Oh god, I just had a brilliant TFOne KO/BD fic idea.
So you know how G1 Knockout is a construction worker and G1 Breakdown is a racer?? Well, in TFOne we see Breakdown is one of the racers in the Iacon 5000 (I don’t have the screenshot, but I do remember seeing his name along with the other Stunticons).
So… what if Knockout in TFOne is one of the many cogless miners???
So, here’s my idea (spoilers below):
Knockout is one of the few on-site medics for the miners, there for work related injuries (like Jazz’s leg in the movie). He’s not a worker because he has a processor bug, where he faints whenever he gets overwhelmed or too excited - which wouldn’t be a good trait for working in the dangerous mines.
Because of this relatively safer position, he tends to be cleaner and shinier than his fellow workers - cleaning and buffing his plating during work hours. He’s not the most well liked, but he’s good enough at his job that people just deal with it.
Knockout is a racer fan, and wishes he could compete in them very badly. Like many miners (at least in my fanfic), he feels like a piece of him is missing and would love to race if he could transform. He’s much like his TFP version in personality, sassy mean girl personality, maybe a bit nicer since he’s younger and already treated like shit.
Breakdown meanwhile, he’s a somewhat cocky racer who’s been apart of the Stunticons (who are basically just brothers who are all racers) since he was born. Due to being a transforming mech though, he hasn’t had much contact with cogless bots.
This changes when the Stunticons decide to go drag racing in a cogless residential area, a somewhat common thing since the roads are clear of other cars and the locals can see some drag racing without needing to get time off work. Knockout is one of these spectators, though only because he had a rough shift and needed something to blow off steam.
During the race though, there’s a crash and Breakdown needs medical attention - and the closest medic is Knockout.
Knockout ends up repairing Breakdown, who was curious about meeting a cogless bot, and from there it’s pretty typical KOBD I imagine. Breakdown might be more cocky here, but Knockout can match it easily and sass him for overworking his engine during the race Breakdown likes a mech who can talk down to him, and ends up flirting with KO… who faints from surprise and excitement.
Idk where to go from here, but I really like the idea of this being a bit of a roleswap au for the typical TFP KOBD and to mimic the “lower and higher class romance” stuff we see in tfp megop. I feel like these two would totally carry on a star crossed romance, meeting in semi-secret and Breakdown learning about KO’s life as a cogless bot and taking him on dates to places he could never access before.
BUT!!! After the events of the movie, Breakdown sees it all go down from the broadcast and rushes to see if KO is okay. He hasn’t seen him in awhile since all the miners were suddenly pulling mandatory extra shifts and injuries had increased exponentially. He bumps into a red racer on the way, trying to squeeze past, but then realized it’s Knockout who now has a t-cog. He came looking for Breakdown to show him.
Breakdown happily lifts up KO, who narrowly avoids fainting this time, and they go on their first racing date - and Breakdown is only more smitten when Knockout narrowly beats him.
(Please feel free to use or expand on this, i haven’t written knockout before so I would love some input on how he would act lol)
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I just need to let this out
The new film, Transformers One, from what I've seen of spoilers taken straight from the theaters and what I've read up on Wikipedia, is a good show. It's got plot threads and characterizations taken across practically every medium of the franchise, and even utilizes the Transformers: Prime theme music twice in the film. It's honestly, all things considered, the best TF film since Age of Extinction in 2014.
But....The only one whose acting I actually enjoy is Brian Tyree Henry, the guy playing a young Megatron.
And that's great; he's a fan, and his love for the Transformers comes through crystal clear in his performance. I fully admit he doesn't tonally sound like Frank Welker's Megatron, but he sounds like Megatron: his vocal range hits every emotional beat you'd expect/are familiar with Megatron having in the various cartoons and comics, and he practically swallowed the source material and became Megatron, all while making use of verbal tics Frank Welker has employed for the character and making it his own while still being Megatron in his own right without stepping on what Frank Welker has done with Megatron.
And I love that. Heck, I 100% expected him to walk away from this production with all the awards, and he'd have earned them all in my eyes.
But....listening to Chris Hemsworth as Orion/Optimus....there's, there's a kind of lacking and restraint there.
Don't get me wrong, he's admitted to going to Peter Cullen himself for advice/guidance in playing Orion/Optimus and to make sure he doesn't goof up his portrayal of the character. But, there's not nearly as much range in his emotions as there is with Brian Tyree Henry. Maybe he's leaning into Orion/Optimus being the more controlled of the two, maybe he's leaning into the immaturity too much, or maybe he just feels like a bull in a china shop with all the pressure on him.
But...he could've done more. He could've - could've tried harder to be emotionally present, like Brian.
And I just - I just can't feel anything from his performance, save one line - and even then, that one line is, essentially, Orion's last words before dying and being reborn as Optimus Prime. I will give him this, he made me believe Orion was seconds away from death.
