Articles I wrote for a project that never went anywhere.
From Dock Worker to Leader - The (Many) Origins of Optimus Prime
Heroes who come in red and blue always have to start somewhere. Superman
started out as an orphan from a dead planet. Spider-Man started out as an
awkward teenager. But who was Optimus Prime before he became the brave and
heroic leader that Transformer fans know him as?
This is a question with more than one answer, as Transformers is unique among franchises; whereas stories like Marvel or Star Wars try to tell a single continuous storyline with their characters, Transformers tends to branch off and portray different versions of their classic characters. As a result, Optimus Prime is a character who has ended up with more than one backstory to explain how he became the Autobot leader that most people know him as.
The first and most well-known origin of Optimus Prime was portrayed in the fifty-ninth episode of the original Transformers cartoon series, titled "War Dawn." In this episode, Optimus Prime is revealed to have been a dock worker named Orion Pax, who worked alongside his best friend Dion and his girlfriend Ariel (you can tell she's a girl because she's pink). It was just an ordinary day on the dock for Orion Pax when his workplace was attacked by Megatron and his Decepticons, resulting in Orion Pax and his friends being grievously injured. Orion Pax was rescued by a group of time-traveling Autobots, who brought him to the wise old Autobot Alpha Trion. Alpha Trion rebuilt Orion Pax into a larger, stronger body; now known as Optimus Prime, the former dock worker took to the front lines and pushed back against the Decepticon forces, assuming the role of leader of the Autobots.
In Marvel Comics' take on the Transformers story, Optimus Prime had a
different set of origins. Rather than a dock worker, Optimus Prime started out
as a gladiator fighter who fought for his home-city of Iacon in competitive
matches. When war broke out, the Autobot leader Sentinel Prime was killed and
the Matrix of Leadership, an artifact traditionally carried by the Autobot
leader, was passed down to Optimus Prime.
Over the course of the franchise, these two takes on Optimus Prime's
backstory would prove to be the inspiration for many others that were
introduced later down the line. Most notably, the whole thing about Sentinel
Prime dying and letting Optimus take the Matrix is a detail that would be
repeated in Dreamwave Productions' run of comic books as well as the Aligned
continuity that ran during the 2010s. In both those continuities however,
Optimus Prime's position prior to becoming a military leader was changed from a
dock worker to a records keeper; a librarian, in other words, a fact which
Megatron would often taunt him with during their many clashes.
IDW Publishing, meanwhile, decided to take a different route with their take on Optimus Prime. Rather than a dock worker or librarian, Orion Pax was instead a super-awesome "supercop" who arrested crooks and brought them to justice. When Sentinel Prime died, he was instead succeeded by an Autobot named Zeta Prime, for whom Orion Pax served as a close confidant to. However, when Zeta Prime turned out to be a crazy evil maniac - worse than even Megatron - Orion Pax turned against him and helped Megatron in killing the corrupt Autobot. After finding the Matrix of Leadership buried deep beneath Cybertron's surface, Orion Pax subsequently took on the name of Optimus Prime and the role of Autobot leader, vowing to not repeat the mistakes of Zeta Prime and other Primes before him.
This, of course, is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to covering Optimus Prime's origins; heck, it barely covers the various origins of G1 Optimus Prime. Some continuities provide more radically different iterations of the character. For example, in the 2008 cartoon series Transformers Animated, Optimus Prime is not leader of the Autobots but rather an academy washout who has been given command of a small crew. In the live-action movies, Optimus Prime is the last member of an ancient dynasty of Primes that had once ruled Cybertron in its distant past.
With a character who has been around for as long as Optimus Prime has, and with a franchise that is open to widely different interpretations of that character, it makes sense that there would be so many different takes on how the Autobot leader became the character we know him as. And who knows what future writers will have in store for Optimus Prime as the Transformers mythos continues to develop him.
Death Is Cheap: When Stories Are Determined By Toy Sales
Imagine, for a moment: You're a young boy
sitting in the theaters in 1986, watching The Transformers: The Movie
for the first time. You are just bubbling with excitement. Finally, you're
going to see your favorite characters on the big screen: Optimus Prime,
Bumblebee, Ironhide, Prowl, Ratchet. You just can't wait to see them in action.
The movie starts and the opening credits
roll. Right away you are greeted with names you have never heard before. Hot
Rod? Ultra Magnus? Galvatron? Blurr? Who were these people? Had your parents
accidentally taken you into the wrong movie? Was there something wrong with the
film?
You push these thoughts to the back of your
mind as the movie itself begins and you grin as you see the characters you're
familiar with. Optimus Prime, Megatron, Ironhide... this is what you were
waiting for. Maybe those names in the credits were just new characters that
they wanted to advertise. Nothing wrong with that.
But then the movie takes an abrupt turn. Before you know it, the Decepticons are gunning down Autobots. Ratchet and Brawn are shot down like nothing. Prowl dies with smoke coming out of his mouth. Ironhide is blasted in the head by Megatron. Wheeljack and Windcharger's corpses are dragged around by Arcee - a character you've never even seen before. And Optimus Prime?
Optimus Prime dies. The leader of the
Autobots, the main hero of the franchise, the Superman of Transformers... dies.
