AllNewSuperRobot wrote:You're talking at cross purposes here. Prime changed the stakes, later, with Megatron. As far as he knew the Decepticons were simply invading Autobot City. A standard plan. So there was no need to kill the Cons he drove through. They were merely in his way to Megatron. Which also points to his hubris. If he could do that the entire time, why didn't he do it sooner? He chose not to? Because the threat wasn't deemed worthy of his direct attention??
Your contradiction your self now.
If he felt there was no need to kill the decepticons he ran through, if he felt it was just a “standard plan” there was no need for the opening declaration when he arrived at the city, no need to “drop the Gauntlet” as you put it.....and certainly no need to raise the stakes himself
And that wasn’t the first time he took on a group of decepticons, I remember him doing something similar in the first few episodes, in “Divide and conquer” he did pretty much the same thing, But without the aerial Display
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He made death threat , he was just acknowledging the possibility of death as an outcome for one of them, again “no mater the cost” = the cost of his own life likely.And there’s no way Prime thought Megatron would back down or retreat from his words alone, Perhaps after the fight but not before
Hubris,Arrogance, This line of thinking has more holes in it than the plot
In the cartoon, Rodimus Prime regained Cybertron threw the Matrix not his own actions, it was the matrix that saved the day after Unicron ran the decepticons off world
And sure he held his own with Galvatron certainly impressive , but he was near dead the when he reached out for the Matrix.....which empowered him, so his defeat of Galvatron is again credited to the Matrix and not him
And certainly the matrix did more for Rodimus, he was the “chosen one”, an other Inheritance not earned on his own.Talk about rose colored glasses, No matrix no win, his win was all Inheritance not earned
As to optimus, I don’t deny his losses, and there were many, but how easy do you think it is to take a group of civilian workers and maintain a civil war against an enemy force designed and created for warfare for over 9 million years?Its s wonder the Autobots weren’t wiped out within a few years
maintaining “The status quo” (more of less) as long as he did is a credit to Optimus that very few credit him with
*I thought to add that, should anyone try to pedantically mention The Rebirth. Rodimus wasn't leader then, guess who was??
But why bother...it was pointless
His losse was designed by a higher power
And it’s not like I’m trying to say how was the better leader.....that’s something you are desperately trying to do
They both had flaws.......but Rodimus didn’t earn his way to leadership as you are saying, it could be argued that it was handed to him with a silver spoon