I am an unapologetic Transformers fan, though there are parts of the franchise or series within it that I prefer to overlook. The second and third Bay movies, for instance, have too much in them that is bad for me to stomach more than a couple of scenes. The less said about Rise of the Beasts, the better.

Nevertheless, I am a relative outlier in the fandom for the franchise: I typically enjoy the human characters and their relationships with various Autobots, as well as the few humans who manage to connect with some of the Decepticons. Many fans complain that the human characters and their arcs “get in the way” of the Autobots’ and Decepticons’ character arcs. They would prefer to focus solely on – as they are known in the fandom – the ‘Bots and ‘Cons, ditching the human elements in the series entirely.

While I sympathize with wanting to see more of the ‘Bots and ‘Cons as characters, I have always balked at the idea of leaving humans out of the story entirely. With a few exceptions in the animated or live action series, I have thoroughly enjoyed the human characters, who are typically children but occasionally adults. In a discussion with a friend I realized some of the reason for this preference on my part is based on the spiritual symbolism of the Transformers.

As far as I know, this symbolism was not intended by the writers of either the original animated series or the animated, comic, and live action series. It certainly did not factor into the creation of the original Diaclone toy models. But it is there in the most famous tagline for the franchise: “Transformers, more than meets the eye.”

Part of the toys’ intended purpose was that they would shapeshift or “transform” into various vehicles. Some were concept vehicles, some were well-known and often seen vehicles, and others were long out of use although they remained recognizable. One set of toys, typically depicted early on as planes, was the evil side while the other side (usually transforming into ground-based automobiles) followed the ideals of goodness, truth, justice, and honor. The toys themselves did not truly take off until they were recast, renamed, and the factions of Autobots and Decepticons were introduced. The Autobots fight for freedom, the “right of all sentient beings,” while the Decepticons seek to enslave others (humans) at the same time they are searching for a new power source to restore the Transformers’ homeworld of Cybertron – which the Decepticons have pretty much depleted through their war of conquest.

It isn’t just their names that indicate the spiritual nature of the two Transformers factions. Yes, “Autobots” begins with A, like angels, while “Decepticons” implies as much as the word demons. It is the fact that the two factions hide in plain sight with only innocent (or relatively ingenuous) children able to perceive and communicate with them in many series.

On a strictly secular look at the franchise, one could see the Transformers as giant “imaginary friends” personified. Children can see and talk to them but the adults in their lives often remain oblivious until the Autobots or even the Decepticons reveal themselves. An exception to this would be the original animated series, known as Generation-1 or “G-1” for short, and the live action Michael Bay films. In these series, the Autobots and Decepticons are revealed to the whole world all at once, necessitating humanity side with the one against the other in a battle for survival.

To some degree the various Japanese Transformers cartoons (often called anime) have a leg up on the later American material when they focus on child characters interacting with the Transformers. Those American series that follow this pattern are not always as enjoyable. One good and relatively recent example in the West is the animated Transformers Prime, which in the first two seasons saw specific Autobots assigned to guard three children who stumbled onto the Transformers’ existence: Jack Darby, Miko Nakadai, and Raf Esquivel.

Jack is the oldest, a sixteen-year-old boy living with his single mother and doing his best to be responsible so she has less to worry about, despite the bullying he receives on a regular basis at his fast food job. Miko is an exchange student from Japan who embraces a wild lifestyle because back home, she is expected to be perfect and fulfill certain hopes that her parents have for her. She regularly blows off her U.S. host parents, following the ‘Bots into a battle for some excitement, with Jack and Raf tailing her to try to bring her back before she can get hurt or someone else takes a hit protecting her.

Raf is the youngest child at twelve (“and a quarter!”). Shy, quiet, and tech savvy enough to hack government codes at need but not at whim, he bonds with the youngest Autobot on the team: Bumblebee. Meanwhile, Miko is given to the care of the large, awkward muscular member, the former Wrecker known as Bulkhead. Jack is assigned Arcee, who turns into a motorcycle, as a partner, something that thrills neither her nor him as she has just lost her partner and implied love interest.

It is not difficult to see the implicit “guardian angel” status these three Autobots receive as they are given care of the children in the show. Jack is reluctant to “answer the call” due to his sense of responsibility, and it must be said that Arcee’s initial prickly reaction to being told to guard him does not help. His relationship with her and growing connection to Optimus Prime were some of the best aspects of the show, as they demonstrated how someone “trying to keep his head down” in a material world that already gave him trouble would react to having the spiritual world pile on additional responsibilities.

Until the third season, where all the human characters were sidelined, Jack rose to these challenges, albeit reluctantly at first. He led the children on “safe(r)” missions to help the ‘Bots, did his best to protect Miko to make sure her thrill-seeking didn’t get her or the rest of them killed, and acted as Raf’s big brother. But the part that was never explored in as much depth as I had hoped was Jack’s growing connection to Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots and “father” to the team.

Jack desperately needed a father-figure in his life. Part of the reason one could posit for his unwillingness to enter into a conflict of any kind is precisely because he had no strong male role-models, only his mother to care for him and whom he did not want to worry. Traditionally, the male humans in various Transformers series had fathers who were present in their lives: Rad White in Transformers: Armada had a father who was a scientist, Sam Witwicky (Shia Labouf) in the movies still lived with his married parents, Coby and his brother Bud had a father who was invested in their lives in Transformers: Cybertron, and Spike Witwicky in the original or G-1 series was an oil rig worker who fought alongside the Autobots with his father. These and other boys in the franchise are generally gung-ho to help out the Autobots and defeat the Decepticons because they had fathers to show them that taking risks had benefits.

