Cartoons of the ’80s were often notorious for their terrible attempts at non-American accents. “English” and “Australian” were often interchangeable and equally mangled (as in the choice clip below), but nowadays, with YouTube opening up everyone’s access to native speakers from all over, it should be easier to get it right.
But despite supposedly learning English from the Internet, Movie Optimus Prime is having none of that. And why should he, when the Internet regularly tells us that Peter Cullen has one of the world’s coolest voices already? In this new viral video, however, a dialect coach attempts to prepare Optimus for his upcoming movie The Last Knight, which includes many scenes set in the UK, and encounters with King Arthur. Foreshadowing his dark turn onscreen, Optimus is not the forgiving, heroic leader when it comes to receiving feedback:
His behavior seems especially dickish considering that so many other Transformers in the movies do have accents, ones they presumably downloaded to match their personalities. And it’s not like Optimus is above changing things about himself: even aside from the fact that his whole character is based on transformation, he has varied his robot look significantly from movie to movie.
So yeah, we’re going to chalk this up to the beginning of what appears to be a good old-fashioned heel turn, like when Hulk Hogan formed the New World Order. Bom bom bom BWAP buh, ba bom bom bom BWAH bah!
Is Prime being too mean to the nice English lady? Or does she totally deserve his beratement for daring to yell at the leader of the Autobots? Bay at us with your thoughts in comments.
Image: Paramount
