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| “ | A new year has begun. The age of the Transformers is over. | „ |
| ~ Harold Attinger |
| “ | You see, it takes patience to make a man. The patience to watch and wait, to protect all of us, quietly, for God and country, without any recognition at all! There are no good aliens or bad aliens, Yeager! It's just us and them. And you chose them. | „ |
| ~ Harold Attinger's last words, moments before being killed by Optimus Prime. |
Harold Attinger is the main antagonist of the 2014 film Transformers: Age of Extinction, the fourth installment of the live-action Transformers film series.
He is a highly decorated CIA administrator and the founder of the agency's black ops unit, Cemetery Wind, who sough to exterminate all Transformers from the Earth; so much so that Attinger even went as far as to work alongside the Cybertronian bounty hunter Lockdown in order to accomplish his goals. He is also Cade Yeager's arch-enemy.
The character was portrayed by Kelsey Grammer, who also played Stinky Pete in Toy Story 2, Rothbart in Barbie of Swan Lake, Hunter in Storks, and Sideshow Bob in The Simpsons. In the Japanese dub of the movie, he was voiced by Yutaka Nakano.
Personality[]
Harold Attinger was a no-nonsense man with strict objectives and zero compassion for his enemies, even if they were innocent people. Though he sought to exterminate the Transformers, identifying both Autobots and Decepticons as a public threat towards humanity, he was willing to join forces with them if it meant to further his goal; ironically his agenda had indirectly led to the presence of non-aligned Cybertronian bounty hunter Lockdown, with whom Attinger had secretly partnered in a bid to achieve his purposes at the expense of anyone - including people besides Transformers - who gets in their way. Lockdown, who disregards both humanity and his own kind's civil war, appears to be similar to that of Attinger's genocidal antics. Despite his hunt for the Transformers, Attinger grew a sense of mutual respect for the bounty hunter to the point where their team-up was close enough to the extent of friendship.
Though all this may come from his years of working in the shadows, causing him to become paranoid and fearful, especially after the battle of Chicago. Strangely, despite being ruthless and psychotic, he was known for his calm and patient demeanor unlike Dylan Gould and Theodore Galloway. Rarely did Attinger raise his voice or overreact to a situation, instead planning it out as it unfolded. He also proved to be quite conniving and deceitful, in light of his supposed partnership with Joshua Joyce and the latter's company KSI. At that moment, Attinger revealed that he had little to no regard for Joshua upon referring him to his "golden parachute of his goal"; though it became apparent that the two were respected partners working towards the same goal in "making the world a better place", Joshua was merely a tool for Attinger and his schemes.
Despite claiming himself to be saving the world from the threat of the Transformers, a majority of the destruction and death in the film is caused by him and his organization of Cemetery Wind. Whether he sees it or not, Attinger is a hypocrite considering that he could never allow any rescue services to recover the injured when innocent people were caught in the crossfire of Galvatron's attack on the Autobots. This was further extended to the point where Attinger even allowed Lockdown to level Hong Kong to find Optimus and hide his cooperation.
In reality, Attinger's main goal is not necessarily to protect humanity but to wipe out the transformers for both financial expansions and his own twisted viewpoint on the world. By having Lockdown and Cemetery Wind slaughter transformers they come across, and then sell their remains to KSI for production into man-made transformers to sell to the US army, Attinger additionally has no qualms with being more than willing to commit high treason against the very kind he seemingly wants to protect to satisfy his own rapacity. Attinger's unquestionable disregard for innocent lives and for those he teamed up with in a bid to complete his dastardly goals were ultimately his undoing; mere moments after receiving his fatal comeuppance, Attinger dies in vain when Optimus used Lockdown's last grenade to destroy Galvatron's remaining forces that also completely destroyed the villain's deceased body in the process.
Biography[]
Formation of Cemetery Wind[]
Following the events from Dark of the Moon, humanity has become fearful of Transformers and so the U.S. government responded by terminating all joint operations with the Autobots.
During this time, Harold Attinger was requested by his higher-ups from the CIA to eliminate the Decepticons upon forming his own CIA black ops unit "Cemetery Wind". Unbeknownst to his higher-ups, however, Attinger had secretly been hunting down Autobots as well; he believes that all Transformers are a public threat to humanity and personally wants to exterminate both factions regardless.
