Transformers: Age of Extinction - More Peter Cullen on Optimus Prime

I love this guy, his voice, his love of Transformers and his commitment to the character: he is a gift to the world in this respect. But somehow, I can't accept the Bay-verse Optimus Prime as the great role-model the G1 version was. In the movies he has, at various points, callously left people to die to pursue his own objectives; mercilessly destroyed beaten opponents; destroyed (or at least partially destroyed) his home planet and, by appearances from the trailers of this new movie, betrayed his own race in favour of cowering in fear, hiding out and wasting time as a beat-up old truck in some douchebag's barn while humanity hunt and destroy his fellow Cybertronians. Not quite the admirable, self-sacrificing protector of the universe we've seen in other continuities, in my opinion. Is this still the best way for Mr Cullen to honour his heroic, fallen brother?

I cant deny that the franchise as a whole has benefited greatly from Bay-formers but Michael Bay and Peter Cullen...Someone said it before me but I just really feel that Peter Cullen's Optimus is NOTHING like the way Michael Bay wants to portray Optimus.

How quaint that y'all seem to think that Optimus should be portrayed on a God-like level and that you think Cullen is doing his brother a disservice by giving voice to Bays version. The simple fact of the matter is that Bayverse Optimus is more like what a Marine would be but what some of you are failing to take into account is that you are projecting your idealized versions onto a being stuck in "real world" situations. You have the lives of your troops in your hands and the lives of billions of innocents hanging on the razors edge of your every decision AND you are outnumbered. The black and white decisions that you think Optimus should be making are no longer so "black and white", they carry the most dire of consequences. It's not about rushing in and kicking ass, you sometimes have to wait, pick your battles and carry the burden of having to decide what are "acceptable losses' and what or who must sacrificed in the short term to achieve your ultimate goal in the long term. That's a combat leaders role: Making the best you can of an absolutely f'd up situation.
Look at the motto on the original G1 Huffers' bio: "Nobody wins a war... somebody loses!" Leadership in a military situation, at least for a leader who is actually out there in the field watching his men fight and die, is like living in the first level of Hell itself, every decision torturing you, the whole world weighing down on you and you have to make choices at the speed of light, oftentimes with limited intel.
So please...tell me again how you think you boys have the right to dictate how Prime should be or whether or not you think Peter is doing a disservice to his brother. I'd really like to see the Generals Stars on any of your shoulders that tell me that you have a better perspective on the situation than myself, Cullen or any active duty military personnel who have been in combat situations.
The Movie Prime may not be the hyper-optimistic G1 version we enjoyed as children but at least this one is closer to reality than the original. It's a screwed up world we live in and instead of giving a kid an unrealistic perspective, this Prime is showing that the world is cruel, it hurts and it's out to kill you but be patient, don't lose hope or faith in yourself and you will overcome what it throws at you. For being a giant alien robot, this Prime is remarkably "human" and that's all thanks to what Peter has projected into the character.

Even if Optimus Prime in Bay Movies is the propably the worst action movie her ever (Whimp with unlimited luck), but it's still really hard to consider him as a total failure, mostly due to the Peter's voice. And that's propably says all about how awesome Cullen really is. Even if there is a little to much of him today, Franchise wouldn't be the same without him.

T-Macksimus wrote:How quaint that y'all seem to think that Optimus should be portrayed on a God-like level and that you think Cullen is doing his brother a disservice by giving voice to Bays version. The simple fact of the matter is that Bayverse Optimus is more like what a Marine would be but what some of you are failing to take into account is that you are projecting your idealized versions onto a being stuck in "real world" situations. You have the lives of your troops in your hands and the lives of billions of innocents hanging on the razors edge of your every decision AND you are outnumbered. The black and white decisions that you think Optimus should be making are no longer so "black and white", they carry the most dire of consequences. It's not about rushing in and kicking ass, you sometimes have to wait, pick your battles and carry the burden of having to decide what are "acceptable losses' and what or who must sacrificed in the short term to achieve your ultimate goal in the long term. That's a combat leaders role: Making the best you can of an absolutely f'd up situation.
Look at the motto on the original G1 Huffers' bio: "Nobody wins a war... somebody loses!" Leadership in a military situation, at least for a leader who is actually out there in the field watching his men fight and die, is like living in the first level of Hell itself, every decision torturing you, the whole world weighing down on you and you have to make choices at the speed of light, oftentimes with limited intel.
So please...tell me again how you think you boys have the right to dictate how Prime should be or whether or not you think Peter is doing a disservice to his brother. I'd really like to see the Generals Stars on any of your shoulders that tell me that you have a better perspective on the situation than myself, Cullen or any active duty military personnel who have been in combat situations.
The Movie Prime may not be the hyper-optimistic G1 version we enjoyed as children but at least this one is closer to reality than the original. It's a screwed up world we live in and instead of giving a kid an unrealistic perspective, this Prime is showing that the world is cruel, it hurts and it's out to kill you but be patient, don't lose hope or faith in yourself and you will overcome what it throws at you. For being a giant alien robot, this Prime is remarkably "human" and that's all thanks to what Peter has projected into the character.

