It's been awhile, boys and girls. I thought I would celebrate election day by posting the first couple of paragraphs of the first chapter of my forthcoming book, Prime Living. It's a life changing tome that takes its inspiration from the handful of lines Optimus Prime speaks in the 1986 cinema classic Transformers: The Movie. Prime's motto - "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" - has always struck me as a political manifesto, and my brother Elisha has developed a pretty cogent thesis about Megatron being a trenchant commentary on Hitler-esque totalitarianisum. They're deep, those Transformers, and I wanted to plumb the depths of Prime's words and reveal the exquisite existence, the Prime Life, if you will (oh, I will), that they contain. Sure, Prime isn't Solomon, but for a massive robot who turns into a Freightliner Cab-Over-Class-8 tractor, he's nothing to sneeze at.
Speak Sparsely and Carry a Big Robotic Stick
"Optimus Prime dies." This is how they were marketing the movie. Optimus Prime. Dead. Leader of the Autobots. Defender of freedom. Righter of wrongs. Big truck who turned into a robot. Dead. Now that Transformers had made it to the bigscreen, the writers were offing their best character! I was shocked, a five year old watching the tv trailer with my head in my hands, utterly in tears even though I hadn't seen the movie yet. The fifteen people who actually attended Transformers: the Movie in the theater in 1986 (I, unfortunately, was limited to the 'Prime dies' trailers at home) had a traumatic life experience when they entered the cinema. Judd Nelson, star of Breakfast Club, as the voice of race car? Horrors! But also, Prime died. Dead. Twenty minutes in.
But this didn't mean that Prime had not been important to the movie. His epic one on one battle with Megatron is undoubtedly the best scene in the entire film, a brutal roboto-y-roboto slugfest that ends the lives of both the Autobot and Deceptacon leaders. One other result of Prime's early death, though, is that Prime doesn't have all that many lines. He basically has three scenes in which to speak: a discussion with Ironhide on Moonbase 1, the fight with Megatron, and his death scene (largely based on the similar scene from 'Camille'). Upon closer examination, EVERY single line Prime speaks is not only powerful, but also easily adaptable into a mode of living: Prime living. You see, Prime may have only spoken twenty or so lines in a movie that made approximately $37.78 (Canadian dollars) at the box office, but even now, his voice speaks to us from beyond the Cybertronian grave.
This book is an endeavor to tease out the life lessons that Prime delivered to us lo these twenty-two years ago. His sayings span two planets, twenty minutes, and one incredibly awesome Stan Bush song: "You've Got the Touch." Come with me, won't you, as we learn how good a Prime life can be.
More to come...
