Bay's final word on Jazz in TF2? (SPOILERS)

[Gutsman Heavy]

Megatron jumps right into battle after the thawing. Why would he need an earth alt mode? the need to hide had long passed.

I'm not a fan of the jet visually and conceptually, but it would have been quite unnessisary for him to get an earth alt.

[GoktimusPrime]

I agree that Megatron's alt mode is a poor "robot in disguise" - but as griffin and Gutsman Heavy have pointed out, there was no compelling reason for him to have a disguise. The other Transformers spent the rest of the movie in "infiltration" mode - gathering intelligence to find the AllSpark. When Megatron was thawed, the location of the AllSpark was known, they just had to chase it! The IDW comics describe both the Autobots and Decepticons operating in phases - most of which require both sides to remain hidden from the sentient populace of a world - but once the fecal excrement hits the fans, then they move to whatever phase it is (very high level of alert) where they no longer care about remaining in disguise.

Apart from you (and your friends) I never heard anyone laughing at Meg's alt mode. In fact, when I was a kid every one at school loved the gun mode (I remember someone actually brought one to my primary school). It was ULTRA COOL! But now (as adults) TF fans seem to think it's dumb... I think we're over-analysing it a bit... something we, as kids, didn't do back then - although maybe you did, I'm not sure.

Look at it from a non-Transformers fan (i.e.: general movie going audience) POV. You see an effing giant 11 metre robot magically shrink into a hand held 53cm pistol that needs someone else to operate is something that requires an incredible amount of suspension of disbelief from an audience.

For the movie to financially succeed, it needed to appeal to a general audience. Transformers The Movie appealed directly to Transformer fans, and while it's become a pop cult classic, it flopped badly at the box office. The live action movie on the other hand was successful, and part of that reason was because non-Transfan audience members could relate to it.

I can appreciate the fact that you prefer Megatron's original gun form, but this concept would be really difficult to work for a non-fan general audience.

Jet is just boring. A ground gun thing like Galvatron is still my pick as elite alt mode for Megs. Who says he needs to fly? :P

Kinda hard to travel across the stars as a ground-based cannon, don'tcha think? Also, aerial superiority is teh pwnz0rz. A column of tanks would get smashed by a squad of jets unless they had specific anti-air artillery and/or their own air support - think of the ending of Saving Private Ryan where the German tanks get thumped at the end by Allied planes.

And yeah, everyone forgets Megatron is a Transformer too.. so the whole race takes alt modes, but Megatron is "better" than that? Pfft.

He has an alt mode, he just doesn't need a disguise mode.

Oh oh, also, they can re-scan whenever they want. If I were Megs I'd keep upgrading forever!

Please don't let Hasbro hear you say that!

But if Movie Megatron is so damn powerful - why does he need an army?

Because he wants to create an inter-galactic empire. For this he needs a bloody big army - not just to conquer, but to continue occupation. He may be powerful, but he can't be everywhere at once.

As he states in the film "You've failed me yet again Starscream". Why would this God-like giant want to waste his time with substandard soldiers if he can just do everything himself? Note - servants are different from an army!

Starscream isn't substandard - he blew the legs off Bumblebee, gave the other Autobots a hard time and beat the snot out of the U.S. Air Force. Starscream may be treacherous (and in the movie we're not shown how aware Megatron is of Starscream's true nature - Starscream does act loyal to Megatron) but he's by no means a substandard warrior. He did lead the Decepticons for the duration of the movie until Megatron's thawing.

G1 Megatron needed an army of "loyal" followers - a fact that is epitomised by his "need" for someone to fire him in gun mode.

Having loyal followers is useful for having someone to fire him, but the fact that he even needs someone to operate his alt mode does make it inherently limiting. For example in "Transport To Oblivion" Megatron had no loyal followers around to use him to fire the Exponential Generator into space so he had to elicit the aid of Optimus Prime - his sworn enemy - to fire him! Prime naturally agreed to it out of mutual survival... but it shows how limited his alt mode is. If he were up against enemy forces and needed to transform, but there were no loyal followers around to help him... he'd be effed.

Personally, I don't think Movie Megatron is so 'mighty' and 'all-powerful' anyway. Firstly, he was beaten by earth's frigid climate.

It's no sign of weakness to be pwned by the Ice Age considering that it pwned an entire planet!

Then when he was revived, he lasted 20 minutes before being killed by a tiny human...

...who happened to be holding the AllSpark. It would've killed Prime too if he'd shoved it into Prime's chest as he'd told him to.

Maybe he should have hidden - from Sam anyway!

Yeah, but Megatron clearly underestimated the human - Sam beat him using his brains rather than brawn... or huffer.