the smartest cartoon of the mid 80s. (Sure lots of it can be blamed on it being an edit job. But the fact it fits together at ALL shows how unimaginative kids shows were even back then. Even the animu.)
Real Ghostbusters is pretty good, but most of the beloved 80s shows… kind of bite.
Though most had some seriously ROCKIN openings. We just don’t have those any more. At best its 30 seconds long now as we need more ad time.
I know a lot of these old shows I haven’t had a chance to rewatch probably suck but I so want to see Mighty Orbots and Saber Rider and Visionaries just because of how much ownage the opening songs have.
Whats sad is really the only eps of G1 I can stand are the ugly S3 ones that do stupid things like send Galvatron to a psychiatric planet. That’s HILARIOUS.
Then there are some like the one with ALLIGATOR PRIME which are just too dumb for words.
Nostalgia: Its a terrible thing. Makes you think Battletoads was a fun videogame.
I picked up a
bootlegDVD set of Bionic 6 once at a con, in a bout of nostalgia-fueled madness. I put off actually opening it for a long time, since I was pretty sure it wouldn’t hold up. When I finally watched some of it…it wasn’t half bad actually. Maybe I’d just lowered my expectations enough, but it was fairly entertaining.The pilot miniseries of The Inhumanoids wasn’t half bad either.
Robotech’s actually pretty good, with the exception of the Robotech Masters segment (the middle part, made from Superdimension Cavalry Southern Cross), which was the most mangled to fit it into the single storyline and was made from the cheapest & worst written source in the first place. But the Macross Saga and New Generation segments were tight.
Of course, the ’90s had their share of crap. Hammerman anyone?
You’re overstating how bad 80s cartoons were.
Yes, most of the toy commercial ones – including Transformers – were pretty dire. (GI Joe has my personal gold standard for WTF? moments in the pilot – a Skystriker cleanly bisecting a HISS tank…with its wing…and continuing to fly. Either Cobra makes their gear out of papier mache, or GI Joe discovered a stash of adamantium…)
But Robotech holds up, even today, as do (most of) Disney’s.
Surprisingly, Jem (at least the first season, all I’ve recently rewatched) holds up pretty well. Dated, oh, MY, yes…but the writing isn’t bad.
http://coelasquid.deviantart.com/art/Based-on-a-true-episode-150941765
“On an upscaled DVD player to a 32 inch 1080p screen the show looks fantastic outside of maybe a slightly slower framerate.”
I’m fairly certain that Beast Wars is at the same framerate as all TV, so I don’t get what you’re talking about there.
“Oh, we’ll ‘think of something’ he says. Well, isn’t that just prime?”
It looks sort of slow in some cases. Not “fluid and smooth”. It might be at 24 FPS but the actual FPS Mainframe used feels like closer to 20 or so maybe.
I play a lot of videogames and such so maybe I can just tell these things too well, or am just too used to high FPS 3d graphics by this point.
I remember watching Transformers when I was 8-10 years old. But even if a young kid wanted to follow episode order and stuff back then, it was extra hard down here in Brazil, seeing as they’d change slots all the time, change voices, cut stuff to fit into programming blocks. So I remember liking it, but I couldn’t tell you much more than “truck was the boss, VW bug was funny”, etc. Beast Wars was MY Transformers. And when I found out about it, I suppose it was already coming to an end in the US, if it hadn’t already ended. By the time I managed to watch all seasons in order on Cartoon Network, I found out about Beast Machines. I guess my first reaction was the same as most people: “What the CRAP did they do to Rattrap?!?!?” I think it took me at least a year to give it an actual chance, and I loved it. Now I own both series on DVD (Beast Machines came out down here, Beast Wars never did, so I imported). And they both taught me to give new stuff a chance.
Case point, I tried both Animated and Spectacular Spider-Man despite my initial knee-jerk reaction to the art: the first never hooked me, even though the toys look fun. The second is a masterpiece.
This was beautifully written. I’m too distracted by other toys to give TF the attention I want and I missed a lot between leaving G1 and never quite being able to jump back into Transformers since. Beast Wars is completely foreign to me, but I always wondered about it and you make it sound worth getting into even after all these years. Thank you!
Amen sir, amen.
Larry DiTillio is great. Hand him a bowl of alphabet soup, and he’ll give you a story back. I haven’t really followed his work since he was in the RPG business, but I see that he hasn’t lost his touch.
Nailed it man! Beat Wars is totally awesome!
I remember it bringing me back to TFs too, and I’ve been here ever since! I still remember the sad day when they stop airing Best Wars to play an hour of Digimon instead.
Beast Wars may have been good for the franchise, but for me it was betrayal. First, because I just don’t care much for animals or monsters – I wanted tanks and mechanical things, it’s what drew me to TF from the very beginning.
