A few days ago I talked about how Transformers: The Movie was going to get it's first North American release onto Blu-ray, and I talked a little bit about the movie and how some of the Autobots were killed off. Afterwards, I received a few emails telling me that some of you didn't know that they ever killed off any of the characters. This is why you need to go out and see this movie! It was actually the first time that the creators of the toy and the television program did kill off some of their characters, and the reason behind it is staggering.
In the movie, they killed off the following Autobots: Prowl, Brawn, Ironhide, Ratchet, Windcharger, and Wheeljack. The Decepticons didn't get off that easily, though. They lost Megatron and two of his minions, who later were "magically changed" into Galvatron, Scourge and Cyclonus. Starscream bit the dust, as well, being pulverized by laser blasts until he was nothing more than a pile of ash. But the most shocking death that happened was when Optimus Prime gets killed. Kids all over the country were shocked, and it was said that they were leaving the theater in tears. One kid reportedly locked himself in his room for two weeks. And do you want to know why all of these kids were made to suffer? So Hasbro could release a new line of Transformer toys. I'm not kidding, that's why they did it.
On the 20th anniversary DVD that was put out, there is a brief documentary on the disc that has story consultant Flint Dille talking about the reactions to the characters deaths after the movie was released.
"We didn't know that he was an icon. It was a toy show. We just thought that we were killing off the old product line to replace it with new products."
Wow. That's pretty dim. Not all of the people that were working on the film thought it was a good idea to kill off Optimus. The one voice of reason was screenwriter Ron Friedman, who made Optimus Prime as the "heroic father figure in the Autobot family," and continually voiced his opposition to his death to Hasbro.
I recognized that I needed to assign family identities to the characters in order to create the recognition factor that young people need. They cannot verbalise this; it's beneath the surface. To remove Optimus Prime, to physically remove Daddy from the family, that wasn't going to work. I told Hasbro and their lieutenants they would have to bring him back but they said no and had 'great things planned.' In other words they were going to create new more expensive toys."
In the end, Hasbro relented to the backlash to Optimus' death and brought the character back in 1987 through the television series, but it seemed that the damage had been done, and they lost a lot of viewers. Luckily for the toy company, the CGI filled movie reboot has re-energized the toy line and they are now as popular as ever.
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