We just thought we were killing off the old product line to replace it with new products.” “We didn’t know that he was an icon,” admits story consultant Flint Dillie on the movie’s Blu-ray commentary. Why would Hasbro scar its young audience with such disturbing, “we’re-not-messing-around” imagery? So they could hopefully inspire their audience to buy more Transformers toys. This massacre set the tone for Prime’s death, which occurs after an epic brawl with Megatron (Frank Welker) sees Prime succumb to his fatal injuries, blacken and die. (The Autobot Prowl, after being shot in the chest, leaks small plumes of fiery smoke from his eyes and mouth). The death march kicked off in an early scene aboard an Autobot shuttle, where Megatron and his fellow Decepticons murder fan-favorites like Ironhide in shockingly graphic fashion. So when parents took their kids to see Transformers: The Movie on opening weekend 35 years ago, they were not expecting to be greeted with a high body count.

While the bold choice to kill off this fan-favorite character and leader of the Autobots gave Transformers: The Movie the type of “no-one-is-safe” stakes rarely afforded in animated films at the time, the motives behind that decision would ripple effect across the franchise for more than three decades.ĭominique Fishback Joins Anthony Ramos in New 'Transformers' FilmĪt the time, the Autobots and Decepticons had spent two years on the animated series, where they traded blows and laser blasts with neither side registering any battle damage or fatalities.

Prime (Peter Cullen), at first, wasn’t a casualty of narrative necessity. Among those action-packed sequences is one of the most traumatizing events for Transformers fans and ’80s kids everywhere: The death of Optimus Prime. The birth of the Transformers’ big-screen adventures began with the death of its most iconic hero.ģ5 years ago this week, Transformers: The Movie (now on disc in 4K from Shout! Factory) blasted into theaters full of stadium rock needle drops (Stan Bush!) and a production budget that allowed for some truly epic - and violent - set pieces that the Hasbro toyline’s animated series could not afford.

Watch transformers prime season 1