Movies - TV
The Constant Death In Transformers: The Movie Even Caught The Cast Off Guard
By DEVIN MEENAN
A common practice in the 1980s was disguising toy commercials as cartoons, and few series epitomized this effective strategy more than “The Transformers.” However, this practice reached a cynical apex in 1986’s “The Transformers: The Movie,” where many fan-favorite Transformers were killed off and replaced by new characters from the latest toy line.
Referred to as “The Great Toy Massacre of 1986,” this decision shocked not only the fans but the cast as well. Actor Neil Ross claimed the cast wasn’t given scripts in advance and shared, “So we show up and they pass out the scripts [...] And suddenly we’re going, ‘Wait a minute! I die? [...] And it was like consternation all around as ‘It says here I die!’ Yeah, that’s kind of what it says.”
Peter Cullen, the voice of Optimus Prime, said, “I was standing with Frank Welker [the voice of Megatron] and we were reading our lines. I got to page, I don’t know, 17, and I said, ‘Hey Frank … I’m getting whacked on page 17! ... Wait a minute, I’m not coming back!” Prime’s death received such backlash that the character would later be resurrected for the following season of the ongoing TV show.