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Optimus Prime has undergone quite a few vehicular makeovers in the past 30 years of Transformers projects, yet his earnest and heroic voice has never wavered, thanks to Peter Cullen.
For the big-budget Transformers: Age of Extinction, the actor once again reprises the role he's been playing since the 1980s Transformers cartoon. Now Prime and his Autobots have a new human ally (Mark Wahlberg) but they are in conflict with the evil Decepticons as well as the U.S. government.
"He is exactly who he was from the very original concept," Cullen says of Prime. "I've always felt a hero should have the qualities that are inspiring and helpful and fatherly and at the same time (be) courageous. I don't see those character traits changing at all."
Transformers is more than a lifetime gig as a transforming big rig for Cullen. It's also a family affair: His son Clay is a stuntman on Age of Extinction, and Cullen's brother Larry, a Marine who served in the Vietnam War and died in 2011, continues to be the inspirational foundation for Optimus' steady and strong tone.
"Though Larry's gone," Peter Cullen says, "he lives on in my mind as Optimus Prime because he was my hero."
partholon wrote:always feel a bit sorry for peter as try as he might with whatever script he's given by the writers - bay clearly doesnt see prime the same way he does.in fact im having a hard time believing bay knows what a real hero is period.
maybe ill be surprised by the new film but i cant help thinking itll take a new director before we get to see the prime of the comics and season 1 on the big screen.
i hope cullens still about and gets the chance to deliver a honest to goodness inspiring prime speach on the big screen at some stage in the future. but so far nothing bays done can even match his animated death scene from the 80s. which is unforgivable considering the money thrown at the live action films writers.
partholon wrote:always feel a bit sorry for peter as try as he might with whatever script he's given by the writers - bay clearly doesnt see prime the same way he does.in fact im having a hard time believing bay knows what a real hero is period.
maybe ill be surprised by the new film but i cant help thinking itll take a new director before we get to see the prime of the comics and season 1 on the big screen.
i hope cullens still about and gets the chance to deliver a honest to goodness inspiring prime speach on the big screen at some stage in the future. but so far nothing bays done can even match his animated death scene from the 80s. which is unforgivable considering the money thrown at the live action films writers.
SlyTF1 wrote:
Prove it.
partholon wrote:end of the day its bays film.
he calls the shots on the final form of the script. i tend to give ROTF a pass cause thanks to the writers strike it was basically all bay anyway and it was his idea to go with the twins the way they did.
in fairness to the guy he did seem to take notice of the flak they got on the dick and fart jokes ans while still to bloody long dark of the moon was a good step up from that.
i dont wish to sound too negative, i enjoy the films for what they are and bay is undeniably a fantastic action movie director. the flow of the films is very exciting visually . but theres NO character in em for the bots n cons. its all image.
they really should be on a par with stuff like the avengers on that front. where you get the feel of a genuine ensemble cast with their own back stories and motivations. as opposed to prime and what ever random collection of bodies named after characters we all know but they look and act feck all like.
TBH at this stage i reckon the only way well get that is in direct to video flims with marvel or something . prehaps adapting the classic stories ala what DC has been doing with its characters. cause right now i reckon the studios see TF live action films as a cash cow that theyll keep as close to what weve seen so far as they can as it nets em a billion a go.
partholon wrote:SlyTF1 wrote:
Prove it.
simple.
revenge of the fallen. when opitimus prime tracked down and executed a defeated opponent by shooting him in the head.
to paraphrase a quote from the franchise "thats not prime".
bay had the autobots acting like a death squad FFS. thats how megatron does things.
and thats before you get to the whole "face ripping " stuff later on.
partholon wrote:he's the leader of an army.
the MORAL leader of an army. ya mightve noticed he DIDNT execute megs in the animated film cause thats not what a hero does to a hepless opponent. hence why his had was forced by hot rods intervention.
demolisher was defeated. all they had to do was pack him up and lock him away on their island base. and seeing as he had Intel on the fallen THAT would actualy make sense.
but no its punisher prime with a bullet to the head cause bay thinks thats cool.
and it is, its a bad ass moment, but its not optimus prime
bay has yet to portray prime the way cullen describes him. in fact he's yet to portray him in a way that wouldnt mark him a war criminal if he was a human doing the same stuff to human opponents.
and on the characters front.
you REALLY think he's captured ratchets character? name ONE bot he treats as a doctor over the entire trilogy? he doesnt even lift a finger to examine primes corpse in the second film.
if you changed the names of the entire supporting cast of bots the story would still make the exact amount of sense that it does now.
ironhides meant to be primes best friend and he dies entirely unremarked by him in the third film. that couldve been good emotional ammo for primes fight with sentinel but nothing was done with it.
the character arcs in these films are soley about the humans. not the transformers.