As a army veteran, original G1 fan and someone who enjoys the movies, I have to agree with everything you said, well put.

Moonshot wrote:

T-Macksimus wrote:How quaint that y'all seem to think that Optimus should be portrayed on a God-like level and that you think Cullen is doing his brother a disservice by giving voice to Bays version. The simple fact of the matter is that Bayverse Optimus is more like what a Marine would be but what some of you are failing to take into account is that you are projecting your idealized versions onto a being stuck in "real world" situations. You have the lives of your troops in your hands and the lives of billions of innocents hanging on the razors edge of your every decision AND you are outnumbered. The black and white decisions that you think Optimus should be making are no longer so "black and white", they carry the most dire of consequences. It's not about rushing in and kicking ass, you sometimes have to wait, pick your battles and carry the burden of having to decide what are "acceptable losses' and what or who must sacrificed in the short term to achieve your ultimate goal in the long term. That's a combat leaders role: Making the best you can of an absolutely f'd up situation.
Look at the motto on the original G1 Huffers' bio: "Nobody wins a war... somebody loses!" Leadership in a military situation, at least for a leader who is actually out there in the field watching his men fight and die, is like living in the first level of Hell itself, every decision torturing you, the whole world weighing down on you and you have to make choices at the speed of light, oftentimes with limited intel.
So please...tell me again how you think you boys have the right to dictate how Prime should be or whether or not you think Peter is doing a disservice to his brother. I'd really like to see the Generals Stars on any of your shoulders that tell me that you have a better perspective on the situation than myself, Cullen or any active duty military personnel who have been in combat situations.
The Movie Prime may not be the hyper-optimistic G1 version we enjoyed as children but at least this one is closer to reality than the original. It's a screwed up world we live in and instead of giving a kid an unrealistic perspective, this Prime is showing that the world is cruel, it hurts and it's out to kill you but be patient, don't lose hope or faith in yourself and you will overcome what it throws at you. For being a giant alien robot, this Prime is remarkably "human" and that's all thanks to what Peter has projected into the character.

As a army veteran, original G1 fan and someone who enjoys the movies, I have to agree with everything you said, well put.

As an aspiring Marine... I'm pretty much forced to agree.

Revenge of the Fallen Prime is still my favourite because he was the most badass.

“My brother said, ‘Peter, be a real hero. Don’t do all the bravado stuff and pretend to be tough. Be strong enough to be gentle. Be understanding - and calm,'" Cullen said. “When I began the audition, his voice came right out. I read the lines the way I could hear my brother doing it.


Thats pretty much it.

Also...

“Now, maintaining those characteristics - courage, trustworthiness, integrity, loyalty - you’re responsible for something to the kids who watch Optimus Prime. I want to be a positive influence rather than just fighting and sock, bang, boom!"

The film is more real obviously than the cartoons but Prime is a bit off how he has been prtrayed for years. Macksimus, it doesn't matter what you think about how Peter voices it, he can't change the script, he reads the lines with maybe a bit of ad libbing. The writers and Bay are responsible for how Prime is shown to us, Peter 'just' does his amazing voice thing. Im not saying Prime shouldn't do what is necessary but you comparing him to a Marine is a fallacy. Hes in charge of his race on another planet.

The Marine thing was to honour his brother and that is good, but it doesnt reflect how Bay and the writers want to portray him. He still uses his voice to endow that character with what he has before. His brother only died recently but his inspiration was felt before (like in G1). A lot of Americans love the whole 'kill stuff with guns' thing. There was a case about a sergeant not so long ago in a war zone executing someone in a war zone....


