The Energon Pub

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.