Remembering Peter Cullen, the Voice of Optimus Prime
Remembering Peter Cullen, the Voice of Optimus Prime
The Autobots will never be the same.
They say celebrity deaths come in threes, and with the loss of beloved figures Dolly Parton, Tim Curry, and now Peter Cullen in the space of a single week, it’s hard to argue with that superstition. A trinity of celebrities who stood as symbols of what adulthood could mean have left us in the same week, with Cullen being the voice of the robot who many children of the ’80s and beyond would see as almost a father figure. Peter Cullen bought Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots, to life in various forms of Transformers media for more than 40 years. Rarely has a performer stayed with a role for so long, across so many reboots, remakes, and reimaginings.
Cullen was so consistent in his vocal characterization of Prime that many assumed he was using his natural voice for the role. But look at Cullen’s career and you see that he was able to change his sound whenever was needed for the part. Most recently, he has played Thaedus on the currently running, ultra-violent animated show Invincible—just one of hundreds of animated characters he brought to life since beginning his career in the early 1960s.
In those days, young Mr. Cullen even dabbled in live action, playing various background roles on The Sonny and Cher show. Cullen was in no way earmarked from an early age for stardom. But he managed to achieve it all the same, though a role that would prove to be much more than met the eye.
By the early 1980s, Cullen had been working steadily for about 20 years but had yet to land a role that he could bank on for the long term. That included the role of Mario from the Donkey Kong cartoon series, which only lasted two seasons before cancellation. He also played roles on a variety of other transforming robot shows of the era, including Voltron and Go-Bots, but it was Optimus Prime that would change his career for good. Prime was essentially a talking truck with huge, metal windows where his pectoral muscles would be. He was about as masculine-looking as a part-time truck could get, bridging the gap between the Japanese robot anime that was so popular at the time and the bodybuilder physiques that had become standard in Western superhero shows.
As such, Cullen created an original voice for the character that combined a sort of motoring growl with the exaggerated inflections of John Wayne, and the gentle-but-masculine style of Cullen’s own brother Larry. The brothers were living together at the time, and Larry, a decorated war veteran, advised his younger sibling to take the role seriously, and to give the talking truck the voice of a real hero.
The results elevated the show, which was seen by many as nothing more than a long-running toy commercial, into something much more. Specifically, Cullen’s performance as Optimus in 1986’s Transformers: The Movie was more than enough to bring a tear to the eye of many a child, as they watched their seemingly unstoppable favorite character fall, sadly yet confidently passing the torch to the next generation as he faded. It was arguably the most effective performance in the entire film, and that’s saying a lot for a movie featuring Monty Python’s Eric Idle, The Breakfast Club’s Judd Nelson, Star Trek’s Lenord Nimoy, and Citizen Kane’s Orson Welles all on the cast list.
“Do not grieve” he told his allies, “soon, I will be one with the Matrix.” But as we’d soon find out, the real reason we didn’t have to grieve is that he’d be back in the role of Optimus Prime almost before we knew it, first on the next season of the Transformers cartoon on the small screen, then eventually in further animated shows, video games, and even Michael Bay’s live-action films.
These movies would transform Transformers from a cartoon and toy line for kids into a multi-generational mega-franchise, appealing to audiences young and old. For the most part, they dodged anything that would make kids cry again, and instead worked as straightforward power fantasies for anyone who ever wished that they (or their car) could turn into a giant metal badass who could kick the crap out of anything. But Cullen never stopped bringing his gravelly emotional gravitas, bringing committed performances to this talking truck all the way up to 2023, when he rolled out new Prime performances for Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Fortnite: Chapter 4, and even an episode of The Masked Singer.
And we’d be remiss to not mention that Cullen also played Eeyore, Winnie-the-Pooh’s depressed donkey puppet friend, for almost as many years as he played Optimus. The two characters couldn’t have had less in common, which speaks both to Cullen’s tremendous range and his commitment to playing as many different roles as he could in the time that he had. He even created the alien clicking sounds made by the Predator in that film and animation series!
The characters he played in the Transformers franchise could turn into two, maybe three different things at most, but using his vocal cords, imagination, and the will to connect with as many people as he could, Cullen could become literally anyone or anything. Losing him on the cusp of the 40th anniversary limited rerelease of Transformers: The Movie feels like a sad poetry. Expect to see a lot of people of all ages crying all over again, for an all-new reason, when they see the movie in theaters next month.