basically, the title. what if Optimus is arrested at the end of AOE for war crimes instead of flying away, in exchange none of the Autobots are prosecuted (so they don't have to live in Cuba). he'll be the prison with the Decepticons in TLK.
I think having him be arrested by the humans would be kind of silly. Partially because he hasn't really committed any war crimes against humanity, all of his executions and brutality were against other Cybertronians. He killed Harold Attenger to save Cade, which would justify it in the eyes of the law (it just goes against his personal moral code). And assuming Cybertronians have civil rights on Earth, I feel like most governments would look the other way on the issue of Optimus executing Megatron and Sentinel considering they were in the process of destroying the world (and I'm in the camp of people who think Optimus wasn't really justified there). That being said, it could be interesting to have Optimus get captured by the Quintessons, and they put him on trial for his questionable methods. That could be an interesting plot. Although I think lampshading Optimus' "war crimes" would make things worse. For all intents and purposes, Optimus is supposed to be a hero who's fighting for the greater good...even if his actions don't always reflect that. A lot of the brutality and executions probably go over kids' and casual viewers' heads. If they started bringing that up in-universe, it would ruin the illusion of Optimus being a hero. I'm not sure Optimus Prime is the place for that sort of deconstruction. The best way to deal with it is just leave that stuff out of future movies.
Well, he promised to never harm humans, and he killed Attinger. They helped destroy so much property in China, including a national park that's revered. I realize Prime & co. were turned against by US forces, but it was made legal and they were officially enemies of the state, therefore their escape made them criminals. (Which is why it continued into TLK.) It's not the most positive outcome with everything that had happened prior, but it is what it is. This discussion is one of the many reasons I hate these movies. They didn't even bother trying to get the right feel. They didn't even bother getting the characters right. It sucks so bad.
Yeah they promised that then the Autobots started fighting in human conflicts in DOTM. Optimus going back on his word and killing one human trying to kill another human is not a war crime.
Optimus going on a path of revenge, becoming self-aware to his own rage and after helping save the day willingly handing himself over to our jurisdiction to be punished while also granting his people a form of amnesty from the law would have been an interesting direction. I fear that would've alienated the primary demographic of these movies, though. They just want CGI robots punching each other in the face, imagined stakes, unearned pay-offs and so forth. Presenting any nuance will simply confuse them. Then again fans of these movies got confused when Optimus (in a totally justified manner) took out Bonecrusher after the latter went on a killing spree.
But they weren't. He killed them once the conflict had ended. Hell, you could even argue Megatron was at least a fight, but Sentinel was a complete non-threat in every conceivable capacity. One could argue though that if they had no capacity/intention to hold Prime's methods up to appropriate scrutiny then he shouldn't have questionable methods to begin with. I just still think it's amazing that Prime had no self-awareness once the humans turned on him and hunted his Autobots exactly like the Autobots had hunted Decepticons. AOE was such a stupid movie because the altercation between Joshua and Optimus should've gone along the lines of: "You hunted and slaughtered my Autobots!" "Just like you hunted down Decepticons and killed them without mercy?" "That was different, they were criminals and monsters!" "And you're not? You kill your enemies even once they're defeated, and all your Autobots do is talk about killing and war. How are we supposed to defend ourselves if you decide we're your next target?" Or something like that. Humanity had every right to fear the Autobots but the way they did it was so braindead. "We don't need you anymore." That just... makes no sense, unless you're like Bay and literally see the Autobots as nothing more than props that exist to kill bad guys. Watching the Bonecrusher fight nowadays is honestly kind of quaint. Optimus just fights him normally and it escalates until he rather quickly and efficiently kills him. He doesn't rip him apart or pull out his guts. You could say he chopped off his arm but Bonecrusher was literally trying to punch him. All the while Optimus doesn't say a word, because he doesn't have to.
It's threads like this that lead me to think the Autobots really should've just left Earth to the Decepticons after the Allspark was destroyed, Bayverse humans simply weren't worth protecting.
What you say is true, but I have a hard time imagining any government on the planet would want to prosecute Optimus for executing two guys who were trying to enslave humanity a few minutes before. Any official who brought up the idea would look like a Decepticon sympathizer. I could see the government trying to prosecute Optimus for unnecessary collateral damage or something like that (I think that was Attenger's motivation in AOE, more or less), but I think they'd look the other way for interpersonal Cybertronian affairs. I think the government would be more concerned with stuff that affects themselves and the human civilians. Whether or not Optimus was morally justified is a separate issue. I think most people agree he wasn't.
Wait, who was ever confused by this? The Sentinel execution is in my opinion Optimus' most outwardly egregious act in these movies, it just plays like a cold hearted execution. There should have been no issue with Sentinel just bleeding out from his wounds inflicted by Megatron. The Demolishor kill wasn't great either, and seemed more like a result of "we don't want to have to answer the question of what NEST might do with giant Decepticons after they've been defeated".
I've said it many times and I'll say it again; Sentinel got what he deserved. He committed treason, killed an unsuspecting ally, helped cause the murder of thousands, and was intending more along with enslavement. Sure he may not have been an immediate threat, but he didn't deserve to keep going after everything he had done. Maybe it could have been framed better but I have no problem with Optimus double-tapping his ass.
Agreed. He would have pulled a weapon on Optimus if he had the chance once down. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Humanity's responses in the movies are more realistic than people give them credit. We hate our own foreigners and have messy politics, what makes anyone think it's going to be any better once an alien species gets thrown into all that? Plus, the Cybertronians are nearly extinct and their planet dead. At that grim point, its killed or be killed. The notion of any heroism left in anyone who surives that is a miracle in and of itself, and Optimus here is tired and not willing to let history repeat. I don't blame him.
The only change I'd have made to that scene would have been to have Optimus force Sentinel to look at the devastation Sentinel played a part in, then say "You didn't just betray me" before pulling the trigger.
Agreed. Or Megatron’s for that matter. And Optimus went easy on The Fallen. Optimus did nothing wrong.
Yeah The Fallen got what was coming to him too. I unironically love the "Give me your face" moment. Awesome stuff! And agreed with you, Optimus did nothing wrong. Sometimes I feel like people forget who he was going up against.
I mean who would even arrest him? Who would WANT to? The Autobots had saved earth several times from a genocidal faction of alien robots in a war of ambiguous Earth/Cybertronian Geneva Conventions. Optimus was degraded into a violent shell of himself, even though I believe it was entirely unintentional. And was just the result of writers seeing the Autobots more as vehicles for action rather than actual characters. I’m not sure how applicable that comparison is. The Bay Decepticons are one-dimensionally evil. Any who came to earth were most definitely there to ruin life on earth. The Autobots were being hunted because the Chicago attacks basically cemented an “us vs them” mentality between humans and Cybertronians. I don’t think there’s a hypothetical through line of Autobots being psychos. When almost everyone in the Transformers films were kinda screwy to begin with. Like everyone, the Autobots were more perverse and juvenile rather than overtly violent outside of the battlefield(barring Optimus and I guess Ironhide one time).
Oh, please. After he stacks up the first pile of bodies, the other prisoners would be on their best behavior for fear of getting on his bad side. He'd be like Rorschach: "I'm not locked up in here with you; you're locked up in here with me."
