TFs: DARE TO BE STUPID

OKAY, I know I'm about to miss 90% of what I want to say, but.

THAT BAYVERSE META, THOUGH

Spoiler

Oh my god. Okay. Where to start?

Let's actually start with Age of Extinction, which is not even covered in that meta (the meta covers the first three movies). Because AoE starts out, and one of the first plot points is that cade yeager mark wahlberg finds a random truck chilling in the wilderness and brings it home and surprise surprise this truck turns out to be an unconscious optimus prime.

I say this because this has already been used as a transformers plot point. Not a good one, or in a series a casual fan would probably be aware of. It's in the japanese transformers series super-god masterforce, in which a japanese trucker rando named ginra has his truck break down at like... a truck stop, and buys a random truck that someone left there (the truck is optimus prime) (and then he pilots optimus prime? as a transformer??? the only reason i'm aware of this is because i went to a con panel titled 'the four worst transformers series of all time')

And I bring this up because this is a weirdly specific plot point to echo, and brings me around to JRO and some of the other movers and shakers at idw, and the way they're obviously longtime fans who graduated to creators. This is just one plot point that might be a coincidence, but it says to me that Michael Bay aside, there were some transformers fans involved in writing these movies who were familiar with the DEEP lore.

Backtrack to the first couple movies. Here's the basic summary: Optimus Prime is our narrator and Optimus is a goddamn liar. And I'm like 99.9999% sure that the people writing these movies cribbed some important aspects of their worldbuilding STRAIGHT from TFA.

Optimus, first. He lies. Lies lies lies. I'm forgetting some of the specifics, because that was a LOT of meta, but things he tells us about the cube, the war, his goals, etc., there are some times when what he says is unsupported by the movie and others where he blatantly contradicts himself. By trying to destroy the cube, he's trying to destroy the future of the cybertronian race. In movie... two? Starscream is very specific that without the cube, new babies are dying. And Optimus is supposedly doing all of this to win the war against the Decepticons. Nnno, in movie three, he straight-up tells Sentinel that the war is lost and has BEEN lost, and at that point in terms of what we've seen, Autobots are at their highest point so far, teaming up with humans to run anti-decepticon hit squads and with a cybertronian-spotting surveillance system. I'm skipping over a lot of casual destruction and disregard for human life and genocidal shenanigans, but we're having the movies narrated to us from the ANTAGONIST'S viewpoint.

I'm not going to go on a full breakdown of comparisons, but TFA was the last big transformers Thing to air before the movies happened. It was canceled early to make way for the movies. It definitely had a kid-oriented aesthetic, but the worldbuilding in TFA was some dark shit. The societal divide between autobot and decepticon society was one thing, where they were segregated by frametype more than philosophy, and where autobot society was militarized and stagnant and prejudiced and unhealthy. Optimus in these movies reminds me a lot of TFA Ultra Magnus, where he kind of... pays lip service to being a decent guy, and you can see some ways wher he almost IS a decent guy, but he's got the steering wheel for this unhealthy societal machine, and has the power to do a lot of good, but is just sticking to his own closed-minded agenda. He almost seems to have compassion sometimes, for some things, but he's also very *shrug* about all the harm he could prevent if he was willing to bend just a little.

Now, let's look at Megatron. In TFA, he crashed into earth after a fight and was found unconscious by Isaac Sumdac and was used as the starting point for a lot of advanced human technology. In Bayverse, he crashed into earth on a solo mission to hopefully, HOPEFULLY find the allspark (and the meta goes into some detail about how it's interesting that this was him alone on a mission of ideals that nobody else supported him on, not a strategic move as a commander), was frozen in ice, and eventually found by the American gummint and kept frozen, and used as the starting point for a lot of human technology.

Also, he was totally conscious while the humans were keeping him captive and experimenting on him. Cybertronians have their own language, but when the Decepticons break him loose, he's IMMEDIATELY AND FULLY fluent in English. He was totally conscious that entire time. TFA Megatron is already one of the more sympathetic Megatrons out there, and it takes his story and tweaks it sadder and more realistic at the same time, and none of this is explicitly in the narrative it's all buried in the deeper reading why why WHY

But guys, Megatron is totally our protagonist. I can't do justice to the meta's breakdown of his ideals and goals, but he went on this desperate solo mission as a bid to save the future of their species (omg, so many of these series have robot reproduction as a central theme, this is hilarious to me), he suffered, significantly, as a result, and he still engages with Sam on a more personal level than almost any of the autobots bother to do. After he's been in frozen science experiment hell for ages and ages!! Or hell, look at the third movie, where he's got a giant horrible head wound, and he's got BABIES, and he's FEEDING THOSE BABIES with parts from his own body!!!!

