Netflix's Voltron: Legendary Defender

They didn’t want to make a space opera so much as they wanted to ram the Avatar formula in with a huge heap of Darker and Edgier. Even as a space opera, it lacks the things that make a good space opera, pathos, wonder, and that enduring sense of scale. I always use the example of Space Battleship Yamato 2199 which has much greater scale, scope, budget, and writing. And it’s not like that wasn’t aimed towards boys as well, so I don’t know why the showrunners found such a target so insurmountable.

I feel like that was the issue, that there was no real pathos or optimism in an ending they said was supposed to reflect those feelings. Haggar getting an unearned redemption, and everyone getting a tragic backstory seemed designed to make you feel bad for cheering against them, like they didn’t like the idea of the big robot being cool and winning the day and did the best to let the air out of that balloon.

Space opera and mecha go together like peanut butter and jelly, and there are plenty of great examples. But this setup went together like pineapples and broccoli.

Edited by Beatman1 on Feb 27th 2019 at 7:16:36 AM

They did mention they wanted a whole episode of epilogue for the aftermath of Allura's sacrifice and its effects on the universe, instead of just half. As well as the final alternate universe to be a whole episode so they could explain her sacrifice up more. The Kill Em All ending would probably have had something like that as well.

I still don't understand the comparisons to Avatar or what the Avatar formula is beyond things like having an evil technologically advanced empire as the villains and a dark-skinned female protagonist which are both very superficial things. None of the three shows are all that similar in structure.

Edited by AlleyOop on Feb 27th 2019 at 1:39:02 PM

I get the feeling you Accentuate the Negative way too much when it comes to the showrunners. Saying stuff like "they think their show is better than other mecha" is very disingenuous (they specified that the ending was unlike anything other mecha aimed at young audiences has done, not that it was better). It would also be very strange that they would write Voltron if they outright hated the Mecha genre. Were they coerced to write it, then? Blackmailed?

Don’t ascribe to malice what can be plainly explained by incompetence, as they say. This show was their first try at creating a story themselves. They were also playing in someone else's toybox, so they had restrictions upon restrictions. People can think it has its strengths, redeeming qualities and/or criticize it without attacking real people's characters.

I do feel like they weren't particularly big fans of Mecha considering how often they seemed to de-emphasize Voltron.

It was ok at first when the heroes were first starting, but after a while it felt like they didn't actually want Voltron there sometimes.

The thing is though, they still did a lot of good and interesting things that I genuinely like, so I can't help but wonder how much better the series would have been if they'd (seemingly) cared for the main draw (Voltron) a little bit more.

It sounds like they're casual fans who watch and enjoy some mecha series but are not hardcore genre enthusiasts like Beatman was hoping they'd be. They've spoken about their enjoyment of Gurren Lagann, Robotech, Evangelion, and various more well-known Gundam series including 0079 and Wing. Shows that they would never spoken so highly of or homaged if they truly hated mecha as much as Beatman insists they do.

I’m not attributing everything to malice, particularly the rather nonsensical accusations from the Fan Dumb that the showrunners were somehow racist or sexist. I mean, they’re not good writers, they have gone on record at pushing back against requests to use Voltron more, and they probably took the job because they wanted a secure job with a big company. You don’t have to invent this false narrative of racism and sexism like the Fan Dumb do when it was a dislike of a certain genre and wanting to do their own thing. And even that doesn’t have to be terrible, since a lot of great ideas come from expanding a genre rather than slavish devotion to it. It’s just their ideas fizzled out and didn’t work.

All that being said, “killing a lead would have been unique!” Uh, no it isn’t. Not in the least.

It’s honestly for that reason I really dislike the more outlandish charges from the Fan Dumb. Because that makes it way easier to deflect any real criticism.

Edited by Beatman1 on Feb 27th 2019 at 2:55:58 PM

Just because it's not claiming malice over race or sex doesn't make it still not a form of claiming malice, this time aimed at a particular genre. Again I don't think they hate mecha, and continuously insisting that they do without clear evidence is as much a form of Fan Dumb as it is to claim they hate black or gay people. I don't know about JDS but LM has mentioned being a big fan of the original as a child and jumping at the chance to reboot this show. This particular point (that they actively harbor disregard for the mecha genre) is one that you've continuously harped on repeatedly, in unrelated threads and work pages, and which others have also pointed out does indeed constitute a form of Fan Dumb. So please, knock it off.

