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The excitement Optimus expresses at the beginning of this episode, about Fort Max being awake, is probably the happiest that Peter Cullen has made any of his Optimus Primes sound in the past decade.

With another episode in the Machinima animated series Transformers Titans Return now available, we also have yet another interview with voice actor and Transformers legend Peter Cullen - the voice of Optimus Prime in the series along with many others - courtesy of Comic Book.com!

The brief conversation can be found below, and you can head here for the full piece. Make sure to check back later on Seibertron.com for a review of the latest episode, too.

During a conversation about Transformers: Titans Return, a webseries that brings Cullen back together with Transformers: The Movie co-star Judd Nelson and other legendary Transformers names, the voice acting legend (who long played Eeyore in Disney's Winnie the Pooh franchise) recalled the wild days of early Transformers seasons when none of the cast were sure anyone was watching.

“I’m a Generation One fan, always have been for many reasons, obviously,” Cullen told ComicBook.com. “It’s the beginning and a successful beginning and a continuing journey of success. Generation One, to see it all happening that way again, reminds me sentimentally of the old days. The only thing missing is the cast; I don’t work with the full cast the way that we used to. I miss the days when we would have laugh attacks and production would shut down for five or six minutes due to everyone laughing so hard they couldn’t stop. Those were the days that I cherished.”

He added that in those early days, working with people like Mel Blanc (in some non-Transformers work) and Frank Welker (Megatron), he was constantly floored by the level of talent that he was working with, even if animation was still considered something of an acting ghetto at that time.

“These creative minds, these vocal geniuses playing multiple characters, inventing them, there’s no greater thrill to be sitting and recording with people who are that capable. You’re just in awe; it’s jaw-dropping,” Cullen said. “I have great appreciation for them; and it's great to get someone like Judd Nelson back. What a great, talented person and a special kind of human being. His approach to acting is a great, great asset to the franchise. We don’t have much opportunity to work with too many other people, but Frank Welker I do. We convene together at conventions, et cetera, and we get an opportunity to back and forth with each other, which is laugh-attack-ville.”

Well It was kind of cool to see Fort Max as a fully powered Titan, able to stand up to Trypticon even with augmented Powers. Having Trypticons transformation again shrouded was disappointing. They should have just made this an actual animated series instead of a cheap web-series. Of course when I say full animated series, I mean with professional level writers, directors, animators etc...Yeah I know Hasbro would never go for it, that's why we cant have nice things.

I just starting watching G1 again, like over this weekend, and trying to do the whole series. IT's amazing to hear how young Optimus Prime sounds to how he does now. I know that's because Peter is older, but you could honestly believe this is part of that continuity, you know, if they hadn't screwed it up. lol

Happy New Year, Seibertronians! With a new year comes more Titans Return, and so we arrive on the ninth episode of Machinima's animated series. Head-scratching moments abound, so let's just dive right in!

We open right where the previous episode left off, as Fort Max stands before Trypticon with Optimus, Windblade, and Emissary in his hand. And almost immediately off the bat we're reminded of one of the series' biggest issues. Fort Max is pelted with bolts from the same cannon that fired one shot at Prime and hurled him across the map, but acts like it's nothing. A mild inconvenience. He carries on a conversation through the entire scene while constantly getting hammered with countless lasers. This show needs to understand battles are not night and day, perfectly healthy to dead. Show some struggle, some battle damage. Heck, even if it's just little burn marks, just SOMETHING. Make us feel an emotional connection to the characters. If you don't want to do that, establish that they have a force field or shield around them, like the ships from Star Wars. Or, since this series loves glowy neon orbs so much, give him an actual lazer shield that expands from his arm! That would look so cool! THIS IS NOT THIS HARD, PEOPLE. It's really starting to bother me, and is really making it feel like they were just, frankly, too lazy to alter the character models in any way.

"Yeah, sure, we can make him fall over, but blaster marks? Ha! That's above MY pay grade."