Or another TFA parallel, but one that's very interesting to me. Alicebot. What was the point of Alicebot? She hung around Sam's college, acted like a human college student for a while, and kinda sorta started to seduce him because... ??? Sam did have his adventure with the allspark shard, which was relevant to plot, but that like, JUST happened. And pretenders are an established transformers thing, but a young lady who is for all intents and purposes a regular hu-mon girl until a big dramatic reveal? That's EXTREMELY Sari.

And like, a thing that diverges from TFA. In TFA, the decepticons are the warbuilds. In these movies? Sometimes they're fancy machines. A lot of time they're like... construction equipment. The autobots are basically all pretty, shiny (sponsored) vehicles, but there's a LOT of constructicon-type frames showing up on the decepticon side, and the closest the autobots get is the Highly Comic Ice-Cream Truck the racist twin robots have for like two minutes. The meta mentions that the IDW comics have just recently started to get into the decepticons=proletariat parallels, and of course these movies never slow down to discuss philosophy, but the visuals here are INTERESTING.

Oh, and in terms of rigid society, a la TFA? The only cross-faction move I recall is Jetfire being an ex-decepticon (who can teleport like skywarp?????) who is clearly not respected as an autobot, and whose body is used and tossed aside when optimus is done with it, like it barely matters at all.

Plus another thing that diverges from TFA is that in TFA, as warbuilds, the decepticons are... very large, very prone to casual destruction. The autobots are smaller, and our main crew especially tends to be good about minimizing damage. The society sucks, but on a personal level, our main guys are trying. In the movie, the amount of casual brutality from the autobots is off the CHARTS. Like. These are our protagonists, in an action movie in MURRICA, so it's not that unusual, but it's REALLY striking how much the decepticons AREN'T that. Megatron rips up Jazz, and Bonecrusher has anger management problems, but like... other than that, their fights tend to end pretty reasonably. Not like Optimus blowing up EVERY SINGLE PERSON'S FACE. Like, wow. If you've got a face, Optimus will shoot it. For sure. Soundwave and his children and grandchildren are a bit of an exception in the third movie, but for the most part, autobots DOMINATE on the murder and violence front.

(even barricade and sam in the first one, barricade could have easily murderized him, or megatron at the film's climax. as opposed to ironhide, who casually tosses another mech on top of an occupied car)

And like.... in terms of sympathetic protagonists, with emotions and issues to care about? The decepticons are knocking it out of the park. Megatron has the tragic science experiment backstory, Starscream has a scene where he gets upset about the dying babies, Megatron feeds his babies from his own frame, etc. Bumblebee gets to do Friend Things with Sam, but that's all... not that much depth to those scenes. Other than that, we get one sigh from Optimus that Jazz is dead before forgetting he ever existed, and after that, we're REALLY lacking in autobot emotions beyond 'ME ANGERY'

Also, once sam takes an allspark to the face, that is 1) a lovely parallel to what happens to megatron when he takes an allspark to the chest and the different-but-similar declines they have, and 2) at that point he's basically frodo getting his soul hollowed out and damaged beyond repair. He starts off as an audience insert, but by the end of the movies, he's not really so much... HIM anymore, he's a thin shell around the allspark. The meta goes into a lot of detail about how his personality and ability to human start breaking down, and I mean that in a less flippant way than it sounds there :P Like, his relationship with Mikaela. He isn't THERE anymore, it's no wonder that it falls apart.

So Optimus is a murderous, genocidal asshole, and Sam is an ex-parrothuman, like... the soul of the movie rests with Megatron. Who isn't really having a great time of it either, there's a clear decline for him from movie 1-3, in terms of power and symbolism and his body and mind. Sam's fall is kind of tragic, but he wasn't as much of like... a plot driver. He facilitated the plot, but he didn't RUN the plot. Optimus and Megatron ran the plot, and Optimus is a lying dickwaffle. Megatron's fall is tragic, and he was pretty darn fucked from the moment he got frozen, conscious in the arctic, but he gets hit with further tragedies to sabotage his hopes and himself, on a more personal physical/psychological level. It's really, really interesting.

And this doesn't even touch on half of things. This is a tiny, tiny sliver of everything I'm incredibly worked up over with these films. And this is after everything has had time to percolate and settle. Mikaela/Carly/Megatron ot3, I refuse to explain myself, but it totally works. I don't know, you guys, I kind of love these movies now?

 

Iirc, back in the tyrest arc, cyclonus did the eye stabby thing with star saber, and then was about to finish him off, but he was... teleported away, I think? Cyclonus was in in combination grief and religion flavored righteous anger mode and took him down in a one-on-one fight, and was totally ready to take that last step, but didn't quite get to strike the finishing blow before things were interrupted