He separately appeared in both meetings with the U.S. government and the CIA where he manipulated both organizations into viewing the Autobots and the Decepticons as the true enemies. As time passes, Attinger became notified of the presence of the non-aligned Transformer bounty hunter Lockdown, who was sent by the Creators to capture Optimus Prime and kill anyone who interfered.
He soon decided to form a partnership with Lockdown as he came to realize that they both have a lot in common, and the two would go on to make a deal upon their campaigns; Attinger would assist Lockdown in hunting down Optimus Prime, whilst killing off any aligned Transformer in the process, in exchange for a Seed which Lockdown promised to give Attinger once their deal becomes successful.
Killing Ratchet and tracking Optimus Prime[]
On one occasion, he tracked down an Autobot named Ratchet and had his second in-command named James Savoy lead his tactical squad to brutally ambush him and then allow Lockdown to finish him off after an attempt to coerce him into exposing Optimus' whereabouts. Soon afterwards, Attinger met up with Lockdown at a rendezvous point. Thereupon he questioned Lockdown's purpose of capturing Optimus, becoming curious of his mission. Lockdown, however, was displeased with Attinger since his black ops unit had once allowed Optimus to escape Mexico City and ended up warning him about their partnership; it turned out that Lockdown wanted Optimus to be apprehended safely since the Creators had wanted him alive for unknown reasons.
Eventually, Attinger receive word that Optimus was hiding at Cade Yeager's farm in Texas thanks to an anonymous phone call from Cade's friend Lucas. He gleefully responded by alerting Lockdown about this just before sending Savoy and his tactical unit to confront them at the farm. Cade had denied anything about Optimus' whereabouts until he inadvertently mentions his presence by saying the word "him", allowing Attinger to expose his secret and have Savoy authorize his squad to hold Cade and his daughter Tessa at gunpoint.
After failing to coerce Cade and Tessa into exposing Optimus' whereabouts, Attinger ordered Savoy to execute Tessa in front of Cade. It was at that moment that Optimus finally revealed his presence, and ended up killing a number of Savoy's henchmen before fleeing with the Yeagers and Lucas altogether. Attinger could only watch as Optimus escaped with the Yeagers and Tessa's boyfriend Shane whilst Lucas was killed by Lockdown's grenade.
He was not only unimpressed that Savoy and his mercenaries had failed to kill the Yeagers, fearing that their corrupt activities would be exposed to the FBI and the public, but was stoked further that even Lockdown was unsuccessful in apprehending Optimus. Attinger would later confront Savoy in their private jet after receiving a message from Cade, who warns that he'll be coming for him and is unaware that Optimus had vowed to kill the human who caused the deaths of countless Transformers upon creating Cemetery Wind.
It is soon revealed that Attinger had been collaborating with Joshua Joyce, an ambitious businessman and the founder of Kinetic Solutions Incorporated, during the course of Cemetery Wind's purposes. It also turned out that all the Transformers that Attinger and Lockdown had killed were then given to Joyce as part of his plan to produce man-made Transformers, and that the Seed would actually be given to Savoy from Attinger as the result would provide several million shares in the soon-to-be-thriving KSI. This was the complex deal that would accomplish Attinger's plot against the Transformers and allow Joyce to provide the United States military with an army of man-made Transformers.
Soon Attinger later met up with Joyce to warn him about Optimus and the Yeagers that were interfering with Cemetery Wind's purposes, which has also allowed them to investigate KSI upon learning of their alliance. Joyce was infuriated with Attinger for allowing a pair of humans and some Autobots to become aware of their alliance, and also ended up warning him that Lockdown's presence has only endangered their nefarious activities even further.
Not long afterwards, Attinger witnessed Cade infiltrating KSI headquarters during his own visit of the facilities and had Savoy's bodyguards detain him. When he entered into the room where Cade and Joyce were in, he appeared before Cade while Joyce and his bodyguards returned to their business. Meeting face to face, Attinger acknowledged Cade's attempts to protect his family which was admirable; but then he expressed his own purpose to protect humanity by eliminating the Transformers and unsuccessfully tried to manipulate Cade.
After warning Cade about the danger he allowed himself and his family to be put in after getting involved in his operation, Attinger became unfazed and showed no remorse when Cade berated him for preparing to kill his daughter with some "hired help" from his black-ops. He dismissed Cade just before questioning him about Optimus' whereabouts. Moments later, the Autobots stormed into KSI at which point Bumblebee revealed himself before Attinger could further interrogate Cade, allowing the former to escape when Attinger had escaped from the scene.
