This was a week full of surprising celebrity deaths, with Peter Cullen among those who passed. Though his most recent role was on Prime Video’s Invincible as Thaedus, he famously voiced Optimus Prime for Transformers.
Cullen was a constant for the Hasbro franchise, going all the way back to the original 1984 series and its movie to various TV shows and games. The Autobot leader has had a hold on fans ever since his first death in 1986, but for those of a younger demographic, Michael Bay’s movies were likely their intro or foundation for the character. And that’s very funny, because the live-action Optimus Prime is a full-on psychopath. From the first movie to the reboot timeline, he’s constantly on one: he mutilates his enemies (and beats them with their own limbs), viciously executes them when he gets the chance, and always makes it clear he is not the one to mess with.
Optimus’ gradual distaste for humanity’s nonsense makes his end-of-movie monologues hilariously out of step with what’s onscreen, and in another world, it feels like another filmmaker would give him a proper villain arc. At a time when Superman was always under fire for not being his most well-known, hopeful self, live-action Optimus notably avoided catching the same ongoing, loud flak, despite the Transformers movies’ continued success. Maybe Cullen’s ability to bring robotic gravitas was just that good, or maybe it was how focused Optimus’ ire was. He found friends in Sam and Cade while specifically hating government authority and tech giants degrading the corpses of his people, letting him be righteously violent in a way the films’ actual villains couldn’t.
However true that actually is, Cullen clearly loved playing Optimus, something Paramount was content to just let him do for as long as he wanted. If and when the studio gets another Transformers movie started up, and provided there’s no digital necromancy at play, whoever’s up next in the booth has some big shoes to fill. It won’t be an impossible feat—Garry Chalk and David Kaye voiced Prime in past cartoons without trying to imitate Cullen. More recently, Transformers One saw Chris Hemsworth voice a young Optimus, with his voice gradually shifting to a Cullen-like register over the course of that film.
It’s a subtle, but impressive bit of voice work that likely would’ve made for a compelling evolution had One been big enough to warrant a sequel, and time will tell whether he made enough of an impression to get another go at the role when the time comes. Whatever actor takes up that task, it’s safe to say no one will be forgetting Cullen anytime soon. Like how Kevin Conroy is always Batman no matter who picks up the torch alongside or after him, the same’s true here. Hopefully the next full-time Optimus gets a fair shake to make the role their own, as fans still hold the most famous voice in their hearts.
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