Megatron: Prime!
Optimus Prime: One shall stand, one shall fall!
Starscream: Oh, how it pains me to do this!
Megatron: Wait, I still function!
Starscream: Wanna bet?
Quintesson judge: Before the Imperial Magistrate delivers his verdict, would you like to beg for your lives? It sometimes helps - but not often.
Answer: The reason for this is the intent of both movies (G.I.Joe and this one) to kill off the old group and bring in a new group for younger kids. You noticed how most of the dead are from the old cartoon. The backlash was so bad that the G.I.Joe movie was changed to not kill off anyone (if you watch it you can see where characters were meant to die but the show was changed at the last sec to keep them alive. If G.I.Joe was release 1st then they would have died and if the same backlash happened you would have seen no-one die in this one.