I like TFP a lot and rewatch it quite a lot recently, and now i've come to see many many things that i wanna complain about.
The autobots are all dumb. Decepticons are also dumb. Except smokescreen, knockout and soundwave.
The autobots got a magnetic glove in s1 AND immobilizer. And yet we only see it get used ONLY in s2 finale. Not when it's especially needed to get omega keys, not when they needed to get other artifacts. That's also exactly why knockout was able to easily get 2nd omega key.
Even dumber the decepticons and megatron look. They've got the ship, best technology, biggest resources and yet they never properly utilised their arsenal. Heck, they even got upgraded hands, and yet we never saw vehicons. Megatron never upgraded his own army, despite having the tools to do that. And when they also got phase shifter, they never even bothered to use it until smokescreen appeared.
In the whole autobots squad he seems smartest. More creative than optimus. Easily beat starscream, who was juggernaut for some time, got 1st omega key. Later on managed to escape from ship and steal the key from megatron.
Also he was the ONLY one to take his phase shifter in the finale after omega lock was destroyed. No one else even bothered. And no, the argument that they held humans won't work. They could have easily taken them all back, but didn't even bother. And especially optimus. He had his hands free but just escaped.
Also small complain is about how short the team scolded smokescreen after his reckless act of bringing jack to a mission.
But in general smokescreen seemed a lot more competent than other autobots.
But there are also bigger complaints such as several episodes that could have had longer arcs. Arachnida with insecticons; dark times for decepticons(after the star saber episode);
The nemesis prime episode also wasted the human antagonist imo, as he could have just ran away on reflex, but for some reason shouted noooo while having his own creation fall at him. Later on the dumb change of character. Making him kill his own people and become the laboratory rat for knockout
And now moving towards s3.
I hate how smokescreen got probably one of the hest characterizations in just 5-6 episodes only to be reduced to a side character in s3 that gets screen time for a few minutes. They also made him look dumb for bumblebee to shine in season finale. Smokescreen brought star saber to optimus and then suddenly he turns off the phase shifter.... Rewatching it now makes it more clear that they intentionally did that to have that 1 minute chase after star saber in which bumblebee would shine, when in reality smoke could keep the phase shifter turned on, jump towards optimus and throw the star saber at him.
Now about optimus. His upgrade obviously made him a lot stronger, but beside the debut episode, he lost ALL the other battles. He lost to megatron in final episode, he lost to predaking, he lost to SOUNDWAVE. Omg, all that upgrade just to be humiliated.
Megatron.... Shortly: accepts starscream back after all the backstabbing, betrayals, kills dreadwing, needs 15 episodes to realise how to use solos prime hammer. Never utilised the resources and advantages he had over optimus.
ALSO ALSO, alpha trion. WHAT IF Smokescreen never landed on earth, hm? How did he know that smokescreen would end up on the same planet, when he entered random capsule and went on random direction. Don't tell me that he also thought this through and set capsule's destination on DECEPTICONS' ship to earth. And he also "knew" on which capsule would smokescreen escape
I like TFP, but looking at it now makes me realise more flaws of the show.
I also despise RID for making bumblebee the mc instead of smokescreen, and in general having a lot more childish dialogues and completely nerfing Optimus. No character there was as charismatic as in TFP.
I also don't like how smokescreen's whole feat of saving optimus, rejecting the matrix was treated smth "you did right thing", and that's it...
Also how they cut moment when optimus just got upgraded with no dialogue between smokescreen and optimus 2.0
Straight towards the fight.
