And now, at long last—in our not-very-deep trek into feminist film theory—it is time to talk about Mikaela Banes,
the most well-rounded and worthwhile character in the Transformers movies.
What?
When people think about women in the Transformers movies, the first thing that comes to mind
(after that Romeo and Juliet law scene from the Age of Extinction) is Megan Fox, but Megan Fox's character, Mikaela Banes:
(Get it? Mikaela...Banes)
is just the beginning of discussion where women in these movies are concerned.
Because the first movie, easily the most cohesive of any of them from a screenplay perspective,
actually has some comment on the way women are treated by men who underestimate them—by being overqualified for a thankless job,
by being dismissed by one's superiors in the workplace because they don't take you seriously because you're a girl—
given that over the last decade these movies have become
an emblem of all that is backward and misogynist in the world, people have forgotten that the first movie is weirdly
sympathetic to its female characters
...on paper.
But this sympathy to the female characters in the screenplay is undermined by the way the women are framed by the camera
and the framing gives the audience a different take away than what we see on the page.
"It squirts the fuel in and so you can go faster."
"Oh."
"I like to go faster."
Let's recap the plot of Transformers 1.
A down-on-her-luck working-class girl with a gift at hot-wiring and fixing cars
gets swept up into a god-like clash of space-car robots by a hapless idiot.
"I just put in that light there and then that disco ball"
"so the light reflects off the disco ball."
"Huh."
She is obviously skeptical at first;
why would the alien space robots have any use for such a worthless dummy?
He seems incapable of even looking after himself, and she even has to save him a couple of times.
"He's gonna kill me!"
But this girl has problems of her own: not only do the men in her life not respect her,
"How about you let me drive?"
"Oh no no, no, this is not a toy. These twenty-twos..."
"Romantic friends do this, I mean, I'm not that friend. I could be..."
"You, in the training bra, do not test me."
Her dad is in jail and she herself has a juvie record for aiding and abetting.
"You know those cars my dad used to teach me to fix?"
"Well they...they weren't always his."
"You stole cars?"
But eventually she learns to see her involvement with the alien robots as a chance to use her bravery
and her automotive skillset, which everyone has always underestimated and not appreciated because she is a girl,
to not only get her juvenile record expunged
and to redeem her car-thief dad, but to help the alien space robot save the world from the other alien space robots
"You think I'm shallow?"
"Huh?"
"I think, um, there's a lot more than meets the eye with you."
Mikaela: the only human character with an interest in cars.
"Got a high-rise double-pump carburetor. That's pretty impressive, Sam."
The only character with even some approximation of a backstory.
"I have a record because I wouldnt turn my dad in."
The only character who self-actualizes not because others tell her to, not because she has given instruction,
but because she realizes her self-worth on her own.
"Huh, oh, God I can't even tell you how much I'm not your little bunny."
A few years ago, back when we were first kicking around the idea of this project,
I asked Twitter to describe Mikaela's character
and the results were...
telling.
Audiences thought it was a given that Mikaela was worse-written or -acted than any of the other characters in the movie when she
very clearly wasn't, but people didn't notice that there was indeed "more than meets the eye"
Because the camera was sending a different message than the script was
namely that Mikaela is not here as a character who grows and changes over the course of a narrative,
but as gratuitous eye candy.
If the theme of the movie is "no sacrifice, no victory",
"No sacrifice, no victory!"
Sam has never sacrificed anything, which Mikaela actually points out.
"I have a record because I wouldn't turn my dad in."
"When have you had to sacrifice anything in your perfect little life?"
But Mikaela has.
Mikaela's skill set, backstory and character arc fit much more neatly with the theme that the movie is at least going for
than the main character himself.
So Transfomers 1 isn't so much Sam's coming-of-age story as it is Mikaela's.
So given this character whom everyone underestimates, but is also the only character with any interest or history with cars
Something that might have even led her to, I don't know, discover something about Bumblebee, like look under his hood and go,
"Hmm, there's something different about this engine. I think your car might be an alien robot."
Maybe have her established skillset pay off in some narrative way, but it doesn't.
"Just pop the hood."
And that image of Mikaela leaning over the car talking about how men don't like that
she has skills as a mechanic because of her gender and the way she looks.
"That's weird. I just wouldn't peg you for mechanical."
"Well, you know I don't really broadcast it. Guys don't like it when you know more about cars than they do."
