The what?

 

Well not entirely but it did ignore the supplement fiction associated with the Aligned Continuity, in which Grimlock was supposed to the same Grimlock from The Fall of Cybertron video games, so the discrepancy was clear from the start, nevermind the whole clash between RID 2015 tone vs the game Aligned Grimlock appeared in. Instead, we were supposed to get a whole new Dinobot, but thanks to Age of Extinction and Hasbro wanting to bank in on Grimlock, we got RID 2015 Grimlock instead. Which means there are supposedly 2 Grimlocks in the Aligned continuity.

 

That's fair, but I'd argue Prime kinda severed that connection pretty thoroughly anyways. Like it or not, the Cybertron games and the Prime cartoon were barely connected, even if that was the official stance.

 

Hyperdrive: the planned Turbomaster who also supposed to be Autobot Supreme Commander.

His time to shine is long overdue!

 

Seeing as Peter Cullen is only voicing movie Prime at the moment, this is really only an issue for that universe. I think it would be fine to retire Optimus in the movies if Cullen doesn't/can't voice him. He's had plenty of movies (whether you liked all of them or not) and so giving someone else a chance to shine would be fine.

For every other universe, there's no reason to make any permanent change - go ahead with a mixture of Cullen impressions, new interpretations, or just having other characters as the leader.

 

Without making the same mistake as the g1 movie.

 

I hella disagree with this. Hard pass.

Almost every "Cullen impression" has been shit.

The problem is that they're trying to impersonate the guy rather than actually capturing the feel and spirit of the character.

Jazz has been voiced by numerous actors, but the key thing here is that they should sound like Jazz, rather than a karaoke night lampoon of Scatman Crothers.

Garry Chalk did fantastic as Optimus Primal, and then used that voice as UT Prime, and it still fit.

*Skipping RID2001 since I watched Car Robots instead.*

David Kay did great as Animated's take, sounding youthful but still very much like Optimus.

Ironically, I would go as far as to say that Aligned Optimus (outside of the games) is Peter's worst set of performances. The voice direction demands that he is nothing less than a permanently stoic big leader type. He sounds bored while delivering his lines.

Jake Foushee is honestly someone that I never want to hear voice Optimus ever again unless they give him some better form of direction. He's imitating Cullen and it's just bad.

John Bailey can only do a parody Prime voice, as far as I'm concerned.

Finally, we have Alan Tudyk, and I'd have to say that he's doing pretty good.

Sounds almost nothing like Cullen's performance, but he's the best Truck Dad that we've had in years.

Hell, Peter sounds more energetic in ROTB than he has in years!

 

Yeah, honestly I've not been a huge fan either of the performances that are largely just Cullen-lite. I really just meant that for 90% of TF fiction, things could continue as they are rather than things should continue as they are. Essentially I just meant that if Cullen retired tomorrow that there'd be no reason to retire the character within Earthspark because that's basically got nothing to do with him. Imagine if Marvel never used T'Challa ever again after Boseman passed. I can understand the idea of having the MCU version retired (although you can debate if he should have been recast instead) but it would be completely silly to not use the character in future comics, animation, etc.

But in the future I think we should focus more on original sound. After all, the best an impression can be is "wow, it almost sounds the same" while new takes can fully succeed on their own merits.

 

My personal first choice would be Rodimus Prime, as already said by others, I feel like there was lots of missed opportunities.

But I'm a little surprised this fellow hasn't cropped up...

 

I would love to see more Rodimus Prime. I’ve always liked him and think he should get another shot at leadership. I thought Cyberverse did a great job of making Hot Shot a good successor to OP.
I would love to see more American media with Star Saber (not IDW tho) his Haslab figure was great and he’s just so… awesome. Like that’s it. His design is sick and while he can be a bit repetitive of OP, I just want to see him more.
Dai Atlas and Metalhawk(we need more pretenders these days) would be good candidates as well.
Go the marvel comics route and have Grimlock take over, that always leads to some great personal conflicts among the Autobots.
Now for my personal number one pick… Thunderclash! I’ve always loved his Carnival paint job, he’s just so 90s. My personal headcanon has him as Primus’s chosen leader of the “G2” faction of bots created after the Great War. Of course you could always have him be the leader of a smaller group of autobots during the Great War, but then I would prefer that to be Ultra Magnus or Fort Max (my love of the Marvel g1 comics is the main reason for that). There’s a lot of candidates, or you could just up and make a new character (I’d rather them not though)

 

You could have Sideswipe… Wait, wait, hear me out, sheath your pitchforks! (Why do you have sheaths for your pitchforks?!)

You can have him be pulled in several directions by a old, crusty, amnesic Optimus, who still thinks he’s the same character he was when he was in power and a Sunstreaker who plays a part very similar to Ultra Magnus from RID2005, but more talkative.

Then you could retire Cullen, and find someone who plays this amnesic, mildly deranged Optimus Prime well. And it would get us more Countach twin toys.