How Optimus Prime's Death in TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE Affected Duke's Fate in G.I. JOE: THE MOVIE

I remember watching Transformers: The Movie for the first time in theaters. I actually got to go to the premiere because my uncle worked on the film. Like most kids in the 80s, I freakin’ loved Transformers and I was incredibly excited to see the movie!

Then the movie started a bunch of my favorite characters immediately started being murdered by the Decepticons! I remember thinking that what I was watching couldn’t be happening! Why would they be killing off all these Autobot characters!?

Then we’re introduced to a bunch of new these new characters and there’s this epic fight between Optimus Prime and Megatron! It was glorious! I had never seen Optimus Prime battle in such a badass way before! There was no way he was going to lose to Megatron! He was finally going to take down the villain!

Then all of a sudden one of these new Autobot characters, Hot Rod, got in the way and messed it all up when he interfered! All of a sudden I was watching Megatron bowing away Optimus Prime and before I knew it, Optimus Prime was grey and dead, the lights faded from his robot eyes. Good lord, that was traumatizing for me. I couldn’t believe that my favorite character was dead! What in the hell was that all about!

Transformers: The Movie writer Ron Friedman knew this was a bad idea, and he was opposed to killing off who he considered a "father figure" and icon. He said: "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."

Well, as you know, Optimus Prime’s death did not go over well with audiences. The reaction was not the one the executives were expecting. Did they really think that it was going to go over well!? Those executives obviously weren’t very bright.

G.I. Joe: The Movie was supposed to be released next and in that movie, the original plan was to going to be to kill off Duke. Yep, Hasbro was going to kill off another major character from one of their signature franchises. Hasbro liked the edginess of killing these characters off and these decisions of death came after Robotech had been among the first to show actual death in a cartoon with Roy Focker being killed off.

In the end, they realized that they made a bad decision killing off Optimus prime, so they decided to change Duke’s fate in G.I. Joe: The Movie. Instead of being killed by Serpentor after he threw a freaking poisonous Cobra through his heart, he ended up being put into a coma that he eventually woke up from. They changed this up by adding some obvious voice inserts into the scene.

We talk about both Transformers: The Movie and G.I. Joe The Movie on our Secret Level podcast. You can listen to them below if you want!