A Brief Description of Megatron

With the third installment in Michael Bay's multi-billion dollar Transformers film series coming out in less than twenty-four hours, I am left to ponder not the evolution of a series and how this affects its quality, nor the ever-expanding retroactive history of the Autobots and Decepticons, but the true stars of the movie, the beloved, animated Transformers. My all-time favorite Transformer has to be Megatron. Why? He's just awesome. He's just a sick, greedy, evil, awesome dude.

First of all, Megatron stands 35 feet tall. He weighs in at 5.7 metric tons. His motto is "Peace through tyranny" and alternately, "There is no command but mine!" He can transform into a Cybertonian jet and flying tank. He is made of 55% iron, 30% steel, 15% titanium, and 100% epic.

The best Megatron fight scene, and probably best overall Megatron scene, is the forest fight with Optimus Prime. While at first he gets his carburetor kicked by Optimus Prime, despite outnumbering the poor guy like 4-1, he makes one of the most epic, gutsy moves in all summer action flick history. He kills the cheered, loved, esteemed Optimus Prime. And it's completely out of nowhere, too. One moment Optimus is fending off four giant Transformers all lunging at him, while caring for the very vulnerable Sam, the next Megatron comes up behind him, and unexpectedly pierces his chest with a giant blade. This not being enough, he proceeds to launch a missile through his exposed chest cavity, destroying his "Spark" and effectively putting old Optimus into an early retirement. Sam, whose location Optimus was questioning in his last words, is forced to watch horrified, presumably while excreting a brick-sized piece of the All Spark. You can see the scene mentioned here at around the 3:45 mark.

While Megatron has had a multitude of great lines--mostly stemming from his annoyance at the self-centered and incompetent Starscream, his apprentice who will be the first to abandon him upon news of his death and also the first to kneel at his feet when he his revived--his best has to be an enraged command delivered to none other than Starscream concerning his treachery. It goes, and I quote: "Even in death, there is no command but MINE!" He proceeds to choke, threaten and generally terrorize Starscream before returning to his diabolical operation with the air of one who has just reprimanded their month-old puppy.

Megatron himself makes for an interesting character. In the first movie, he is presented as one of the power-hungry Transformers who began the war which tore apart--and eventually destroyed--the utopia of Cybertron. He and his band of evil robots, the Decepticons, seems to want to only steal the All Spark and kill their opponents, the good Autobots. Particulary Optimus Prime, his brother and arch-nemesis. He fails to do so, is killed and unceremoniously dumped into the Laurentian Abyss so he won't make any more trouble. This strategy fails, as he is revived by loyal Decepticons in the second film. Additionally in the second film, a broader scope is given as he is revealed to be the servant of an even larger, more evil Transformer, the original Decepticon, a disgraced member of the Primes called the Fallen. The Fallen hated humans and tried to build a Solar Harvester to harvest Energon, the sustenance of the Transformers, from the Earth's Sun in Egypt in 17,000 BC. Destroying the Sun of an intelligent life-harboring planet was a big no-no, hence the disgrace. The Fallen could only be killed by a descendant of the Primes, the last known of which was Optimus Prime, whom Megatron killed in the film. With Optimus dead and the Solar Harvester about to be activated, all seems to be going perfectly until things completely turn around starting with the revival of Optimus Prime, who in turn kills the Fallen and forces Megatron to retreat. If this is all seems very complicated, that's because it is. God help us when Dark of the Moon further complicates the plot.

But what we can draw from this is that, basically, Megatron wants to take over the Universe, and hates humans. He sees no value whatsoever in human life, and is even surprised and somewhat confused by Optimus' lot and their Sapienphiliac nonsense. His main motive for getting the All Spark is presumably to use it to do general evil and seize control of the Universe. When the All Spark explodes, killing him subsequently, he returns to his master who informs him the All Spark's information, including the location of the Matrix of Leadership, the key to the Solar Harvester the Fallen designed because he downright hates humans, has uploaded itself onto Sam Witwicky's brain. Megatron, without delay, devises a plot to capture Witwicky and kill Optimus. Setting a trap for the pesky insect, he succeeds in the latter, but the insect escapes to get the Matrix before the Decepticons, aided by some old fossil he dug up in the Smithsonian. Megatron finally kills the human, who had so rudely resisted getting his brain removed, but then the human goes to Transformer Heaven for whatever reason and meets the Primes who basically hand him the Matrix. The bothersome flesh-sack uses this to resurrect Prime, whom he hands the Matrix. The Matrix is laughably stolen from Prime's hand by Megatron's master, who turns on the Harvester with it, while simultaneously wiping out an entire battalion of hostile artillery. At the last second, Prime combines with the old fossil into an over-the-top Mega-Prime only Michael Bay could concoct, destroys the Harvester just in the nick of time a la Death Star, and then the Fallen. Megatron, whose entire world imploded in the space of three minutes, is persuaded by his whiny lieutenant to retreat, which he does, again swearing revenge.

A hunger for power and hatred for humans and the Autobots being the only things that drive him, Megatron can be best described as one of the most sadistic, cruel and just plain evil villains ever. But then why must he be so awesome?