I have personally never been a fan of the Transformers films that Michael Bay produced, but the biggest punch in the gut for me is the portrayal of Megatron. Throughout many forms of media, Megatron has proven why he’s THE enemy of the Autobots, using a combination of his incredible strength and cunning mind to frequently overpower Optimus and his team. However, while Bay definitely makes it clear that he’s a villain, this Megatron is a sad, weak shadow of the character’s potential.
Always Second Fiddle
Rather than clawing to the top and cutting down anyone in his way, Megatron takes a back seat and always serves the real villain of each movie. For instance, in the first movie, we see Megatron frozen in ice and doesn’t make a true appearance until close to the end of the movie when he’s freed. In the next two movies, he serves The Fallen as his apprentice and then follows Sentinel Prime’s lead, only rebelling against him in the last five minutes of the story.
Somehow, it gets even worse, as in the next two movies he’s still more of a background character than his own villain. In Age of Extinction, Megatron returns in a body humans created, but only rebels against them much later on. But even then, he’s barely present in the final battle and everyone focuses on Megatron’s newly recruited minions than Megatron himself. In the Last Knight, Megatron once again serves a deity known as Quintessa. While faithfully serving his creator and working to save Cybertron, it’s still the same old story of Megatron bowing the knee to someone else.
The Megatron that fans know and love would NEVER submit to anyone, and he would make sure everyone would get the message.
Extremely Weak
There isn’t a bot alive who could keep up with the punishment Megatron dishes out, and even Optimus has struggled to barely win against him in a 1v1 battle. However, the Bay movies show a Megatron who is the complete opposite of that.
Literally in the first movie, his first ever debut, he gets killed off in the few minutes he’s on screen. Not even a resurrection in Revenge of the Fallen saved his reputation, because even though he kills Optimus, the Autobot returns to beat him to the point where he’s even calling to Starscream of all bots to help him (yeah, let that sink in for a minute). The beating he got was so bad that he couldn’t truly fight (or do anything else for that matter) throughout the movie, except when he rebelled against Sentinel. However, Sentinel was already roughed up quite a bit from his battle with Optimus, so it would’ve been easy for anyone else to ambush him as well. But the craziest part is that Optimus only had one arm and was at Megatron’s mercy, yet Optimus was still able to quickly rip Megatron’s head off in five seconds flat.
After resurrecting yet again in the human-made body that was previously mentioned, his fighting skills have improved ever so slightly, but unfortunately not enough to make a significant impact. In Age of Extinction, Megatron only fought Optimus ONCE and never fought his arch-nemesis again, not even in the final battle in Hong Kong. After that, Megatron spent most of the Last Knight fighting the Autobots, and sort of participated in the final battle, but only briefly fought Optimus before getting kicked through the wall of a spaceship that was thousands of miles off the ground.
Honestly, it’s a wonder why no other Decepticons have usurped Megatron if it’s this easy to beat him.
No Depth, No Arcs, Nothing
Megatron’s reputation as a villain already preceded future projects, but you can’t just put an iconic villain into a story and call it a day like Bay did. Throughout all five movies, there has been little to nothing added to the character as a whole. Instead, Megatron mainly acts like the stereotypical school bully in every high school drama, being a big brute who occasionally pops in to cause trouble but then slinking back into the background. We never even get much of his background, only a couple mentions of Megatron’s brotherhood and betrayal with Optimus, and a brief but unexplored mention of his apprenticeship with the Fallen. This lack of depth paints Megatron as a villain only in name alone, and therefore makes it hard for the audience to truly connect with him and register him as a bad guy.
For example, consider the Megatron we saw in the recently made Transformers One. We see Megatron (known at the time as D-16) start off as a humble miner and best friend to Optimus Prime (Orion Pax), dutifully obeying the law and idolizing Sentinel Prime. However, after being constantly dragged through Orion’s mishaps, and witnessing his hero commit unspeakable evil against his people, it set D-16 on his dark path. Fueled by the knowledge of Sentinel’s injustice, resentful of Orion holding him back, D retaliated against Sentinel and Orion to create a new age that he believed was fair and free of deception. A backstory such as this is what creates a true villain, because the motivations are clear and sympathetic, and adds more presence to the character. Of course, this never excuses the actions of that villain, but the audience can’t resist backing them up.
While Megatron’s somewhat understandable desire to restore Cybertron is made abundantly clear, it’s ultimately empty without that missing depth that drives the point home.
Conclusion
It hurts me every single time I think about Megatron’s past appearances in these films, because not only is Megatron one of my favorite villains, but the character had so much potential built up through years of various projects. However, Bay tarnished that image so badly that it’s no wonder we haven’t seen Megatron in any live action movie since The Last Knight. I hope that, in future Transformers projects, Megatron receives the justice he deserves.
