Decepticons Unessential

No Decepticons, no conflict, no plot. (Regardless of holes, however I have solved most of them, there is A plot.)

@Ash from Carolina, Megatron was a great villain. No cowardly guy hiring a load of bodyguards, no crap, no sitting around. (Except in DOTM when he was too injured to do anything else.)

He's the kind of guy who will walk right up to you, say something along the lines of "Screw you." and kill you, then take what he wants.

That's what I was hoping for the live action movies.

Side note/question: Does the 86 movie Megatron have almost as many lines the Megatron from the 3 live action movies combined?

I will never accept the notion that the Decepticons were the masterminds behind the scenes !!!!!

They can't do crap on their own !

Dude, Megatron alone whipped out some pretty awesome plans. The initial plan was obviously; snag Allspark, raise army, defeat Autobots, but when that failed, and he died, he had Soundwave as his back-up, who tracked down the shard, successfully stole it and had the Constructicons rebuilt and revive Megs. Megatron could then move on to meet up with the Fallen and initiate the second plan; find Matrix, activate Harvester. Soundwave keeps watch from above, Megatron successfully murders Optimus, the Decepticons are fairly well set. Even after Jetfire and Optimus' revival screwed the second plan over, Megs still had Sentinel as yet another back-up plan. Soundwave set up human spies for their purposes and wiped them out when their usefulness was gone, while Shockwave successfully baited Optimus into searching for the Ark and reviving Sentinel, Sentinel betrayed people and brought an army from the Moon.

Basically, the Decepticons played the Autobots like chumps and only factors they couldn't truly predict, such as Jetfire, Sam's revival and the Autobot's sneak attack foiled them.

Originally Posted by Gingerchris Ratchet: "I hear you've been talking smack about me, Bumblebee."

Originally Posted by TylerMirage A wild question appears! Meta uses 'SCIENCE!' It's super effective!

Someone just had to actually read my post.......better you than those idiots back in the "could war made Optimus brutal as he is?" trend. I got blasted for counting off DOTM for the sake of evaluating Optimus' strength and character.

Anyhow, I was exaggerating. They did ok in the 1st movie. But really, they sucked onwards.

That's the thing. DOTM doesn't exactly flow with the other two. How did Megatron even know about Optimus having the Matrix ? We never saw Prime going back to retrieve, heck I assumed it was destroyed with the Harvester !



TFTM: A new slate so you can practically do anything with it.

ROTF: Since Megs in league with the Fallen (the last Super Prime), if destroying the Sun (and Earth will subsequently die) will restore......whatever, that kinda moots out the deal Megatron made with Sentinel.

Even if you include Sentinel into the contingency plan, you saw how easily Megatron can get knocked around by Optimus without Jefire. That he could have just ran to a safe distance once Optimus engages the Fallen.

It would have been better if Megatron convinces Sentinel to switch sides after revival.

Well, Megatron most likely (and correctly) assumed that an artefact as powerful as the Matrix wouldn't be destroyed by conventional means. Stuck out in the desert, hoping the Matrix had survived the Harvester's destruction was all he could count on. And luckily for him, it paid off.

And remember, Megatron's a Decepticon. Of course he'd render his deal with Sentinel moot if the Fallen's plan had succeeded. He doesn't care which plan succeeds, so long as one succeeds and he achieves his goal of domination!

Originally Posted by Gingerchris Ratchet: "I hear you've been talking smack about me, Bumblebee."

Originally Posted by TylerMirage A wild question appears! Meta uses 'SCIENCE!' It's super effective!

Why I never ! Are you suggesting that an artifact like the Harvester CAN be destroyed by conventional means ?! yeah it can

You do realize they could have made something other stuff that could
have completely killed off any reference to ROTF :

- The Matrix could have been replaced with Optimus giving Sentinel a blood transfusion, followed by some Energon (you get what I mean, right ? )

- Megatron's head injury could have resulted in a power struggle in the wake of the Fallen's death. (The Fallen could have been Jedi-mind tricking all the while, and suddenly PPL CAN ACTUALLY THINK !!!!! )

- Optimus offering the Matrix to Sentinel could have easily been his sword(s). In retrospect, I think it would have shown a bit more character for Sentinel.


