Generations 2027: No More Primes! It is the Age of Evolution!

And the thing is, the original animated version of Maleficent didn't need fixing because she was already excellent. She was sophisticated, regal, intelligent, cunning, and competent. She was so thoroughly evil because she LOVED being so. She relished making others suffer. It brought her pure joy and entertainment, unabashedly. She didn't care how evil others thought of her. She was better than that, better than them, and she knew that. And because she knew she was better, the fact that she didn't get invited to baby Aurora's birthday party was taken as a mockery of her greatness, not her villainy. Anyone could call her wicked and spiteful all they wanted, because she saw that only as flattery. But mock her obvious superiority and that's going too far. She carried herself with an air of upperclass malice, wore her malevolence on her sleeve, and did so openly with pride.

Having Maleficent depicted as "not evil" goes against not just the core essence of what made the character great to begin with, but even goes against her very name. Why is she even still named "Maleficent" if she isn't malefic at all? What, did her parents hate her as a baby and decide to give her an inherently evil name just for kicks?

Conversely, what made Wicked work better was the fact that the Wicked Witch of the West was originally just a thug, a lowlife bully whose whole personality amounted to mere scum and petty sadism. She was the kind of person who gleefully loved scaring people and emotionally tormenting them just for the fun of it. A cackling madwoman whose campy antics would give eyerolls of annoyance to the kind of self-respecting villain that the animated Malelcent was.

Wicked took something with little-to-no substance and gave it substance by reimagining it in an engaging manner. The live-action Maleficent movie took something that was already very substantially good and engaging in its own right and flipped the switch on it in a very shallow manner, completely missing what made the original so great to begin with.

Have I missed news of an upcoming Transformers x Maleficent crossover in Age of Evolution or something?

lol. Yeah, I just opened a can of worms with that one.

Sciflyer said:

Have I missed news of an upcoming Transformers x Maleficent crossover in Age of Evolution or something?

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We are due a Prime Airachnid that isn't terrible...

lastmaximal said:

We are due an Prime Airachnid that isn't terrible...

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It's kind of interesting how she's never had a gone one. I thought the SS TFO one would be decent at least but it's easily the weakest of the SS TFO figures.

I was massively disappointed with that TF One Airachnid. I expected that it would be decent (or at least fun), but IMO, it is not either.

I have it and like how ambitious it is, but I will readily concede it is not fun. I'm surprised it's as sturdy as it's been so far for all the spindliness, but it's tough to do much with it.

Sciflyer said:

Have I missed news of an upcoming Transformers x Maleficent crossover in Age of Evolution or something?

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She's the secret new Megatron.

Sciflyer said:

Have I missed news of an upcoming Transformers x Maleficent crossover in Age of Evolution or something?

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Don't put that Idea out there! You know Hasbro is looking for new crossover ideas!

Well, the trends now are to make the 'evil' characters good or at least somehow justifiable, the good characters morally questionable with awful hidden secrets, and anything innocent to be somehow untoward, so the next step is to take Beachcomber and turn him from a hippie pacifist into a violent maniac. And it's not hard to guess what made him snap since it's not even Halloween and I'VE ALREADY SEEN THE BLASTED CHRISTMAS ORNAMENTS FOR SALE!!!



Shapeways...the Golden Age...

Sabrblade said:

She's the secret new Megatron.

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Ya know, if it got me the TM2 mold in black and purple, I'd be down for it.

The Mighty Mollusk said:

Ya know, if it got me the TM2 mold in black and purple, I'd be down for it.

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Ya know... Me too.

I got a unlicensed Airachnid that's pretty ace. APC Toys Night Countess.

Yeah, she's neat, although she's kind of really tall for the new Generations scale. If Transformers were people, she'd be like an average runway supermodel but scaled up to Yao Ming height.

In all honesty, it is a little surprising that, in the past 42 years of this brand, we've still never gotten a main lead who is female. We've had some standout female Decepticons and Predacons, but who are always under the authority of Megatron or some other male leader. I'm talking somebody having the same overall role as Megatron, but being female. Think like how Rita was the main villain in the first season of Power Rangers, or like how other seasons of that show had female lead villains, like Divatox, Astronema, Trakeena, Queen Bansheera, Madame Odius, or Void Queen.

The closest we've ever come to having a proper lead villain who was female was Glowstrike in the second season of RID2015, but she came with several caveats. Namely, she was not the sole leader of Decepticon Island, but instead of a triumvirate of leaders that included herself, Scorponok, and Saberhorn, whom she was equal to in terms of authority. Plus, she and the other two were double-crossed and overthrown by Steeljaw, who was the actual main villain of that season 2 story arc, being in the spotlight way more than Glowstrike ever was. And his overthrowing her and the other two meant that he was not only the main villain but the final one too. Glowstrike never got to be in the spotlight like like he did, nor did she ever get to be first-in-command when she did have authority.