Second, it’s fugly. It was, even back then, extremely ugly. The original cartoon wasn’t perfect, but even stuttering hand-drawn animation is a universe away from bad CG, which is what this was. i have tried watching Beast Wars multiple times, but the CG makes my eyes water and my brain screams at me to stop. It just doesn’t work.
Have you considered that you might just need glasses?
Ah, because G1 had no Animals, or Monsters…
And bad CGI? I don’t know, it may not compare well to today’s standards, but it actually still looks fine.
Define “better CG”. I’ve seen lots more detailed CG, but as a general rule (and accounting for style) the beast wars CG is comparably smooth and usually more expressive than most things that came before and after.
Now, if you had been talking about the Unicron trilogy 3D, you’d have a point.
Ugly? seriously? I don’t think you’re as familiar with 90′s CGI as you think you are. Alternately, Are you sure you know what that word means? Because I do not think it means what you think it means.
Thing is, all 90′s CGI was pretty much crap – I never thought it looked good, even then. This isn’t in relation to other CG stuff of the period, you understand – To my mind, CG very, very seldom works when it comes to actual characters, no matter how expressive. I understand CG is often cheaper than making hand-drawn cartoons – but something is sacrificed in the process.
This is, of course, a matter of taste – but for me, 90′s CGI will always look like crap.
“Tanks and mechanical things” is both very specific and very vague. If you wanted tanks, you had, what, two during the G1 cartoon? As for “mechanical things”, surely that’s what all the Transmetals are?
You…. DO realize a good third or so of the G1 cast was some form of animal right? And Beast Wars had plenty of cast members with either mechanical animal or vehicle modes.
Let’s see G1 animals. Laserbeak, Buzzsaw, Ravage, Pounce, Wingspan, Predacons, most of the Pretenders, Pirahnacon team, ALL the Decepticon Headmasters, the Dinobots, Ramhorn, Steeljaw, the DINOBOTS, the Insecticons, the Deluxe Insecticons, Sixshot, Monstercons, Sparkbots, Trypticon…
Nope. G1 didn’t have any robot animal/monster type forms. Nope. I guess all of those and the ones I forgot never existed.
I mean, the Dinobots and Insecticons weren’t shown since oh.. halfway into Season 1 or anything. And Ravage? He certainly wasn’t in the original miniseries and actually had a fair part to play.
Sorry. TRANSFORMERS DONT TURN INTO ANIMALS is a completely inaccurate and kind of stupid reason for not liking Beast Wars.
Honestly about as many of the Beast Wars cast had vehicle modes percentage wise as G1 cast had animal or monster modes.
Gotta agree how it’s stupid how people hate on Beast Wars for the fact they turned into animals, for the very reasons you stated. But at the same time I can kinda respect his position. He just wanted to see some vehicle-to-robots, and Beast Wars had none. Personal taste and all that. But seriously, Grimlock and Ravage have to be some of the most popular Transformers of the franchise.
You DO realize there’s a difference between a mechanical robot-animal and an actual biological animal, right?
Unsurprisingly, I like the transmetals more than the rest of the Beast Wars stuff. I’ve always been more interested in mechanical things (even when those things happen to be animals) than biological things (even when those biological things happen to turn into robots). I never liked the Pretenders, either, if that makes any sense.
Beast Wars definitely changed EVERYTHING when it came to Transformers, and was the series that got me back into the franchise after being way too unimpressed with the G2 stuff. If people ever ask for a recommendation, this and Animated are the two series I always suggest to them.
A brilliantly written article Willis!
I was one of the resisters. I felt that Beast Wars was too foreign, too broad of a step away from the original. But the thing is, you’re 100% right, and there’s no way to argue otherwise. So while BW will always seem foreign and to me, the “Odd one out”, I have to respect it for what its’ done for the franchise.
Quoted For Pure Truth
Well said! Beast Wars is not without its faults but it did bring so much to the Transformers world in terms of writing and story. I haven’t caught a transformers cartoon since but its nice to know some of the concepts have lived on.
Well said, sir. I grew up on G1, and like so many people who drifted away, I kind of scoffed at Beast Wars when it came out (though I got into Beast Machines because it was “serious”). Many years later when I took the dive from casually checking in on TFs to being a ridiculously obsessed junky, Beast Wars was the first thing I went back and watched all the way through. It hooked my thoroughly and I’ve loved it since. I’m still pretty Geewun, but I recognize that it’s just because of nostalgia (though I still say those cartoons hold up pretty well. Some of them anyway). Beast Wars set a grand new standard for story telling, one which we had to wait until Animated to see any real competition to.
The last episode of Beast Wars that I ever saw was when Megatron killed G1 Optimus. Can you believe that? Dunno why I wasn’t able to catch the show afterward; it’s not like I was watching it diligently as it was. Somehow, though, I caught that, and the next time I caught the show, it was all reruns. Since I was young, then, I seriously thought the show ended that way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o_2Hk786JQ
The Autobots lose! Evil TRIUMPH! And you…YOU! NO! LONGER! EXIST!”
