Optimus Prime: Awakening Feels Like the Farewell Peter Cullen Deserved

I saw Optimus Prime: Awakening opening night at the first showing.

That is important because I didn’t go into it carrying everyone else’s opinions with me. I wasn’t sitting there thinking about reviews, fan reactions, arguments on social media, or whatever criticism would eventually surround it.

I simply watched it.

And I loved it.

It was only afterward that I started seeing the reactions online, and there has definitely been some backlash.

Some of it seems to be coming from Transformers fans. Some of it may simply be people trying to generate reactions from a fandom that has been around for more than 40 years.

Either way, it hasn’t really changed how I feel about the short.

The Transformers fandom I’ve experienced is extremely dedicated, especially when it comes to Generation 1 and the original American continuity. Fans have very strong opinions about what Transformers is supposed to be, what Optimus Prime is supposed to be, and what should or shouldn’t count.

That’s just part of being in a fandom this old.

But my reaction to Awakening came before all of that.

I was invested from beginning to end.

This Didn’t Feel Like an Apology for 1986

When we first learned that something new was being added after The Transformers: The Movie, I think a lot of us immediately wondered if it would somehow address Optimus Prime’s death.

That moment has followed Transformers for 40 years.

At the time, the movie was moving older characters out so newer toys could take their place. In the process, Optimus Prime was killed, and an entire generation of kids basically watched their hero die in a theater.

That decision has been discussed ever since.

So before seeing Awakening, I wondered if this was going to be some kind of acknowledgment of that. Maybe not literally an apology, but something that looked back at the decision to kill Optimus Prime and gave fans something different after all these years.

Once I actually watched it, though, that wasn’t really what I took away from it.

It felt much more personal than that.

It felt less like Hasbro saying, “We shouldn’t have killed Optimus Prime,” and more like a celebration of what Optimus Prime had become over the decades.

And because of Peter Cullen, those two things are almost impossible to separate.

Peter Cullen Sounds Incredible

One of the first things that stood out to me was Peter Cullen’s performance.

I’ve seen criticism of how Optimus sounded in some of his later appearances, especially Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. His voice did sound different there.

I heard it too.

It just didn’t bother me the way it seemed to bother some other people.

I could interpret that version of Optimus as a character who wasn’t quite the Prime we eventually knew. He didn’t trust humanity yet. He was more distant. He was frustrated.

Whether every part of that was intentional or not, I could accept it within that version of the character.

With Awakening, though, none of that was even on my mind while watching it.

Cullen sounded great.

Honestly, I think this might be one of my favorite performances he ever gave as Optimus Prime.

There was strength in the voice, but there was also something reflective about it. He sounded like the Optimus Prime I grew up with without it feeling like someone was simply trying to recreate something from 1984.

It felt natural.

It felt familiar.

It felt like Optimus Prime.

It Feels Like G1 Without Being Trapped in G1

The animation worked for me almost immediately.

The best way I can describe it is that it gave me a little bit of an early Beast Wars feeling, just obviously done with much more modern animation.

There were also moments where I could see something that reminded me of Transformers One, but with the blockier Generation 1 designs.

It felt modern without throwing away what made G1 look like G1.

That’s an important balance because you can update something so much that eventually it doesn’t really resemble the thing you’re supposedly celebrating anymore.

Awakening never crossed that line for me.

The characters looked right. The world felt right. The animation had its own identity without making me wonder why everyone had been completely redesigned.

The music helped a lot too.

It felt like it belonged in Generation 1.

Not because it was simply copying old music, but because it understood the tone.

That immediately helped pull me into it.

Frank Welker being there made the whole thing even better.

Hearing those familiar voices together again matters.

You can recreate designs. You can recreate animation styles. You can make something look like G1.

But hearing Peter Cullen and Frank Welker makes it feel like G1 in a completely different way.

Seeing the Different Optimus Primes Changed How I Saw the Short

One of the moments that really stayed with me was seeing the different versions of Optimus Prime that Peter Cullen had played over the years.

That was probably the moment where the short stopped feeling like it was only about the 1986 movie for me.

It suddenly felt much bigger.

