#the issue moreso is that any trauma he might have is either an afterthought or just a headcanon and is not the focus of the story

[chainsaw-dick]

Can you talk about Optimus?? Sorry if this is weird haha but I just really want somebody who loves him and his character to talk about him. Anything is fine really, appreciation, (fandom) salt, or whatever you feel like

ofc! this isn't weird, don't worry :)

I'm going to talk about a subject that's been on my mind a lot, especially with the release of ROTB

Optimus' anger and how he displays it, taking examples from Bayverse, TFP and ROTB

One of the biggest criticisms Bayverse tends to receive is the way Optimus acts. He's brutal, doesn't shy away from insults and threats while in battle and comes off as hungry for revenge, bloodthirsty, etc. He dismembers his enemies without a hint of hesitation, and the camerawork and CGI go out of their way to make sure we pay attention.

This goes pretty against what we're used to seeing from Optimus. He's been shown to go all out in fights before, but only when it was necessary to do so. He's always been known as in control of himself, showing restraint and knowing when to hold back.

A counterargument to this criticism is that the movies are trying to portray PTSD, trauma or simply Optimus' exhaustion and frustration with the war and everything related to it. And while this does make sense on the surface, it misses the fact that Optimus' brutality is there first and foremost to look cool.

Bayverse thrives on explosions, gore and violence, and Optimus is no exception. He decapitates nameless enemies in closeups + slow-motion, weapons digging through metal with as much detail as possible, because he's effectively a kill-cam farm. Every robot in the movies is there to provide cool and shocking fight moves first, and be an interesting character second, and Optimus is the pinnacle of that, because any talk of peace or regret at killing Megatron he might hold is immediately contradicted when the movie needs someone to disassemble a Decepticon in brutal detail.

Optimus' trauma and motivation is an afterthought and feels more like a last minute, poor attempt at shoving away criticism than anything else.

And while I can understand wanting to turn him into a deeper character and put his potential to good use, it's important to note that he's not written to be an interesting and engaging leader battling trauma and depression, he's written to be a fighter who knows how to kill someone in a cool way.

The movies are built on the glorification of violence, military propaganda and toxic masculinity, and Optimus is a perfect encapsulation of that- rather ironically, given everything he as a symbol stands for.

In comparison, Optimus in Transformers: Prime is entirely different. He's the complete opposite- reserved and keeping to himself most of the time. He keeps himself tightly controlled, which is both stated outright (multiple times) and obvious from just his behavior alone.

In comparison to Bayverse Prime, when TFP Optimus gets angry, it's a rare occasion and that makes it all the more surprising, and putd emphasis on the change.

When he goes to fight Megatron after Raf gets injured, there's a clear change to how he fights, acting more brutal and using dirty tricks, i.e. running his tires on Megatron's face. He's collected, he's not running around flailing his arms in blind fury, he knows exactly what he's doing despite his anger. He's determined.

During S2, when Starscream steals the Autobots' keys, Optimus yells out in anger, which takes Ratchet and Bulkhead by surprise, because there was build up leading up to it.

The show, for all its flaws, did pretty well on making this scene work, because it created a contrast between it and how Optimus acts 99% of the time.

To see a character as calm and wise as Optimus lash out like this, even if it's in a way that wouldn't seem strange coming from other characters, is jarring.

TFP had almost 2 full seasons to flash out Optimus, give us his most important, defining characteristics, hammer them in and then contradict them and make the contradiction stand out.

Another key difference is that when Optimus punches someone and the camera slows down, the music stops and that over-used, time-slowing-down sound effect comes in, the violence is much more toned down.

It goes from "look at how cool seeing someone's face get ripped off in 4k ultra is" to "this guy is cool because he can punch people really hard". It shifts the focus away from the violence and towards Optimus being a cool, strong warrior guy. Don't you just want to buy his toy?

To sum it up, the stark difference between Bayverse and TFP Optimi is that Bayverse revels in brutality and anger, and extends that to Optimus, whereas TFP sets Optimus up as a calm, controlled leader who never loses his cool and then uses his anger to both surprise us and emphasize certain plot points.

Both are there to be dramatic, but Bayverse uses anger and violence and over the top brutality so much that it quickly loses significance and becomes a boring, if a bit confusing mess. Transformers: Prime is more toned down, and therefore, Optimus' anger succeeds in what it sets out to do.

