Transformers movies are one long Optimus Prime villain origin story

Can you really call a character a “hero” if they once yelled “Give me your face!” at their enemy right before going all Ed Gein on them? Asking for Optimus prime.

The leader of the Autobots definitely started out as a good-guy robot in Michael Bay’s 2007 live-action movie Transformers. A complaint common to the Optimus prime of that movie was that he brought the Autobot-Decepticon conflict to Mission City in an attempt for the All Spark. This risked the lives of many people. But that decision was actually made by Josh Duhamel’s Captain Lennox, and as soon as Optimus arrived on the scene, he tried to get the All Spark and lead the fight away from humans. He even offered to sacrifice his life and merge with the All Spark to destroy it — that’s hero behavior right there.

In space, no one can hear you scream — but that doesn’t stop an evil-doer from trying. Polygon will celebrate sci-fi villainy every week this week.

And yet… even back then, there were some concerning things about Optimus Prime’s behavior.

For one, he allowed Bumblebee to be captured by Sector 7, sacrificing him to a shadowy, torture-happy government organization because he didn’t want to risk losing the All Spark. OP was informed by Jazz about Jazz’s passing. Half ripped by Megatron, his reaction was little more than “Oh no! Anyway…” You can try and excuse this by saying that Optimus was fighting a war, which can desensitize people and robots alike. Optimus, a veteran and enduring member of the army, has a problem. BloodyCybertron is in an oily war. AlwaysIn War Mode. Some of his actions in live-action films are therefore considered war crimes.

2009. Revenge of the FallenThe Autobots join forces with the humans to find all Decepticons remaining on Earth. This includes Demolisher who Prime executes using a pointed-blank headshot. After he’d already been disabled and posed no threat. He had to violate a Robot Geneva Convention concerning POW.

Image: Paramount Pictures

Optimus is primarily concerned about the death of Decepticons. He may be aiming to get out of Cybertron in a blaze after losing the All Spark. He dies at Megatron’s hands halfway through the movie.

Later Revenge of the FallenOptimus is brought to life by the Matrix of Leadership. Sometimes, resurrections can be a complicated business. Sometimes, when things come back… they come back wrong. Add in the fact that Optimus Prim was later augmented with parts of the Decepticon Jetfire and suddenly, the scene where Optimus goes all deli slicer for the Fallen (the original Decepticon) makes a lot more sense.

Optimus would follow this path for the 2011 sequel Dark of the Moon, where he’s betrayed by his mentor Sentinel Prime, causing something inside him to just snap. The movie also shows him allowing Decepticons attack Chicago, killing 1,300 people. All to demonstrate that Decepticons can be a menace to Earth. Sentinel had actually charged Optimus with not prioritizing those in need over those who are less fortunate (cute since he was voiced at the time by). Khan and the Wrath of Khan’s Leonard Nimoy). But it’s Optimus who was the real Number Cruncher of Doom in the movie, deciding that over a thousand innocent deaths was an acceptable sacrifice to save the rest of humanity. Although, you do have to wonder how much him getting to slaughter his enemies again factored into his decision…

In fact, when leading a counterattack on Chicago, Optimus doesn’t give an inspiring speech like “Let’s save Earth” or “Let’s honor the sacrifice of those lost here,” but rather says: “We will kill them all.” Though that’s not totally accurate, because Optimus doesn’t “kill” Megatron in the movie. His head and spine are severed by him in a Mortal Kombat attack.

It’s like with every movie, more and more of the little goodness left in Optimus Prime was chipped away until he was running on empty. He was most hurt by the 2014 movie Age of Extinction, where humans kill several Autobots and Optimus witnesses Stanley Tucci’s character melting the corpses of his friends for metal to make Transformers of their own. Optimus realises in that instant that Transformers to humans will never become fully-sentient. They will remain so. MachinesYou can have them taken apart for spare parts. Or, they could see their dead bodies as a way to earn money. After that, his psyche was utterly destroyed.

At the end of the film, Optimus leaves Earth to look for the Transformers’ creators. Quintessa is the one Optimus ends up meeting in the fifth installment. The Last Knight. She turns out to be a bit of a dick. A mind — human or robot — can take a lot: war, seeing your friends’ corpses mutilated, betrayal. However, the discovery that God exists and is a complete jerk could be overwhelming for some people. In the movie, Quintessa supposedly “brainwashed” Optimus into becoming the evil Nemesis Prime, but what really happened was more like what the Joker did to Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight OP only got a push to the edge, even though he was already dangling from his robo-heels.

In the end, Bumblebee helps Prime return to normal, proving that OP’s case of purple-eye wasn’t really brainwashing but rather a psychotic episode brought on by too much mental trauma, which could 100% happen again. If anything The Last Knight leaves Optimus in an even more fragile state of mind after finding out that Earth, “the only place in the universe whose people let me call it home,” is actually Unicron, which in Cybertronian religion seems to be their version of THE DEVIL.

Optimus will likely continue suffering from his mental problems until he is brought before a professional. Paramount made this clear. BumblebeeInstead, deal with it.