[/quote]SlyTF1 wrote:partholon wrote:
Maybe if you actually look past just the images that show up on the screen, youll find the characters.SlyTF1 wrote:
Prove it.
simple.
revenge of the fallen. when opitimus prime tracked down and executed a defeated opponent by shooting him in the head.
to paraphrase a quote from the franchise "thats not prime".
bay had the autobots acting like a death squad FFS. thats how megatron does things.
and thats before you get to the whole "face ripping " stuff later on.
So what? You expected him to let Demolisher continue to terrorize the planet? Maybe you missed the part in the animated movie when Optimus swept through Autobot City, murdered all those Decepticons, then proceeded to beat Megatron, and attempt to execute him on the spot. Again, you expect Optimus to let Decepticons run rampant on Earth? No. He's supposed to exterminate them before they become an even bigger problem.
SlyTF1 wrote:partholon wrote:he's the leader of an army.
the MORAL leader of an army. ya mightve noticed he DIDNT execute megs in the animated film cause thats not what a hero does to a hepless opponent. hence why his had was forced by hot rods intervention.
demolisher was defeated. all they had to do was pack him up and lock him away on their island base. and seeing as he had Intel on the fallen THAT would actualy make sense.
but no its punisher prime with a bullet to the head cause bay thinks thats cool.
and it is, its a bad ass moment, but its not optimus prime
bay has yet to portray prime the way cullen describes him. in fact he's yet to portray him in a way that wouldnt mark him a war criminal if he was a human doing the same stuff to human opponents.
and on the characters front.
you REALLY think he's captured ratchets character? name ONE bot he treats as a doctor over the entire trilogy? he doesnt even lift a finger to examine primes corpse in the second film.
if you changed the names of the entire supporting cast of bots the story would still make the exact amount of sense that it does now.
ironhides meant to be primes best friend and he dies entirely unremarked by him in the third film. that couldve been good emotional ammo for primes fight with sentinel but nothing was done with it.
the character arcs in these films are soley about the humans. not the transformers.
He didn't kill Megatron, because Hot Rod got in the way.
So, in exchange for putting Demolisher down in probably one of the most humane ways to terminate an enemy in war, it would have been just fine to harbor a prisoner of war for no reason? And if he ever got lose? Imagine the damage he would cause at the base. He'd likely even call in reinforcements and give away the Autobot's base of operations. And how is shooting someone in the head a war crime? Keeping an enemy as a POW like that is a war crime. They'd probably just leave him in a cage to starve to death.
In terms of Ironhide being Optimus's best friend, why do you think Optimus was so pissed off at Sentinel? Optimus has never been the kind of person to show his emotions so blatantly. When he blew Sentinel's face off, that was payback for Ironhide.
partholon wrote:ya mean like over the previous two years when demolishor was free to do just that but cringed in hiding from an autobot death squad instead like the rest of his kind ?
its not the autobots job to exterminate the decepticons, that'd make em just like them. its their job to stop them. prime in these films has been acting just like grimlock would if HE was running the autobots.
hot rod "got in the way" cause he was written that way as character device- cause flint dille and ron fridman knew they couldnt have prime execute a defenceless megatron without killing everything that makes him a heroic character.
but a guy using an autobot as sheild weilding a hidden weapon he was inching toward while lying his ass off. THAT guy you can kill.
bays prime in dark of the moon knew nothing of what happned to ironhide and just went on a psychopathic killing spree and actually threw away a chance a peace with the deceps .
and what planet are you on if you think shooting an unarmed combatant in the head isnt a war crime.
there are people in JAIL for that sort of thing right now.
ricemazter wrote:SlyTF1 wrote:partholon wrote:he's the leader of an army.
the MORAL leader of an army. ya mightve noticed he DIDNT execute megs in the animated film cause thats not what a hero does to a hepless opponent. hence why his had was forced by hot rods intervention.
demolisher was defeated. all they had to do was pack him up and lock him away on their island base. and seeing as he had Intel on the fallen THAT would actualy make sense.
but no its punisher prime with a bullet to the head cause bay thinks thats cool.