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/cr ... 85102.html

I admire soldiers for the work they do but killing their own families? You're off your rocker fella. Don't make the whole Prime thing about being a Marine.

Unfortunately violence and the like sells in films; guns explosions and death, so it was inevitable Prime, the films main guy would end up doing something like this I guess. I just blame Bay. It doesnt necessarily make the films bad for that reason alone, I think they could have done something else, but then I always loved 80's Prime so go figure

I have never been involved in any military situation, I know very little about it, I have never fired a gun. All I can say is that Bayverse Prime, while can come across to others as "violent", especially before his battle with Sentinel. However, as the Leader, he has to make the tough choices, the ones that Sentinel couldn't make. His adopted planet told them to go home and basically allowed Decepticons to take over. Prime did what he had to all in service of protecting life, even if that means killing his own kind and sacrificing his home planet.
I remember reading how angry fans were that the Wreckers tore apart that Decepticon so violently, completely forgetting that this Decepticon just murdered innocent people, without hesitation, and somehow the Autobots are the bad guys.
What Bayverse Prime does seems pretty fair for the situation, one in which I myself have never been in but can at least appreciate. Choose your battles cause the wrong move could destroy a lot more than just yourself, like the entire adopted planet and all life on it.
Also, the forest battle in ROTF was still one of my favorites scenes.
"You'll never stop at one. I'll take you all on!"
Cue excellent score, what Prime fight to protect Sam. He may fail, but that's how he rolls.

The movies attempt to portray realistic warfare scenarios that, up until TF: Prime, had never really been reflected in most of the TF cartoons. There had been shades of it here and there in some of the cartoons, but the movies were really the first motion pictures of the brand to really hit home with the concept. While the cartoons did speak of the conflict being a war, it was mostly depicted in the style of what superhero genre stories had come to be like, rather than really taking the concepts of war and warfare to heart, for the sake of appealing to young children without bringing down the wrath of unhappy parents and/or other authorities.

Since the movies were really the first really big and really mainstream TF thing to strive for actual war genre levels of violence and situations, they also went with a portrayal of Optimus that's more evocative of a real life soldier leader over the more child-friendly superhero commander that he had come to be known to be like in all the years before. In real life, the "good guys" don't just let the enemy get away to keep fighting another day after some harebrained scheme of there's was foiled; they fight to the bitter end. Thus, Optimus takes far less prisoners in the movies and has a much smaller conscience about killing his enemies in general (not just about killing them when they're defenseless, but even about killing them in battle as well, which itself rarely happened at all in many of the pre-movie cartoons).

Lots of people point to the season finale of Animated as an example of how Optimus should act in the movies, in which he chose to take a defenseless Megatron prisoner rather than killing him since "That would be the easy way out." In a perfect world, yes, this would be a more ideal way to depict Optimus in the films. But since the threats portrayed by the movies have come to be on the levels of Kryptonian invasion in Man of Steel, it is relatively impossible for Movie Optimus to simply disable and capture every onscreen Decepticon without killing them since the movies made the Cons so inhuman and monstrous that they're all too dangerous to be kept alive, and the Movie Autobots likewise lack the means to properly incarcerate all of them. So the movies have purposely written themselves into a corner that prevents Optimus and the Autobots from going with any less violent methods short of killing all their foes. And since many viewers were evidently turned off by seeing their childhood icons be portrayed like violent soldiers involved in these scenarios that more resemble real life combat rather than classic superhero combat, Movie Optimus is thus looked down upon as "less noble" and "less heroic" than several of his more superhero-esque pre-2007 fiction counterparts.

Whether this is actually true or not is and has been a subject of debate since the 2007 movie, and will likely continue to be for debates yet to come, as there is simply no right or wrong answer here since everybody views heroism, nobility, and ethical nature of each in different lights and often tend to find very few common grounds of agreement, as there are those who prefer the more realistic take that the movies went with while others prefer the more child friendly classic superhero take that had been in effect since 1984.


And after having said all that, there's now the elephant in the room that is the "realistic superhero stories" like the Nolan Batman trilogy, the aforementioned Man of Steel film, and other examples that the TF movies do resemble, which helps to make the whole above explanation bare less weight. But if one considers my occasional use of the phrase "classic superhero" to refer specifically to the more child friendly iterations over the more realistic ones, then that might let this argument prove more fruitful.