This brings me to the reason why I'm writing this in the first place: Rise of the Beasts.

Optimus is driven primarily by revenge. It's clear that Bumblebee's 'death' messes him up, as is stated by multiple characters, and that's where the problems arise: we have nothing to compare this to. It's tell, don't show.

We barely see anything of Optimus before Bumblebee gets killed. We got a glimpse in BB2018, but I'm pretty sure not everyone who saw ROTB also watched that. It's the MCU effect of relying on the viewer's prior knowledge of 60 other movies and half a century's worth of comic book runs to feel at all upset when Tommy Kicknuts aka Invincible Guy dies within the first 20 minutes.

Were it not directly stated that Optimus was acting out, we wouldn't really know. He might as well just be like that all the time, because we're going off of what the characters tell us, not what we actually can see.

There is no contrast. Optimus already acts frustrated before the supposed change in his character, and while that's not an issue by itself, it only makes the lack of build up all the worse. We caught a tiny glimpse that's not enough to make a conclusion about him as a person, and immediately, the movie is asking us to be surprised at how differently he acts.

However, unlike with Bayverse, this doesn't seem like the result of a writer who just didn't care.

ROTB as a whole suffers massively from having too many subjects to tackle, and it's very likely that Unicron and the Maximals were not a part of the original script at all.

The first third or so of the movie feels like a completely different story. It tackles racism, poverty and how people can be driven to crime when they're out of options. I feel like that was a look at the movie we could have gotten if Hasbro didn't want to shove half the characters in the franchise into the movie.

With Unicron and the others, the movie is filled to the brim and leaves no room to explore the characters in depth- including Optimus.

It feels like the writers did genuinely care for the characters, at least in the beginning. No matter how stuffed and confusing the movie can be, you can see that at least someone om the team cared about what they were doing.

As a result, we get an Optimus that still has a lot of potential, but whose first proper debut fell incredibly flat because of lack of time.

I also feel iffy about the fact that after everything, Bumblebee just came back. While it's not clear to what extent, Optimus was clearly heavily affected by Bumblebee's death and is very likely traumatized. It doesn't feel right to me how Bumblebee got revived and everything went back to how it was before, because it feels dismissive of Optimus' arc, however poorly it was done.

I don't want to take the blame completely away from the crew, though, because there were still a couple of things they could have done to create the contrast Optimus' character lacked.

First, change the way he fights. We get a fight scene prior to Bumblebee's death, and several fight scenes after that. One isn't a lot, but it's something at least.

By making Optimus fight with a more elegant, composed and calculated style, using his weapons a lot and clearly planning out his moves, only to then change that completely and make his body language more aggressive and sudden, maybe with more punching and directly tearing at his opponents, it would convey his anger pretty well without directly telling us. Body language is a powerful thing in cinema and it makes me sad to see how underutilized it is in Transformers as a franchise.

Another way would be to make the characters more surprised at his behavior during the rest of the movie. They take a second to respond, hesitate, look like they're about to argue but end up staying quiet.

Third, show us Optimus grieving while the group stays in the village. Maybe he just sits there and looks at Bumblebee, maybe the others leave and it shows him staying behind, maybe someone just mentions mid conversation that he's with Bumblebee and they shouldn't disturb him.

If combined, these wouldn't add more than a few minutes of runtime, meaning they could very well have been added without any worry for time constraints.

To conclude this and give my final opinion, Optimus' status as a wise, good guy who's not easily swayed by anger works to his advantage. Making his display anger, especially in destructive ways, is not inherently a negative thing, but is hard to pull off when you don't have enough time. Otherwise, he either acts out of character, or you lose the balance and the moments when his anger shines through do not stand out as much as they need to.

Give him time. Give him enough time to establish himself, give us a good idea of who he is, and then change that. In this case, the lesser the better, because the more aggression he displays, the more casual the narrative is about it, the less impact it has.

#asks #media analysis adjecent #im so fucking sorry about how long this is. lord have mercy #i also want to note that the issue with Bay Prime isn't the aggression in relation to trauma necessarily #trauma and PTSD can very much lead to worsened temper/poo emotional regulation/etc and we absolutely need more #representation that doesn't paint ppl like that as inherently evil monsters #the issue moreso is that any trauma he might have is either an afterthought or just a headcanon and is not the focus of the story #transformers #optimus prime