Douple pump?
It squirts the fuel in so you can go faster.
Oh.
I like to go faster.
This is how audience were introduced
to Megan Fox's portrayal of Mikaela Banes in Michael Bay's
2007 adaptation of Transformers.
After the film's incredible success,
Megan Fox was catapulted into the spotlight
and became a household name and international sex
symbol seemingly overnight.
When it came time to start production
on the inevitable sequel to Transformers,
producers sought to recreate the box office magic a second time
and hired Megan Fox to reprise her role in Transformers,
Revenge of the Fallen, a film that
would heighten not only the story of Transformers,
but also the sexualization of Fox's Mikaela Banes.
Transformers 2 outperformed its predecessor at the box office,
and a third film was greenlit with Megan Fox in agreement
to co-star.
But when it hit theaters, you may
have noticed a significant lack of Megan Fox,
as the character of Mikaela Banes
seemed to have been replaced by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley's
Carly Spencer.
The reasons for Fox's replacement
are part of a much larger problem Hollywood is currently
trying to distance itself from.
Sex sells is a concept that has been around for well
over a century.
And in selling a film to an audience,
sexuality can be an extremely powerful tool.
While sexualization of women in films
is as timeless as the medium itself,
we're going to be focusing on a few trends that
were appearing in Hollywood at the time of Transformers's
initial release.
The early aughts were rife with films that predominantly
featured attractive women in roles
that had very little to do with the character development
and more to do with having scantily clad
women placed in compromising positions.
Magazines like Maxim were specifically
tailored to pique the blossoming sexual interests of young men
and were flying off the shelves.
And those same young men were flocking
in droves to movie theaters across the planet.
Hollywood was using sex as a way to generate controversy
and then riding the waves made by that controversy
and to some fairly large profit margins.
Films like American Pie 2 and Road Trip
were generating profit margins of over 700%.
And numbers like that just don't get ignored.
The message being sent to studios by consumers
was that audiences wanted to add a little spice to their summer
blockbusters.
And by 2007, there was quite a lot of that going on.
Sex was, in fact, selling.
Michael Bay's Transformers was one
of the most highly anticipated films of the aughts.
Transformers fans had been salivating over the big screen
adaptation of the franchise since Steven Spielberg was
attached as a producer back in 2004.
The studio clearly had high expectations
for the film, which was reflected
by a budget of over $150 million.
Now, when a movie gets this much money thrown at it,
a studio will do anything and everything
in its power to squeeze as much money out of the moviegoers'
wallet as they possibly can to make their money back.
Part of that success model involves
the casting of attractive women in leading roles.
However, these casting decisions can end up
being sort of a double-edged sword for the performers
who are taking the roles.
Sometimes, talented performers can
get overlooked as being just a pretty face
or get pigeonholed into roles where
they seem to almost function as a prop versus a completely
fleshed out character.
It's important to note here that you can't write Megan Fox off
as just a pretty face.
Megan Fox worked hard to get to where
she was at the time of her casting in Transformers.
She had been training in dance and dramatic arts
since the age of five and left her small hometown in Tennessee
at 17 years of age to try and make it in Hollywood.
After some minor successes in an Olsen twins' movie
and a supporting role in Confessions of a Teenage Drama
Queen, Megan Fox caught her big break with Transformers.
And in a way, Transformers caught a big break
with the casting of Megan Fox.
Buzz and hype are two key factors
in selling a motion picture.
And Megan Fox generated a ton of it.
Tabloid magazines began comparing the young starlet
to Angelina Jolie, and her name became synonymous
with the phrase, "sex symbol."
She would begin appearing on talk shows
and gracing the covers of internationally
distributed magazines.
And as much publicity as this was generating
for the young Hollywood starlet, in turn,
it was also generating enormous buzz for Transformers.
We don't know how much Megan Fox was paid for Transformers,
but it's rumored that she was paid around $800,000
to appear in the sequel.
The point here is that the marketing value of the casting
far exceeded the price of the performer.
A 30-second primetime television ad can cost upward to $100,000
depending on the network and the show.
For $800,000, Megan Fox would not only appear in the sequel,
she would also be contractually obligated to do
press work for the film during its release, something
that is worth far more than any commercial could ever be.
Transformers 2 is where things started
to get a little messy between Michael Bay and Megan Fox.
