Everyone on the block had seen the movie before me. Even though it had been out for years, we didn’t have a lot of money, so a VHS copy of a 1987 cartoon featuring a scene where 200 robotic sharks with human heads chant ba weep grana weep ninbon was not high upon our family’s purchase list. For this reason I’d heard all the rumours already, kids all up and down the street and at school had flirted with the idea of Optimus Prime dying and in fact some fucking derelicts had actually outright told me, but I refused to believe it could happen.

It’s not that I was stupidly stubborn its just that the concept of Optimus Prime dying just seemed so remote that it verged on lunacy. It was just physically and morally impossible. I know that in today’s macabre state of affairs the hero often dies in movies, but you have to understand that there had been a billion Transformers episodes prior to the movie and Prime been in a gunfight in every one and had beaten Decepticons like hard-ons in every one. In fact NO transformer had EVER died to my knowledge. Even the shitty ones like Ironhide (who thankfully is the first to go in the movie) So what could possibly happen to kill him? I want to give you some frame of relativity by saying this would be like having Rocky die but even that is not on the same scale.

I’m actually now in retrospect thinking that scene was horribly used. That was the ultimate fucking battle between good and evil. Prime vs. Megatron. And I think because of that I disliked the rest of the movie somewhat because I knew it would never reach that height again. I mean, both the triumphant final battles are shit in comparison - Unikron can’t seem to defeat the Dinobots who an hour previous were ALL shat on by Devestator, and what should have been the pivotal battle consisted of Hot Rod doing hit and runs in Unikron’s intestine before swiping the leadership matrix and using ITS power o toss Galvatron into space.

Don’t get me wrong it’s still one of my all-time favourite movies but things were just down-hill after Prime’s death scene.

Possible improvements to that scene:

1. Not appointing a successor, just letting the Autobots duke it out for the Matrix so as to avoid giving it to that pussy Ultra Magnus.

2. Prime saying “Ultra Magnus, it is to you…” and then reaching the Matrix out to him, then a black Autobot called Pimpatron voiced by Chris Rock going “Niggaaaaaaaaaaa Whaaaaaaat??”

Yeah, this is going to be a problemI have no idea what any of the actors in this film are doing or how significant their roles are, but here is a comparison anyway:

LEAD ROLES:

JOHN VOIGHT v OPTIMUS PRIME

Now I know, Optimus is not strictly the lead in the 1985 version but it is my steadfast belief that any film that features an 80 foot robot who constantly defies gravity and logic, says immortal lines like “one shall stand and one shall fall” and partakes in one of the greatest scenes in cinematic history to the sound of “You’ve got the touch” by Stan Bush is therefore starring said robot. That particular scene engulfed my life pretty much from the ages of 6 to my late teenage years. A typical primary school morning conversation would go a little something like this:

Mum: What do you want for breakfast, James?
Me: Petrorabbits
Mum: What?
Me: Petrorabbits. Or energon chips.
Mum: You’re going to be late if you don’t tell me.
Me: All I need is a little energon
Mum: You have –
Me: — And a lot of luck.
Mum: You have to stop this.
Me: Megatron has to be stopped no matter the cost.

It’s incredible in retrospect how my utter love for Optimus Prime managed to completely blot out in that scene that:

a) Gunfire that had for the previous 10 minutes been laying waste to about 60% of the entire Transformers cast was now falling off Prime’s chest like Paris Hilton’s clothes at an orgy; and
b) Prime leaps into the air and his trailer disappears into thin air.

Anyway I’m pretty sure John Voight is not as engaging as Prime as a screen presence, in spite of the Lead Actor Oscar, so I have to give the nod to Prime here.

TYRESE vs. SPRINGER

Springer was like the only autobot except for Prime that actually kicked any ass. I think it’s a fair assumption ass-kickery and abs will be Tyrese’s sole function in this film. Since even Tyrese can’t kick Megatron’s ass I imagine he’ll be some kind of lippy fighter pilot like Will Smith in Bay’s Independence Day, except without the charisma, gay locker room innuendo, acting ability, reason for existing whatsoever or repeated need for you to tell his momma than he “never made a whack jam”.

I hate Springer. He’s dull and green and gets beat by a fucking Junkion to the soundtrack of a Weird Al song.
He also manages to waste one of the best lines in the movie by saying “I got better things to do tonight than die” while loading a 300 foot missile and then spending the remainder of the film very narrowly escaping death.

SHIA LEBEOUF v. WHEELIE

This could quite possibly be a defining moment in Shia Lebeouf’s young career. He is currently probably top five on my list of all-time most annoying and for what reason exactly are you famous again list, but to possibly overtake Wheelie as the most annoying in a Transformers movie? That could really be something, although I don’t honestly think it possible unless despite playing a useless kid he delivered his lines epic Orlando Bloom style or ended every sence with y’all or something. I don’t know. To be more irritating that Wheelie is something I can’t even fathom.

In the Transformers it’s not like they found Wheelie at Alphia Trion shooting the shit of Vector Signma, they found him on a remote planet populated by a narcissistic robotic judge and an armada of robotic sharks with human heads and Grimlock and the dinobots just choose to integrate him into their ranks for the simple reason that he bears an autobot insignia. Thorough.

Shia Lebeouf annoys me. He managed to ruin Constantine for me.

JOSH DUHAMEL v. HOT ROD

I lump these two together because Duhamel is like the young cool dude and Hot Rod is called hot rod for fucks sake they’re appealing to the same demographic. That and their shared ability to make really really poor decisions. For example:

(i) Jumping in front of Megatron and thus providing him with a human shield and subsequently allowing him to blow the shit out of Optimus Prime, in spite of Kup telling him repeatedly to fuck off.
(ii) dating Fergie.

I hate Fergie. Whenever I see her I think of… Well I think why is she famous but I think of mah-jong tiles. She looks like an elderly Chinese woman for fucks sake what gives.

REAL FUCKING SMOOTH HOT RODBERNIE MAC v ULTRA MAGNUS

I have absolutely no idea what role Bernie Mac is going to be playing in this film, as I have no capacity to understand where he could possibly fit in a movie about battling alien robots, but then again I have no understanding of where he could possibly fit in life. I merely lump these two together because I fucking hate both of them.

As a child, before I saw the movie I had the Magnus toy. It was fucking fantastic. It was huge and it was kinda like Prime but not. But then the movie came out and for a moment I sat watching the movie with my Magnus, when it turned it he was Prime’s ‘chosen one’. Following this Magnus makes two key decisions, flee their Earth base and blow their ship in half, before being beaten to a pulp by Galvatron. Die.

This scene is actually pathetic