Creature SH drops bombs like Megatron on the upcoming Transformers movie, but just like the Transformers themselves this article is far more than meets the eye. Creature takes us on a philosophical ride as he digs deep into the Transformers mythology and examines the inherent humanity underneath those hard metallic exteriors.
Transformers – One of the few toy names that have become synonymous with a concept even beyond the boundaries of pop culture. A robot that turns into something else is a Transformer to most people. But is that really all there is to it? Not by a long shot. Transformers is more than a mere concept – To many, it is a collection of childhood memories, a saga, sometimes even a part of what has forged one’s identity. Today I’d like to talk about understanding the appeal as well as the vast potential that is so easily missed.
As everybody knows by now, there’s a live-action movie headed towards the big screen at the moment. Personally, I find that to be… a pity. Because this particular movie, as good or bad as it might ultimately be, fails to capture the certain something, the essence, the spark that makes Transformers special. A ot of wasted potential. But this is not going to be yet another hate-filled tirade against a hollow piece of Hollywood. This article is not about how the actual movie fares, but how good what we won’t see could have been.
What Hasbro and Marvel comics came together to formulate over twenty years ago with a good mixture of expertise and dumb luck turned out to be one of the most engaging sagas in modern pop culture. Let’s just take the basic premise of the original stories. Two warring factions of sentient artificial life forms find them-selves stranded on a strange planet far away from home, forced to fight for survival. One faction adheres to strict ethical guidelines while the other, dominant one will settle for nothing less than total conquest. To be able to move freely on a hostile alien world, both factions use their inherent ability of changing forms to blend in with their surroundings. The planet they stranded on? Earth.
This fairly simple concept epitomizes one of the most prevalent and appealing principles of science fiction: Human self-reflection through the eyes of an alien parallel. Through the proxy of those seemingly inhuman characters, we get to face the reflection of our own humanity in an objective way. Of course, being what it was – a kids show designed to sell toys – the 80s animated series only scratched the surface of this concept. As the biggest possible scale a scope can be told in, a live-action movie should have focused on this most universal aspect. It could have been a powerful parable about humanity in times of (and this is where the leading subject of Transformers comes in) war.
Indeed, as unusual and gritty as it was for a cartoon of the early 80s, Transformers was a war story, driven by the archetypical commanders of each faction. There was Optimus Prime, the idealistic freedom fighter who would never betray his ideals. And there was his great nemesis, the ultimate warlord: Megatron. Maybe not even fully intentionally, the creative team that included talent such as Jim Shooter, Denny O’Neil and Bob Budiansky forged a clear-cut symbol of much that is wrong with mankind. Power-hungry, ruthless, self-serving and merciless, Megatron is the face of war. Even his original alternate form was a weapon made only for death and destruction. This analogue (or in many cases discrepancy) between a character and their alternate form as a machine or device well-familiar to the viewer offers a form of symbolism that is otherwise unheard of.
But the human archetypes don’t end at the leaders of the factions. In the original continuities, great care was taken to give each and every character very human, very defining traits. Bumblebee, the underdog who made up for his physical limitations with great ambition. Starscream, the arrogant schemer so driven by his lust for power that he bordered on insanity. Ironhide, the grizzled veteran who never lost his spirit. Soundwave, the opportunist who only knew loyalty when it came to his superior. The list goes on as endlessly as the potential for all kinds of epic tales.
And epic tales are to be found especially in the comic incarnations of these characters. Being able to go further than daytime TV could allow and broader than human characters could be stretched, the comics often told very grim and and sometimes downright shocking tales about the horrors of war. The surface of the Transformer home-world Cybertron was shown as shaken by war and oppression under the Decepticon reign of terror. Autobots were seen stripped of all but their most basic parts and forced into slavery or melted to be used as raw material. One of the most shocking tales was seen in the Marvel-helmed continuity: The creation of the first space bridge (A star gate long before Stargate). Its inventor, an neutral Transformer named Spanner, was kidnapped, forced to work for the Decepticons and finally integrated into the actual space bridge as a sentient, living control module robbed of his free will. He was last seen begging the Autobot Blaster to end what was left of his life.
The mention of neutral bots such as Spanner also brings up another important point that is sadly neglected or even negated by Michael Bay’s multi-million-dollar spectacle – Autobots and Decepticons are of one and the same "race". What divides them is a political conflict. Different philosophies. And yet, one has to wonder how much each’s individual programming plays into this. Is a bot constructed as a Decepticon different from one who joined with a fully-formed personality? Could an Autobot created to save lives be driven so far over the edge that he turns into a murder? Would the ultimate survival machine ever give up? And most importantly, does it make a difference whether it is software or genes that collide with the flood of personal experience? A story woven with the appropriate finesse could provide an intriguing look behind the metal mirror in this technological take on nature versus nuture.
Something else that I briefly touched on in the note on the space bridge here was that re-use of parts was a recurring motif in these stories. And for a good reason! Another underlying topic of the Transformers myth has always been the race for quickly-depleting natural resources. And this bring us back to the core tale that took place on Earth.
Once again paralleling human states of affairs, most of the Transformers warfare on Earth targeted the planet’s natural resources. While the Autobots attempted to gather the energy – or energon – they needed through diplomacy and other non-invasive methods, the darker side of this coin took what they needed by brute force and occasional trickery. Megatron and his followers were typically seen walking right through hopelessly outmatched human opposition to get their metallic hands on various energy sources. In fact, the very first battle shown to take place on Earth was about an oil platform! How relevant and thought-provoking could this angle have been in a cleverly-written movie today, when energy more than ever before drives world politics?
The aforementioned oil platform battle also served as an introduction to the some of the scarce human characters in the original show. As opposed to a sizable ammount of the fan community, I am not entirely opposed to the usage of human characters in these tales of disguised robots – It’s all a matter of the right perspective. Human characters, especially in a live-action setting, could be used to prevent the viewer from taking the ‘bots as granted, to provide perspective. They should not, however, take total center stage. It would provide a very useful dynamic to have another character to recognize and point out the humanity in these machine aliens. If written subtly, recognizing these giant beings as often "more human than human" would add to a very memorable story. Also, the concept of sparks, the "souls" or lifeforce of the Transformers (as introduced in the "Beast Wars" era), would provide a highly intriguing sidenote to explore in short. Spirituality has been a source of debate, conflict and even war on Earth for millennia – And then, there are these machines from outer space who not only claim to have souls, but also treat it as researched,
measurable, empiric fact. How would this knowledge impact an average human being? And how can life be defined to begin with? Does it matter whether a being is born or built? And is it more than the sum of its parts?
These questions could’ve been brought to the big screen in a way that has never been seen before. Unfortunately, we won’t be seeing something as clever or even as ambitious. What Hollywood champions is a spectacle that has been reduced to the lowest common denominator, void of ambition, personality or even visual recognizability. But one thing that will never be buried under all the cinematic explosions, the marketing campaigns, the design overhauls and the flood of likely pegwarmers in the toy stores… is the imagination of truly dedicated fans. Are you out there?
