#so this is tf1 specific I’m talking about

[raspberry-pastries]

That take for tf1 annoys me because the movie explicitly presents his descent. Yes it was rushed in some places but the run time required it and I’m hoping it’ll be fleshed out if we get a sequel.

For one D-16 was not a rebel from the beginning, that was Orion. D-16 was okay with the system and was a prime fanatic (which made sense given sentinels propaganda and stuff). But Orion was the one who believed they could be more, who wanted to prove to the transformers that they were wrong about cogless bots. The way some people talk about him in the movie you’d think he went to get the matrix just because he randomly wanted to and not because he wanted D-16 and him to prove themselves to sentinels as more than miners so they could live a better life and fix the energon shortage. I mean after he found out the truth D-16 literally blamed Orion for the entire thing because he broke protocol, which included saving jazz’s life. He was incredibly emotional in this scene which explains why he reacted like that but it still shows that he has the mindset of ‘if you don’t break the rules nothing bad will happen’; he didn’t want to challenge the established system.

D-16 wanted revenge which is fair given what sentinel did to him. It was a reasonable reaction but where it devolves is when the desire for revenge become more selfish and entwined with the strong over the weak mentality the high guard introduced which clouds his judgement later on.

He did not care about the consequences of killing sentinel in an extremely public and flashy execution and how that would impact iacon moving forward. His actions were fuelled by his desire for revenge. It gets to the point where this desire outweighs his care for others. He wants to kill sentinels supporters almost immediately after. He destroys any sentinel iconography and doesn’t care to get people out of the way first or that it was putting them at risk of death from the debris. His revenge was not sated and he just kept escalating.

He proclaims himself as a leader, taking megatronus’ cog and promising no one will be deceived again. This focus on deception throughout the movie is especially interesting because the way they frame it it’s almost as if he isn’t angry about the system itself he’s angry that it was built on lies. Sentinel killed the primes, mutilated D-16 and used his labour to pay off sentinel’s own debt. There’s no real mention on cogless mechs being treated like nothing or anything like that (correct me if I’m wrong I have a shit memory). He is not motivated by a desire to change the system but revenge for how the system he suffered in was built on lies and the betrayal that came from that. My friend described it as ‘megatron is fuelled by personal anger and Optimus by societal anger’. He was called Optimus because he was optimistic, he had hope things could be better for the cogless bots without burning everything including them to the ground. It’s shown through the symbolism too, Orion kneels at the miners’ height to talk to them but megatron towers over the high guard in his speech. Also as prev mentioned, he was continuing the cycle of violence. The way megatron gained power mirrored the way sentinel did and ofc the intentions and motivations were completely different but this was the way the movie was communicating this is not the way to do it.

Do I think that Orion was sympathising with sentinel for trying to stop megatron? No but I think he definitely could’ve handled it better, especially when he compared megatron to sentinel which was the WORST possible thing to say in that moment. I do think his desperation to stop D-16 was because he could see the consequences of killing sentinel like this, both on iacon and on D-16. Also one of Optimus’ flaws is that he wants to solve things non-violently or at least non-fatally when he really should sometimes, so it wasn’t completely selfless reasoning either. I was very happy when sentinel was finally killed but I could see why Orion wanted to stop D-16.

I’d say neither of them were completely in the right or wrong when it comes to sentinels death and the aftermath. Orion had much better intentions and awareness of the consequences, but his reasoning was at least a bit connected to his own ideology and he really could’ve communicated Why It Was Bad better. And megatron was the one in the wrong by the end through his actions and especially intentions. In tf1 he’s right in some places and wrong in most but this was an origin; an oppressed persons reaction to their worldview crumbling around them and realising that they were owed more. It’s why it impacted him harder than Orion because he already knew that much. D-16 was betrayed and lied to and had no idea what to do after that other than kill the person responsible. When he let go of orion he disregarded his connection to his past, the last person he could truly trust, letting his anger consume him past of the point of no return. D-16 was my favourite character in the movie but it’s important to recognise that he was not in the right. We know what he will do in the future; the atrocities he will commit, this is just introducing how he may have escalated to such extreme actions.

Pls let me know if I get anything wrong I typed this at like 3am lol and sorry OP for the long addition!

"Maturing is realising Megatron was right." Have you even watched a single second of Transformers.

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

Aight I'm that one person who keeps talking about Asians in this show in your inbox. When I watched Qilin, I was so frustrated that they just made Sabine's morning routine so "exotic" because she had tai chi in the dang background. Like I could be nitpicking but they just made her seem so foreign instead of showing how she's come to terms with western culture as an immigrant.

Don’t worry, your complaints about the portrayal of your culture are more than valid. I’m a white dude who hasn’t faced a lot of prejudice myself, so I really appreciate the clarification here. 

It’s hard to really say how accurate the events of the episode were to the actual anti-Asian crimes going on in France around the time this episode was made, or the time the episode aired. My best guess is that the treatment was simplified was done to appeal to other broadcasters (specifically the “victim of misunderstanding” line), though it didn’t do much, as when the French channel TF1 aired the episode, the censored most of the scenes with Sabine arguing with the law... despite the fact that they’re integral to the plot.

As blunt as the message was, the racism in “Kung Food” made more sense because it was things that Asians had to deal with more, like Chloe mixing up different Asian cultures and mocking the limited dialect Wang Cheng had with her “No speak Japanese” line. Here, the actual discussion of racism and police brutality, even for a show aimed at children, is almost nonexistent here. Yes, racism is a problem that people of all kinds of ethnicities face, but you can’t just erase the history of racial tensions to make it seem like the discrimination African-Americans and Asian-Americans is the same. 

Part of me wonders if the episode was reworked to parallel more recent incidents of police brutality like George Floyd, as according to Astruc, the story was originally written during the Yellow Vest Protests of 2018.

How getting caught in the crossfire during a series of protest over rising fuel prices led to writing an episode on racism and police brutality is anyone’s guess.