So now that Michael Bay is not expected to direct TF5, Peter Cullen has found it safe enough (to keep his job) to finally speak about how he felt the Iconically pure character of Optimus Prime was being corrupted just to tick a few scripting boxes of modern movies (that require heroes to have character flaws and be forced into being a bit too dark - like the last Superman movie, a character who also used to be scripted to never intentionally kill, even to the point of sacrificing themselves, was now scripted to kill).
We had an ensemble cast of Autobots in the Transformers Movies that can still have all the gore and violence... but they could have still kept one as a conflicted pacifist, who always finds a way to avoid killing by just neutralising opponents, and not execute them like Demolishor was. A leader sets the standard of his followers, and if Optimus was so bloodthirsty, are the Autobots any better than Decepticons.

Anyway, enough of my personal rant on the matter... apparently in TF4 the character of Optimus got scripted to be so dark and evil, that even Peter Cullen didn't want to say a certain line (as he used to publicly state how proud he was to be the voice of such a pure and heroic and reliable character).

So my question is, which line might he have been talking about?
I can think of a few, since TF2, but one in AOE seems to have been the one that crossed the line for him.
Was it in the factory when he said he would kill them all, because the character in Transformers History had never intentionally killed a human.

Hasbro used to maintain certain character traits of the iconic names, but when they gave Michael Bay ultimate control of the Movie franchise to buy him back for the second, it's left them with some retconning I think in the next few instalments, to bring him back to the "Superman" standard that every Optimus had before 2009.


Sorry... I grew up during the 80s cartoon era that had a more black and white, good verses evil premise, which gave us pure (reliable) heroes. Because once they go dark intentionally, you can't trust them as a hero anymore... and modern movie/tv writers either don't realise that or aren't allowed to submit stories and heroes that aren't a little dark or psychologically flawed. There's enough main and supporting characters for that to not need all characters to be dark in some way. That's why we had Dinobots in Gen1, to see what Autobots could be like if they weren't classic heroes.

That, and the necessity to kill off someone heroic or closely related to the hero, as if it is the only way to bring tragedy to modern stories. When all it does is alienate fans of that character, who never embrace the show/movie fully ever again.
We saw what it did in 1986 with Transformers and GIJoe both retconning a character death because the "permanent tragedy" requirement of scripts doesn't work, when you can get the same emotional effect from "temporary tragedy" without losing fans. Same happened with the permanent loss of major characters in TFPrime, Animated and even Beast Wars... it leaves a lingering negative tinge to the rest of the series, waiting and hoping for those beloved characters to come back. The Universe is big enough to have major characters leave a show or movie in some plausible way without resorting to them being permanently killed off, if it is going to kill off a portion of your fans and support.

Okay, rant over... for now.