and it is, its a bad ass moment, but its not optimus prime
bay has yet to portray prime the way cullen describes him. in fact he's yet to portray him in a way that wouldnt mark him a war criminal if he was a human doing the same stuff to human opponents.
and on the characters front.
you REALLY think he's captured ratchets character? name ONE bot he treats as a doctor over the entire trilogy? he doesnt even lift a finger to examine primes corpse in the second film.
if you changed the names of the entire supporting cast of bots the story would still make the exact amount of sense that it does now.
ironhides meant to be primes best friend and he dies entirely unremarked by him in the third film. that couldve been good emotional ammo for primes fight with sentinel but nothing was done with it.
the character arcs in these films are soley about the humans. not the transformers.
He didn't kill Megatron, because Hot Rod got in the way.
So, in exchange for putting Demolisher down in probably one of the most humane ways to terminate an enemy in war, it would have been just fine to harbor a prisoner of war for no reason? And if he ever got lose? Imagine the damage he would cause at the base. He'd likely even call in reinforcements and give away the Autobot's base of operations. And how is shooting someone in the head a war crime? Keeping an enemy as a POW like that is a war crime. They'd probably just leave him in a cage to starve to death.
In terms of Ironhide being Optimus's best friend, why do you think Optimus was so pissed off at Sentinel? Optimus has never been the kind of person to show his emotions so blatantly. When he blew Sentinel's face off, that was payback for Ironhide.
In our wars, summary execution of POWs is a war crime. We can't just kill a wounded enemy because we feel like it, the Geneva convention terms were written to prevent that sort of thing. Even POWs wounded in battle are supposed to be given medical treatment and not just put down because it would be inconvenient to house them. Shooting someone in the head during a conflict between able bodied combatants isn't a war crime, but summary executions are. Even knowing the kind of danger that Decepticons present, you'd think that someone with Optimus' supposed moral high ground would recognize that's a pretty bad thing to do to someone.
It actually might be a pretty neat commentary on the horrors of war given that both the Autobots and Decepticons in these movies afford themselves pretty much the same level of battlefield courtesy, but given that it's never brought up in the films at all and that all the promotional materials we get keep acting like these are the classically moral characters we all know and love I doubt this is the case.
SlyTF1 wrote:
It is their job to exterminate them. It doesn't make them just like the Decepticons. The only difference between the Autbots and Decepticons, anyway is that Decepticons will go to extreme measures to get what they want. Neutralizing a threat is not an extreme measure. And how the hell wouldn't Optimus know about what happened to Ironhide? You don't think someone would have told him what that huge pile of rust out in front of the base was? Also, Optimus would never accept a truce with the Decepticons. Why should he after all they've done?
Anyway, I think that was done to show how war changes people. Optimus started off begging for peace, and Megatron started off being ruthless. And at the end of DOTM, they had both basically taken each other's positions. It's irony...
...In real life, you don't get the chance to take the "moral high ground." Movie Optimus is more of a realistic interpenetration of what Optimus Prime was. It's kill one to save thousands.
ricemazter wrote:SlyTF1 wrote:
It is their job to exterminate them. It doesn't make them just like the Decepticons. The only difference between the Autbots and Decepticons, anyway is that Decepticons will go to extreme measures to get what they want. Neutralizing a threat is not an extreme measure. And how the hell wouldn't Optimus know about what happened to Ironhide? You don't think someone would have told him what that huge pile of rust out in front of the base was? Also, Optimus would never accept a truce with the Decepticons. Why should he after all they've done?
Anyway, I think that was done to show how war changes people. Optimus started off begging for peace, and Megatron started off being ruthless. And at the end of DOTM, they had both basically taken each other's positions. It's irony...
...In real life, you don't get the chance to take the "moral high ground." Movie Optimus is more of a realistic interpenetration of what Optimus Prime was. It's kill one to save thousands.
In a realistic interpretation, Optimus would have been tried as a war criminal for not taking the moral high ground (heck Impactor was tried and imprisoned for doing exactly what Prime does here). As a character he's supposed to be the hero, moral archetype that we all should look up to which includes mercy. I think someone else already mentioned that this version of Prime is more akin to the Punisher than anything else, who is not a heroic character. I'd be fine with this portrayal of Prime if the needs of the many thing was actually explored in the movies, like it was in the Prime TV show. But here, the brutality is exploited for spectacle without any serious attempts at building these characters.