I’ve never really had a problem with different versions of Transformers existing alongside each other.

G1 exists. The live-action movies exist. The games exist. Different cartoons exist. Different continuities exist.

At this point, I just look at all of it as Transformers.

You can call it a multiverse, alternate continuities, alternate timelines, or whatever explanation works best.

To me, they all exist somewhere.

That’s why seeing those different versions of Prime didn’t bother me at all.

I actually thought it was one of the sweetest parts of the entire short.

Especially because the focus was on versions connected to Peter Cullen.

Watching it in that first showing, that already gave the sequence a sense of history.

After Peter Cullen’s passing, it became something even more emotional.

That’s one of the strange things about art. Sometimes the meaning of something changes because of what happens around it afterward.

I didn’t see that sequence opening night knowing it would eventually feel like a tribute.

But that’s absolutely how I see it now.

The Ending Hits Completely Different Now

I don’t want this review to become a complete play-by-play of the short.

If you haven’t seen Optimus Prime: Awakening, I think you should experience most of it for yourself.

There is one moment I have to talk about, though.

So this is the one major spoiler I’m going to allow myself.

Near the end, Optimus Prime walks toward the light.

Bumblebee asks where he’s going.

Prime answers:

“To light our darkest hour.”

When I heard that line opening night, I already thought it was a great ending.

It connected everything back to The Transformers: The Movie in a way that felt earned instead of forced.

But hearing that line now carries an entirely different weight.

Now I hear Peter Cullen saying it.

Now I see Optimus walking into that light knowing this became one of Cullen’s final performances as the character.

And whether that was ever intended to mean what it means now almost doesn’t matter to me.

The context changed.

For me, the scene changed with it.

That line now feels like the closing of a chapter.

It feels like Optimus Prime saying goodbye.

It feels like Peter Cullen saying goodbye.

And I honestly can’t think of a better final line for his version of the character.

The Backlash Hasn’t Changed My Opinion

After seeing the short, I started seeing more reactions online.

That’s where I became aware of some of the criticism and backlash surrounding it.

Some people didn’t like the animation. Some people didn’t like certain interpretations. Some people seem to be looking at the short from a completely different perspective than I did.

That’s fine.

We’re all going to react to things differently.

I just don’t share a lot of that criticism.

I had already formed my opinion before I knew most of those arguments existed.

I walked out of that first showing thinking Optimus Prime: Awakening was fantastic.

Seeing other people dislike it afterward didn’t suddenly make the animation look worse to me.

It didn’t make Peter Cullen’s performance weaker.

It didn’t make the music less effective.

And it definitely didn’t change how I felt about the ending.

If anything, I’ve become more interested in discussing why people are interpreting the short so differently.

Transformers fans have been arguing about continuity, characters, colors, toys, voices, and interpretations for decades.

This is probably just another thing we’re going to add to the list.

Final Thoughts

I could nitpick Optimus Prime: Awakening if I really wanted to.

I could go through it frame by frame. I could argue about continuity. I could pick apart animation decisions. I could question exactly what every image is supposed to mean.

But at that point, I’d be looking for something to complain about just so I had something negative to say.

That’s not how I felt watching it.

I thought the animation was great.

I thought the music was great.

The voice acting worked across the board.

Peter Cullen sounded fantastic.

Frank Welker being part of it made it even more special.

And the ending landed exactly where it needed to land.

Maybe we’ll eventually learn more about what Optimus Prime: Awakening was originally intended to represent.

Maybe fans will spend the next 20 years debating exactly what certain scenes mean.

Let’s be real.

We’re Transformers fans.

We still debate who became Cyclonus and what color Rumble is.

We’re definitely going to be talking about this one for a while.

But none of those future arguments change what happened when I saw it opening night.

I walked into that first showing without the backlash in my head.

I watched it.

I loved it.

And I walked out thinking I had just seen something special.

After Peter Cullen’s passing, it has taken on even more meaning for me.

What I originally saw as a great Optimus Prime short now feels like something else too.

It feels like a tribute.

It feels like a goodbye.

And if this is one of the final notes we’re left with after more than 40 years of Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime, I can’t really ask for anything better.

10 out of 10.