The Energon Pub

[St. Even]

With the confirmation (see toys) of Megatron in TROF who thinks he "kills" Prime at the end of the movie?

[lkavadas]

It's an interesting notion but I don't see it happening tbh. If they did kill off Prime though I hope he stays dead.

I think it's pretty lame when they bring back dead characters (/sigh Megatron).

[Rocketeer]

I'm still not happy that Megatron is being brought back in ROTF.
The sequel could have dealt with Starscream's attempts to maintain control of the Decepticons, while Soundwave (or another important Con) sought to resurrect Megatron (perhaps in the *next* movie).
I just think it's too cliche to resurrect Megatron so quickly.
But I am still optimistic that the movie will turn out good.

That said:
I doubt that Bay would have Prime killed off.
Even if Prime does die, he'd probably be back in TF3.

[JazZeke]

We all knew it had to happen. Seeing Starscream and Shockwave contend for leadership would have been more interesting, but no one in Hollywood is smart enough to pull that off.

[SPOILER ALERT!]

What bothers me though is HOW they are supposedly going to do that in the rumors. Scorponok is going to insert his own spark to revive Megatron. A spark isn't like a heart or part that can be swapped--it's a Transformer's SOUL. You can't put a soul into a dead body and expect it to be the person who died.

[Serpent O - R]

Yes, the Spark is 'supposed' to be the Bot's soul. But it is not in the Movie Universe.

In the Movie Universe, consider the Spark nothing more then Dark Energy. The Bot's soul is defined by the neural pathways carved into their, ahem, brains by the erratic nature of controlled Dark Energy.

Example; Think of the TF brain as a field with canals cut into for irrigation and the Spark as a tsunami. Yes, the majority of the tsunami will obey the canal pathways, but there will be places where the waters erode new canals in the field. These new canals are unique to that single Bot, thanks to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

In this scenario, Meg's can be resurrected by absorbing Skorp's Spark and still be Meg's without carrying Skorp's soul over.

Or not, this is just a theory...

[lkavadas]

Having the spark act as a highly advanced Cybertronian power source makes a lot more technical sense then it being some ill-defined intangible "soul" like thing.

Unless a TF's soul is defined as nothing more but a vessel which contains their AI.

But on the whole, spark = soul is silly IMO.

[JazZeke]

I prefer the concept of Transformers having souls. It makes them more than just robots. And if they're limited to just having internal computers that can be rebuilt or turned back on with the right spark of electricity after "dying," it begs the question as to whether they are truly alive, to me.

[Adimus Prime]

Having the spark act as a highly advanced Cybertronian power source makes a lot more technical sense then it being some ill-defined intangible "soul" like thing.

Unless a TF's soul is defined as nothing more but a vessel which contains their AI.

But on the whole, spark = soul is silly IMO.

I think that to say that the Spark is their soul is fine but understand that the story will probably never go too deep in explaining this area. To define the human soul is basically impossible. Why try to define the spirituality of ficticious giant space alien robots? Let their sparks remain in fantasy mystery and let it be. Imagine that the sparks are whatever you want.

It is clear that their "life" depends on the Spark's presence and functioning. Who knows if you can repair a "dead" spark? Who knows if you can just make a new one? Who knows if they can reproduce? (A la Arcee, anyone? Just kidding.) Who knows if how they are really created? Who knows what a spark is supposed to literally be? It is just fairy tale fantasy that makes for a great story. Don't complicate it. Let their chassis and servos rest in peace.

This discussion is like the one that questions the idea of female transformers. Why are there male ones? There is no sex with them so they ought not resemble human genders of either kind. It is just fantasy.