Anyway, Trypticon transforms back to kaiju mode, and battles Fort Max, and again, the Titan fights are proven to be when this series is at it's best. The combiners can't reform their super combiner mode, as they've spent all of their energy. They decide to just split up and try to distract the Titan Dinosaur. Optimus discovers Megatron just watching the battle, and tries to convince him to fight. He's unsuccessful for the time being, as he's distracted by Fort Max, who lands a couple good hits on Trypticon, knocking him on his back. It looks like the Autobots have the upper hand for the first time in this battle, and Victorion rushes him, trying to finish him off. At the last second he turns his head and devours her whole. Literally, in one bite.

Hey, it's Attack on Titan! Heheheh

The odds then stack up against the Autobots, as not only did they lose a fighter but Trypticon has also consumed the Enigma of Combination, which somehow activates it, granting him magical powers. He promptly uses them to knock Fort Max and the other remaining Autohots down. It is a glorious couple of minutes of action, and it's extremely pretty. The visuals of Trypticon using the Enigma are very good looking. Again, the art style and color palette are very quickly becoming my favorite parts about this series.

I'm excited for the Doctor Strange remake starring Trypticon

Trypticon takes control of the other combiners and makes them turn on Fort Max. Windblade and Emissary decide they have to get them off the City Titan, so they do a couple strafing runs, knocking Devastator and Menasor off. Computron fights back, however, and sends her way off course, crashing into the ground, conveniently right at Megatron's feet.

I was almost going to complain about how Windblade shot Fort Max more than the combiners she was aiming for, but then I realized there's no point, because damage is meaningless in this series. HAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAA

Windblade convinces Megatron to finally join the fight, and he narrowly saves Optimus from Devastator. While this is all happening, Perceptor has received a message from the Matrix of Leadership, which he's supposed to be carrying to safety. He brings it back into the city, presents it to Trypticon, and also gets straight up eaten whole. With that, the episode ends.

Trypticonus Prime?

This episode brings us one step closer to the end of this season, and I have to say i'm kind of enjoying the overarching story. When you zoom into each episode, the details and execution annoy me, sure, but the actual story isn't awful. It's an interesting idea, and now that we're closer to the climax, the action is more fast-paced, fun and definitely watchable. Depending on how they tie it all up, of course, but that remains to be seen.

Thanks for reading! You can watch this episode for yourself over on Go90, and come back and tell me if you agree or if you think I was totally off base. Catch you next week with the release of Episode 10!

This series has been a better watch but, man it drags on sometimes.

Stuff ALMOST happened with this episode.

I mean sure, there was still the whole bit with Optimus telling the combiners to separate ... only to ignore him and get promptly taken over by Trytiscream.

Oh and Menasor and Devestator only got taken over because of their limited intelligence. Care to explain Computron then Windblade?

And hey look! It's Perceptor! Totally ignoring Optimus' orders as well. I don't think anyone respects his leadership abilities any more.

Except Megatron, maybe, though he's just hanging around for the lulz.

Good grief this series is a mess.

I want to say I think the Enigma of Combination is quite possibly the worst item ever conceived of and added into Transformers Lore. Whomever came up with it, should be thoroughly beat with their keyboard.

To a certain extent I would like to see them do a reissue of Trypicon in the Psychedelic magic scheme of translucent purples and glitter they us in here.

The best part of this episode Preceptor getting eaten. I loved him in the G1 cartoon but I can't stand him in this series. I admit, part of it is probably the voice actor for him this time around.

I think the idea of the Enigma is a good one, explaining how Combiners work, and can come into existence. How its been executed in this series, and the previous one, yes that is a point of contention I can understand.

Its kind of like Vector Sigma...Sure you can make new Transformers without it (i.e. The Dinobots), but they are going to have limitations. In my head canon, I always envisioned the Dinobots were taken to Vector Sigma at some point between 1985-2005, which explains their vastly augmented personalities from TFTM & on.

o.supreme wrote:Its kind of like Vector Sigma...Sure you can make new Transformers without it (i.e. The Dinobots), but they are going to have limitations. In my head canon, I always envisioned the Dinobots were taken to Vector Sigma at some point between 1985-2005, which explains their vastly augmented personalities from TFTM & on.

