Dissecting the exact moment Bayverse Optimus became a psycho

In all honesty, the fact he’s been fighting centuries on cybertron and the fact that the humans or decepticons wont learn anything he tells them, it’s a miracle he kept his cool for that long

Im so glad you pointed out that Optimus really only changed after he died and came back. He was legitimately just sick of getting screwed over because he played by the rules. Imagine you have to protect someone with your life and you know if you fail, if you die, then the ENTIRE WORLD will be destroyed. Then imagine you lose and you know youre about to die, and because you lost, the world will end. But then you come back to life. Youre not going to be the same person that died. Youre gonna play by your own rules. Optimus wasnt about to let himself make the same mistake again.

What people forget about the bayverse is that is highlighted the fact that they were in a war. Optimus was a pacifist caught in that war, in the first two films he tries to stick to that but we see him realise that the decepticons will not show mercy. So he becomes a person who fights them on their terms, flawed as it was, for someone who’s been beaten, betrayed, and watched countless friends die for no good reason, the fact that he stayed true to his morals for so long is the most impressive thing.

I think Optimus realized that restraint is often a crippling weakness when you are facing physcopaths. To defeat then, you have to beat them at their own game. I honestly don’t think that’s far off: the guys over seas that get their hands dirty to keep us safe, come home to their families and try to live a normal life. But the memory of battle scars then for life and there’s no going back, it’s a heavy price.

The moment Megs said “is the survival of our race not worth a single human life” was the moment Optimus was done putting up with the decepticons

Something cool to note is that Nemesis Prime on the Bayverse, ain't some bad guy like it may appear, but literally someone fighting to save his own dying planet, like Megs and Sentinel, Nemesis is just Prime without his morals, morals that began to change already on AOE, he always cared about his planet, but not by killing another one, that was part of his morals...

Unpopular opinion (probably): Age of Extinction had the potential to be the darkest and most impactful story on Optimus. I think it's great in many ways (yes, I am aware of its many faults) but if I may share my own headcannon to that story: Before the events of AOE, Prime was rolling around with Sam, shortly after the events of DOTM. They were ambushed by Lockdown and Cemetery Wind. During the commotion, Sam was killed and Prime was forced into hiding and taking on another form when he went into stasis mode. Cade then finds him and you know what happens next. This, coupled with the fact that his fellow autobots were mostly hunted down and scrapped would've really set him over the edge and force him to give up on humanity. Cade could've played a more important role in reminding him that humans are still primitive but have potential. Just like Prime said back in the first movie, which would've been a nice lil callback. That being said, this is basically delusion on my end and what we actually got was Galvatron with wasted potential and ended up being a useless and unnecessary Villian, an older douchebag with no redeemable personality justifying his love for a minor with no personality at all, with some Romeo and Juliet law and a REALLY annoying character played by T.J Miller. Still like the movie though, WAYYY more than TLK.

The reason Optimus doesn’t hold back anymore is ‘because he learns from his mistakes.’ -A certain movie reviewer.

I always saw bay-verse in a sort of more realistic 'not everyone is going home' type deal, and primes decent into ruthlessness was just bay's way of saying "We all know you'd do it if you were him"

I’m glad there’s someone who isn’t just calling him a psycho without going into more detail, never understood why he acted the way he did until now and it’s very understandable. I definitely like the idea of the other autobots reacting to his shift in behavior.

Love these videos going more in depth to stuff like this to give it a more concise story. When in reality Bay just wanted “Big robot kill other big robots”

I always believed he was well justified in no longer pulling his punches. Dude not only paid the ultimate price himself. But he made sure his troops held themselves back and he lost so many friends due to that. He was sick of it and him dying was just the final straw. Especially I feel after he was resurrected and he saw that things only got worst

The way I always saw it was that he wasn't so much becoming psychotic as he was reverting to his older ways. The way he's unleashing brutality and almost never getting seriously injured (AFTER the forest fight, of course, and with the exception of losing an arm in DotM) seems to come from a great warrior rather than a madman. He's not chaotic, he's precise, and he flows with a savage sort of grace. He was a warrior before he was a peacekeeper, and now he is in more of an equilibrium between the two; a Peacemaker

Finally someone that has given reasons instead of just calling him a blood thirsty psychopath

Prime is not a psycho. He's simply a warrior. A tired warrior that just wanted it all to end.

In the first movie, he killed Bonecrusher as fast as possible. Sure he punched his eye out but that's way more tame than what he did to Shockwave's eye. He didn't even want to kill Megatron but rather himself alongside the All-spark. In the second movie, before his death, he also tried to deal with Demolisher as swiftly as possible and even asked him to pull over. After his death, we see him take out his first fatility on The Fallen, someone who shouldn't have been left alive anyways. Had he killed Megatron in the forest, he would've never had left the planet in danger with his absence. In the third movie, he's done with the Decepticons' shit, even saying that he'll kill them all. I think Optimus' brutality is a little unnecessary but I think him killing is reasonable enough. This isn't g1 where the Decepticons were just Copy 'n' Pasted schmucks who only got serious in the Movie, these are full on terrorists who needed to be stopped at all costs.

This honestly makes the forest fight just that much more of an impactful event in the Bayverse films. In a way, it was the end of the story for the Optimus we knew from the first movie, and the beginning of a new story for the Optimus we know immediate post-revival and onwards.

I think Optimus' slow decent into cyncism and ruthless violence vould make an interesting, even great arc. The issue with the Bayverse is the lack of time they give to Optimus and the other Cybertronians. I think the tragedy behind Optimus having to kill both his "brother" in Megatron and his mentor, Sentinel, would have hit harder if the movies built on their relationship rather than focusing on human shenanigansso much. Even in AOE, Optimus's change in viewpoint of humans gets pushed aside for shit like Cade worrying about his underraged daughter being in an relationship with a grown adult or Chinese propaganda, and by TLK, where the character arc should have reached its climax, he only shares a scene or 2 with Quintessa before turning evil, then disappears for most of the movie and only comes in at the beginning of the third act to first Bee and turn good again after just hearing him speak. The underwritten potential of the story really harms the characters overall, and I don't blame people for thinking these movies are brianless junk food.

I like how he doesn’t have any fun or whacky catchphrases he just says horrific stuff like “give me your face”

"Optimus Prime died that day, now I'm WarCrime Prime."