All while Sam leers at her and listens to not one word she is saying.
This is what we might call "dissonance of framing":
The text is saying one thing, the framing is saying something else.
What do people remember from the scene? Do they remember what Mikaela says?
"Guys don't like it when you know more about cars than they do,"
"Especially not Trent. He hates it"
Or do they remember the way Megan Fox's body was shot?
Mikaela is emblematic of the problem with these movies: long movies that move so fast that the story is almost impossible to follow,
so aesthetic impressions get weighted much more heavily than thematic or narrative ones.
And when you have a director who is much more interested in frame for frame's sake?
rather than using the camera to emphasize the storytelling
Thee narrative, the character, and theme are at war with the aesthetics.
The text says one thing the camera says another,
and because this is a visual medium, what the audience remembers is what the camera tells them.
Mikaela is talking about how people don't see her as anything but a pair of T & A,
but all-the-while the camera is conveying to the audience that this is her value,
and unless you're a pedant like me who's obsessed with fixing the flaws of the screenplay because it had potential, dammit!
That's all the audience takes from it.
On the other end of the spectrum are the women that are not frames of object of desire
Namely Sam's mother, played by Julie White,
"Were you masturbating?"
"Judy."
and Director of National Intelligence Charlotte Mearing, played by Frances McDormand.
"I don't care who you are, if you breathe a word of what you've seen here, you'll do time for treason. Do you understand me?"
White's character is almost entirely played for comedy.
"Hey Professor, I'd do anything for an A!" "All right, Grace Slick."
"You have to call it that word if that makes you uncomfortable. You can call it Sam's Happy Time."
"March, young lady!"
"I love it when you call me young lady, you dirty old man." "Oh, oh Dad..."
"Just been a weird night, I've had a little bit to drink."
The McDormand's character seems to resent the fact that she is a woman at all: see her reaction when she is called "ma'am" or "madam."
"Yes, ma'am".
"Stop with the 'ma'am'. Enough with the 'ma'am', do look like a 'ma'am'?"
"No ma'am, y-yes ma'am, yes."
Feminism dot JPG, am I right?
But don't worry, here comes John Turturro to put her and all women in their place.
"Moving up the world, huh?"
"Your booty looks excellent"
Women in these films are on two extremes:
Props of beauty shot in the same manner as Victoria's Secret models, (and one actual Victoria's Secret model).
"This is your new lucky bunny."
Hey, it's almost like our director had directed Victoria's Secret commercials before,
And sexless butts of jokes.
the only noteworthy exception to this is NSA contractor
Maggie Madsen, played by Rachel Taylor in the first movie
who was the person who discovers that the Decepticons are trying to hack into national security networks.
"There is nothing on earth that complex."
"What about an organism? A living organism, maybe some kind of DNA-based computer."
No one believes her so she breaks all of the laws and seeks out her friend Glen, played by Anthony Anderson,
"Grandmama, drink your prune juice!"
to help her figure out what is going on. This doesn't really go anywhere and ultimately leads the two to discover nothing of consequence
and lands them in jail where there is this nothing scene in which Anthony Anderson eats the whole plate.
"I ate the whole plate"
Now for the sake of argument we're going to ignore the fact that on the surface,
given that this is the first movie and no one knows about the robot aliens yet, her proposal is absurd.
"What about an organism?"
[Lindsay]: "What if it was a witch?"
"What if this is all a projection?"
"What if we're in the Matrix?"
"If the moon was made of ribs, would you eat it?"
[Maggie] "and I know that that sounds crazy..."
Ignoring that, it is pretty clear that there is some gender-motivated bias in the way Voight's character talks to her.
"If you don't get a filter on that brain-mouth thing, you're going to be off the team, understand?"
But the dismissive way that her superiors treat Maggie isn't the only comment on women in the workplace buried in this movie.
"Yes, Mr. President?"
"Yeah, can you wrangle me up some Ding-Dongs, darling?"
During the scene while the Decepticons are trying to break into Air Force One,
an Air Force One Secret Service woman complains about having to be overqualified
to effectively be a glorified stewardess.
"Join the Air Force to bring the man Ding-Dongs."
"I'll be in storage."
Maggie is exceptionally beautiful, sure, but she's not framed as a commodity like Mikaela is,
nor do her male colleagues treat her as anything but an equal.
