If you feel like getting heavy, the franchises run oppositional at their foundations.
(There are Daisy Dukes inFastmovies, yes, butTransformershasDAISYDUKES.)
No need to get heavy, though.Furiousis about people who drive cars;Transformersis about cars who are people.
But this month, trailers for both franchises 2017 installments arrived, and theres a common theme.
The hero ofFast & Furiousis the villain in the nextFast & Furious.
The hero ofTransformersis the villain in the nextTransformers.
Dominic Toretto and Optimus Prime are breaking bad.
Rethink Your Heroes, announces the poster forTransformers: The Last Knight.
Nobodys seen these movies.
Dommaybe running an elaborate con.
Primemayhave been reprogrammed by Unicron.
(Where will the Library of Congress store all our theories proving that Kylo Ren is Luke Skywalker?)
And, this manufactured character conflict is a big marketing concept just now.
Two of the biggest movies of 2016 promised a showdown between heroes.
You could point to those films as evidence of our divided nation.
But in both films, the clashes were narratively rooted in eerily resolvable miscommunication.
Im not sure the big problem right now is a misunderstanding.
But nostalgia is potent right now, a political force.
Nostalgia is the national mood: both poles, red state and blue.
With that nostalgia comes paranoia, and the trailers reflect both of those ideas.
Can we credit the eighthFast & Furiousfilm and the sixthTransformersfilm (#NeverForget) with uncanny perception?
The turn to violent evil is maybe less surprising with Prime.
The Bay films wallow in gloriously overflowing robotic viscera which counts as PG-13 because the MPAA hates robots.
Prime has already died twice on screen.
Once youve died and come back, a turn to villainy seems almost mandatory.
Its not Quicksilver.)
But Prime also represents what you might call the fundamentalist spirit of the series.
Modern heroes have families, love interests, origin stories, and core psychological traumas they must be overcome.
In theTransformersfilm franchise, Prime simplyisheroism.
To turn Prime into an antagonistmeanssomething, even if its just mind-control or misunderstanding.
The pessimistic read is that Prime actually thinks hes doing the right thing.
WithFate of the Furious, the betrayal looks more personal.
But in some respects, turning Dom bad is a return to the franchises origin story and anti-fundamentalist ambiguity.
By the end of the fourth film, Dom was on a prison bus, a convict.
In hindsight, you could sayFast FiveinventedBatman v SupermanandCivil War.
After that, the next two films cast Toretto and Hobbs as government-approved heroes battling car warlords.
(Kurt Russell joined up, basically playing Nick Fury, pre-Samuel L. So you could argue thatThe Fate of the Furiousis a return to some core idea of this series.
Here is Dominic Toretto, once again pursued as a criminal, once again facing off against Luke Hobbs.
But the dark joke of the trailer is that now, for once, Domisthe bad guy.
So willThe Last KnightandThe Fate of the Furiousgo Full Dark Phoenix absolute power corrupting absolutely, and fatally?
We can guess about the films, but Im more intrigued by the salesmanship.
Somehow both sides wonandlost.
But its important to note that this distrust isntjustpolitician-focused.
And that was just theactualnews failed journalism that was nevertheless trying to be journalism.
This was also the year of Fake News: propaganda disguised as facts, Goebbels gone viral.
And the experts told me Trump would lose, and they were wrong.
So its possible that this skepticism has crossed Leftward now, too.
I keep thinking aboutThe Force Awakens.
Not the movie, but the fan theory: Luke Skywalker = Kylo Ren!
Like most theories based on advertising, that idea was disproven almost immediately by the product itself.
But I think there was a deeper conversation happening.
Luke Skywalker was always, symbolically, George Lucas: the fast-driving dreamer who became the rebel leader.
Turning Luke evil feltappropriate, somehow, to people who held this theory close.
(I admire your paranoia and doubt Disney will validate it.)
And maybe you think that, butalsothink theFuriousandTransformersplotlines are just ploys.
If Dom pretends to be bad but is actually good, isnt that the happy ending we crave now?
Heres a bedtime story for the modern moment: The bad guys were justpretending!
Not every good guy is turning bad in 2017, of course.
Maybe thats the kind of hero we all want right now.
Youre rethinking your heroes; you dont know your own family.
And this isnt some high-concept twist, buried deep behind spoiler warnings.
This is the market-testedtrend.
When paranoia goes mainstream, what comes next?
Will our fate be fury or transformation?