As a fan who didnt grow up with G1, the key to Vector sigma is what I have the hardest time making sense of. Especially when you link that to Beast Machines.

william-james88 wrote: As a fan who didnt gro up with G1, the key to Vector sigma is what I have the hardest time making sense of. Especially when you link that to Beast Machines.

yeah, BM screwed a lot of things up, but that's nothing new.

o.supreme wrote:

william-james88 wrote: As a fan who didnt gro up with G1, the key to Vector sigma is what I have the hardest time making sense of. Especially when you link that to Beast Machines.

yeah, BM screwed a lot of things up, but that's nothing new.

What did BM do with the Key that was wrong? In G1, it turned organic material into metal, just as it did in BM.

I was being a bit facetious, but the question may want to be directed at William since he was wondering how Vector Sigma made sense...

As for me, I really have no issue with Vector Sigma itself in BM...it's other things I take issue with.

I just watched the Stop Motion video you guys posted with Optimus, Hot Rod and Overload, which was awesome, but I noticed there was another one by the same creator and I didn't know if you guys knew about it, so I thought I would share just in case.
This one has Windblade, Optimus, Megatron and Tyrpicon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRhfqRUYNTE

Recently Den of Geek did an interview with the one and only Peter Cullen. In the article he talks about his role as Optimus Prime and Ironhide throughout the franchise, including the most recent Titans Return animated series. He reflects on the moment when he got word that Optimus would be written out of the Transformers: The Movie (1986). He goes on to talk about how he portrays Optimus and Ironhide in the live action films by Michael Bay.

He later gives some advice in the article to those who aspire to be voice actors. It is worth the read for those who are thinking about being the voice of a character in a show. If you would like to check out Peter Cullen's latest work, Transformers Prime Wars: Titans Return is available on Go90.com.

I was a 1980s kid, and I remember seeing Transformers: The Movie and just being devastated by the death of Optimus Prime. How did you first find out about this plot point, and after Optimus died did you find yourself grieving for the character?

I was stunned when I first read about it. I was reading the script, getting ready to go into recording. I was with Frank Welker and I got to the page, and I just read it and when the dust settled in my brain, i said "wait a minute, this is it, I’m not coming back. Oh damn." Or whatever curse words were available at the time, I chose those that were appropriate.

It was disappointment for sure. As an actor you either learn to put up with rejections or disappointments or you’ll break, you'll succumb. I'm used to that. Most actors are used to that, getting hired for something that means a lot to them. You hope, you hope, you hope. Your hopes shouldn't be dashed because you didn’t get the part. But in my case I was a little disgruntled because there was no explanation, there was no intended meaning behind it, other than years later to find out they were just trying to create a new character to sell more toys. But at the time you interpret that as being “my character sucks, God I must have been terrible in this role.”

We didn’t get fan mail. I never received a letter of fan mail although I was told it did come. And we didn’t have the internet so there was no thermomenter to judge how popular or unpopular something was. So move on, go on to the next job.

Of course now you realize how beloved Optimus is. Jumping ahead a few years when you were first cast for the Michael Bay Transformers movie, was your approach to the film version of Optimus different than his cartoon counterpart?

I think the answer is a two-fold answer. The character traits were ultimately for me going to be the same, but how to enact them and make the change from a small television screen with painted pictures to a full-on, blown up 45-foot character who is talking to human beings in real-life form in a believable way, that was something that had to be contended with. And I might add that Michael Bay and the people in his department were very concerned whether or not Peter Cullen could act. In other words could he act in a real-life situation and the way they were going to conceive it and portray it?

I had to audition a total of three times, they weren’t quite convinced. I don’t blame them, because at the audition Michael asked me if I played any other characters and I said yes, I played Ironhide and Ironhide had a scene with Optimus Prime. There was a girl reading Ironhide not giving it any dimension. I assumed that Michael Bay was at least aware of some of these characters so I said “if you don’t mind I’d like to read that part, I did him two and half years on the television series." She said ok.

Jess Harnell was Movie Ironhide. Cullen just read Ironhide's lines during his audition for Optimus.

It's Tuesday, where's episode 10? Did I miss a memo about its delay?

Surprisingly, it isn't up yet on go90.

Episode is up now.

Windblade wrote:Somebody explain what just happened!

Sums up what I think of the series so far.

"All Things Must Pass" ....so many jokes/puns could be made here, but I'll leave that for others...

