The Themes Of Transformers Factions

Not ALL the factions, mind you. In the years since Hasbro took random Japanese transforming robot toylines and split them all up into two warring factions, we have gained a whole bunch more factions in the Transformers franchise, depending on continuity. Predacons alone have two factions and a Combiner team using that name. Mini-Cons, Blendtrons, Quintessons, Mutators, and a whole host of others are more united by a gimmick than a set of values. Instead, our focus for this commentary will be on the original two born of similar but not completely shared values: the Autobots and Decepticons.

The Primus origin for the Transformers, the one that has become official multiversal continuity despite the G1 cartoon allegedly being the more important media, doesn’t give a lot of reasons for the factions. Every comic, cartoon, and movie since has had different reasons for the forming of the Decepticons. In the original cartoon Quintesson origin the factions were almost destined to exist. Creating robots to sell off, these pre-Transformers were split into consumer goods and military hardware, the precursors to the Autobots and Decepticons respectively. While this could have informed their general differences when they gained sentience and overthrew their creators, we do see evidence that this isn’t the case. There are military minded Autobots and laborer Decepticons with the alt modes to match, but usually it’s the Decepticons with the war modes and Autobots with the casual, cool, or rescue themed modes. It’s more a majority of A went in one direction and the majority of B the other, taking a few stragglers from their opposites along the way. So even when you have an origin that forces them into one perspective or another there are outliers.

However, since that origin has Megatron being created by the Decepticons to be their leader and multiversal continuity states Megatron formed the faction himself we won’t look too hard at that. Besides, it’s through the tech specs, the character bios they stopped putting on Transformers figures outside of the occasional homage packaging, that tells the real story of the division between Autobot and Decepticon and what the external creators had intended for the mythos. It’s a story that seems to be ignored by more recent continuity giving us evil Autobots and a reformed Megatron, a Cybertron that even when run by Autobots was a terrible place to live, and why that doesn’t reflect the story the creators, Hasbro and the original Marvel-produced concepts by the likes of Jim Shooter and Bob Budiansky, were actually trying to tell with the factions. That doesn’t mean you can’t tell a deeper history but modern writers don’t seem to fully understand why Autobots and Decepticons exist beyond selling toys, and why the simpler ideas of the kids toyline don’t have to be abandoned in order to tell a mature story. Unless your version of mature is just about explosions, gore, nudity, and cynical “people suck” deconstructions.

The idea that Cybertron was run by corrupt regimes obsessed with an alt-mode based caste system kind of flies in the face of what Autobots are. The Autobots used to represent goodness. It wasn’t a tightly knit version of “good” mind you. Unlike modern Twitter, Autobots whose viewpoints would, for humans, rank in between conservative, libertarian, progressive, and liberal perspectives existed in that group back when we at least tried to get along and understand each other, the republic system of US government but also something closer to the British system. You can have more war-abhorrent characters like Beachcomber or Skids alongside intellectuals like Prowl (unless you’re Simon Furman and hate Prowl) and Brainstorm, or tougher dudes like Optimus Prime or Ironhide, all striving for peace but knowing that peace has to be fought for. Even the brutish Dinobots, when not created by the Autobots, often side with them over the Decepticons.

The Autobots are the ones who believe in peace and freedom. Their usual leader, Optimus Prime, has the quote “Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.” in his bio. Optimus Prime, as leader, was created to be the…prime…example of what the Autobots believed and stood for. Some are more into the action than others, some want payback on the Decepticons, or just want the war to end to return to their lives. Mirage and Huffer are good examples of that. If they work with the humans, it’s out of convenience but since they usually set up in the United States, which has similar differences of opinions when you ignore the fringe extremists of the far-left and far-right, they share a set of values and perspectives with the general population of that area of the human race. As the good guy faction of a 1980s kids-targeted toyline their personalities as seen in the tech specs, the show, and the comic were meant to represent the differences and similarities of the human race, promoting understanding based on shared values while still arguing over differing viewpoints. Marvel is, or used to be, pretty good at showing that since they were the relatable comic universe, so when Hasbro went to them after the success of including bios in the current G.I. Joe toyline turned the collections of plugged-together plastic parts into characters, aka “people”, they were the right choice to do the same for the Transformers, despite being an alien planet and lifeform, and the culture that should come with that.

