First
off, I want to say, I do not hate nor do I blame Shia LaBeouf for
anything. People like to rag on him
because it’s easy. He started out a
child actor, and as a young adult actor was given roles in movies that weren’t
great, but that’s not his fault. He did
his job and, in the context of the end result, did it well.
Yet, we aren’t necessarily talking about him today, at least
not directly. We are talking about a character
he brought to life, one Sam Witwicky, probably the most hated and derided
character in the Transformers movie franchise.
However, he’s not even that bad of a character. We have to look at what he represents, how
his actions inform where he is at during the stages of his life that we
see.
In Transformers, the first live action endeavor, we meet
young Sam, a high school student desperate for two things; 1) a car, and 2) to
get with the girl of his dreams Mikaela Banes.
Now looking backwards in time, through the lenses of age, reason, and
experience, we can criticize his choices, his actions, and his motivations…but
would we really have acted much different if put in his position? Think about it the target demographic of your
average Michael Bay film…its Sam Witwicky.
That is who Michael Bay plays to, and that is the mindset of the average
white heterosexual male American teenager.
You want a car that will help you get noticed by the girls. That’s it.
Your world is hormones and you have no idea what you are doing. At no point during the film did Sam really
take charge of the situation. He has
strong feelings about Bumblebee and insists he be released, but had it not been
for the intervention of Lennox and his team, along with the U.S. Secretary of
Defense, he would have been overruled and kicked to the curb. The only reason he was even there to begin
with is because he’s had immediate contact with the aliens. He has no special skills, talents, or
information. The only time he says
something that everyone else in the room doesn’t already know is when he points
out that Megatron is a huge threat. They
were going to find that out in a few minutes anyway and it never shifts the
tone or the weight of the situation.
Essentially Sam is an unwilling participant in his story,
his life has been high jacked, and that is a common element on the hero’s
journey. Often the main character will
be forced along his quest by a collection of circumstances. Luke Skywalker initially rejected Obi-Wan’s
offer to become a Jedi. Bilbo Baggins
rejected Gandalf’s offer to become Thorin’s resident burglar. Young Arthur initially scoffs at the notation
that he might actually be the King of England.
Yet just like those narratives, there comes a moment where Sam, likely
without thinking about it, accepts his place in the story. Sam, after the incident at the Hoover Dam
becomes a delivery man. His job is to
take the cube from point A to point B.
He has to run the ball down field and it is everyone else who heroically
fights off the Decepticons to give him a clear path. That’s not where he takes his place. No, again that is just Sam following the
direction of everyone else, like you do at that age. You may think you are forging your own path
during your teens, but how much of your own life is decided by other
people? Teachers, parents, principals,
doctors, friends, parents of friends, your entire life is dictated by
committee. It wasn’t until Optimus
offered himself to take on the cube’s immense power and sacrifice himself that
Sam made his own decision. He and he
alone, chose to shove the cube into Megatron’s spark, killing him. This was the Hail Mary throw. This could have ended disastrously, but it
worked.
However that doesn’t mean that Sam has control of his life
now. Quite the opposite, in Revenge of
the Fallen (which I’ll talk in more detail about in a later essay), Sam has
returned to his tried and true methodology of taking cues from everyone else,
and it makes sense given his age. Sam is
going into college, which means he wants to take control of his own life, but
he can’t quite get there. That is very
common for that demographic. Going from
high school into college is a transition period that becomes very complicated
very quickly. He continues to defer to those
around him and again, he is summoned into the Hero’s Journey. His life is defined by those around him and
he reacts at lot like how many of his contemporaries react. I think it’s here that people take issue with
Shia LaBeouf because he portrayed a character who isn’t really that likeable,
but that is typical for that age group.
People aren’t upset because Shia’s a bad actor or plays a bad character,
but rather that the character he portrayed is a reflection of that subsection
of society. They are angry because they
see themselves in the character. A
result of writing, or lack there-of created a movie that hit a lot of the same
notes as the first. Which is pretty
accurate since your freshman year of college often feels like a rehashing of
your high school experience. That doesn’t excuse the production, but it
does inform why they did what they did when they did it.
Where the Hero’s Journey really comes full circle is about
the middle of the third film. The beginning
of the film featured another transition for the character, going from college
to the world of adults and trying to find a job. Sam is dealing with a lot at this point, he’s
complaining that he got a medal from the president and saved the world twice
and can’t tell anyone about it. On one
hand he’s feeling entitled because of all that he did, but on the other hand,
he really didn’t do that much. Again,
his Hero’s Journey had him essentially run the ball to the goal while everyone
else fought the battle. In the second
film, all he really did was plug a new battery into Optimus Prime. Had it not been for the intervention of
Jetfire, Optimus likely would have been killed again during the ensuing battle. Sam is placing a lot of important emphasis on
his past, which is what you do when you are fresh out of college. You are hung up on what you did, but what
employers, what adults, what the world wants to know is “What are you going to
do now?”
That question becomes an essential theme for Sam during the
movie. As the world he knows is stripped
away from him through the violence of the alien war and the betrayal of former
allies, he is left with those around him telling him what to do, or rather,
what not to do. Remember our first two
films? His world was loaded with people
telling him what he needed to do, what they needed him to do, but now there is
no one telling him to take this here and do that, to plug that in there and restart
that. Now they just look at him and say
they’ve got nothing. Nothing he’s done
to this point matters, not anymore. He
now has to ask himself “What are you going to do now?”
This, like I was saying, is where he comes full circle. He finally has agency in his story, he picks
himself up and says “I’m going in and I’m going to save the woman I love.” Even Epps who has come with him to the edge
of the city says it’s a lost cause, but he chooses to push on, and honestly,
Shia sells that moment. That is the end
of the kid and the beginning of the man.
This time, people are taking cues from him, following his lead.
I was actually kind of glad that the character was absent
from the fourth film, not because I didn’t like him, but rather because it was
time for his character to move on. I don’t
think Michael Bay and his team would have been able to really shape the
character any further, and Shia was having so many problems at the time I don’t
know that he would have been able to devote much energy into continuing Sam’s
story even if he wanted to.
Ultimately Sam’s story will always be one of contention
because the lens of nostalgia is not a forgiving one. I don’t know that I would mind if they
revisited the Sam character later on down the road, but I would ask that they
give him a new story, one where he decides where he goes from now on.
Thank you,