Shortly after the Autobots' departure, Attinger declared the raid as a terrorist attack worthy of a CIA-military operation op in retaliation. He then demanded Joyce to respond, which the latter did by sending his two made-man Transformers Galvatron and Stinger to hunt down the remaining Autobots and the Yeagers. Attinger watched as Joyce and his team controlled the two Transformers to pursue the Yeagers and the Autobots. In the ensuing confrontation, Galvatron unexpectedly opened fire on civilians and caused massive property damage without KSI's orders.
Despite this, Attinger showed no concern about the damage Galvatron created and confronted Joyce for sending paramedics to the injured - claiming that innocent lives were lost every day. When Galvatron caught up with Optimus, the two began fighting that was soon cut-short when Lockdown intervened after firing at Optimus. Joyce and his KSI team were shocked by Lockdown's presence, but Attinger told them that Lockdown is his "asset" and ordered Joyce to have Galvatron retreat in order to allow Lockdown to personally capture Optimus himself.
Following this, Attinger arranged for Savoy to meet up with Lockdown in Chicago to collect the seed and settle their partnership while he warned his higher-ups to have the military stand down as there was no need for alarm; assuring them that Lockdown is his "asset" and that his presence is part of his CIA operation with Cemetery Wind.
Hong Kong and betraying Joyce[]
After Lockdown's departure, Attinger travelled to Hong Kong where he delivered the Seed to Joyce at his newly headquarters. Having seemingly completed their complex deal, Attinger proudly claimed that the two of them will now provide the opportunity to protect humanity without any Transformers' interference once and for all. What Attinger didn't know, however, was that Cade had been warning Joyce about Galvatron and his secret plan to use the Seed to destroy humanity; it had earlier turned out that Galvatron was actually Megatron, the Decepticons' leader who started their war against the Autobots on Earth from the beginning of it all. Because of this, Joyce had taken this into consideration and had a change of heart when he openly attempted to decline his reward. Attinger became surprised about Joyce's change of tune and reminded him the loss of countless casualties following their complex deal.
It was then that Joyce became aware that he and Attinger had a difference about their dreams to make the world a better place; with Joyce hoping to do so in creative terms whilst Attinger had merely the same in rather destructive ways. Realizing Attinger had been manipulating him all along, as well as growing disillisioned with the former's callous indifference to civilian casualties when Galvatron was unleashed, Joyce confronted him over his nefarious activities and threatened to blackmail him with all the blood on his hand. However, Attinger scathingly declared that he'd bring down Joyce with him after pinning him against the wall and telling Joyce that he cannot back out of their deal.
Suddenly their argument is cut-short, however, when Galvatron awakens and orders his KSI droves to launch an assault to the headquarters. When Joyce became notified by this, he had Attinger and Savoy escorted out of the building. It was then that Attinger became aware of Joyce's betrayal and Galvatron's presence when he was shepherded to safety by Savoy, though not after he confronted Joyce outside of the carpark about his change of heart.
Final Confrontation and Death[]
The next day, Attinger was prepared to kill Joyce when he and Savoy hunted him down across Hong Kong. It was then notified to the pair that the Seed they are searching was in Joyce's possession when Galvatron arrives with his KSI army at the same request. Things become escalated when one of Lockdown's ship arrives. As Savoy questions about this in surprise, it became clear to Attinger that the Autobots were still on Earth and that Optimus had not been with Lockdown ever since he traveled to Hong Kong.
As the Autobots and Galvatron's forces began fighting, Attinger discovered that the Yeagers were also in presence and are now assisting Joyce in fleeing from Galvatron. He told Savoy to split up and kill both the Yeagers and Joyce should he encounter them, warning him that they'll expose Cemetery Wind's illict activities should they survive and the pair die. This was unsuccessful, and Attinger could only watch in horror upon seeing Savoy falling to his death after losing to Cade in a fist fight.
Becoming vengeful over Savoy's death, Attinger contacts Lockdown to inform him about Optimus' location in Hong Kong and tells to do whatever he wants to recapture him. Lockdown responded to Attinger's meesage by activating a deadly weapon that caused Hong Kong to suffer countless casualties. Attinger, though, was unfazed by all the destruction that he had allowed Lockdown to cause in the process - thus showing that Attinger had all but lost what remains of his sanity because of it.