In an interview with Fox News, Megan Fox
accused Michael Bay of forcing her to gain weight for her role
due to his preference for a full figured woman.
Allegedly, tensions ran high during the production
of Transformers 2.
And during a press tour of Jennifer's Body,
Megan Fox stated in an interview with Wonderland Magazine
that Michael Bay was trying to build a madman reputation
and equated his on-set behavior to Adolf Hitler.
Guys, I said 15 [BEEP] seconds, not 30!
Casey, can you quiet that whole laughing [BLEEP] stock
over there back there?
I know they're having a great [BLEEP] time.
This is a problematic statement that, whether intentional
or not, has roots in anti-Semitism.
It really didn't resonate well with the film's producer, who
also happened to be the same guy who won an Oscar for directing
Schindler's List.
In an interview with GQ Magazine,
Michael Bay revealed that after one conversation with Spielberg
about this incident, he instructed him to fire
Megan Fox from the film.
And so, after production wrapped on Transformers 2,
Megan Fox was fired from the role of Mikaela Banes
and the character was changed to Carly Spencer, played
by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.
Here's how that character was introduced, by the way.
What is that?
This is your new lucky bunny.
In response to Megan Fox's Wonderland interview,
three of Michael Bay's crew members
published an open letter to Megan Fox,
which was posted on Michael Bay's website
and subsequently printed in every industry trade
publication in circulation.
They refer to Megan Fox as trailer trash and a porn star,
even going as far to insinuate that she
may have had a strong career in the porn industry.
They called her graceless, classless,
and refer to her as an unfriendly bitch
several times throughout.
They went after her upbringing and publicly
preyed on every insecurity the actress
may have had about her performance in Transformers
and how she struggled with being sexualized.
Michael Bay did come forward to denounce this letter,
but there is a lot of speculation
as to whether or not he had a hand in writing it,
as the letter contains some phrases that Michael Bay is
known for using with some frequency.
All of this very public drama between Megan Fox and Michael
Bay resulted in a tough few years for Megan Fox.
The press went after her in a big way, painted her
as a diva, an entitled brat, or being
extremely tough to work with.
The scenario cast a big enough shadow over her career
that she started to miss out on opportunities.
And the actress self-admittedly looked inward
and eventually reached out to Michael Bay via text.
The two shared a genuine exchange
and built a bridge over their troubled waters, which
seems to have worked out well and cultivated
a new and mutually beneficial relationship between the two.
Fox was cast as April O'Neil in 2014's Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles, which was produced by Michael Bay.
And the two have publicly made amends.
Megan Fox made an incredibly insensitive and ill conceived
comparison between Michael Bay and Hitler.
And that is what prompted Steven Spielberg to recommend having
her fired from Transformers.
However, the details surrounding Megan Fox's firing
shine a light on a much larger problem in Hollywood.
And that is sexism.
By creating superficial characters for beautiful women,
Hollywood creates superficial relationships
with the actresses cast to play them.
When women are written as objects, marketed as objects,
and portrayed as objects, they get treated like objects
both on and off set.
When casting super attractive performers
to play two-dimensional roles generates massive box office
success, more female roles are written with the intent
of emulating that success.
This, in turn, makes it harder for young starlets
to land interesting roles because the only parts that
are being offered to them are written for them
due to the fact that they once portrayed
a two-dimensional character in a successful film.
It's a vicious cycle that many performers can only
break away from by leaving the industry entirely.
There's a measure of the representation
of women in fiction known as the Bechdel test,
named after the cartoonist Alison Bechdel.
And it's a fairly simple thing to follow.
It asks writers two fairly basic questions
about their female characters.
Number one, does your work feature
two women who talk to each other about something other
than a man?
Number two, do these characters have names?
Sadly enough, it's estimated that fewer than 50% of films
pass this benchmark.
But it's important to think about when
writing a screenplay.
The more we can approach writing our female characters
with some reverence, the more we can
avoid pushing an actress like Megan Fox
into a career centered around objectification
and constant scrutiny over her appearance.
This might create an environment in which performers
can actually perform, rather than just have their bodies
sprayed down with glycerin and filmed during magic hour
in a weed field.
That's it for today's episode.
And we understand that it might feel somewhat controversial,
so please feel free to weigh in with your thoughts and feelings
in the comment section below.
You might see a couple of links to some other videos
here, so feel free to click them if you want to stick around.
And once again, thank you for watching Nerdstalgic.
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