Transformers: Earthrise

I really enjoyed the first part of the "War for Cybertron" trilogy. If the very first series of the very first show was the perfect cartoon for the 8-year-old me, "War for Cybertron" was the perfect one for the 43-year-old me - darker and more mature, with much stronger grey areas, motivations, and factions. It's fair to say that it was a little slow, but I didn't mind that.

Unfortunately the second chapter, "Earthrise", just didn't live up to the first. It retained the slower pace of the series, but because the characters were largely separated throughout it missed much of what I found worthwhile about the first. Worse, where there were some interesting ideas, such as the inclusion of Scorponok and Sky Lynx, they just didn't seem to know how to deal with those, such that those characters seemed to be stuck in a loop - rather than having a coherent conversation they just repeated a handful of stock lines over and over.

The other feature of note in the series were the cameos: as mentioned we see Scorponok and Sky Lynx, but also Alpha Trion, Galvatron, and even such obscure characters as Doubledealer. All of which is cool, except that the show therefore suffers the same weakness as "The Force Awakens", "Ready Player One", and almost all of Disney's recent live-action remakes of their classic cartoons - it coasts along on the well-wishes generated by reminding us of something that used to be awesome, without actually having to be very good itself. Dig a little between the surface, though, and you find it's all just surface.

One last thing: although I remember Prime being all noble and self-sacrificing, and so forth, I don't actually remember him being utterly stupid. And so, while I can just about understand him agreeing an alliance with Megatron in desperate circumstances, and for the mutual good of all, I really can't see him doing so, suffering the inevitable sudden and unexpected betrayal, and then immediately doing exactly the same thing again.

And then the show ended.

I was, sad to say, bitterly disappointed with this second part of the trilogy. I will watch the third part when it becomes available, but my hopes have been thoroughly dashed now. How that third part turns out will determine my recommendation for this one - at present, I'm saying "avoid", but if part three is excellent then this may be necessary as a bridging episode.

#2: "Starsight", by Brandon Sanderson