I remember watching Transformers: The movie for the first time in theaters. I actually had to go to the premiere because my uncle worked on the film. Like most kids in the 80s, I loved Transformers and was incredibly excited to see the movie!
Then the movie began, some of my favorite characters immediately started being murdered by the Decepticons! I remember thinking what I was looking at couldn’t happen! Why should they kill all these Autobot characters !?
Then we are introduced to a bunch of new these new characters and there is this epic fight between Optimus Prime and Megatron! It was glorious! I’ve never seen Optimus Prime fight so hard before! There was no way he would have lost to Megatron! He was finally about to defeat the bad guy!
Then suddenly one of these new Autobot characters, Hot Rod, got in the way and screwed everything up when he interfered! Suddenly I was watching Megatron walk away from Optimus Prime and before I knew it, Optimus Prime was gray and dead, the lights fading from his robot eyes. Good God, he was traumatizing for me. I couldn’t believe my favorite character was dead! What the hell was all of this!
Transformers: The movie writer Ron Friedman knew this was a bad idea and opposed the killing of anyone he considered a “father figure” and an icon. He said, “Removing Optimus Prime, physically removing Dad from the family, wouldn’t work. I told Hasbro and their lieutenants they should have brought him back, but they said ‘no’ and they have ‘great things planned.’ In other words, they would have created new, more expensive toys. “
Well, as you know, Optimus Prime’s death didn’t get along very well with the public. The reaction was not what the executives expected. Did they really think it would be okay !? Those executives obviously weren’t very bright.
GI Joe: The movie was to be released later and in that movie, the original plan was to be to kill Duke. Yes, Hasbro was going to kill another major character from one of their signature franchises. Hasbro liked the nervousness of killing these characters, and these death decisions came later Robotech he had been among the first to show actual death in a cartoon with Roy Focker being killed.
Eventually, they realized they made a bad decision by killing Optimus Prime, so they decided to change Duke’s fate into GI Joe: The movie. Instead of being killed by Serpentor after throwing a poisonous Cobra through his heart, he ended up being put into a coma from which he eventually woke up. They changed that by adding some obvious vocal inserts into the scene.
Let’s talk about both Transformers: The movie And GI Joe the movie on our secret level podcast. You can listen to them below if you want!
by Joey Paur
Source: Geek Tyrant
