warning: Bumblebee spoilers ahead
As a big Transformers fan, I’ve been looking at different transformers accounts on social media and have been surprised by the recent uproar about Cliffjumper’s death in Bumblebee. The reason this has surprised me was because the people most excited for the movie seemed to be fans of G1 and to me cliffjumper was kind of an unlikable character in G1. and here’s why…
In the first episode, “More Than Meets the Eye: Part 1”, Cliffjumper wanted to go with the scout, Hound, on a recon mission to find the Decepticons. During this time Optimus Prime had told them to only find them and to not attack. The next thing you see is Cliffjumper pulling out a bazooka to Hound’s surprise. And fired at Megatron and the other Decepticons, but missed. This made me not like Cliffjumper as much because it was hound’s mission and he didn’t even notify Hound of his actions. He just acted really brashly. I know it’s part of Cliffjumper’s character to act brashly and I still like the character a lot, but I thought that what Cliffjumper did was dumb. To further things, Soundwave had ejected laserbeak to go after them and it resulted in Hound tumbling off a cliff. Cliffjumper had to go back to the Ark to get help for Hound and apologized. Hound was one of the friendliest characters too.
In the episode “Transport to oblivion”, Cliffjumper had thought that some rocks were a Decepticons and fired at it. it had caused an avalanche and Optimus and Ironhide were in the middle of it. Cliffjumper had apologized, but Ironhide didn’t care. This again can convey his reckless behavior.
In the episode “Fire in the sky”, Cliffjumper was told to look for Spike and Sparkplug in a cave. Optimus had told the autobots to stick to a search pattern, but Cliffjumper disobeyed the orders, got jumped by Ravage, and had to be saved.
In the episode, “Traitor” Cliffjumper had accused Mirage of being a traitor. (Mirage was one of my favorite characters at the time of seeing this.) He had little evidence that wasn’t very trustworthy and jumped to conclusions. By the end of the episode, it is revealed that Mirage wasn’t a traitor and Cliffjumper apologized once again.
There are many more examples of brash, reckless actions from Cliffjumper. Even though it’s part of his character and makes him interesting, It’s not really what I would consider to be a likable character, like Bumblebee, and that’s why I was surprised. i guess Cliffjumper has been more of a cooler character in other incarnations of the character, such as Prime so I guess I could see it.
This is not meant to make Cliffjumper seem like a bad character. I still think he is cool and interesting, just not “likable”.