Filled with grief, you barely process the
next several minutes as your parents drag you crying and bawling out of the
theater, joining in a mass exodus of angered and dissatisfied audience members.
All of this has to make one wonder: Why would
Hasbro kill off so many of their characters in such an unceremonious fashion?
Most stories and franchises - whether its Star Wars, Star Trek, or Lord of the
Rings - at least try to treat killing off their characters with some respect
and make it a "big deal" in the story. Why did Hasbro not take this
approach?
Because in Hasbro's eyes, these aren't characters. They're products. The reason why characters like Ironhide and Prowl were killed off was because their toys were no longer on shelves and they needed to be removed to make way for new "characters" (ie. toys) like Hot Rod and Blurr, for whom the movie had essentially been made to advertise. And it was for that same reason that Optimus Prime was killed off: to make way for the new Autobot leader, Rodimus Prime.
Suffice to say, Hasbro had greatly underestimated just how attached their audience had grown to these characters. In the wake of strongly-worded letters from angry parents, the company decided to reverse their decision and brought Optimus Prime back to life in the cartoon series' third season finale. In the following years, the character would return to toy shelves with new figures, along with other characters that had been killed off such as Prowl and Starscream.
However, this would not entirely end Hasbro's
mindset of viewing their characters as little more than toys to sell. In many
of the shows that followed the original series, story elements were determined
by what was and wasn't on shelves. While some writers, such as those of Beast
Wars and Animated, were still able to create an impactful story
despite their limitations, others such as the Unicron Trilogy shows served as
little more than glorified commercials for their respective toylines. In fact,
many of the questions fans would have regarding those shows' story decisions
could all be answered with the phrase "To sell toys."
Why was there an episode dedicated to give
some of the characters new color schemes? To sell toys. Why were some
characters killed off or grievously injured only to be brought back in new
bodies? To sell toys. These instances have become so egregious in the franchise
that the Transformers Wiki even has a page dedicated to it!
Needless to say, even after nearly 40 years of history, Transformers media has still yet to fully break away from its roots and evolve into something more than a commercial for toys. That is not to say that there haven't been attempts to expand the story - many of the comics, such as those published by Marvel and IDW, have done their best to tell a continuous narrative within the limitations they have been given. But because of the franchise's inherent nature as a toyline first, the stories and characters will almost always be determined by what figures can (or cannot) be found on the shelves.
THE STAR WARS VILLAIN
THAT (ALMOST) NEVER WAS
In 1983, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi released to
theaters and with it came the conclusion to the story of Luke Skywalker and his
friends. Another Star Wars film would not be made for another fifteen years,
and by that point the story would be shifting focus to a time period set before
that of the original trilogy.
But while the story may have been finished, sales were still
going strong for the toys that were being produced by the toy company Kenner at
the time. In 1984, they decided to renew interest in the franchise by
rebranding their toyline as Power of the Force. While most of the figures made
for the first year of this rebranding were characters from Return of the
Jedi, Kenner had plans to take the story beyond the defeat of Darth Vader
and the Emperor by introduced a new villain for Luke Skywalker to fight: the
genetics master ATHA PRIME.
Atha Prime, according to Kenner’s pitch to Lucasfilm, would
have been an architect of the Clone Wars who sought to crush the Rebel Alliance
and seize control of the galaxy. The design for the character would have been
based on unused concept art for the Emperor’s Royal Guard, designed by Nilo
Rodis-Jamero. However, despite the thought and enthusiasm that Kenner had put
into their pitch, their plans for expanding the Star Wars universe were
rejected by Lucasfilm, who were not yet ready to take the franchise in such a
direction, although they would change their minds seven years later with the
release of Timothy Zahn’s novel Heir to the Empire and Tom Veitch’s Dark
Empire comic book.
While the character of Atha Prime was left abandoned and
forgotten, his design would be recycled in Veitch’s Dark Empire series for
the Imperial Sentinels that served the Clone Emperor, and Kenner was given the
chance of realizing their design as a physical figure by producing a figure for
the Imperial Sentinel in 1998.
It would not be until 2004, twenty years after Atha Prime’s
original conception, that efforts were made to bring the character to life in
the Star Wars fiction. Abel G. Pena,
an author for The Official Star Wars Fact File and an aficionado for
obscure Star Wars facts and details, wrote a reference to Atha Prime for the 122nd
issue of the Fact File only for it to be cut from the final product.
Pena went on to write a more elaborate backstory for Atha Prime, collaborating
with Daniel Wallace for an article in the Polyhedron magazine, only for the
magazine to be cancelled and the article left unpublished.
Undeterred by these defeats, Pena made several (and
unsuccessful) attempts to resell the article before finally being a chance to
incorporate an element of Atha Prime’s character in the 2007 article Aliens
of the Empire, which he co-wrote with Rich Handley. Finally, in 2015, a
novella penned by Pena titled SkyeWalkers: A Clone Wars Story was
published on the official Star Wars website, featuring a genetics master now named
Zeta Magnus. Despite the name change, the cover for the novella was identical
to the concept art created for Atha Prime and the character’s original name was
subtly hinted at with Zeta Magnus being identified as a prime clone for
the “Accelerated Transgenic Heuristic Abhorers” (or A.T.H.A. for short).