Sabrblade wrote:
Lots of people point to the season finale of Animated as an example of how Optimus should act in the movies, in which he chose to take a defenseless Megatron prisoner rather than killing him since "That would be the easy way out." In a perfect world, yes, this would be a more ideal way to depict Optimus in the films.

I Belive that Megatron in Animated was exequted shortly after series finale. Why? It is simple, For Autobots he is nothing more than a common thug. He is maybe powerfull and cunning, but he is'nt a real threat for Autobots. There is no army ready to follow him, and he can't be portrayed as a martyr. So there is no reason to spare him....

However, even if he wasn't exequted: Isn't he's final fate technically worse for him than death? He has been beaten by guy that is technically a civilan, and he couldn't even defeat a Space Repair Brigade. He was humiliated, and he will live long enough to be aware that anyone now about this...

Sabrblade wrote:The movies attempt to portray realistic warfare scenarios that

You called main protagonist killing anything (including things obvoiusly more powerfull than him) on sight just because he is main protagonist "realistic"? I quess Rambo is a historical documentary movie for you...

TurboMMaster wrote:I Belive that Megatron in Animated was exequted shortly after series finale.

Actually, he was sentenced to spend jail-time at Trypticon Prison. In BotCon's story "The Stunti-Con Job", the Stunticons, disguised as a travelling circus troupe, attempted to break Megatron out of Trypticon Prison.

TurboMMaster wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:The movies attempt to portray realistic warfare scenarios that

You called main protagonist killing anything (including things obvoiusly more powerfull than him) on sight just because he is main protagonist "realistic"? I quess Rambo is a historical documentary movie for you...

You must have missed the keyword in that sentence I wrote: "]The movies attempt to portray realistic warfare scenarios..."

They TRY to make it realistic. I never said they succeed, but nor did I say that they fail to, either. All I said was that they try for realism, which is true.

Though, you are wrong to call Optimus the "main protagonist" of these movies. Sam Witwicky is the mian protagonist of the first three, while Cade Yeager will be the main protagonist of the fourth. No Transformer in any of these films has been the protagonist. They've been the heroes and villains, but not the protagonist. There IS a difference between a "hero" and a "protagonist".

At best, you could probably call Bumblebee or Optimus the "deuteragonist" of one of the first three movies, but Sam held the protagonist role for all three.

Main Optimus Prime is main protagonist in battle scenes - while Human Characters are the one witch perspective is portrayed in the movie, and they are the ones that saved the day, most fight scenes are builded (poorly) around Prime. It very similiar to Yu-gi-oh, when anyone knows that tactic and deck of good guy sucks, but since he is a good guy, he can win anyway. In this term, Bayformers Optimus Prime is exactly the same.

Sabrblade wrote:They TRY to make it realistic. I never said they succeed, but nor did I say that they fail to, either. All I said was that they try for realism, which is true.

Then they failed so miserably, that it is even hard to notice... But realism never was a strong part of Franchise: remember that this is all about giant robot from other planet.

Dude, Sam is the protagonist, period, not Optimus. Focal presentation can change to observe other characters besides the protagonist without reassigning new roles to the characters per scene transition. Optimus is the hero, but by no means is he the protagonist in any of these films.

Even if I must agree, that outside battles Sam is the main protagonist (and during fight, since he saved Autobots from disaster two or three times). My argument remains valid. Optimus won so many fights only because he is "The Hero" And that makes him boring and uninteresting character.

TurboMMaster wrote:Even if I must agree, that outside battles Sam is the main protagonist (and during fight, since he saved Autobots from disaster two or three times). My argument remains valid. Optimus won so many fights only because he is "The Hero" And that makes him boring and uninteresting character.

Oh, I never denied that Optimus wasn't a well written character. On that I agree.

The way these films portray Optimus's personality is one rooted in enormous contradictions in the filmmakers' attempts to portray him like a soldier instead of a superhero.

One minute Optimus is giving an impassioned speech about freedom and righteousness with triumphant hopeful music playing the background, the next minute he's ruthlessly ripping out the sparks of his victims only to show said sparks into their faces just rub it in, right before he pulls their faces off.

