He was asking Optimus for a truce, not Sentinel.

Wouldn't that still kill them? How would the Autobots keep the spark alive?

 

Are you kidding...

Are you guys friggin kidding me? The cons (including sentinel) were killing humans left and right and trying to take the earth over... they brutally killed Jazz, Ironhide and Wheeljack. Prime tried to sway Megatron away from evil in the first movie... THIS time it was well deserved and Prime did exactly what needed to be done. The cons deserved every bit of hurt that the bots gave them this time around. The movie was very well done.

 

So trapping their soul in a box forever is better and more humane than just shooting them in the head?

 

They've done it in other continuities; no reason why they can't do it in this one. And as far as killing is concerned, apparently not. The Combaticons were kept on ice for ages, but they were as good as new once Starscream liberated them.

That's what proponents of life imprisonment the world over say.

 

Being betrayed changed Optimus and he just got fed up with it. He was pissed.

 

Yes I do believe it was very likely that Optimus would have let Meg's live if he was really giving up

was it a tommy gun?

I remember a hand gun

That doesnt explain why in the 86 film, when killing/showing deaths was allowed, we still didnt see Optimus kill a single Decepticon.

 

You could argue that he had intent to kill them all throughout, and that he mortally wounded the ones whom Unicron reformatted later, including Megatron. They were in really bad shape, and would very possibly have expired had they not gotten help from Unicron. But yeah, I digress.

 

Though, in general, I agree with your point, I can easily see Wolvie doing that. When he flies into his "berserker rage," all bets are off, of course. But having said that, the fact that he didn't kill that poacher in his first limited series was one of the moments that demonstrated Logan had some level of humanity, and raised him above the level of, say, a Magneto, who would kill someone for much less even if he had no ability to defend himself. And this example helps to distinguish Wolvie as a hero.

And as I recall, it was suggested that Wayne as Rooster Cogburn shot and killed folks who really weren't much of a threat. But in any case, Prime =/= John Wayne  

The only way I can see Prime's actions as defensible morally is if you say: 1) that there was no way to imprison Sentinel for good, thus meaning that he would present a greater threat to life, liberty et al. in the future (I don't buy it in the universe with all the fancy technology and capabilities demonstrated in those films); or 2) if the TFs live by a different set of rules. The latter opens up a whole other can of worms. If you say TFs aren't expected to live by the standards of modern, civilized man, then I would have a much tougher time relating to them, having empathy for them, and suggesting that anything they did was actually just when they are acting in a modern, civilized universe. I think it's hard to try to have it both ways suggesting that Prime is a great, noble hero who has done great things. . .but did abhorrent things from the modern human perspective IMO. The prisoner of war example is precisely what I've been thinking about. Trying to imagine a human doing this to another human is difficult unless that human is a fairly amoral vigilante/anti-hero type.

Sadly, I don't think Bay/screenwriters were so concerned with having this discussion at all, btw. My suspicion is that they wanted to remove loose ends so they didn't have to deal with Sentinel in any sequel(s), and this was the easiest way to go about it I guess without giving Megatron any chance to one-up Prime by ultimately defeating Sentinel (though Megatron really did do that while Prime couldn't. . .). Otherwise, I can't see why they decided to "kill off" Starscream, Soundwave, Laserbeak, Shockwave, Megatron, and Sentinel all in one fell swoop. I really get the impression they want to pull a TF1986 on us and reboot the entire Decepticon threat in the next movie.

 

One could argue that, but if his intent was to kill, he failed greatly.