Movie News: The Voice of Optimus Prime

I’ve been nervous about this since I saw the picture I posted a few days ago of the truck version of Optimus. Aside from the, as Aaron calls it, “fag flames” I’m still on the fence about how I feel about him. While I wish he looked like the flat nose truck in the cartoon, I do understand what I’ve heard from the Bay camp about them having to go with a different style truck due to how it would have to transform. They said it will still look like Optimus when he’s a robot, but that with how they are approaching transformations, the flat nose truck didn’t give them enough real estate to work with so to speak.

Regardless of how he looks, Optimus can still be Optimus if he sounds right, and thank God almighty they didn’t screw this one up. The voice of Optimus Prime will be none other than….well….the voice of Optimus Prime. That’s right, Peter Cullen. The voice we’ve all come to expect to hear when the big blue and red truck rolls up. So when he says “Autobots, roll out” it will sound the way it is supposed to do. It’s to bad Chris Latta, the voice of Cobra Commander and Starscream, is dead. It would have been great to hear him reprise his roll as well. I haven’t heard who they are going to use for Megatron yet, or even if there is a Megatron, but I do know that he won’t be the hand cannon he was in the cartoon. They’ll never be able to make a toy out of that. I’m not certain, but I heard there is an M1-A1 tank that is the main villain, and I think there was a version of Megatron in one of the new Transformers series that was a tank, so maybe that’s it. I’m more forgiving on the voice for Megatron, but it would be cool to hear Frank Welker, his voice in the original series, reprise his role (which is indeed the current rumor). Outside of Megatron, Optimus, and Starscream, I don’t care who they use for the voices of the other characters.

-Steve