In terms of saving people though, Prime isn't very good at that here either as he decides to follow a plan that engages a dangerous fugitive in a highly populated area, probably resulting in the injury or death of a couple hundred along the way. Again, if this issue was explored at all, I'd be fine with it, yet they still choose to characterize Prime as this figure for all that is good and just despite not doing that in his actions.
It would be nice if the movies themselves appreciated the ironies they keep creating, but the Autobots and Decepticons in these things started off the way they are and keep up their brutal ways throughout.
Fires_Of_Inferno wrote:Woah, what happened to this topic? :O
Va'al wrote:I keep track of everyone. Backwards.
There are atandarfs to maintain.
LOST Cybertronian wrote:Hey, If Mindmaster survived then you should do just fine.
SlyTF1 wrote:
Tried as a war criminal in a one sided war? Who would hold the charges against him? Megatron? Doubtful.
T-Macksimus wrote:Y'all are just pissy because Prime is finally "humanized". You think Peter's brother was never placed in a difficult situation during his combat times? Do you honestly think that you have the right to attribute characteristics to this fictional, iconic character more so than the man who voices the character, who gives life to Prime and basically channels anothers soul into the essence of this character?
Get your asses shot at, have the lives of a platoon of soldiers or, better yet, the lives of 7 billion innocent bystanders forced to deal with a war YOU brought into their backyard and try to tell me you won't do WHATEVER it takes to make it end. You'd kill your own men, your own family members to save 7 billion lives and you'd let that decision torture your soul until you drew your last breath but you'd still make the same damn call. THAT is the kind of dedication a Marine has and THAT is what Cullen is drawing on for inspiration to give voice to Prime. A brother whom he loved dearly and whose loyalty and dedication to his family and his country was unyielding.
What WE think Prime should be doesn't mean jack-sh** compared to that. I salute Peter, I salute his brother and honor him by accepting Prime for how he his in any story. If Peter has an issue with how Prime is portrayed by the writers or any director, you can damn well bet he's going to stand up and say something about it. The whole thing falls apart if he decides to walk out at any point. Bay knows it, the writers know it and you can bet your whole bot collection on the fact that Cullen knows the power he commands too.
This whole damn thread spiraled out of control needlessly and senselessly. You guys should be ashamed of yourselves. Lets get back to paying Peter some respect and just leave it at that!
SlyTF1 wrote:T-Macksimus wrote:Y'all are just pissy because Prime is finally "humanized". You think Peter's brother was never placed in a difficult situation during his combat times? Do you honestly think that you have the right to attribute characteristics to this fictional, iconic character more so than the man who voices the character, who gives life to Prime and basically channels anothers soul into the essence of this character?
Get your asses shot at, have the lives of a platoon of soldiers or, better yet, the lives of 7 billion innocent bystanders forced to deal with a war YOU brought into their backyard and try to tell me you won't do WHATEVER it takes to make it end. You'd kill your own men, your own family members to save 7 billion lives and you'd let that decision torture your soul until you drew your last breath but you'd still make the same damn call. THAT is the kind of dedication a Marine has and THAT is what Cullen is drawing on for inspiration to give voice to Prime. A brother whom he loved dearly and whose loyalty and dedication to his family and his country was unyielding.
What WE think Prime should be doesn't mean jack-sh** compared to that. I salute Peter, I salute his brother and honor him by accepting Prime for how he his in any story. If Peter has an issue with how Prime is portrayed by the writers or any director, you can damn well bet he's going to stand up and say something about it. The whole thing falls apart if he decides to walk out at any point. Bay knows it, the writers know it and you can bet your whole bot collection on the fact that Cullen knows the power he commands too.
This whole damn thread spiraled out of control needlessly and senselessly. You guys should be ashamed of yourselves. Lets get back to paying Peter some respect and just leave it at that!
My point, exactly.
T-Macksimus wrote:Get your asses shot at, have the lives of a platoon of soldiers or, better yet, the lives of 7 billion innocent bystanders forced to deal with a war YOU brought into their backyard and try to tell me you won't do WHATEVER it takes to make it end. You'd kill your own men, your own family members to save 7 billion lives and you'd let that decision torture your soul until you drew your last breath but you'd still make the same damn call. THAT is the kind of dedication a Marine has and THAT is what Cullen is drawing on for inspiration to give voice to Prime. A brother whom he loved dearly and whose loyalty and dedication to his family and his country was unyielding.
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