No Country For Old Optimus

So, I was watching Transformers the other day and, okay, well, I wasn't watching it. I was thinking about it. I was thinking about how shitty it is that it lost the VFX Oscar to that bullshit movie with Daniel Craig NOT being Bond and a bunch of polar bears who, for whatever sad reason, don't look much better than the ones from the coca-cola commercials of my youth. As I said, bullshit.

Anyway, I had Autobots on the brainpan and started thinking about subtext, the things not said in a film. Even popcorn films are loaded with subtext. Like how Top Gun is really about homosexuality or how Deja Vu is about Apartheid. Viewed with the right perspective, Michael Bay is no different than Federico Fellini.

The other thing mudding up my thought processes is all of the Iraq-commentary themed films that graced our screens in the latter half of the last year. Rendition, Lions For Lambs, In The Valley Of Elah(elah...elah...ayy...ayy). There was no shortage of topically opinionated uber-dramas geared to get you thinking in your armchairs and to get slender, golden statuettes into actor's mansions.



I'm all for poliltical themes making it into art films, but the thing I noticed about this trend is that an art film just isn't built to carry any semblance of an opinion. Without the structure and dramaturgical stability a more mainstream film brings, a politically preoccupied filmmaker tends to veer off into onanism around the 1:15 mark. A director like Gavin Hood or Paul Haggis knows what he is doing and is plotting every step of the way. A director like Michael Bay lacks that level of self-awareness. He just wants to blow shit up.

This is why I was more intrigued by Transformers than any of the other movies highlighted for their relevance and "controversial" imagery. Let's say you don't like political films. You see a poster with an American flag and Robert fucking Redford, you pretty much know whats in store and ignore it entirely. These films are just preaching to the choir. No one expects global introspection in a movie about big fucking robots, and that's the beauty of it all.

To be honest, Transformers has always been a politcally subversive property. The toy line was rife with Cold War-era implications: robots that weren't what they seemed. What were they hiding behind those Detroit-steel exteriors? Better dead than red, motherfucker. Then you had the cartoon. Just listen to the premise, and try not to picture the cartoon imagery you're oh-so familiar with.

A race of aliens emigrate to Earth, fleeing from what could best be described as religious persecution and an energy crisis over a substance called "Energon," basically crude oil. They hide out in the suburbs, blending in and hiding out while preparing to further their holy war on their hated rivals, who are also surreptitiously roaming the countryside.

Autobot. Decepticon. Sunni? Shi'ite? Red state. Blue state. Little bit country? Little bit rock and roll?

Superheroes like Superman always represented the jewish immigrants of the early 20s and 30s, a sort of hopeful metaphor displaying the best other countries have to offer us as a whole. Todays immigrants are from closer to the border, and people see them more as a threat, but think about this: The Autobots come here from another planet and hide out in garages with your children, and when they have "gang violence" they blow up buildings and kill innocent bystanders by the hundreds. When's the last time that El Salvadorian guy who works at your Kohl's got into a fight with a Jet that turned into a big, metal machine of death and killed your dog?



Don't discount the uber awesome Jesus-Superman-Neo Christ imagery in Optimus' self-sacrifice in the animated feature either. Go back and watch the movie, with new eyes. You'll see what James Carville doesn't want you to.