Netflix’s Transformers: War For Cybertron Trilogy: Siege

It’s been awhile since I did a proper review. Heck, it’s been awhile since I did a review at all, proper or otherwise. But Netflix’s Transformers: War For Cybertron Trilogy: Siege came out recently and for some reason, I don’t see many “proper” reviews of it. I see some where they’re either shilling (I say this because a) their reviews are positive and b) based on the content of their review, they’ve obviously never actually watched the show in full) or they’re non-committal, like the author isn’t sure how the audience will respond to the show, so they don’t wanna tip their hand one way or the other.

So here’s my take on Netflix’s Transformers: War For Cybertron Trilogy: Siege, warts and all. Spoiler free though.

The thing is, this is a review where I really ought to jump straight to the conclusion before getting into the details. Because the thing is, for a piece of Transformers media, Siege is really unconventional. Whether it’s good or bad, you need to either come in with a really opened mind or temper your expectations. A show can be great, but if it’s too left field from the expectations of the audience, they may reject it out of hand. Take Teen Titans Go for instance; it’s a great series, but fans of the previous Teen Titans series reject it for going in a totally different direction. Then there’s shows like Thundercats: Roar; which is a perfectly serviceable show with occasional bouts of brilliance, but like TTG, the fans reject it. It’s worse with Roar because the fans delude themselves into saying Roar should have followed in the footsteps of the 2003 Thundercats reboot; ignoring the fact that the 2003 reboot was for the most part, a piece of shit, despite an all-star cast and crew.

So here’s the dealie-do. Overall, I think Siege is fairly interesting and worth a watch. It has some interesting takes on certain characters, explores the mythos of Transformers and at the end of the day, it’s only 6 20-odd minute episodes. Even if it ultimately doesn’t do it for you, it’s a small investment of your time. But if you expect to be entertained… well, think of Siege as the cutscenes of a videogame, all strung together to form a story; as opposed to a TV series, meant to grab your attention on an episode by episode basis. It’s not a show so much as the telling of a story.

For one thing, this is a really talky show for a Transformers series. Like, there’s a LOT of talking. And for the most part, the voice work is subpar. Some of the actors do emote, but no one’s probably gonna win an Emmy for their voice work here. With the possible exception of Megatron, whose voice adds to an already really interesting take of the character. Which is great, because he has a whole boatload of dialogue in this shindig. He just monologues, flatly, seemingly ceaselessly throughout all 6 episodes. Mercifully, by the time his monologues become nothing more than a dull hum to your ears, the season will have ended. Yeah, for the most part, everyone sounds flat, generic and/or totally inappropriate for their character.

Don’t expect much action either. There’s some sprinkled here and there, but don’t expect the usual “minimum 1 action sequence per episode” trope to play out here. Not should you expect any great choreography or flashy movement like in Transformers: Prime. That said, there’s a fair amount of death and robotic gore in the series. I mean, nothing graphic but the implications are there. Which is good enough for me!

The story is nothing new either, but it’s not something that’s explored in a lot of detail in animated form before. The story’s frequently explored in the IDW comis and even Transformers: Cyberverse to an extent, but they really drive it home this time around. The most interesting thing about Siege is that it adds a lot more gray to the black and white morality of the Autobots vs the Decepticons. It explores and hints on the idea that the Megatron and the Decepticons were not totally unwarranted in their actions. And at the end, we get a pretty great face-off between Prime and Megatron as they both try to prevent the other from screwing the pooch.

At the end of the day, you can’t really talk about Siege without talking about Megatron and to a lesser extent, Optimus Prime. So let’s talk about them. Prime first, since he’s the less intriguing of the two. Basically, this isn’t your daddy’s Optimus Prime. Unlike the Prime most of us know, this isn’t an all knowing father figure. He’s speaks with doubt and his design is such that more often than not, he has a weird “hurt feelings” facial expression most of the time. By the time he starts speaking with more purpose, you really don’t get the feeling that he’s necessarily unquestionably correct anymore. And that maybe, just maybe, he might be wrong. And once we get to that face-off between him and Megatron at the end, well, at that point, maybe neither he nor Megatron are right, right?

Now as for Megatron, this seems to be an early days Megatron. He’s not the unadulterated evil villain we all know and love. He’s got a lot more restraint at the start of the show. I mean, he slides down the slippery slope pretty quick but I don’t think we’ve ever seen a Megatron quite like this. The comics and Aligned Continuity cartoons (Prime, Cyberverse etc) implied that he was once a good bloke who got corrupted over time, but they’ve never portrayed him as such. He was always very obviously pure evil even when he was ostensibly neutral or even god forbid, supposedly good. But here in Siege, he doesn’t really fully embrace his bad self till near the end, and even then, it was fueled by him being pissed off and frankly, desperate.

So in conclusion, Transformers: Siege is an adequate show but it’s probably worth watching if you’re a Transformers fan because it has some interesting takes on the mythos and it’s not a huge time sink. Just don’t expect to be entertained or captured by masterful storytelling. Think of it as being told a story via the next step in audio-books, an audio-book that has both audio and video.