This article will be about the character Transit. We saw Transit in the marketing material from Takara Tomy's Beast Awakening page (that's what the film is called there). He is a Decepticon that turns into a bus. Now we see Optimus Prime in a bus yard in the film, that is our first shot of him and he was supposed to have an encounter with a Decepticon.
Sources differ slightly, but the gist is that the Decepticons know that Optimus is on Earth and instead of carpet bombing the planet like what might have been planned in the Bumblebee film, they keep sending soldiers to take out Prime. Everytime a Decepticon arrives, they blow up their ship making it unusable for Optimus, guaranteeing that he is trapped there. This notion is replaced by a line in the film which recounts that Earth was supposed to be a pit stop for the Autobots but that now they can't get home.
The scene follows with Optimus fighting Transit, killing him and dumping his body in the Hudson river, where we see other decepticon bodies, showing that this is just the latest attempt in a long line of attempts on Optimus' life.
Now part of that scene should be in the home video release, we'll see how much of it was finished, and it is said to have been removed for being too dark. But it explains a lot:
- It further shows Optimus' frustration at not getting home, how the Decepticons are basically messing with him, stranding him on Earth where he can't take the fight to them.
- It also explains the look he has when he can't beat Scourge initially. He's been fighting grunts for the past 7 years, taking them out with ease, and now he finally has a real threat to fight. It would also explain how he probably can beat Scourge (and ultimately does) but initially does not due to not making all the use of his skills, strength and ferocity which he finally unleashes in the final showdown.
So there you go, a dark scene for sure, but it would have gone a long way in helping fans understand why Optimus is so grumpy for most of the film and why he can't beat Scourge until he suddenly can (granted that second one still needs a lot of inference).
