Respectfully, I strongly disagree. I do not think Megatron was motivated by saving his people.
First, a personal note: I’m a big Megatron fan, so this post is not meant to be bashing. The farthest thing from it! I love Megatron. But the reasons I love him are pretty much the opposite of yours. Please let me explain.
Imo, Megatron was motivated by spite. He wanted to do to the Autobots what the Senate and the corrupted Primes had done to him, and if he had to sacrifice his people to get his revenge then so be it. I believe he didn’t truly care for making his side win, he cared for making the other side lose.
Remember, this is the guy who, in Chaos Theory, willingly goaded Optimus into torturing him because “when he hurts others he hurts himself.” Megatron is so utterly and completely obsessed with revenge, so powerfully consumed with it, that he will jump at any chance to hurt his enemies, no matter how tiny the chance and how high the price. He literally plotted to subject himself to excruciating agony just so Optimus would feel sad.
And these other quotes too:
“Because in the final analysis, I would happily wade across a river of corpses, chest-deep in rust and grease and engine oil, just to crush the spark of the last Autobot standing. And I would not do so simply as a means to an end. No. I’d do it, Prime, because it would give me pleasure.”
“And the thing is, when those words were in my head I didn’t think I meant them; but when they left my mouth, I realized that I did. If the world thinks you’re a monster, what does it matter? The world is wrong. But when you start to think of yourself as a monster…”
The Senate and the corrupt Primes were terrible for Cybertron, an incurable evil that kept spreading death and suffering. And you couldn’t reason with them, you couldn’t try and solve things peacefully, because those who tried were subjected to mnemosurgery and had their personality altered to agree with them.
No matter how you look at it, they had to go. They had to be killed, they just had to. Even the Autobot high command openly agreed that, if Megatron had stopped after assassinating the Senate and Zeta, he would have been a hero, a saviour for the entire Cybertronian race.
But Megatron didn’t stop. After winning the war, Megatron kept fighting anyway. As he says in Dark Cybertron, he kept fighting because he couldn’t bear the thought of the Autobots being treated as equals. He won the war, but he kept fighting because he wanted to punish anybody who hadn’t been supporting him. He even tried to kill Orion Pax, who had given ample evidence of being a genuinely good person and sincerely supported oppressed groups, who could have been a great ally to rebuild a new and just Cybertron. Megatron tried to kill Orion Pax just because Orion Pax was an Autobot, and all Autobots had to die because Megatron resented them for their past sins.
And because Megatron kept fighting the war he had already won, the very world he had saved ended up in ruins.
The actual planet was destroyed by Scorponok, who had taken control of the Decepticons while Megatron was severely injured, and for millions of years afterwards it was unable to produce energon. If Megatron hadn’t been hunting down and executing Autobots with the goal of killing them all, the Autobots wouldn’t have been forced to fight back, he wouldn’t have been injured and Scorponok wouldn’t have been able to steal the army and reduce Cybertron to a dead husk.
The Cybertronian race almost went extinct. We don’t know how many Cybertronians there were 4 million years ago, but we are told that Hot Spots could carry up to a billion sparks each, so I think it would be accurate to say that there were billions of Cybertronians. We don’t know how many Cybertronians are left today, but there was a vague mention in one comic (I’m sorry, I don’t remember which one) that the remaining Cybertronians are about 10.000.
Assuming the numbers are correct, that means that the Cybertronian race went from billions to 10.000. And then we have to add the other mechanical races too. Nickel’s entire colony was destroyed by an organic army as revenge for all the organic worlds that had been destroyed by Megatron. If Megatron hadn’t gone on a genocide spree against organics, other mechanical worlds would have been safe too. And we have no reason to believe that the army that destroyed Nickel’s colony won’t try to attack Cybertron or another colony next.
Megatron’s actions before he tried to kill Orion Pax at the battle against Zeta could have been noble and just. But Megatron’s actions after killing Zeta were driven by the urge to take the hurt he had inside and unleash it onto anybody who reminded him of his oppressors, even if the only thing they had in common with the oppressors was the Autobot badge. It didn’t matter that the evil Autobots were gone and the remaining ones had been fighting by Megatron’s side for a better future, it didn’t matter that carrying on the war would decimate both Autobots and Decepticons, it didn’t matter that a hundred billions of innocent organics would die in the crossfire and the survivors would become Cybertron’s enemies: all that mattered was revenge.
(Btw, that’s the stated reason for Starscream’s treachery. Starscream openly admitted that he had no problem fighting a war for a legit goal, but he was sick and tired of fighting for fighting’s sake).
That is why I find Megatron so fascinating: he is the ultimate example of “bullied victim who becomes the bully.” It’s the perfect portrayal of the cycle of abuse.
Even better, he is the bullied victim who becomes the bully while still convinced that he is morally in the right, then has a devastating nervous breakdown when he is forced to take a good long good at his real self and realizes he has become even worse than the monsters who tortured him. And then, instead of taking “Redemption Equals Death” as the easy way out, he actually starts working to atone for his sins. And the cherry on top is that, despite everything, he is still at least partially motivated by pride! He was willing to let them kill him until Starscream publicly humilated him, that’s when he started fighting back for his life!
Megatron is driven simultaneously by pride and regret, by anger and guilt. He has committed abominable crimes, but as one of the most powerful beings in the universe with a lifespan of million of years he has the potential to save counless lives in the future. Will he live up to that potential? Will he succumb to his inner demons again, doing the wrong thing under the delusion he is the hero of the story?
I love Megatron’s story. And in my personal opinion, it’s far more interesting than “hard man willing to make hard choices for the good of his people.” Imo, it’s not a matter of moral conflic, but of conflict between the real self and the idealized self (”guy thought he was the hero, but he was the villain all along”) and its fallout.
