Forgive me if I'm wrong, I only got to the 13th episode. So far, I love the series, but I've read that OP isn't given too much screentime/character development. I saw that Optimus is given a good amount of screentime (well not as much as the Guardians but still) and his character develops a bit. But again, I'm just at the thirteenth episode. Is it something that starts happening later on? Thanks for the answers.

 

You're in the episode Sick Mind now, I think. After that we found not that much change in Optimus. We didn't see more of his personality or him learning anything new. We don't get more information on the things he likes or dislikes. His hobbies or things he enjoys. We don't get any information on his past or his future hopes. We don't get to know his weaknesses. His character interaction is one sided, with him speaking supposedly epic lines or great words of wisdom. He doesn't have much time for two way communication with his soldiers.

Even his battle scenes seem to be lacking lately. Arcee has been doing back flips and multiple combos. Optimus move set outside Darkness Rising seems slow and nothing much else.

 

The producers said the show was about what it meant to be a Prime, hence the title. But i guess they were just trolling us.

 

I think they they may be saving OP as much as possible for budget reasons. Cullen is probably one of the top paid talents on the show, I'd bet. There has been at least one whole episode without a Prime line, that should speak for itself. Notice the other "big name", Welker, was off the set for a number of episodes too.

On a more speculative side, it seems the writers are ignoring OP and BB - they have to be there for the recognition factor and they're toys will probably sell regardless of characterization. The other toys, and therefore characters are harder sells, and therefore they're putting more time into growing them and "selling" them to the audience. I think this might be most evident by the fact that Arcee gets the most screentime and development (imo) - a girl TF is a harder sell but if she's a kickass character, little boys will want the toy regardless.

Looking at it yet another way, it allows them to keep OP as the flawless great leader super-robot who can always save the day. Optimus doesn't have to hold an idiot ball one week so that the kids can figure it out, and he doesn't have to be defeated by a weak enemy just to make that enemy's debut look cool.

Who knows, maybe Hasbro is being very strict in terms of what Prime can do and say, so the writers are saving him for those type of moments rather than make the plot conform to him. And if the higher-ups won't let the writers develop him into something else, then it's best to leave him be.

At least what they've done so far has left most people wanting to see more (complexity) of this Prime. And it's always better to leave your audience wanting more than wanting less.

 

If they are still sticking with that theme, I don't think they're going to develop that theme with Optimus. They've apparently planned (at least the skeleton points) several seasons of this already - my bet is that Prime is the story of one of the other Autobots rising to become a Prime.

And based on characterization, I'd say that character is Arcee.

 

I see now. Well, at least we've had some epic lines from Optimus, like the one when he said he hoped to change Megatron's mind, not extinguish his spark. That was great.

I like Arcee (I didn't quite like female bots before) but I wouldn't have her be the next Prime, because I like Optimus, and this one is one of my favourites along with the movie version of the character. Also, I heard that Peter Cullen said he didn't want Prime to get killed again like in the G1 movie.

I'd say they focus more on Optimus a bit, probably have an episode centered on him like Arcee had 'Predatory' if the budget allows it. We can hope.

Thanks for the very informative answers, I really appreciate it.

 

Optimus doesn't do very much for the rest of the season, but I'm still hoping they'll give him more exposure before the season is up. For now, I treat Arcee as the main character.

I agree, the shows producers did say it was about what it means to be a Prime, not about Optimus himself. The show is still very young so they may still go either way.

 

Nope. He doesn't. Even weirder is the fact that he gets characterization... from people talking about him when he is not present.

He exists only to be the "leader" and nothing else. Certainly the weakest incarnation of the character in history. I repeat that if it wasn't for that AWESOME design he would be flat out terrible.

 

Would've been better if instead of calling it Transformers: Prime Season 1, they just called Transformers Prime: Season of Arcee, Bulkhead, and Starscream.  


On a serious note, they're probably saving development for Optimus and Megatron for season 2.

 

There is probably multiple reasons why Prime isn't in Prime very much. For one, Peter Cullen's brother died so he probably was too busy to record Optimus's voice. Another reason could be that they just want the audiance to admire the other team mates before focusing on Prime.
Based on what I saw in Darness Rising and Masters & Students, this Optimus seems to have the fighting skills of Movie Optimus and the mentality of G1 Optimus Prime. That is great but it is useless if he doesn't get any development.

 

I wish we had more of Optimus like in Masters and Students, he was great in that start, trying to negotiate, actualy acting like a father figure instead of EPIC VOICE MAN, mourning the enemy (both Megatron and Skyquake) and Scrapheap was simply beautiful.

Then he became the show's movie narrator (he still had some great Optimus moments though, like his interaction with Fowler in Convoy and Sick Mind where after effected the first thing he does when he rests enough to talk is ask Ratchet if he was infected as well, that was just perfectly Optimus right there)

 

they should rename transformers prime to humanformers human lol

 

That was the second time you made that joke, it didn't make sense the first time, it won't magically make sense when you repeat it either.

 

you dont get do you shroob they focuse to much on the humans -_-

 

the leader jackumis human the scout ralphabee second in command marcee the muscle foulhead

 

The movies focus more on humans than Prime doesm, heck, some Japanese series focused more on humans to the point where the robots had humans controlling them.

Even when the episode is SUPPOSED to be human focused like Scrapheap and Crisscross we still get a shitload of robot screentime, not to mention the episodes where humans are barely in it (the last one we had was 100% human less even) while there's yet to be one episode that has more human screentime than robot screentime (if there is it might be a matter of seconds because I didn't notice it at all).

 

I often wonder about this. Given those possible statements about being a con I wonder if Optimus isn't the kind of paragon the others see him as. Perhaps he did some bad things until somebody made him realize what he was doing was wrong.

@Shroob: I think Speed Metal was a bit more human focused though I don't know if it made up the majority of the episode.

 

well you do have a point there i barley even watch that show ive only seen 2 episodes of it so yea im wrong

 

Speed Metal was human focused for sure but still had just as much screentime for the robots, specially because most scenes with the humans also had the robots with them (heck the very start of the episode is all about Knock Out being awesome).

 

I don't mind the human's screen time, so far most of the episodes with them there were quite good. Predatory, Scrapheap, Rockbottom amongst others were quite well done, imo. Except for Shadowzone. Shadowzone was a bit of a letdown.

Aside from the occasional mischief of Miko, which I think they should tone down, the humans are okay to me. I especially like Jack and June's characters.