Well, that was something. Actually something I think I may have not entirely disliked...not sure yet...It certainly did make the end of the battle with Trypticon anti-climactic, but in an odd way, I feel it was kind of like the end of LOTR. There was nothing really the armies of the world could do to stop Sauron, but the destruction of the One Ring did bring it all to an end, as did giving the Matrix to Trypscream.

Oh and we see Overlord, make sure you don't forget him . Megatron, what terrible language . Also is that Mark Hamill voicing Megatronus? Just a shot in the dark, probably not, but just going by my initial instinct.

Are there any Mazinger fans here? I Initially thought of the Mikene Emperor with the flaming face, and oddly enough, Megatronus had a Mazinger-ish head in his robot form, which is again a completely new design not based on any previous rendition of Megatronus/The Fallen.

No surprise about Evil Rodimus, though they must have done this before getting renders from Hasbro about Rodimus Unicronus. Though the face-plate reveal in PotP could come complete with evil goatee.

This felt much more like Episode 1 of PotP than the end of TR, but it is what it is...Oh and it definitely was also very much like the end of Pirates of the Caribbean "Dead Man's Chest" (the 2nd one). -The Hero is dead, the Villain comes back and asks if the crew is willing to go to the place they need to go, to do the thing they need to do...It's just too bad that Optimus' Death means so little now, its pretty much a staple of every series.

I'll admit I'm more optimistic about PotP now, than I was for TR at the end of CW, but just a bit more. .

o.supreme wrote:"All Things Must Pass" ....so many jokes/puns could be made here, but I'll leave that for others...

Well, that was something. Actually something I think I may have not entirely disliked...not sure yet...It certainly did make the end of the battle with Trypticon anti-climactic, but in an odd way, I feel it was kind of like the end of LOTR. There was nothing really the armies of the world could do to stop Sauron, but the destruction of the One Ring did bring it all to an end, as did giving the Matrix to Trypscream.

Oh and we see Overlord, make sure you don't forget him . Megatron, what terrible language . Also is that Mark Hamill voicing Megatronus? Just a shot in the dark, probably not, but just going by my initial instinct.

Are there any Mazinger fans here? I Initially thought of the Mikene Emperor with the flaming face, and oddly enough, Megatronus had a Mazinger-ish head in his robot form, which is again a completely new design not based on any previous rendition of Megatronus/The Fallen.

No surprise about Evil Rodimus, though they must have done this before getting renders from Hasbro about Rodimus Unicronus. Though the face-plate reveal in PotP could come complete with evil goatee.

This felt much more like Episode 1 of PotP than the end of TR, but it is what it is...Oh and it definitely was also very much like the end of Pirates of the Caribbean "Dead Man's Chest" (the 2nd one). -The Hero is dead, the Villain comes back and asks if the crew is willing to go to the place they need to go, to do the thing they need to do...It's just too bad that Optimus' Death means so little now, its pretty much a staple of every series.

I'll admit I'm more optimistic about PotP now, than I was for TR at the end of CW, but just a bit more. .

TFWiki credits Hamill for Megatronus. So, credit to Hasbro again for upping the voice budget.

His design definitely evokes Mazinger with the helmet and the neck spikes. I guess it looks a bit like the movie incarnation filtered through the RID art style.

Not sure what I think of this. It was certainly a bold way to end this chapter. Megatron continues to entertain, so I guess that's enough for me.

MrBlack wrote:TFWiki credits Hamill for Megatronus. So, credit to Hasbro again for upping the voice budget.

oh wow, I was right for once. . Still this is not his first gig in Transformers, he was Chief Burns brother in Rescue Bots.

When I saw this: https://i.imgur.com/JhKnYpL.png

I thought of this:



and this:

Final episode? You mean "How much can we cram into this one episode because we ran out of time?"

Just like that, Trypticon falls over dead, Ghost Starscream goes flying off, and a flaming eyes and mouth that made me wince.

Basically this entire series was a set up for Megatronus to get his hands on the Enigma of Combination and The Matrix? ugh ...

At least we got a glimpse of Rodimus Unicronus, I thought for sure they'd just skip over that little plot point.

Now that they've discovered more money for the voice actor budget, can they find some money for the script budget for PotP?

Will there be a new Megatronus toy?