Ultra Magus – More Than Meets the Eye, but not in terms of personality

Even giant robots can be boring fucking nerds and cops, sometimes both! Here’s why that’s good:

Every group needs that One Person. The person who will stand up and say “But the rules say…” and not cry when every one else throws wadded up paper at them and boos. The person who knows, deep down, that if they try to be even more of a boring rule-licker eventually everyone will come around.

Will they come around because they know that person is correct? Probably not.

Will they come around because they have been ground down, just inch-by-inch, by the sheer non-stop persistence? Does it matter if that’s true so long as they come around?

Not to that one person!

And that one person is, obviously, Ultra Magnus.

Yes, Ultra Magnus! Shoulders up to there. Stick so far up his butt it transforms with him, into another stick. Name like an off-brand condom. Ultra Magnus.

Do I actually dislike Ultra Magnus? No, of course not. He’s a decent character who does, truly, mean well. But let’s be honest here, if you look at the roster of Autobots and wanted to pick one Transformer to go “Holy shit, in Transformer school that guy got shoved into another robot that transformed into a locker,” you’d pick him.

And yet! He is a stalwart hero. You can not deny that. He fights to the last of him, and tries to step up when needed (even if the Matrix of Leadership is like “Bro. Bro, naw. C’mon. Remember the locker? Bro.”) which is admirable.

But he is also so deeply uncool that one might decide he was so uncool that he came back around to being cool.

One might.

I would not.

But why is that? Why am I meh on Ultra Magnus? You would think I would dig him. I am a known big time fan of Scott Summers, and if you like Cyclops you would think you would also be an enjoyer of Ultra Magnus.

And yet Ultra Magnus is just that extra inch into dullard that doesn’t work for me. Cyclops is at least also cool as hell at times. Ultra Magnus is just Ultra Magnus. And while that steadfastness serves him well in many things, it does not do so in the coolness factor.

So uncool you could use him to defrost meat.

I never thought Truck that become a big dude with missiles on his arms would be so …deeply … boring. Missiles! Right there on his upper arms. And yet. And. Yet.

But all of this is to say he tries. And trying counts for something. In his case not quite enough where it counts in the personality department, but he does try. And we gotta respect that.

Or else, I guess maybe he’d work out how, for the first time in 40 years, how to launch one of those missiles instead of just keeping them at the ready like weird arm nipples.