Still sends shivers down my spine.
Should I add my tuppence as to why I think beast Wars is awesome? I will anyway.
Beast Wars was the first cartoon I watched as a kid where there was an overarching storyline. Everything else was either Tom and Jerry or Loony Tunes.
Also, before that I had never watched any Transformers. I was only 8 years old at the time, so I was definitely in that target demographic Willis mentioned. Looking back, it’s the only cartoon I really have fond memories of. Everything else, such as Dexter’s Lab or Johnny Bravo, begin to seem juvenile as you get older.
So the technical limitations which forced Beast Wars to have a tiny cast was responsible for a change in the characterisation of most later cartoons? I didn’t care, I just loved watching the shiny robot-people fight.
Thank you for reminding me why I would watch Beast Wars while in High School. I have just added them to my Netflix Queue (much to the dismay of my girlfriend).
Beast Machines was great too! And didn’t G2 last into ’95?
Otherwise, full agreement and beautifully written.
Wonderful written!
Beast Wars forever! And Animated, too…
Well freakin put :0
A brilliant blog post.
I Grew up with G1, but after the movie Transformers was DEAD. I was in Kiddie City (RIP) as a teen and saw the toys on clearance next to the carcasses of Robotech, Silverhawks and Voltron leftovers.. No one wanted em. G2 never took off. I didn’t catch Beast Wars until 98, but I LOVED IT! The writing and character development were some of the best I’ve seen in any cartoon (Only Batman: The Animated Series and Gargoyles are on its level) BW was the series that revived Transformers and was the foundation for all the awesomeness we have today; I doubt we’d have a Masterpiece Prime if it weren’t for Beast wars making Transformers fun again.
I have to admit I didn’t even know Beast Wars existed until I started reading DW’s comics. And it isn’t like I wasn’t watching cartoons at the time. I guess it wasn’t syndicated in the SF bay area? I know ReBoot was but I never liked ReBoot.
It was part of the Syndication Block with Mighty Max, Reboot, and something I’m blanking on. Mummies Alive?
I believe it aired with EXTREME GI Joe. I remember a syndicated block on ABC with Reboot, Beast Wars and that attrocious XTREME GI Joe. And Vor-Tech ><
Mummies Alive! came a little later, I think at that point Beast Wars was airing on Fox Kids. Not sure.
Pretty sure the lineup changed about every other year.
I must have skipped that block. I don’t remember any of those (well, I remember ReBoot, but I never watched it. The cheap-looking CG was enough to keep me away, though oddly I enjoyed “The Incredible Crash Test Dummies” during its brief existence).
Was it a weekday afternoon or Saturday morning block?
You should give ReBoot another go if you ever get a chance.
The first season was heavily content-restricted, but S2/3/4 are really good storytelling. Strong arcs, characters and well worth visiting/revisiting.
Everyone should see Enzo’s Birthday at least once.
Megabyte has left the Building.
Thomas speaks the truth. I didn’t like ReBoot’s first season, but loved seasons 2 to 4.
-airfox
IT wasn’t the writing; I don’t think I ever watched a full episode. I just thought that, graphically, it looked awful. I agree with Mikael above the ’90s TV CG looked cheap and terrible.
well there is a post I found about why BW sucks it’s not snackpant’s but I assume it’s the same arguments he’d use.
http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/delta_ass/sorry-but-beast-wars-sucked/30-53722/
enjoy (or don’t as the article makes it obvious that they didn’t watch much of Beast Wars despite the overwhelmingly bad opinion.)
Clearly a pinacle of critical analysis, using words such as ‘dumb’, ‘silly’ and ‘I just don’t get it’ show the professionalism.
Someone doesn’t understand the concept of Time Travel either.
oh lord, nonsensical ramblings 101.
NO DUDE BEST WARS SUKED BECUASE I TWASNT ENOUGH LIKE GEEWUN.
WHAT IS WROGN WUT U GUYS
TOM CROOM FOREVAH
I’ve also realised that Dinobot (Although an alternate green version) was the first transformer I bought with my own hard-earned money.
Wait, scratch what I said. Apparently, the T-Rex is actually Megatron. So Megatron was the first I ever bought.
Yeah, I suck with the names.
To Me…Beast Wars (and Beast Machines) was cool to me and Megatron was really cool to me in both series (he’s my favorite TF in those series).
I mean this in the kindest possible way, but BeastWars is so awfully paced that I gouge my own eyes out every time I watch more than three minutes of it. I’m glad other people enjoy it — obviously — but boy howdy is it not for me.
See this is a criticism that can be explained and has some basis. You think the pacing of the show is lacking. That’s much better than ‘its dumb’ and ‘it doesn’t feel right!’ or ‘its ugly!’.