Megatron in this continuity isn't smart. He's more of a raging beast of nature than a mastermind. Let's be honest, isn't he more likely to swear at you and kill you (clear cut kill you), or use psychological warfare and something intelligent then kill you (play around with you, then kill you)?

If they actually followed up with the notion that the pressure in the Laurentian Abyss would destroy the Decepticons' bodies, Megs would be royally screwed. But no, for Michael Bay : consistency is for squares, nerds, and losers. Megatron's body is more or less INTACT.

and you do understand what i'm getting at ? The Fallen's pretty much the Devil who killed all the gods there were, having him as an ally covers all bets (Teleportation, Force powers). In effect, his deal with Sentinel is pointless. He didn't even have to make a deal in the beginning.

i think he does, just a bit more maybe

I said the Matrix might not be destroyed by conventional means, not the Harvester! I did see Optimus blast it, ya'know

Many things could have been replaced in the movies, but they weren't, hence why we discuss what we got.

Oh, this Megatron is smart. As aforementioned, he was the one coming up with these plans and allying himself with Sentinel and the Fallen to make them happen, he had his troops catch Sam pretty easily, killed Optimus, manipulated the autobots into reviving Sentinel so he could bring an army to Earth, thus scaring humanity into chasing the Autobots into the perfect position for Starscream to kill them (Though the Autobots predicted that bit, of course)

And he had Soundwave to take care of finer details, so Megatron was well-prepared, my friend.

As for ocean pressure crushing them, well, it's never explicitely shown/mentioned that ocean pressure could actually destroy a Cybertronian. It was basically the humans dumping crap in the water and hoping it wouldn't come back out, LOL.

Originally Posted by Gingerchris Ratchet: "I hear you've been talking smack about me, Bumblebee."

Originally Posted by TylerMirage A wild question appears! Meta uses 'SCIENCE!' It's super effective!

So I cross-posted my initial post to a couple boards, and I got an interesting response from Onslaught Six. He says:

I have to agree with him. I think growing up with the cartoons and coming to know all the Decepticons as characters with personalities and all their own unique little quirks and traits creates a kind of gap with the movie Decepticons, who are all by-and-large just canon fodder. We see Michael Bay offing Decepticons left and right with no regard, but those names represent something to us. For Hollywood though, and the general movie-going public, they're just more metal monsters that need a good killing.



This goes along with something else I was thinking. The Decepticons in these movies aren't so much the guys we've come to know in the cartoons and comics. They're more akin to a mindless horde of monsters, going so far as to actually take visual inspiration from cinema and literary monsters.

Megatron: A decaying Frankenstein's monster. Rebuilt using parts from his troops in RotF, head blown half off, and by DotM he's rusting and falling apart.

Alice: Confirmed that Medusa of Greco Roman mythology inspired her look.

The Dreads: Confirmed that the Predators inspired their looks.

Shockwave: I'm not really counting the eye as being inspired by a cyclops, since he's always had that, but that rib cage is monstrous looking. I've heard a lot of people compare him to Lord Zed.

Laserbeak: Bears a striking similarity to "The Giant Claw," an old monster movie about a giant killer bird.

Igor is named Igor.

Feel like I'm forgetting some, but you get the idea. I don't want to turn this into a thread about Optimus' brutality (so damn sick of those threads), but when I stepped back and realized how the Decepticons were being portrayed in these movies, I likened them more to a zombie or monster horde than I would an army of intelligent soldiers with minds and thoughts and desires and everything else that makes a character a character. When I saw them in this light, I pictured Optimus Prime as Bruce Campbell from the Evil Dead movies, and remembered how I would cheer him on when he mowed down wave after wave of skeletons and evil demons.

Okay, enough of that! That's already treading too close to old morality debates.

I did say that some of the conflicts were necessary to the plot. But only some. A good deal don't provide any real substance to the story except to remind us that there's some bad robots out there.