Character Deaths
Among the Autobots shown dead on screen are Optimus Prime, Ironhide, Prowl, Ratchet, Brawn, Windcharger, and Wheeljack.
A substantial number of Autobots from the first two seasons of the show do not appear after the film, leaving their fates uncertain.
Aside from Starscream, and several Sweeps, there are virtually no permanent Decepticon deaths in the movie, and what few that died were not killed by Autobots. Most of the Decepticons who were dead or dying are reformatted by Unicron, and while Galvatron makes a few references implying he has Megatron's memories, it is less clear with Cyclonus and Scourge, as Bombshell and Thundercracker (who became Scourge), are depicted as having grave markers in a subterranean Decepticon crypt on Cybertron in the episode "Starscream's Ghost". Shockwave's death was scripted but cut from the finished film; it was reinstated for IDW Publishing's adaptation of the feature, printed in 2006. However, a rather different-colored Shockwave makes a couple of appearances in the season premiere sequel Five Faces of Darkness. One of the intentions of the movie was to rid the Transformers cartoon universe of the majority of characters from Seasons 1 and 2. Story consultant Flint Dille elaborated:
| “ | In the next season (3), we were going to have all these new characters, and people are going to be wondering what happened to the old characters that they liked so much. What we knew, in a business sense, is that they had been discontinued, because they were the 1984/1985 (toy)line – but, we needed to tie them off. So, we had this one scene where the Autobots basically had to run through a gauntlet of Decepticons. Which basically wiped out the entire '84 product line in one massive "charge of the light brigade". So, whoever wasn't discontinued, stumbled to the end. That scene didn’t make it into the finished movie. But if you think kids were locking themselves in the bedroom over Optimus Prime, basically in that scene they would've seen their entire toy collection wiped out. | ” |
The film was produced by Sunbow/Marvel simultaneous to G.I. Joe: The Movie. The writers of G.I. Joe: The Movie film asked for permission from Hasbro to kill the Duke character. Hasbro not only approved the request but insisted that the writers of The Transformers: The Movie adopt the same fate for Optimus Prime. However, Optimus' death sparked much controversy and incurred so much backlash that it caused the writers of G.I Joe: The Movie to make changes so that Duke simply ended up in a coma (from which he eventually awoke).
Read more about this topic: The Transformers: The Movie
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