My life was ruined back in '86 when they killed him the first time.
my experience w/ that movie was weird. 1 time i rented the 1st 3 episodes of g1, and thought since it was so long it was movie. the years later i see something called "transformers:the movie" w/ optimas and co. on the cover, and thought it was what i had seen years erlier. so i rent it. than i see unicron and realize it's completely different. than optimas dies...
and megatron almost dies but gets brought back stronger
i was disappointed than, but now i've seen it a few more times and unicron is awesome!!!
I had a similar situation happen with kids during my IMAX screening. When Optimus gets shanked by Megatron tons of kids just start moaning and crying. Saw about (no exaggeration) 10 or so parents walk out with their kids who were mourning (or just scarred) the death of Prime.
Knucklehead parents should know better. Most of these kids looked like they were 5 so its understandable that they would react that way.
every lil kid started crying or @least gasped in my theater when he died. but the 1 kid just wouldn't calm down so his mom took him out like i said.
I figured he'd get beet up pretty good, but I never expected him to die. especially after the way he was fighting. but i kinda figured they'd bring him back by the end, just cause he was such a major character. of course, i was right this time, but i also assumed he'd come back @ the end of TF:TM when i first saw that too.
(as soon as he died in the 86 movie, I came up w/ the theory that the way the autobot matrix of leadership would save the autobots in they're darkest hour was to bring back prime, but bigger and stronger. after all he was the leader, and it was the matrix of leadership right? oh well. i still like my ending better than what happened in the movie.)