Voice actor Peter Cullen passed away recently at the age of 85. He’s known for voicing many different characters. But he made an indelible mark on my life as heroic Autobot leader Optimus Prime.
Other actors have portrayed Optimus in different iterations of The Transformers series over the years and did great work. But Cullen’s voice is the gold standard that every other Optimus needs to measure up to. His deep, steady delivery gave the character gravitas. And more than that, it made him sound wise, courageous, caring, and good.
He helped transform Optimus into more than just a hero. He helped forge him into a role model. One of mine, actually.
And Cullen had a pretty good role model of his own: His brother Larry.
“Be strong enough to be gentle.”
In 2018, Cullen was asked at a convention about where he got the idea for Optimus’ voice. He revealed that his inspiration was his brother Larry, a decorated Marine Corps captain:
“It was 1984 and we were living in an apartment together and he would always take a little interest in where I was going. He said, ‘Peter, where are you going today?’ And I said, ‘I’m going to audition; I’m auditioning to be a truck. Evidently he’s a hero truck.’ Larry’s a hero and his face got somber. He said, ‘Peter, if you’re going to be a hero, be a real hero. Don’t be a Hollywood hero with all the BS. All the yelling and screaming and trying to be tough. Be strong enough to be gentle.’ His voice was ringing in my ears as I’m driving to the audition. I read the copy and Larry was just coming out. His
– Peter Cullen
voice, the way he talked to me. And it said, ‘I’m Optimus Prime.’ The words just rolled off my tongue.”
I obviously didn’t know any of that when I was watching The Transformers as a kid. I just knew that Optimus Prime was what a leader should be: Strong, compassionate, decisive, able to lead by example, and ready to do the right thing even at great personal cost.
Those are pretty good lessons for a little boy.
And they’re good lessons for a product leader, today, too.
“We didn’t know he was an icon.”
After two seasons of TV adventures, the Transformers made their feature film debut in 1986, and the unthinkable happened.
They killed Optimus.
Major character deaths aren’t necessarily unusual in entertainment today: Dumbledore, Mufasa, and others have broken plenty of young hearts over the last thirty years. But in the mid-1980s, killing the heroic leader of an ongoing cartoon series was shocking. Kids cried in theaters. Parents complained. Hasbro, the owner of the toy line, was flooded with letters and phone calls.
Because they’d misunderstood their own product.
From their perspective, Optimus Prime was part of a toy line. There were new toys to sell, which meant making room for new characters.
But kids weren’t attached to a SKU.
They loved Optimus Prime.
Many decades later, a story consultant on the movie admitted to The Hollywood Reporter:
“We didn’t know that he was an icon. It was a toy show. We just thought we were killing off the old product line to replace it with new products.”
– Flint Dille
As business leaders, we can review sales numbers, usage metrics, or whatever other data we have and assume we understand why people value our products. But sometimes there’s more going on than meets the eye.
Hasbro knew Transformers was popular. They apparently didn’t understand that Optimus was irreplaceable.
Ironically, neither did Peter Cullen.
The fan letters the cast never saw
Forty years ago, there was no social media. There were no Transformers conventions. And according to Cullen, the cast didn’t receive fan mail. So when Optimus was killed, Cullen was out of a job. And he told Den of Geek that he’d wondered if his character had been killed off because he wasn’t good enough.
I was reading the movie script, getting ready to go into recording. I got to the page, and I just read it and when the dust settled in my brain, I said, ‘Wait a minute, this is it, I’m not coming back.’ […] There was no explanation, there was no intended meaning behind it. [So] at the time you interpret that as being ‘my character sucks; God, I must have been terrible in this role.’
– Peter Cullen
Cullen continued working steadily after the original Transformers ended, including voicing Eeyore for Disney and (I didn’t realize until the last few days) providing the sounds of the Predator in 1987’s Predator. But for nearly two decades, other actors carried the Matrix as Optimus Prime. Then in 2007, he returned to the role of Optimus Prime in the big budget Transformers movie by director Michael Bay. And he continued on in that role on Transformers: Prime, the War For Cybertron video games, and many other projects.
It’s still wild to me that Cullen had no idea, for so long, of the impact he’d had on so many GenX kids.
To their credit, Hasbro acted relatively quickly to bring Optimus back in 1987’s The Return of Optimus Prime… but things took a grim detour first in the episode Dark Awakening where Optimus returns as a zombie and is seemingly killed again at the end.
No matter what Hasbro did to Optimus, Cullen’s warmth and humanity shone through. I carried the leadership lessons I learned from his Optimus into adulthood. And whenever I read a Transformers comic book, it’s his version of Optimus that I hear.
In the 80s, Cullen didn’t get fan mail and Hasbro didn’t understand its audience. But both of them were closer to something great than they knew.
We won’t always see our own impact, and we may not immediately understand why people love what we’ve helped make. Both of those are good reasons to stay curious. And Larry’s advice isn’t bad either: Be strong enough to be gentle.
Closing Thought
Cullen’s surviving family made a simple request: “Honor Peter’s remarkable legacy by serving your communities and leading others with compassion, integrity and loyalty and always remembering to be strong enough to be gentle.”
As much influence as he had on me, I didn’t know Peter Cullen personally or what he believed about God. But I do know this: I know Jesus loved us enough to live and die for us so that anyone who trusts in him and believes God raised him from the dead would have eternal life and be adopted into his family. I hope Peter is using his talents right now to give voice to characters and stories that make heaven rejoice.
Thanks for the memories, Mr. Cullen.
Bonus Content
At a convention earlier this year, Cullen and Frank Welker (Megatron) reflected on their experiences working on Transformers: The Movie as part of its 40th anniversary celebration. They discuss the recording process, what it was like to work with Orson Welles, and joke about lessons learned.
On September 17, we’ll be able to hear Cullen voice Optimus in an all-new chapter added to the re-release of the 1986 movie.
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