Why Optimus Prime’s Dark Side Was Cut from Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts had to cut a dark fight scene between Optimus Prime and the Decepticons.

The new movie Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is set in 1994 and brings in more powerful and wild robot groups to join the old rivalry between the Autobots and the Decepticons. Optimus Prime has to lead the Autobots and work with the Maximals and the humans to stop Unicron and the Terrorcons from destroying the world.

However, one scene that showed Optimus Prime’s brutal side was cut from the movie. Director Steven Caple Jr. revealed to Collider that the scene involved Optimus Prime hunting down the Decepticons with no mercy, as he was affected by the loss of Cybertron. 

The director said that the scene was too dark and confusing, so he decided to remove it. Here is what he said:

I tend to keep my director’s cut pretty tight. At least the one the studio saw was probably, like, 15 minutes longer than what we have now, but there’s small scenes in there that just cause confusion. Like, one was this Decepticon scene, Transit that I’ve been talking about, because Optimus Prime fights Transit at the beginning of the movie, or at least he used to, and you find out that Optimus Prime wants to go home – that’s all he wants to do – and that Cybertron is in deep trouble. And this guy, Transit, was telling him that like, ‘We’re just here to kill you, a.k.a. Cybertron is already ours.’ It was a really epic fight scene, and then you saw Optimus Prime dump his body in the Hudson River, and all these Decepticons were dead and you saw that he’s been hunting for the last few years.

So when we screened it, people were like, ‘Damn, this is kind of dark.’ It was kind of dark, but I thought it was a movie I wanted to make, but then I started to realize it is dark, and it felt a little darker. So we pulled back on that, and then we started to dive a little bit more into the Maximal origin story because we were trying to play with the time travel, which is originally in the mythology for the Beast Wars. It got just confusing, and I was like, ‘How can I simplify it?’ So a lot of the rewriting and editing and pulse became, ‘How can we sort of simplify the Maximal story so it doesn’t confuse the audiences?’

Since Rise of the Beasts has many Transformers groups, it would have been hard to follow Optimus Prime’s battle with the Decepticons. The movie also has the Maximals, the Predacons, and the Terrorcons, and inclusion of more conflicts would only have increased the confusion.

So, what drives Optimus Prime to find the Transwarp Key and return to Cybertron? The deleted scene reveals his motivation but also shows him in a dark and violent light. 

He fights fiercely and dumps his enemies’ corpses in a river, haunted by guilt. This scene was later replaced by a more subtle and emotional one, where Optimus Prime shares his feelings and goals with his allies.

Now, why did the director make this change? Because he wanted to preserve Optimus Prime’s heroic image, which is essential for his origin story. This movie shows how he became a legend among the Transformers, inspiring Optimus Primal and Maximal. 

If he were seen as a ruthless killer, it would be hard to believe that he would grow into a noble leader. By cutting the scene, the director ensured that Optimus Prime’s character arc was consistent and compelling.

About Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is an upcoming American cybertron fantasy film and the seventh movie in the Transformers franchise, which started all the way back in 2008.

Rise of the Beasts is set in 1994, with the story evolving out of Brooklyn, New York City. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts will take audiences on a ’90s adventure and introduce the Maximals, Predacons, and Terrorcons to the existing battle on Earth between Autobots and Decepticons and the big bad Unicorn.