Only her superior, the Secretary of Defense played by Jon Voight
does the "go away, little girl, the big men are talking" thing.
This mirrors Mikaela being dismissed for her skill set in a male-dominated field: cars.
Yet framing her like she is in a car commercial.
This is even more overt in the third movie when Bay combines the camera work with some dialogue to compare Carly to a literal car.
"Look at the curves."
"Elegant, isn't it?"
"Beautiful, built to evoke the body of the ideal woman."
The first movie constantly subverts the gender status quo
but then reinforces it by way of framing which objectifies or undermines the female characters
That's what I find interesting about the first movie
It acknowledges that in a sphere like this
the sphere of technology, the military, and automotive mechanics,
a woman is presumed to be lesser, a secretary or likely way out of her league
This is in part due to the tendency for people to see young, beautiful, or feminine women as empty shells:
props, you might say. And nowhere is this more clear than in the chimera that is Carly.
"What is that?"
"This is your new lucky bunny."
The screenplay for Dark of the Moon was mostly complete before Megan Fox was fired,
so Carly hits all of the beats that Mikaela's character had built up to
(Ignoring the weird "was a White House intern" introduction that is just kind of slapped on)
The fact that Carly is a curator of automobiles for a rich guy makes sense for Mikaela:
Mikaela's skill set is paying off in the new economy and Sam's is not, because it's mostly non-existent.
He has built up no professional contacts, he is a nervous wreck and also a total douche
"Sensei."
And then the film ends with this
"Ooh, rings."
[Bumblebee sings "Here Comes the Bride"]
Which does not make sense for these two characters after only one movie of build-up.
This was supposed to be the same character from movies 1 & 2. If you look at it in a sense that it was a deliberate story choice
to replace Mikaela with Carly, which it wasn't but let's pretend that it was
in a narrative sense it's even more depressing because the main arc between Sam and Mikaela in Transformers 2
really Mikaela's only arc in 2, because this one was mostly written by Bay himself because it was in pre-production during the writer's strike of 2008 (tangent)
is that Mikaela wants Sam to tell her that he loves her.
"I adore you."
"That's not the word I want to hear right now."
"What are you talking about? It's the same word as the other word."
"It's not the same word."
And neither is willing to say it first and eventually Sam wins.
"I love you."
You know, maybe by dying. There are some begrudging proclamations of love:
"It took all all this for you to tell me that you love me."
"You said it first."
But the real kicker: it's not that he can't admit it because men and commitment, it's because he doesn't love her.
That she is the trophy, she is the ward and therefore disposable.
And therefore in movie 3 he has another disposable beautiful girlfriend.
"Get in the car, please."
Another hood ornament, another decoration. Who she is does not matter because she is not a person to Sam.
Nothing is real to Sam. Everything is an object because he is so navel-gazing self-obsessed lacking an empathy and detached from reality
"Listen, listen, I am a victim."
Everything and everyone: the Autobots, his girlfriend, is an object to be used and disposed.
"You will always be my first car."
And if we take Mikaela and Carly as two separate characters, which for the sake of narrative argument, let's.
"What if she dumps us like the last girl?"
"She was mean. Didn't like her."
Mikaela is a far more rounded and realized character than Carly, even up to the fact that she dumps her boyfriend because
after putting up with him for so long she realizes that he, like everyone else in her life, does not love her.
"You said it first."
To him, as to everyone, she is not a person but an object, a trophy, a hood ornament, a reward so she leaves him...off-screen.
We see this mirrored in the real life adventures of Megan Fox as well. In a metatextual sense, by booting Mikaela and shoving in
A replacement who is not set up nor even works from a story standpoint
this is the message that Bay was sending Fox: you are an object, you are disposable, you can be replaced.
"What if she dumps us like the last girl?"
"She was mean. Didn't like her."
The first film brings up issues of gender iniquity
and how men often don't take women seriously because they are objects to them,
"Why doesn't my little bunny just hop in the backseat?"
But at the same time objectifies Mikaela to the point that for most viewers
she is impossible to take seriously because she is so impossibly beautiful.
So impossibly dressed, so objectifyingly framed. Her impossibility is not in the text, but in the framing.
Mikaela Banes is the embodiment of what remains with the audience through cinematic language.
Framing and aesthetics supersede the rest of the text
Always, always, always.