Transformers: Robots In Denial
Posted on Tuesday June 23, 2009, 13:12 by Chris Hewitt
BEWARE: SPOILERS ABOUND. DO NOT READ THIS UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN REVENGE OF THE FALLEN!
A few hours ago I became the last Empire-ite to slap my eyes upon Michael Bay’s mega-sequel, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen. And, as my interest rapidly waned ‘neath the relentless barrage of robot punching, robot kicking, robot smashing, robot leg humping, robot farting, robot incomprehensible exposition and ROBOT LOUD NOISES, I noticed something that piqued my interest.
In short, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen may be the gayest mainstream movie since Top Gun, with its talk of wingmen and tails and whatnot. Not, as Seinfeld once said, that there’s anything wrong with that. In fact, it’s quite audacious and subversive. After all, Transformers is a giant, toy-shifting, popcorn-shovelling buster of blocks, a movie designed for parents to take their kids along to, safe in the knowledge that it won’t turn out to be a paean to the joys of love between two men. Except…
Revenge Of The Fallen is all about man-love. Specifically the man-love between Shia LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky and Optimus Prime. Don’t be fooled by the presence of Megan Fox and her near-pornographic hot pants. She’s a red herring, a great big beautiful beard designed to take your eyes off the central couple. After all, there’s clearly more to the Sam/Prime relationship than meets the eye. Or maybe I’m madder than a bag of snakes playing ping pong on the surface of Jupiter with a giant dragon wearing the face of Esther Rantzen…
But consider the evidence: the movie conspires to keep Sam and Optimus apart for long periods of time, but when they’re together, the sexual chemistry is there in spades. Long, lingering looks. Clandestine meetings in windswept locations. Meaningful dialogue laced with subtext: “Fate rarely calls upon us at a moment of our choosing,” says Prime at one point. Read between the lines, and it sounds like Optimus is trying to find the right words to express feelings that can no longer be contained.
Consider, also, the curiously chaste relationship that Sam has with Mikaela. For a guy with a girlfriend who redefines the term ‘smoking hot’, he doesn’t seem that keen to put his lips on hers – in fact, the only time he even begins to display any sexual excitement is when he has Mikaela whisper, ‘camshaft’ down the phone. Is it a coincidence that Optimus Prime has a killer set of camshafts? Probably not.
And when Sam is briefly killed near the end of the movie, what brings him back from the brink… is it Mikaela’s grief-stricken cries of ‘I love you, Sam?’ Or is it a bizarre dream sequence where he’s transported to early-era Cybertron, and effectively meets the parents of his one true love, Optimus? No prizes for guessing it’s the latter. Poor Mikaela – you get the feeling that by the time she’s 40, she’ll be a sad drunk with bags under her eyes, a cigarette in her hand, and a contemptuous look in her eyes as Sam tells her he’s out to spend yet another Friday night with… him. “There are three people in this marriage!” she’ll scream, before flinging the last piece of the All Spark at their wedding photo – a photo with the giant legs of the Best Man, Prime, dominating the frame…
That’s, of course, if it gets that far. After all, we’re also constantly told, throughout the movie, that Sam and Mikaela haven’t said, ‘I love you’ yet, despite the fact that they’ve been going out for two years. When I was at college, I was telling girls I loved them after two weeks and, as you might expect, I didn’t know any girls who looked like Megan Fox. Heck, I didn’t know any girls who looked like Neil Fox. And yet Sam has this goddess by his side for 104 weeks, and doesn’t once use the ‘L’ word? Dude. Has. Serious. Issues.
Issues that are compounded when we see him interact with evil Decepticon spy, Alice (Isabel Lucas). From the off, Sam is uncomfortable in the face (and ass) of her overt sexuality. Recognising this, Bumblebee – his Autobot guardian (and, perhaps, something more?) – virtually assaults Alice and degrades her by dumping brake fluid, or Transformer urine all over her. Or could he be marking his territory? Needless to say, Alice turns out to be a stone-cold killer, reinforcing the notion that Sam is better off in the warm, welcoming Transformers’ boy club.
Haven’t you noticed? Oh, Transformers 2 may introduce token female, Arcee, but otherwise there’s more enough kugelsack at an Autobots meeting to put Bruno out of business. Same with the Decepticons – at the end of the movie, seven of the evil bastards cast off their inhibitions and literally come together to form the giant Devastator, a 130ft tall behemoth whose USP is the ability to suck other robots into its enormous mouth. It even swallows – and then spits – one of the annoying Twins. All of this explicit action in a PG-13, just waiting to corrupt the minds of our youth and turn them all into gay robots. Chris Tookey of The Daily Mail is going to dig out the ‘Careful Now!’ placards when he gets wind of this…
Ultimately, though, it all comes back to Sam and Optimus and the consummation of their forbidden love. When Optimus is slain in the heat of battle, Sam is lost, consumed with grief, racked with remorse, insert your cliché here. But when he hears that there’s a chance that Optimus might be resurrected, immediately he gets his game-face on. And it’s virtually impossible not to notice that the language surrounding Optimus’ resurrection would give Freud, not to mention sixth-form humorists, a field day. “Put the Matrix into Optimus’ spark,” Sam is told, while later Jetfire pleads with Prime to “take my parts and you will know power that you’ve never known before.” I had to check the credits to make sure he wasn’t voiced by the ghost of Kenneth Williams.
And, of course, the final act of resurrection is committed when Sam, finally free to express his feelings for his fallen flame, literally penetrates Optimus’ chest with the phallic-shaped Matrix Of Leadership. It’s in this act that Sam is finally free to express his true feelings, and bond with Prime on a level that human society just won’t be able to accept.
Of course, this sudden lurch into homoeroticism shouldn’t come as a surprise, for Hollywood’s been doing it for years. The previously mentioned Top Gun, as memorably laid out by Quentin Tarantino in the indie film, Sleep With Me, is a treasure trove of gay subtext, while Bryan Singer’s X-Men movies, particularly X-Men 2, use mutation as barely-disguised metaphors for homosexuality. And, as Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg noted so adroitly in Hot Fuzz, Bay’s previous sequel, Bad Boys 2, is really about two guys who are so afraid of their love for each other that they routinely cover it up with homophobic banter.
But action cinema has lacked an openly gay hero, so perhaps Bay can push Transformers 3 even further. Will Optimus Prime finally come out? Well, it’s unlikely – but perhaps it’s time for these robots in disguise to stop being robots in denial…
Okay.... wow.
Not looking good for TF2.