It's because the filmmakers try to make Optimus fight like a 1980s Action Flick hero, like Schwarzenegger in Commando or Stallone in Rambo. Whereas Peter Cullen vocalizes him as the same kind of compassionate saint of superheroism that he was in the G1 cartoon. Thus, his fighting style behavior and his vocal behavior greatly clash with each other, creating a character who is ultimately a living paradox.

Sabrblade wrote:

TurboMMaster wrote:Even if I must agree, that outside battles Sam is the main protagonist (and during fight, since he saved Autobots from disaster two or three times). My argument remains valid. Optimus won so many fights only because he is "The Hero" And that makes him boring and uninteresting character.

Oh, I never denied that Optimus wasn't a well written character. On that I agree.

The way these films portray Optimus's personality is one rooted in enormous contradictions in the filmmakers' attempts to portray him like a soldier instead of a superhero.

One minute Optimus is giving an impassioned speech about freedom and righteousness with triumphant hopeful music playing the background, the next minute he's ruthlessly ripping out the sparks of his victims only to show said sparks into their faces just rub it in, right before he pulls their faces off.

It's because the filmmakers try to make Optimus fight like a 1980s Action Flick hero, like Schwarzenegger in Commando or Stallone in Rambo. Whereas Peter Cullen vocalizes him as the same kind of compassionate saint of superheroism that he was in the G1 cartoon. Thus, his fighting style behavior and his vocal behavior greatly clash with each other, creating a character who is ultimately a living paradox.

Just because he likes to rip faces off doesn't mean he can't talk about freedom.

SlyTF1 wrote:Just because he likes to rip faces off doesn't mean he can't talk about freedom.

Oh, he can, but that isn't being a good example for others to look up to, which the general Optimus Prime character has become known to be over the year.


In way, it's almost as if Movie Optimus is completely oblivious to the fact he fights in a barbaric manner in which he commits actions that would be considered war crimes on a human scale. The way he goes on about goodness, hope, and freedom, yet casually resorts to underhanded ruthlessness in the field of combat, is almost as though that's how he feels a person of those beliefs is supposed to act, completely unaware of just how cruel he's really being.

And if this really is the case, that's an interesting take on the guy who's typically portrayed to be a "Mr. Perfect", thinking he's doing what's natural and failing to realize that he's gone too far multiple times in his way of fighting. The fact that he fights so callously despite his noble-sounding speeches, and the possibility of his uneducated morality, might make for an interesting factor in humanity's distrust of him in the upcoming movie.

Sabrblade wrote:

SlyTF1 wrote:Just because he likes to rip faces off doesn't mean he can't talk about freedom.

Oh, he can, but that isn't being a good example for others to look up to, which the general Optimus Prime character has become known to be over the year.


In way, it's almost as if Movie Optimus is completely oblivious to the fact he fights in a barbaric manner in which he commits actions that would be considered war crimes on a human scale. The way he goes on about goodness, hope, and freedom, yet casually resorts to underhanded ruthlessness in the field of combat, is almost as though that's how he feels a person of those beliefs is supposed to act, completely unaware of just how cruel he's really being.

And if this really is the case, that's an interesting take on the guy who's typically portrayed to be a "Mr. Perfect", thinking he's doing what's natural and failing to realize that he's gone too far multiple times in his way of fighting. The fact that he fights so callously despite his noble-sounding speeches, and the possibility of his uneducated morality, might make for an interesting factor in humanity's distrust of him in the upcoming movie.

To achieve freedom, you have to exterminate those who oppose it. Optimus understands this. In the heat of battle, why should he care how he takes out his enemies? They're his enemies. Either he kills them, or they kill him. And the most effective way seems to me, to be ripping their faces off.

SlyTF1 wrote:To achieve freedom, you have to exterminate those who oppose it. Optimus understands this. In the heat of battle, why should he care how he takes out his enemies? They're his enemies. Either he kills them, or they kill him. And the most effective way seems to me, to be ripping their faces off.

In the heat of the battle, why should he care enough to mutilate his enemies instead of simply disposing of them quickly? He doesn't simply cut them down or gun them down, he taunts them, he messes with their insides, he humbles and humiliates them as though he were a villain or a sick anti-hero. He does much more than what is necessary to bring down his enemies, all in the name of freedom, all while keeping a rational mindset as though he is unaware of his excessive actions. That is not how good people fight in real life. That is how action flick heroes who purposely cross the line for the sake of drama and shock appeal to the audience behave. Movie Optimus is following a classic stock character archetype that is popularly associated with action flicks rather than following in how a real soldier of honor behaves.

