Ben 10 Fans

@coreofthesun There are some differences between Ben and Peter, and there should be. Ben should have some elements of his character that would make him more distinct compared to Peter.

In regards to why he acts so cocky, Ultimate Alien does cover that but I think they missed the point there. At least as far as I can tell, Ben acted cocky, impulsive, and fun-loving even before he got the Omnitrix and started being a hero. Even then, Ben was being cocky, impulsive, and fun-loving even when he's not performing heroic acts. I can see Peter being cocky and witty to help cope with the danger and stress of being a hero. Ben does it because he's simply being Ben.

@Tactical-Ochoa Charmcaster is a character who deserved so much better than what she got by the end of the original timeline. Actually, if we compare what happens with Kevin and Charmcaster in the sequels...

Kevin:

• Gets redeemed in the first episode of Alien Force and becomes a main character.
• Has multiple run ins with former adversaries but is supported by Ben and Gwen and helps overcome the troubles of his past.
• Becomes a better person morally while around the Tennysons.
• Despite going mad again from another mutation, he still becomes good again due to Gwen's complete faith in him.
• Becomes a normal member of society, a hero, and very close with Ben and Gwen.

Charmcaster:

• Returns in AF S3 as someone who is obsessed with Gwen on a personal level and her motivations are based around that (I'll ignore what happens in Time Heals as that was an alternate timeline)
• Then in UA she teams up with other villains to cause personal pain to the Tennysons by going after their family
• Then she becomes the ruler of Legerdomain and becomes good for one episode where she admits that she was jealous of Gwen's magical proficiency (the closest that she came to getting a redemption) and becomes temporary allies with the main characters.
• Then she does a 180 for no reason and kills the main trio the next time they meet to revive her dead dad only for him to reverse the spell because he thought it was cruel. This combined with her being used by Darkstar makes her a broken wreck at the end of UA.
• In Omniverse she has become crazy, turning all those who wronged her in the past into totems, still with a hatred of Gwen, and eventually she gets turned into a totem and stuffed into her own bag.

I don't know about anyone else, but I think that if the two situations were reversed (with some tweaks) it would make way more sense than what we eventually got. Charmcaster never seemed to be a evil person at heart, more of a rebellious girl under the bad influence of her uncle. A redemption could totally work for her as she becomes a better person due to the positive influence of Ben and Gwen. Her antagonistic motives in the OS were nowhere near as personal as Kevin's so they would be more willing to trust her (though for Gwen it would take a while). Given her personality she could've worked similar to almost a female version of Ben as a character, which would make her character interactions with Ben,Gwen and the other characters pretty funny. But anyways, she has the demons of her past to contend with as well, most notably Hex who for some reason makes up with her by the time Alien Force comes around. I think that a better idea would be to have her running away from Hex ever since he turned into a toddler, but eventually she would need to stop running and face him which could be a character arc for her.

Kevin on the other hand, was a psycho in the original who was obsessed with Ben. Pretty similar to the Joker actually, and the explanation of how "the powers made him do it" is mediocre at best - if Cletus Casady and the Joker are held responsible for their actions despite their insanity, why shouldn't Kevin? I think that he could've worked either as a vigilante or a villain in this regard. In fact I think that him randomly switching from alliance to antagonization of the Tennysons would work given that he's not completely sane, and any teamups would have an undertone of mistrust. I think that having his own character arcs paralleling Ben's would be cool to make him more 3D as a character but fundamentally his character is tied to a personal hatred of Ben.

TL;DR - Charmcaster deserved better while Kevin should've been the one who went down a path to what she did in the main timeline.

@Tactical-Ochoa I am a huge Spider-Man fan and yeah, the comparison is excellent. Although there is slight difference because Spider-Man has a very clear double life: as Peter Parker he is actually very much like Alien Force Ben in that he's shy, observant, smart, and more mature than those around him. But when he dons the costume his more exuberant side comes out, he has the nerve to joke around and wisecrack while fighting his villains all of the time, but when the stakes are high he knows what he needs to do as a hero. Paraphrasing something that I read on some old forums a while back: "When Spider-Man stops quipping, as the villain you know that you're in for it." However both sides of his life share that general maturity and drive to do the right thing.

Ben is obviously not completely the same though given that while he does try and keep his secret, he doesn't wear a costume or anything and so his personality will remain the same because he always has the Omnitrix on, so yes having a personality like Spider-Man works very well for him.

Another thing that I'll point out in the similarities is that the reason that Spider-Man jokes around so much when in the costume is to hide his fear and distract himself from the gravity of the situation. At first he actually does it out of nervousness but as time goes on it becomes a staple of his character. Well what do you know, that's what Ben does as well. By being fun-loving and not taking everything completely seriously, he's making sure that a situation doesn't crush him mentally. I'm fairly sure that there's an episode of Ultimate Alien which touches on that.

Though there is a significant difference between Ben Tennyson and Peter Parker: Peter is incredibly intelligent. I'm not saying that Ben should be dumb by any means and he's witty and smart in his own right, especially when it comes to resourcefulness while in battle, but he's never meant to be the thinker of the team. That's Gwen's role, or at least it should've been until they made her into a token girl in Alien Force . Ben is more of the "talk/fight first, answer questions later" kind of guy. There were many moments in Alien Force where Ben was coming off almost as too smart compared to the others.

@coreofthesun Yup, that pretty much sums it up with Ben in Alien Force. I guess to sum it all up here, Ben in Alien Force isn't Ben. He very much feels like a different character instead of being Ben. There's allowing for a character to grow and develop, and then there's straight up changing that character so much to the point where he doesn't even feel like the same character that we've been following. Go ahead and let Ben grow, mature, and become more responsible as he gets older, but make sure that Ben is still the same old Ben that we all like as well.