Back to the main topic, until they say something that proves otherwise, it's far more believable that as casual fans of Gundam/Robotech they sought to emulate certain aspects they liked from it such as the penchant for focusing on the warfare aspects and characters fighting the battles, while the robots remain as disposable tools to those ends. But they did a poor job of communicating that vision due to a mix of Executive Meddling and native incompetence, and/or picked a questionable franchise to do it for. It's far more likely than them lying about their enjoyment of other mecha series, and deliberately choosing to write for a series about Humongous Mecha all so they could deliberately give Humongous Mecha the Ron the Death Eater treatment out of spite for the genre.

Edited by AlleyOop on Feb 27th 2019 at 5:53:36 AM

Part II of the interview is up and unfortunately, I don’t have a convenient cheat sheet this time. I do have a few things that were of note though.

The negative reaction to the epilogue wedding and the Lance X Allura relationship is thrown directly on shippers. They all but say that they think the shippers are the only reason it went over so negatively.

In hindsight, mentioning Adam at SDCC was viewed as a mistake, but they were really proud of putting him in, and allegedly threatened to walk out over it when executives pushed back on it and gay Shiro.

The epilogue for Allura was going to be a lot weirder than her just up and dying. It was going to involve Allura reborn as a baby, who Lance would raise in the epilogue as his daughter. It would also have had Lance as a flight instructor for the Garrison, which would have opened itself up to a sequel or spinoff. With no sequel or spinoff in the cards, they went with the more closed ending of Lance as a farmer.

Everyone present COMPLETELY throws the fanbase and their fan made content under the bus.

The majority of the blame is thrown not on Dreamworks executives, but World Events Productions (the original holder of the Voltron IP) executives. While no one comes out and says it, it’s implied WEP was very unhappy with the final product and its reception.

The showrunners will be doing one more interview in the future, with the Let’s Voltron podcast (this is as per the podcast’s Twitter). After that, they both claim to be done with Voltron as a franchise.

Clearly no biased reporting from you at all in that post

I was trying to be tonally neutral and I am not judging the showrunners for what they said. Especially the Adam part, where, you get why they were proud of getting that included (along with the confirmation of Shiro’s homosexuality) but that may have blinded them to how Adam’s actual role would be viewed given the hype afforded. And they copped to it being a mistake.

"Throwing under a bus" isn't neutral term though <_<

But yeah, seriously speaking, you can tell show had lot of production problems and something going on the background. I don't think ending was particularly bad, but the show was inconsistent in general.

Yeah, in hindsight that was a bit too hyperbolic on my end, but their reaction was admittedly rather funny.

I mean, if I had the choice, knowing the Unpleasable Fanbase and the fact that most of the outcry over Adam had more to do with bad faith actors concerned mainly about shipping, I would've stuck to my guns with the original ending. For representation purposes I'd modify it to have a scene of Shiro holding hands with another man in the background of the original plan, instead of this domino effect that led to worse-than-nothing representation (due to the tokenism and OOC canceling out whatever good it would've done) and awkward endings for all of the characters.

Yeah, the biggest problem with the fanbase VLD cultivated is how their behavior negates real criticism with their focus on ship wars. The epilogue had a lot of critics for its lack of continuity to the story and character motivation, but the only complaints staff has heard until now is "this show is bad because [insert ship] is not canon."

In any other fandom, I'd be offended at the showrunners trying to deflect criticism as just crazy shippers, but with this fandom's history, I really can't blame them, even if they're wrong this time. Because I haven't seen anyone actively liking and/or defending the epilogue aside from people who worked on the show.

I've seen a small handful of people, but like you said they're all that specific type of Fan Dumb who refuse to admit the final season had any flaws at all, and are quick to blame any negativity on "just angry shippers". Something which the Afterbuzz hosts apparently also got into, but it should be noted that they are apparently Klance shippers with a ship axe of their own to grind, because god forbid even the media around this show stay out of the wars.