Having survived the battle in Hong Kong, which culminated with the Autobots emerging victorious following Stinger's death and Galvatron's escape, Attinger wandered off alone and ended up locating Cade in the same area where Lockdown was fighting Optimus. He confronted Cade at gunpoint shortly before the latter could help Optimus against Lockdown during their fight. Thereafter Attinger finally loses his temper as he began ranting about how it takes patience to make a man and to work in the shadows to protect all humans - proudly making false justifications for his actions for the good of his country, when everything he’s ever done wasn’t good or protecting humanity at all. He continues to berate Cade by snaring at him for siding with the Transformers over humanity, before proceeding to declare that "There are no good aliens or bad aliens, Yeager! It's just us and them. And you chose them."; henceforth Attinger could never see or realize that Cade chose to be good in this matter.
Attinger then prepares to execute Cade at gunpoint when Optimus, who having witnessed this shortly after overpowering Lockdown, intervenes; he promptly blasts Attinger in the chest, killing him instantly and fulfilling his oath to kill the person responsible for the deaths of countless Autobots and human lives during Cemetery Wind's campaign against the Transformers. And his corpse was finally blown to ashes after Optimus used Lockdown's grenade to destroy the remaining KSI drones, resulting in his ultimate demise.
Legacy[]
Shortly after Attinger's death, Optimus would go on to proceed in killing Lockdown before using his last grenade to destroy all of Galvatron's remaining forces - which all but vaparized Attinger's deceased body in the process. Consequently, Attinger's plans died with him and Lockdown as they were all but nothing in the end. Following this, Optimus would then go and find the Creators. It was then afterwards that Cemetery Wind's illict crimes were finally exposed, resulting in the U.S. Government severing all ties with Cemetery Wind and declaring them a terrorist group.
However, their legacy didn't even last long as their traditions would still be continued; this was done by the formation of the Transformers Reaction Force, a worldwide paramilitary organization with the same intent as Cemetery Wind - to destroy all Transformers regardless of faction. This was because the world's governments, including the United States, began to declare all Transformers illegal as more waves continued to arrive on Earth due to the damage in Chicago and Hong Kong - with the exception of a few island countries such as Cuba. The TRF headed by Santos, a former Delta Force operative who became the unit's leading field commander. His colleague Colonel William Lennox, a former ally Autobots and former NEST commander, also worked with TRF but was a reluctant member due to his past experience with the Autobots. TRF also wanted to apprehend or kill Cade Yeager, believing him to be an Autobots sympathizer. But in the end they would ultimately switch sides and redeemed themselves after injured by Optimus Prime and berated by Cade Yeager, they helped them and the Autobots to stop Lockdown's employer Quintessa from destroying Earth as well as defeating Megatron and the Decepticons once more.
Afterwards, the TRF was disbanded and thus what remainded of Cemetery Wind's legacy and Attinger had all but perished in the end. Nevertheless, Cybertron had begun rebuilding.
Trivia[]
- Attinger is a Swiss surname. It is implied that he is of Swiss descent.
- Attinger is considered to be a human counterpart of Galvatron from the animated movie.
- Despite his genocidal plot against the Transformers, he secretly made a deal with Lockdown (who seemed to share a mutual contempt towards his own kind) to get a MacGuffin known as the "Seed", which can turn organic life into a metal called Transformium to make new Transformers for the private sector. Even though the deal was complete, he informed Lockdown of the Seed being taken, upon his confrontation with Joshua Joyce.
- Ironically, Lockdown despises humanity, in contrast to working with Attinger.
- Harold Attinger can also be considered as Lockdown's human counterpart.
- His deed when he has Joshua Joyce recreate Megatron into Galvatron is somewhat similar with how Unicron evolved/recreated Megatron into Galvatron. Both also tries to have them work for them, and considering the movie creators previously intended to use Cyclonus as another major antagonistic Cybertronian before they chose Lockdown instead, Harold Attinger was meant to replace Unicron as well. Ironically, damage that Harold received when Galvatron turned on him was more severe than Unicron had, something that Joshua had been warned about by Cade before he betrayed Attinger previously.
- He is the second human antagonist in the Transformers movieverse after Dylan Gould and also the third human villain after Theodore Galloway.
- His line of dialogue, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" (which was said to the Autobots' human ally Sari) is from Transformers: Animated, which is a cartoon that Age of Extinction highly references.
- This line is also used by Furious 7 villain Deckard Shaw.
- However he also hypocritically claims "there are no good aliens or bad aliens, it’s just us and them and you choose them".