SlyTF1 wrote:Either he kills them, or they kill him. And the most effective way seems to me, to be ripping their faces off.

Yeah, Demolishor really wanted to kill him. or Megatron, that spared Prime three times. Sentinel spared him once, and later he try to convince Optimus that he should switch sides and support Cybertron's reconstruction... They all were so much about killing Optimus!

Considering number of times Optimus was spared, it's really hard to belive that he was consider important target for he's enemies in first three movies. If they really would love to see him dead, then he either would be killed already in Mission City, or was later executed by Sentinel after activating Space Bridge. And that makes Optimus even more sadistic: He killed a lot of he's own kind, that weren't even hostile about him. He's not only resposible for Destruction of Cybertron and many death's, but he is also ungrateful bastard.

Personally, I think what OP needs badly is reluctance. All his face-ripping and head-chopping will make perfect sense if the moviemakers injected reluctance and a little angst in him. Clearly illustrate the fact that he doesn't want to kill his fellow Cybertronians, but does so because he's forced to.

In the movies, he seems to enjoy what he does a little too much.

All they had to do was switch the dialogue up a little.

For example, his fight with The Fallen. Instead of a nonsensical but admittedly cool, "Gimme your face!", how about, "You don't deserve to wear the likeness of your brothers!" or something along those lines. It makes more sense because The Fallen has sullied the honor of the 13 Primes.

And when he executes Sentinel in DOTM: while the line he used was okay, it felt a little self-righteous. It would have worked far better if he killed Sentinel to avenge Ironhide.

Sentinel: "Optimus... all I ever wanted... was the survival of our race... You must see why I had to betray you..."

Optimus: "Tell that to Ironhide."

I would also switch up his lines when he faces off Shockwave at Chernobyl to make him more heroic. Instead of all that exaggerated growling, have him try to get Shockwave's attention so he won't go after the human soldiers (who don't seem to stand a chance against him).

"Over here, Shockwave! Your fight is with me!"

To be fair, I find OP fairly toned down in DOTM, and it seems he'll be getting even better character development in AoE (relationship with Wahlberg).

I agree. The easiest way they could have fixed at least the contradictory nature of Movie Optimus's character would have been to have scripted his dialogue to have better matched his ruthlessness instead of having him speak like the "Mr. Perfect" he's usually written as.



To be honest, ya'll know what I would like to see happen in AOE but more than likely won't happen? If they were to take all of these contradictions and hypocrisy regarding Optimus that have been seen in the previous films and brought up in this thread (like his aforementioned noble and inspiring dialogue vs. his barbaric and cruel fighting style), and have all that be part of why humanity no longer trusts him or the Autobots. Have the humans recognize that the Autobots weren't nearly as heroic as the first three films would like us to think of them as, and work that into humanity losing faith in the Autobots, which in turn would affect Optimus's own opinions about humanity and his losing faith in us. He'd think that all he had done before was for humanity's benefit and would be completely oblivious to the brutality of his actions that we all noticed.

Seeing as the humans would no longer condone Optimus's hypocritical nature, Optimus would thus feel betrayed by those he swore to protect and no longer trust the humans either. And his journey in the movie of trying to regain humanity's good graces wouldn't simply be about him having to just save the humans again from the next big threat like he always has, but rather it would be about him having to come to terms with how his violent nature really has conflicted with his saintly speeches, and how he would want to become a better person to actually live by the things he preaches. In order to revise his relationship with humanity, he'd have to revise his own contradictory nature for the better.

"Freedom is the right of ALL sentient beings" ought to really mean something to him and extend towards everyone and anyone, including his enemies. His brutish fighting style would have to be revamped into something less ugly. No more taunting his foes while ripping them to shreds, no more tearing out one's spark just to shove it in their face, no more execution style murders of fully incapacitated opponents; just doing only what is absolutely necessary to save lives, rather than going out of his way to do everything he can to destroy lives in the most cutthroat manners imaginable.

Sabrblade wrote:I agree. The easiest way they could have fixed at least the contradictory nature of Movie Optimus's character would have been to have scripted his dialogue to have better matched his ruthlessness instead of having him speak like the "Mr. Perfect" he's usually written as.