Well, it’d be okay if it was actually explanded. “The pace is bad” isn’t much of a comment. Episodes are a teeny bit slower than, say, Animated, but I’d say in a more “grown-up” way. We can have characters talking without explosions and music and noise because TV companies think that if there is none of that kids will get bored and change over. (Animated isn’t actually that bad in that regard, but it’s noticably a bit worse than Beast Wars.)
On the other hand, compared to something like Energon, then the pace is really fast. Mainly because things actually happen.
Did you happen to try starting somewhere other than the beginning? The first 4 I think (possibly 5) episodes have horrible pacing, and honestly all of Season 1 is very generic since the over arching story isn’t really developed yet. I’d say look at Chain of Command or Power Surge (or one of my fave Dark Designs) In Season 1 or just start off with the end of season 1 and try from there.
It’s actually a general thing — the lines are delivered slowly (so the kids can keep up, I understand) and the visual field is dark and little-moving (for budgetary reasons, I understand). I found the dialogue to be uninteresting in a general sense. It didn’t work for me.
This is based on seeing a half-dozen random eps, including the youtube vid our host linked to a couple weeks ago.
It’s all right; I wasn’t the target audience and I’m glad a lot of folks got something out of it. It certainly seems like a strong narrative was threaded through the issues with presentation that I had. And I would probably have enjoyed it if I had been target demo.
That Megatron toy makes me so sad, I had two both of which decided to self-terminate…
Aside from that Beast Wars is probably the show that cemented my love of the brand, I’d seen the original that was being rerun on sci-fi when I was quite young and Beast Wars was what essentially made me into a true fan. Of course I lost interest over the course of Energon and into Cybertron (did like Armada though in retrospect). It wasn’t until TF animated that I decided to get fully back into the brand, as such it’s my hope that TF Prime continues in the tradition of those two shows.
BEAST WARS SUCKED…. TRUKK NOT MUNKY
Just kidding, Beast Wars was what brought me back as well, plus there were some epic figures to come out of the associated toy line and yeeeessssss Beast Wars Megatron re-invented both the character and the common villain
This post is fantastic.
(Except for the caption on the TM Megatron pic. I have never understood the love that toy gets, I found mine highly disappointing even before it crumbled to pieces.)
Bravo Willis! Bravo!
Beast Wars didn’t bring me back to TFs, because I never left.
I was 10 when G1 started, which means I was “old” by the time Beast Wars came along. I remember reading about it on ATT, and thinking: “they transform into organic animals?! No sir, don’t like it.”
But then, something happened: Ben Yee posted a review of episode 5, “Chain of Command” on ATT. Just reading Ben’s review about that episode, made me like the characters of Rattrap and Dinobot. I had already seen the toys downtown, so I decided to get the characters that seemed important from that episode: Dinobot, Rattrap and the leaders (I got the Bat/Alligator 2-pack). But I was already there at the toy store, so I decided to get Razorbeast and Rhinox as well. Gotta admit I liked some of the toys (Rattrap still ranks among my favorites), and disliked some.
Some months later, my sister tells me that HBO-OLE is airing something about Transformers. It was “Beast Wars pt.2,” and I have to admit, the art, the graphics and the action got me. The way the blasters worked – when comparing it to G1 – looked fantastic … I was hooked.
The next day I return to the toy store to get every toy I had left behind.
And this was all before Season 2. Before Inferno’s introduction. And before Rampage/Depth Charge.
Beast Wars is indeed awesome.
-airfox
David, I’d just like to say thank you for this post and all of your Beast Wars related stuff. This show was by and large my favourite growing up, and, a few years ago in university, I learned in was one of the few that still had storytelling chops to stand up to the shows I have come to love today (which, incidentally, tend to also have great characters I can identify with – another trait I love about certain stories that I think I picked up from Beast Wars). While I’m a few years behind you (didn’t get to G1 until just before I went through Beast Wars in university), this show was and continues to be the yardstick by which I measure all other Transformers stories I’ve seen. I may never watch an episode again (the DVDs I burned seem to have been lost to the ages), I too will never forget what an excellent show this was.
Wow well written! I really enjoyed reading this. I submitted it to Digg, let’s get the numbers high so it will end up on the front page.
http://digg.com/comics_animation/Why_Beast_Wars_is_awesome
Bravo. Amen to all of that.
I agree with everything you have to say. I wrote a small bit on it on my blog:
http://cocsianframcradolcild.blogspot.com/2010/07/thors-day-heroes-of-different-caliber.html
Also, I’ll be at GenCon, so I am very tempted to go and hear this panel with information so incredibly powerful it can’t be shared on the internet. If I manage to make it, I’ll publish the notes; that is if they won’t destroy the internet.
interesting post, pretty much covered it all for me, thanks.