The ending didn't make the complainers happy (because let's be real, it was patently obvious the vast majority of them were concern trolling idiots whose real goal was canon Klance). It definitely didn't make fans of Sheith and all the myriad other Shiro ships happy. It didn't make general Shiro fans who aren't even concerned with shipping happy either. And because of their inability to read the air, it also ended up foisting unnecessary epilogues on all the other characters in the process, which made fans of those characters unhappy as well. Worst of all it's also not considered good representation by the people who truly do care about that kind of thing either, because of how inorganically slapped on it was, when we're at a point where people can afford to scrutinize the quality of the depiction of LGBT characters.

The irritating thing is, they spent a lot of time pointing out how Shiro didn't need a relationship to be happy and about how the need for him to be in a relationship was a silly complaint since LGBT people aren't defined by their relationship status (a problem us bi folk have to deal with constantly), and they were right to do so. As far as gay male leads in shows not aimed strictly at adults go, Shiro was pretty solid representation too. It's not as amazing as it could've been thanks to Executive Meddling, but leaving it off at that would've been fine for the average person. Pure goodwill does a decent job of getting you so far, but this is another example of why, no matter how well-intentioned they may be, it's important to have actual LGBT present in the writer's room working behind the scenes to help avoid these kinds of mistakes and pitfalls.

Edited by AlleyOop on Mar 5th 2019 at 9:03:29 AM

I'd like to add having actual LGBT helping doesn't stop this, or at least, people would be even more critical of them than they would be of straight writers who try their hand and make mistakes, because they'll hold them up a pedestal and "know better".

As sometimes writers regardless of orientation, just like tropes that fans might not, and can receive backlash for it ss a result.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Mar 5th 2019 at 5:45:34 AM

...

All the other stuff is fine (hey, the first gay male kiss in animation is a big deal), but I wanted the show about Voltron...to actual use Voltron.

Everything else is a bonus (if not necessarily a bonus for me depending on how much I do or do not care), but why was Voltron so damned weak?!

After a while the stated reasons (the pilots not being all that good, or how they didn't want it to be the end all be all of problem solving) just faded away as it became clear they didn't actually care about the title character.

Which is a shame, cause I like this version of Voltron. It's design is slick, it's got some cool powers, etc.

I'm feeling like the only ones who do the series right are the people who created it in the first place... and they don't give two shits about the series.

I just wanted to see Voltron form a blazing sword and cut some bitch ass ro-beasts. Was that so much to ask? There was stuff there that was good, and stuff there that was bad...but where were my ro-beasts fight? Where?!

It wouldn't keep everyone from complaining as some people just like to Accentuate the Negative and be critical regardless but it shows real effort at inclusivity, which for people who truly mean well it's easier to buy.

Honestly, the fact that they're trying to shift the blame of the finale's failures onto literally everyone but themselves is just pathetic at this point, especially when a good portion of their claims contradict what was told to us in prior interviews.

It took me a while to get that you meant to say Toei.

Edited by AegisP on Mar 6th 2019 at 4:17:07 AM

Americans just don’t do the genre very well. It’s why everyone was so bearish on gen:LOCK being any good.

Yeah, in a normal setting, the pair literally blaming everyone but themselves would be an enormous red flag for any future projects they’re on and a serious burning of bridges, I mean, I still expect that to be the case as far as Voltron is concerned, if it does ever get another series it will probably use as little of the framework from VLD as humanely possible (or just be another parody series in the vein of Teen Titans Go and Thundercats Roar), but given just how tumultuous the production sounded this feels like them processing dealing with events that made no one happy. Especially given this is this first go as showrunners.

Still doesn’t excuse the final product and how badly it went over, but you can kind of understand how defensive they were of their role in it. I’m sure any future employees will look at the 6% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and ask what was up, but if you have a list of people to blame, it should go over easier.

Edited by Beatman1 on Mar 6th 2019 at 7:27:41 AM

Aren't some folks behind Voltron working on the Spider-Verse sequel? I can see why that'd worry some coming off of this show.

The showrunners are. Specifically, Dos Santos is handling the sequel and Montgomery is helming an all female spinoff.

...Oh Balls.

Didn't Montgomery leave about halfway through? Before everything went downhill.