To be honest, ya'll know what I would like to see happen in AOE but more than likely won't happen? If they were to take all of these contradictions and hypocrisy regarding Optimus that have been seen in the previous films and brought up in this thread (like his aforementioned noble and inspiring dialogue vs. his barbaric and cruel fighting style), and have all that be part of why humanity no longer trusts him or the Autobots. Have the humans recognize that the Autobots weren't nearly as heroic as the first three films would like us to think of them as, and work that into humanity losing faith in the Autobots, which in turn would affect Optimus's own opinions about humanity and his losing faith in us. He'd think that all he had done before was for humanity's benefit and would be completely oblivious to the brutality of his actions that we all noticed.

Seeing as the humans would no longer condone Optimus's hypocritical nature, Optimus would thus feel betrayed by those he swore to protect and no longer trust the humans either. And his journey in the movie of trying to regain humanity's good graces wouldn't simply be about him having to just save the humans again from the next big threat like he always has, but rather it would be about him having to come to terms with how his violent nature really has conflicted with his saintly speeches, and how he would want to become a better person to actually live by the things he preaches. In order to revise his relationship with humanity, he'd have to revise his own contradictory nature for the better.

"Freedom is the right of ALL sentient beings" ought to really mean something to him and extend towards everyone and anyone, including his enemies. His brutish fighting style would have to be revamped into something less ugly. No more taunting his foes while ripping them to shreds, no more tearing out one's spark just to shove it in their face, no more execution style murders of fully incapacitated opponents; just doing only what is absolutely necessary to save lives, rather than going out of his way to do everything he can to destroy lives in the most cutthroat manners imaginable.

You know, they should have done exactly this in ROTF. The scene where he kills Demolisher could have been the perfect opportunity to show the first signs of him coming apart at the seams.

After OP shoots the Con in the head, they could have added a couple seconds of dialogue between him and Ironhide:

"It had to be done; killing them, I mean. Don't feel too bad about it."

"I don't, Ironhide...that's what scares me."

Actually, I belive that the main problem with Bay's Prime is not that he can kill cons so easily, but that he can kill cons so easily From all guys he had killed, only Bonecrusher, Grindor and Fallen tried to fight back. The rest either were running, disarmed or passive. It's almost like nobody in this Universe really wants to kill him.

Also, I don't understand why Optimus could take all the credit after Mission City and Egipt, since technically both times Sam was the one that save the day.

TurboMMaster wrote:Also, I don't understand why Optimus could take all the credit after Mission City and Egipt, since technically both times Sam was the one that save the day.

So Sam could have taken down the Fallen and Megatron and destroyed the Solar Harvester all on his own?

Mindmaster wrote:

TurboMMaster wrote:Also, I don't understand why Optimus could take all the credit after Mission City and Egipt, since technically both times Sam was the one that save the day.

So Sam could have taken down the Fallen and Megatron and destroyed the Solar Harvester all on his own?

Optimus was able to do so only because Ressurection + Power Up from Matrix and Jetfire last will. So technically, day was saved by Sam and Jetfire. And when you think about this, I don't see why Humans can't just use this BFC that they used to kill Devastator to get rid off Sun Harvester.

But I see your point: In RotF Prime at least have his role in victory. In first movie it was all up to Sam. In DotM he was saved only only by Megatron's interference. And once again, Sam had his role to save the day....

So yes, Optimus is stealing credit from other guys. This isn't really heroic to me. Especially when you are a killing machine that is specialised in destroying anything that can't defend itself properly at this moment.

Well........Your kind of wrong. Both sides of this argument. Optimus is kind of the hero..... yet....... he the point of the plot is to have optimus and Sam in a balanced relationship. Alien and human relationship. Sam can bet on optimus and vice versa. On one side optimus beat shockwave with a pull of the eye and I punch to the ribs. The wreckers shot at him at least one ton of led and laser, but didn't do much. Yet he did need Sam and the Matrix to bring him back. But he killed the Fallen and ripped literal pieces off of da MEGATRON so..... but he needed Jetfires literal pieces to do so...... IT IS A TIE!CONGRATS DO YOU WANT A MEDAL OR A TROPHY.

I dunno if others had thought this; maybe Cullen is a bit old already for the role. Maybe they could get another voice actor to do it. One with the same basso but with another edge to it. But if he could still do it, no harm done.