Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen has been out for some weeks now. You might think it’s the best movie ever. You might be someone who really hates it, even if you haven’t seen it. Often the claim has been leveled that the whole movie is quite shallow. I beg to differ.

Interestingly, Transformers 2 carries some strong political overtones one would not often think of being in a Hollywood film. In the movie, the Autobots and the military have a quite conservative attitude in assessing the threat of the remaining Decepticons on the planet. Drastic actions taken for the safety of the public are kept secret, much how security agencies have acted in recent history. Rather than wait for the Decepticons to regroup, the Autobots and the military engage in many small firefights around the world to root out the rest of the Decepticons.

However these actions do go beyond reproach. Early on in the movie, a top-ranking bureaucrat appointed by the Obama administration comes to question the tactics the military and Autobots are employing. The bureaucrat believes that the troubles with the Decepticons are brought about by the presence of Autobots. He concludes that the Autobots are pulling the U.S. and the rest of the world into choosing sides in a civil war among the Cybertrons. The bureaucrat then requests for the Autobots to leave in hopes that there will be no future engagements with the Decepticons. However, Optimus Prime confronts these allegations head-on and explains how foolish it would be for the Autobots to leave if the Decepticons were actually to stay.

Consider for a moment, how this relates to the war on terror. The liberal argument for disengaging in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere is the same the bureaucrat in Transformers 2 made: the people do no want to be pulled into an ethnic conflict. The conservative reply to the liberals that the engagement is something far more important than anything ethnic. Optimus Prime similarly urges the importance of the Autobots mission on earth at the same level of significance.

In the movie, Optimus Prime, the Autobots, and the military wing that aides them feel the same way many U.S. soldiers feel when the purpose of the War on Terror is questioned. They feel misunderstood.

What actions are taken in such contradictions of leadership? The scenario that unfolded in Transformers 2 was an event of incredible crisis.  Those responsible for engaging crises, the Autobots and the military, moved forward in their actions to engage even in spite of the urgings of the leadership (the bureaucrat i.e. Obama and any other liberal administration) who had long since chosen to disengage the crisis from it’s very beginning… It seems fitting and right that those who had done something to try prevent to a catastrophe would be the ones to confront such times of peril rather than those who would have given up at the outset and possibly made things worse. This is the persuasion of many pro-national defense, conservative voters as well as the Autobots.

With that said, is this actually the biggest anti-Obama film yet made? Could that be why so many reviewers in the media trashed it? Possibly, but I think it has more to do with many film critics having a very high, very artsy perspective that gives them an aversion to the loud, ornately composed mechanical sounds and high-class visual thrills of a movie like Transformers 2. Sure, the plot isn’t Shakespeare, but there is enough to keep up the interest. There are even a few decent plot twists as well.

Is the movie meant to be a political statement? Perhaps. Yet it seems more comfortable to assert that MichaelBay, Steven Spielburg, and the other minds behind Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen did not make it a film to be annotated for it’s political doctrines. My guess is that if anything, it’s made to appeal the core instincts of how we confront evil in the world and how flippin’ hot Megan Fox is.