Just as Optimus is the “face” of the Autobots until new toys needed pushing and Hasbro hadn’t realized what they’d done, Megatron is the face of the Decepticons. His bio’s quote is “peace through tyranny”, which nobody has ever really explored. I’d liken a properly adapted Megatron to someone like Doctor Doom, believing peace and tranquility can be forced on people and ignorant of the fact that the people only pretend to be happy rather than be dead for real for breaking the illusion. Instead we either have the typical “I want to conquer everything because I’m evil” version modern writers try to get away from, only to then give us Megatrons forced by circumstance to be revolutionaries against a corrupt Autobot regime. IDW even tries to paint Megatron as a hero for forming the Decepticons in their continuity while the aligned continuity gave us a Megatron trying to change things only to become jealous that Optimus’ words better swayed the government. Then he went into full conqueror mode. Meanwhile the Bayverse Megatron was only interested in the power of the All-Spark followed by a lot of payback and whatever power he could pull together.

If the Autobots are supposed to represent the best qualities of people as well as our weaknesses, the Decepticons by contrast represent the worst: the communists (again, 1980s, when you were still allowed to hate communism), the anarchists, the bullies, the war-mongers, the backstabbers, the bot seeking power or using cold logic without compassion or emotion, the scoundrels without a heart of gold…I mean without a spark of electrum. The Stunticons alone are a great example. Motormaster is a bully who forces the others to follow his orders. Wildrider wants to smash things and hurt others. Drag Strip is a poor loser and a cheating jerk. Breakdown and Dead End have serious personal issues that lead to negative actions. Even their combined form, Menasor (accidently wrote Motormaster and only recently caught my goof), is depicted in media as violent and destructive, hampered only by the five conflicting personalities only working together out of Motormaster’s bullying and fearing Megatron’s wrath. We could also talk about the backstabbing Starscream who wants Megatron’s command, the opportunistic Soundwave whose tech spec claimed he blackmailed his own comrades, and why hasn’t Shockwave ever been used as the mirror of Prowl?

The Autobots are what kids should strive to be when they grow up, with a different personality for each kid’s preference. The Decepticons inversely represent the kinds of horrible, ruthless, and depressing types of people kids should avoid becoming. That is their roles in the mythology of Transformers. There’s a reason the Autobots have the Protectobots and Rescue Bots and the Decepticons took decades to finally get a dedicated medic…who’s still a mad scientist!

An evil Autobot or a good Decepticon outside of the Shattered Glass universe goes against that. I’m not saying that over the course of a story a character can’t switch sides. In Armada you have their version of Wheeljack, who went to the Decepticons in order to get payback after believing the Autobots left him for dead, including his best friend. You can also have a Decepticon change sides. A reformed Megatron feels as adverse to me as a reformed Skeletor, but it’s not completely unlikely. It’s just not Megatron’s role in the themes established by the Transformers franchise. Having Megatron ever truly be in the right feels wrong. If you want to add complexity to his reasons for conquest it’s right in his bio: peace through tyranny. Give him the belief that conquering the other planets will protect them from anti-robot sentiment, or that mechanical lifeforms are superior to organics and thus by right Cybertron should rule the galaxy. Or follow the Doctor Doom logic that the only way to have peace is to force it, not realizing that the mechs he’s bringing into the Decepticon fold are actually the types of robots that can’t abide by peace and will probably doom his utopia if not his mission to achieve it. Meanwhile IDW had Optimus essentially take over Earth and force it into an Autobot empire…and that’s worse than Simon’s Furman indecisive wuss take on Optimus. At least he was still a hero.

Decepticons opposing a more peaceful and mostly unified Autobot society isn’t simplistic. The Cold War was the initial influence on the Autobots vs Decepticons, standing in for the USA and USSR, being an American 1980s toyline. The Autobots do have enough opposing opinions without turning Getaway from a cool escape artist with a bit of a mean streak into a manipulative jerk with no concern for others if I follow the Transformers Wiki. (I bailed on IDW after the war ended and what they came up with didn’t interest me, the same issue I had with Archie’s Sonic comics. That might be an article idea someday.) Autobot Cybertron should be the ideal that must be protected or reclaimed from a force more interested and capable of combat, that freedom is something to fight for against seemingly overwhelming odds, so when the Autobots win it’s cathartic. Evil in stories, whether they call themselves evil or not, represents the worst of us and overcoming that with good is the point of the story unless you’re going for an “evil wins” plot. Doing otherwise just doesn’t feel like the Transformers’ story to me or why it became my favorite fictional multiverse. Simplistic? Childish? I don’t care. It’s what the story of the Transformers is to me, a battle of good versus evil, with both sides made of the best and worst of us battling to be the singular vision of the universe. I know which one I choose.