- To no end he blamed the Autobots (instead of the Decepticons) for having caused the Battle of Chicago in the 3rd movie, and that humans were completely the victims of it. In fact, one certain human was responsible for causing the Battle of Chicago.
- If Bumblebee had arrived earlier to save Cade by distracting Attinger, Cade would have engaged Attinger in a fist fight just like Optimus fighting Lockdown.
- In the same year, his actor Kelsey Grammer also portrayed Napoleon in The Expendables 3; said character is a former mercenary who helps protagonist Barney Ross recruit a younger generation of Expendables to take down antagonist Conrad Stonebanks.
- His death is similar to Megatron from the 1986 film where Prime defeated him with a single punch, causing him to fall from the battle.
- Attinger and Savoy are the most hated characters by fans and received negative reception. Which explains why Grammer and Welliver are banned from the franchise.
- Mark Wahlberg and Peter Cullen hated working with Grammer and Welliver on the film due to the poor reception.
- Grammer is a fan of the franchise which is why he starred in the fourth film. But due to his character, his co-stars hated working with him.
- Originally it was Cade Yeager who was going to fight and kill Attinger.
- Despite being the main antagonist, he is never seen to fight or kill anyone by hand.
- Optimus said “He is going to die!”, ironically he does that when he killed Attinger.
- It's believed by many that Sam Witwicky, the human protagonist of the first three Transformers films, was among the humans Harold Attinger and Cemetery Wind had killed between Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Transformers: Age of Extinction, as Sam is indirectly confirmed to have died before Transformers: The Last Knight, which could also apply to his parents and to his girlfriend Carly Spencer due to Sam's association with Bumblebee. If this were confirmed true, it would make Attinger even worse.
- Because of his character, Grammer received death threats from fans saying “he ruined the franchise and killed our favorite characters!”.
- Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci and Nicola Peltz said they were glad that Attinger and Savoy were killed for good in some of their interviews. Ironically , Tucci and Grammer are no longer friends because of this.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
- It was mentioned he has lots of humans and Autobots killed for discovering his true nature.
- He turns his back on the government and the President of the U.S. by not only having Cemetery Wind hunt down and killing Decepticons, but also Autobots and other humans who he deems as threats to everyone in the aftermath of the Battle of Chicago.
- He has the corpses of all the Decepticons and Autobots killed by Cemetery Wind to be used to create his own personal army of nightmarish gouls and empty husks.
- Among them is the head of Sentinel Prime, even in spite that Sentinel and the Decepticons were the sole ones to blame for what happened in Chicago, plus reactivating using Sentinel's body parts for his army could have been a wrong and risky idea.
- He made a deal with the Cybertronian bounty hunter Lockdown to capture Optimus Prime and bring him to his employer (who might be either the Creators or Quintessa).
- He unleashes Galvatron (actually a revived Megatron) in a populated area, willing to risk huge amounts of casualties. He even explains this to Joshua Joyce who wanted to get a medical team out to help the innocents who were endanger.
- Orders Lockdown to go on an all-out rampage to kill Optimus Prime despite very much knowing that hundreds of lives would be lost from their deadly rampage.
- He plans for Cemetery Wind to execute Cade Yeager's daughter Tessa in front of him if Optimus Prime doesn't show himself.
- He uses Joshua Joyce, the head of KSI, to send any leftover dead Cybertronians into their own prototype robots, so Attinger himself can profit off of the attempted genocide of both Autobots and Decepticons alike.
- He tries to kill the Yeager family and Joshua Joyce to prevent being exposed to the world as criminals, but failed.
- Although he was furious when he saw James Savoy, his right-hand man, falling to his death, he was only angry that his crimes would be exposed so he ordered Lockdown to kill a witness that would expose him as a criminal.
- Plans to use the Cybertronian Seed to have enough Cyber-Matter (or "Transformium", as KSI calls it) to create a drone army he would enslave as his war machines.
- His actions, along with Lockdown's, would cause the relations between humans and Cybertornians to deteriorate even further, as even after his crimes being exposed and Cemetery Wind being shut down for it's crimes, the Battle of Hong Kong led to the world leaders deem all Cybertronians illegal and fund the anti-Cybertronian organization Transformers Reaction Force (or TRF for short) to capture or kill any Cybertronian spotted on Earth and would keep doing it until an alliance with the Autobots to save Earth from Quintessa would make it's field commander Santos realize the error of the organization's ways and amend the relations once and for all.
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