You're right about cockiness and immaturity as well. They really aren't the same and Ben can be both mature and cocky. You pointed out Spider-Man and he seems like a good example of this. Spider-Man is a mature and responsible individual driven by the death of his uncle to be a better person. Spider-Man is also known to be quite a cocky individual as well, much to the annoyance of his enemies. I think Spider-Man is always going to be one of the best examples of the type of person that Ben should be; especially considering how incredibly similar those two characters are to each other to the point where Spider-Man could've been used as inspiration behind the creation of Ben. If you haven't seen it yet, I made a page on here going into those very comparisons back in 2016.
https://ben10club.org/topic/99/ben-10-and-spider-man-main-character-comparisons-analysis

@coreofthesun Charmcaster really should've been the one to go through a redemption arc instead of Kevin. With the way that she was set up in the Original Series, it felt much more fitting for her to be in Kevin's position in Alien Force.

@cooljay7 They may still be deciding on which direction to take the franchise next (with the two most likely options being a reboot sequel or else returning to the original continuity with an Omniverse continuation) hence why they may not reveal it for a while. Perhaps they may reveal some details in July when it comes to Comic Con but it may take until 2022 for them to start releasing any kind of promo material.

Personally I'm not bothered if we have to wait for a while and would rather they take their time to create a good series (whatever that may be) rather than rushing it.

I always had problems with AF S1 and 2 Ben and my outward reasoning was because he felt too generic and boring, but I knew that there was something else to it but couldn't quite place my finger on it. Then when rewatching Alien Force there's a scene when Gwen is trying to convince Ben to ask out Julie, in which she says:

"You're weird, funny, sensitive, well mannered."

This quote by itself made everything click in my mind. The reason why AF Ben doesn't fully work is because the writers were going for a completely different kind of protagonist than the one whom we saw in the original series.

Is Ben weird? To a degree I guess but I don't see him as being overly weird, if he was going on a date I see him more as the kind of guy who tries too hard to impress the girl

Is he funny? Ok maybe.

Sensitive? Err...I don't think that we're talking about the same person here. Original Ben was anything but sensitive a lot of the time, with personal feelings not usually being the first thing on his mind (although he still cared deeply for others close to him). Obviously 5 years quite a bit of time to be humbled by life experiences but I don't think that Ben would lose his headstrong nature completely.

Well mannered? Again, people do change and Ben obviously wouldn't be brattish anymore and would be more careful about what comes out of his mouth. But his rebellious streak and slight arrogance are some of his defining traits which it just feels weird to see disappear.

So from that I can conclude that they were trying to make AF Ben an introspective, slightly awkward, and serious teenage protagonist. In fact with this in mind, it is really evident when you see Ben on screen in AF that they were going for this kind of character. I'm not saying that it's bad to have that kind of protagonist in a story at all (AF Ben is probably what I would be like if I were in his position lol. ). But it isn't who Ben is - in fact it's very much the opposite of who Ben should be. Ben is a headstrong, extroverted, fun loving main character with a slight touch of arrogance, but when it comes down to it he knows where his responsibilities lie just like Spider-Man. Ultimate Alien and Omniverse Ben came far closer to this but what the writers did not fully understand is that cockiness and immaturity are not one and the same. UA and OV Ben both had some great moments where the balance was found, but more often than not they ended up being skewed one way or another: UA swayed massively from Ben being obnoxious one episode to being overly serious in the next, OV Ben was usually aloof and also obnoxious to the point of being irritating.

This is meant to be Ben's story and it's a shame that the titular character himself goes through so many regressions and changes to his personality throughout. Even the original series wasn't perfect when it came to this with Ben suffering a bit of regression and developing an slightly annoying egotistical nature in OS season 3 despite having learned his lessons. But the original definitely nailed who he is as a character the best, and I believe that teenage Ben is perfectly capable of being mature at the same time as being headstrong, rebellious and intriguing as a character.

@coreofthesun Speaking of Last Laugh, I was about to mention that the Original Series also had many dark moments as well and again, it's one of Cartoon Network's most popular shows. There were also a fair share of other shows during that time that also had plenty of dark moments and scary imagery yet they turned out to be really good and really popular. I mean, look at Courage the Cowardly Dog as an example. It's a horror comedy and it's filled to the brim with horror elements and scary imagery. Kids can handle dark moments, mature themes, and scary imagery. Therefore, maintaining the body horror transformations from the Original Series shouldn't be a problem.

@Mortie-10 I've used the template to make the meme

I also managed to help get the format trending on the Ben 10 subreddit which was cool.

@Tactical-Ochoa It's just that the Ripjaws one looked especially painful to me, but given that I was something like 6 years old when I first saw it ...it makes sense why I got slightly creeped out, but nearly 11 years down the line I really like it. Ghostfreak's transformation was creepy but I think they nailed the subtle creepy vibe in the transformation without making it too horrifying. Although I am so grateful that I didn't see "Last Laugh" as a kid, only watching it fully when I did a rewatch of the entire franchise recently.

My personal favourite transformation sequence is Wildvine's but I have a lot of love for all of the original sequences, except maybe Cannonbolt's, it was ok but could've done with a bit more detail than Ben swelling like a balloon and then being fully transformed in the next frame. All of them were distinct and although there were some reused parts as npzman mentioned (such as the XLR8 transformation where Ben's arm muscles expands like they do for Four Arms despite XLR8 being opposite in build), they still all felt different enough.