The second closest case would be Lady Mega from Super-god Masterforce, in which she and her husband, Lord Giga, were basically co-leaders of that series's Decepticons, but even they were both still subservient to the true main villain, Devil Zed. And when the two of them combined their transectors to form Overlord, it was always Giga who did all the talking in that form, basically being in the driver's seat the entire time while Mega remained willingly silent and simile not at all in control of the combined form (though, she never complained, because, despite the two of them being wicked people, the love and trust they shared as husband and wife was genuine and unyielding, as each of them would do anything for the other). And even when they weren't combined as Overlord, the show still gave more for Giga to do than Mega, such as focusing on his growing personal rivalry with Ginrai.

It's a long game, especially with all the preexisting tropes that have to be pushed back against for female leaders in general, not just Decepticon ones. Transformers' contemporaries have also had to deal with this -- when there are females at all, they're just among the team (or only leading subgroups) as opposed to being leads (Scarlett, Evil-Lyn, Steelheart, Elita-1, Shadow Striker, Arcee). But this is also already progress. The closest we've seen is Baroness, but that character's also largely been locked in that trope for much of her publication history, and is more "love interest to lead" than "lead" unto herself. Any more divergences here are largely confined to comics, as well (Elita Prime, Arcee Magnus; idk which one is a LEADER leader) which has less reach than other media. RID2015's contributions are among the reasons I want that series to get more love, but it's also true that Glowstrike and the leadership there were definitely out of focus anyway.

Power Rangers I think had the fortune of being a newer text, and especially having its originator series (which set the narrative conventions) happen to have a female lead villain, already opening that door. It's also a genre that lends itself well to having the wicked witch/evil queen archetype in place in the key villain role.

But I'd love to see this for Transformers. There's been a lot of growth already, but that momentum should be maintained and increased. More female characters in more kinds of roles -- including leadership roles that aren't just love interests or plot devices for other leaders -- are welcome. One reason I started reading the 2019 continuity (after having largely sat it out due simply to disinterest) was being intrigued by the direct integration of the previous continuity's huge generation of female characters, new prominent female characters like Termagax, and the new take on Pyra Magna.

In that respect it's been a bit of a boon that it hasn't happened yet, because narrative conventions of earlier eras were probably not the best circumstances for female leaders to have been written under, let alone evil female leaders. Now there's a bit more awareness, a bit more purposiveness, and a bit more room for writers with better-informed takes to work on these.

It's hard to get a continuity that doesn't worship at the alter of the big names, which just so happen to be from the era where the only female characters were Elite-1's squad (one episode wonders) and Arcee, none of which are Decepticons.

Thinking about it, was Thunderblast the first female Decepticon to show up in a major continuity? (Blackarachnia was a Predacona and Strika was a Vehicon). Unless you want to count Nightbird.

lastmaximal said:

It's a long game, especially with all the preexisting tropes that have to be pushed back against. Transformers' contemporaries have also had to deal with this -- when there are females at all, they're just among the team (or only leading subgroups) as opposed to being leads (Scarlett, Evil-Lyn, Steelheart, Elita-1, Shadow Striker, Arcee). But this is also already progress. The closest we've seen is Baroness, but that character's also largely been locked in that trope for much of her publication history, and is more "love interest to lead" than "lead" unto herself. Any more divergences here are largely confined to comics, as well, which has less reach than other media. RID2015's contributions are among the reasons I want that series to get more love, but it's also true that Glowstrike and the leadership there were definitely out of focus anyway.

Power Rangers I think had the fortune of being a newer text, and especially having its originator series (which set the narrative conventions) happen to have a female lead villain, already opening that door.

But I'd love to see this for Transformers. There's been a lot of growth already, but that momentum should be maintained and increased. More female characters in more kinds of roles -- including leadership roles that aren't just love interests or plot devices for other leaders -- are welcome. One reason I started reading the 2019 continuity (after having largely sat it out due simply to disinterest) was being intrigued by the direct integration of the previous continuity's huge generation of female characters, new prominent female characters like Termagax, and the new take on Pyra Magna.

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I always thought it was cool how DinoZaurs (Bandai's attempt to directly compete with Beast Wars) had the female Daimon Ryugu as that series's main villain. While all of her main generals and field commanders who led the enemy troops into battle far more often than she did were all male, whenever she went into battle herself, things got real, because she was both enormous and freaking scary. Bandai never made a toy of her (along with many other characters from that show's second half), but if they ever did, it would have needed to be Titan sized, and would have looked terrifying.

Marvel UK letters page once joked there's a female Decepticon car called Clio but it was a reference to the Renault Clio,

Female characters was one place that the old Hanna Barbara Go-Bots cartoon really did a lot better than Transformers. It definitely wasn't half of the characters by any means, but a pretty solid percentage of both Guardians and Renegades were female, and it was never treated as unusual or remarkable in any way that they were. The female characters were treated exactly the same way that the males were, each with their own personalities and skillsets that were not just "the girl."

Crasher wasn't the evil LEADER, obviously, but she was very much the second in command.