The Transformers: The Movie that killed Optimus Prime and traumatised a generation… is back!

Forty years ago, Hasbro killed one of the most beloved kids’ characters on television because it wanted to sell a new range of toys. It wasn’t a good plan.

Back in 1986, the Transformers cartoon was huge. Fans, mostly kids, tuned in to watch Optimus Prime and his team of Autobots beat the crap out of the Decepticons. I was 14 and remember it well. 

The show featured a lot of glorious and assorted robot violence and massive explosions, but the main characters always survived. Like most TV shows. 

But then came The Transformers: The Movie.

Within the first half an hour, a traumatic amount of the existing cast had already been wiped out. Brawn, Prowl, Ratchet and Ironhide were killed, and several other well-known Autobots were shown lying dead. It was like George RR Martin had been the guest writer.

Then they killed Optimus Prime.

And it wasn’t a vague, ‘probably dead’ death either, like an explosion or a fall from an impossible height. Optimus fought his nemesis Megatron, got a ton of injuries, and died surrounded by friends. He even turned grey, just to reinforce the point.

I was more of a Battle of the Planets / Gatchaman kind of kid, but I watched Transformers regularly and The Transformers: The Movie was pretty shocking.

Why did they kill Optimus Prime?

Basically, they wanted to sell more toys.

The original Transformers TV show was closely tied to Hasbro’s toy range. And in 1986, the company had created a load of new Transformer toys it wanted to flog. But the TV show posed an obvious problem – it was full of old characters/toys. 

The movie was designed to solve that problem by simply killing off characters whose toys were being phased out. I know these are all very fictional alien robots, but it still feels kind of callous.

Hasbro wanted to bring in fresh er… metal? Oil?… and replace the old guard with newcomers like Hot Rod, Kup and Ultra Magnus. The plan was that Hot Rod would become Rodimus Prime, the new Autobots leader. 

With him in charge, that also meant a new toy that kids would pester parents for.

Not everyone was keen, and they were right to be dubious

Screenwriter Ron Friedman later said that he’d warned Hasbro that killing Optimus was a huge mistake. He said the character was essentially the father figure of the Transformers world, and that kids were more attached to him than the company seemed to realise.

When the film was released, Friedman was proven right. 

There were numerous reports of children crying in cinemas, followed by angry phone calls and letters from parents. Which is a pretty damning form of movie review.

Hasbro expected some negative reaction, but executives later admitted they were surprised by its scale. They had just wanted to put shiny new toys in the shops, and all they got were angry questions about why they had killed Optimus Prime.  

Optimus’s death kind of saved Duke from G.I. Joe

There was a strange parallel going on at the time: G.I. Joe: The Movie, which was being made by Hasbro at the same time. I guess it was a theme someone came up with. 

According to its story editor, Duke was going to die, and his death was conceived first. Hasbro liked the idea so much that they told the Transformers people to do the same with Optimus Prime. But then the G.I. Joe film was delayed and wouldn’t come out until 1987.

Given the weeping response to Optimus Prime’s demise, they did a 180 on the idea and decided to change what happened to Duke. The animation was already finished, so they dubbed over the scene and explained that he was just in a coma. At the end of the film, they added another line saying he was ok.

Duke survived.

The inevitable return from the dead

The next Transformers season had an episode called Dark Awakening where a species called the Quintessons revived Optimus’s body and used him as a weapon against the Autobots. (Sorry – spoilers, I guess.) But Optimus manages to regain control, returns the Matrix of Leadership to Hot Rod, and apparently sacrifices himself.

Then, in 1987, the two-part The Return of Optimus Prime revealed that his body had somehow survived yet again. Two human scientists recovered it before a nearby star exploded, and when a contagious substance known as the Hate Plague began spreading across the galaxy, the Autobots decided that their old leader might be their best hope.

Sky Lynx tracked down a Quintesson and made him to repair and revive Optimus properly. Prime then reclaimed the Matrix of Leadership from an infected Rodimus and used its accumulated wisdom to cure the Hate Plague.

This resurrection stuck, and Hasbro had its old leader back in charge.

Forty years later, Hasbro is still apologising

The original film wasn’t particularly successful when it came out. It cost around $6 million and made around $5.8 million in North America. So it certainly wasn’t a hit. But since then, it has become a bit of a cult favourite.

For the film’s 40th anniversary, Hasbro launched a year-long ‘Apology Tour’, acknowledging the poor decision to kill Optimus Prime. The campaign culminated in a 4K theatrical re-release, accompanied by a new 12-minute short, Optimus Prime: Awakening. It came out last week.

Despite all I have written, the film is a reminder that it actually had some pretty cool things going for it. Especially the cast. 

Leonard Nimoy voices Galvatron, Eric Idle plays Wreck-Gar and Orson Welles gives one of his final performances as the planet-sized Unicron. And who can forget Stan Bush’s very 1980s rock anthem The Touch? 

I won’t give any spoilers about what happens at the end, but the extra short sees Prime in a Cybertronian afterlife interacting with a god-like being called The One. I’ll be honest – I haven’t seen it yet, but apparently it is a bit existential.

There is a poignant detail about it, though. Peter Cullen, who had voiced Optimus Prime since the original 1980s cartoon, died on 26 August at the age of 85. Optimus Prime: Awakening contains his final original performance as the character. RIP.

The reviews are mixed, but that doesn’t really matter

The early reviews are a mixed bag so far. A reviewer on io9 described it as the ‘strangest apology’ they’d ever seen. He and other reviewers found it a touching farewell to Cullen. They were just a bit baffled about what the film was trying to say.

Others, especially die-hard fans, seem a bit miffed at what happened and the creative decisions made for the character. Which seems very predictable. 

In conclusion:

Hasbro decided to kill Optimus Prime and made lots of children unhappy. They then kind of brought him back, kind of killed him again, before finally resurrecting him again. 

To apologise for the trauma caused, they did an apology culminating in a re-release and the final extra 12 minutes. Now the fans are all upset again. Good times.