Trivia: One scene that is in the script and almost made it into the movie involves Dirge trying to tackle Optimus Prime as he talks to Megatron, but Prime manages to slam him into the ground. In the actual film, this deleted part of the scene was suppose to happen just after Megatron says "Why throw away your life so recklessly?" This is why Optimus Prime looks like he is getting up from a crouched position.
Trivia: At one point this movie was broken down into a five part mini series a year or so after it came out. It was the same as the cinematic release apart from obviously Spike doesn't curse, but Ultra Magnus' line of "Open damn it, open." was changed to "Open......open." when he tries to use the Matrix.
Trivia: This film was not released in Japan until 1990.
Trivia: A lot of fans may wonder where a load of the characters are. Just where are the likes of the Combaticons, Protectorbots, Omega Supreme etc etc? Well, the movie actually began to be made about midway through season 2 of the Transformers cartoon show, so any new characters in the show after that couldn't be used. So the likes of Blaster and Perceptor made it into the movie, since they came in early season 2, but any other new ones after the middle of season 2 did not.
Trivia: Originally the Autobots were actually suppose to build the shuttles they used to blast off from Autobot city, but this was changed.
Trivia: In the original script, Brawn was supposed to be blasted in half, but the censors forced the artists to change it, as it was too violent for a kid's movie.
Trivia: Shockwave was suppose to die in the movie. After he said "Decepticons, were under attack, scramble." Unicorn was suppose to crush the area he was in and kill him. It's rumoured this bit was actually made but was cut out. Shockwave did appear in later Transformers episodes.
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.