But everything else....there's not quite as much effort in it, most likely for fear of losing a balance between honoring Mr. Cullen's work and staying in his own lane. And when he speaks, it's....not that impactful.
There's not...how do I explain this....He just, he just doesn't have a vocal presence. He doesn't stand on his own in this movie; if anything, he sounds like a walking anomaly and just hearing him talk makes my suspension of disbelief for the movie shatter.
Scarlett Johanssen, I'm just gonna be blunt: she was a mistake to cast as Elita One.
Elita is one of my favorite females in Transformers of all time, and Johanssen - every time she speaks in this movie, my brain just registers the moody, teenage porcupine she voiced in Sing and Sing 2. She doesn't fit as Elita. There's too much youth in her voice (says something that she has the voice of a teenager), too much strictness/harshness, and not enough warmth and feminine strength in her voice like there was in G1. That's the whole point of Elita: she's the feminine counterpart that complements Optimus' masculinity.
And they took it from her. They took it, from me.
Yes, Elita doesn't have as much memory/love held to her as Optimus does, and I understand that people are gonna mischaracterize her. But that doesn't make it okay; it doesn't make it okay that she's modernized while having attempts at making her nice/still partially given feminine qualities to - this version of her.
And I hate how she fights in this movie. She moves like Black Widow - all slip 'n slide, using confusion and up-close-tactics with kick/leg-grappling-thing techniques.
Elita, in the original, from what we saw, was both a distance fighter (read: she shot a space gun), and capable of close quarters combat that was both feminine and practical. Heck, she was even more bad-aft than the movie portrays her: she literally caught a missile in her debut and threw it back at the Decepticons.
Why is a fighting style like THAT so hard to emulate?
Bumblebee, I don't care. His appeal has become lost on me for almost two, maybe years now. But dear Lord in Heaven, he is so annoying in TF One. No joke, Megatron would be in the rights for ripping his voice box out in this continuity.
That said....the guy doing him, somehow, manages to convey the seemingly eternal sugar rush this version is on. And he gets a small nod of approval from me for being physically active behind the mic in order to sell his performance.
(Despite that, something about the actor rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it's that both he and Bee never shut up, I don't know. I do know that I never wanna be in the same room as him.)
Shockwave....is too emotive, but it gets a pass from me because so far as I can see, all his emoting in this film is a direct result from hearing Bee yap non-stop, including in an unconscious state. That's passable for me. A tic, yes, but passable.
Soundwave still sounds monotonous, but the ones in charge get an 'X' in my eyes for not getting Frank Welker back for the character.
Starscream is done interestingly, and although I don't yet know how to rank Steve Buscemi's delivery of the character's lines, I'll let Buscemi slide because he's had experience in voice acting - little bits, but the experience counts. I'll also let him slide because he returned to volunteer firefighter duty when 9/11 happened, and he stayed there all three days of search and rescue. So, while I can't rate his performance fully, he has my respect and I will not take on his portrayal negatively because of that.
Sentinel....I'll give the VA this, he pulls off the airy, self-aggrandising theatrics well. Beyond that, to be decided.
Laurence Fishburne as Alpha Trion....I'm not sold. His voice is too deep, and while I have many issues with George Takei, he did, indeed, nail Alpha Trion's performance post G1. Takei's experience, plus his voice, allows him to sell Trion as an old, yet still physically capable, former Prime whose wisdom is sound and collected from eons of experience.
All I get from Fishburne's portrayal is "old but still tough", and that's not enough for this character, in my book.
That's...more or less it. I'm just, really tired of consistently getting new Transformers media that has potential, but without Peter Cullen and Frank Welker even being approached for the projects. Yes, there's a possibility that they both tell/told these people to pound sand, but they've said repeatedly that they're getting pushed aside by the higher ups. And they've been so vocal about wanting to play the characters, but are constantly being given the boot by Hasbro.
They deserve better than that. The fans deserve better than that, and even I deserve better than that.
Peter Cullen and Frank Welker are the reason I and so many others had such golden childhoods. It's painful to see them getting disrespected like this, and I hate that more new TF media is being made without them, especially since they aren't getting any younger.
I'm not scared, exactly, about them dying.
I'm just scared they won't be able to have any more rodeos in Transformers media together before their time comes.
And that is why, ultimately, I can't bring myself to enjoy or watch Transformers: One. Why I don't care that it's failing like this.
Because Hasbro had their chance many times, and they've failed me. They keep failing me, Peter Cullen, Frank Welker, and all of us.
I'm just done caring for new shows from Transformers unless it's got our childhood heroes voicing our favorite characters with the good writing they had up until Transformers: Robots in Disguise 2015. And given this commercial blowout, I won't be getting satisfied anytime soon.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk. I hope you don't mind the release of my pain, but I've held it in for a month, more or less. I just needed to make it public.
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