But Jack’s father left him and his mother when Jack was born. Until Optimus Prime, at the end of the first season, entrusts Jack with a way to restore his memories once he defeats the arch-demon of the Transformers’ mythos (at least for the time being), Jack Darby had no true paternal figure in his life. For the first time in his life, with Optimus’s gesture of trust, Jack must take a risk. A real risk that he may not come back from attempting. He must travel to another planet, find the data needed to restore an amnesiac Optimus to his former state, then return and use this mystical device to restore the Autobot leader’s memory in the middle of a battle. He must do all of this with only his “guardian angel” Arcee to protect him as well.

The spiritual parallels in this instance are worth considering. Jack must develop a relationship with Arcee to begin to cultivate one with Optimus Prime, much as relying on, praying to, and otherwise recognizing one’s guardian angel can lead a person closer to God the Father. It also speaks to the driving necessity of a boy requiring a father in the home and how, if there is no human father present for him, he needs the help of a spiritual father to stand in for the physical father he has lost. With no father or step-father in his life, Jack is left to drift, ever afraid to pursue any adventure past a certain point because he has to think of his mother, her fears and worries, and how what he does or does not do may cause her more trouble. Until he becomes embroiled accidentally in a spiritual as well as physical conflict where he must take on new responsibilities or see everything he loves perish, he remains unwilling to step out into the wider world that Miko keeps trying to throw herself into despite everyone who cares about her putting up roadblocks to protect her.

Unfortunately, Transformers Prime never finished this arc for Jack, so those watching it are left to their own suppositions on how the adventure might have gone. Yet the importance of a “guardian angel” for specific human characters remains a key part of the franchise, shown best in how Cade Yeager (Mark Walhberg) interacts with Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) primarily in Age of Extinction. An inventor who never made it to college and whose inability to gain higher paying employment means he lacks funding for his designs, Wahlberg’s character buys an “old truck” for scrap that he soon realizes is a Transformer.

Initially intending only to sell the wreck for a bounty put out on Transformers, Cade changes his mind when Optimus – disoriented and wounded – transforms in a rage, threatening to kill unseen attackers. Moved by the alien’s concern for his Autobots, once he identifies himself, Cade tells his daughter Tessa that Optimus needs their help and proceeds to repair the damage the Autobot leader sustained fighting humans who have betrayed their treaty with the Autobot faction. Unable to escape in his weakened condition, Optimus has no choice but to trust that Cade actually means to help him.

Cade returns that trust by refusing to reveal he has hidden Optimus in the basement of his barn even when his daughter’s life is threatened. Listening to Tessa’s terrified screams as Cade never reveals his location, Optimus breaks out of the barn and draws the attackers’ fire, giving father and daughter time to escape. But the following revelations of just how deep humanity’s betrayal goes leads Optimus to declare that the Autobots will abandon Earth and humanity, leaving mankind to fight their battles alone.

For Cade, who has seen his house destroyed and his life upended to help the Autobots, this declaration to quit bothers him enough he has a discussion with Optimus about humanity, mistakes, and faith:

You gotta have faith Prime

Cade’s speech recalls the “happy fault” of Adam that led to Christ’s crucifixion and the closer tie between man and God than that enjoyed in the Garden – if man is willing to reach for God and to conform to His will. Having lost so many friends and been betrayed so deeply, it is not difficult to see how Optimus, in a sense Cade’s incarnate “guardian angel” as well as Earth’s, may be thinking of throwing in the towel. Mankind has wondered more than once, after all, if they are even worthy of God’s love after all the mistakes and sins they have made since the Fall of our First Parents (or over millennia of evolution, if they are coming from a secular point-of-view).

Optimus even points out that the Autobots have died “to atone for [humanity’s] mistakes,” as Christ died on the cross for our sins. There is a faith-filled perspective in the franchise, although it is not apparent at first glance. Some might even think that the toys tied to the various series distract from faith, and they can if they become the focus of a fan’s life. But at the end of the day there is more than meets the eye to the Transformers franchise and it ties in very neatly to the Catholic view of the world.

Catholics are called upon to transform their lives to bring them into accord with God’s will. The Transformers come from an ancient world and their conflict predates humanity’s creation, much as the fall of Lucifer and the war between angels and demons preceded the fall of mankind. They come from beyond the world we know as angels and demons hail from a world beyond the material. Incarnated in the world as they are, the Transformers can manipulate matter enough to hide in plain sight, but this very incarnation makes them susceptible to emotional disturbances and pain as humans are and can be.

Through his connection with Cade, Optimus realizes that the betrayal of some men should not blind him to mankind’s potential. Yes, he and the Autobots have been subject to treason. They have been murdered, their bodies torn down for the metal that makes them, and that is beyond horrible. It is a crime that cries out to heaven for vengeance – but vengeance is not his to deal out, nor is it Cade’s. They are to dispense justice and do in the course of the film, but as Shakespeare noted, that justice must be tempered with mercy. As Cade showed mercy to the wounded Prime and his people, never blaming them for the actions of the humans who ruined his livelihood and threatened his daughter, so Optimus grants mankind clemency based on Cade and his family’s actions. Their firm adherence to the values of the Autobots reawakens his belief that humanity might be young, but it is not beyond saving nor unworthy of protection.

So might an angel who, incarnated like Gandalf of The Lord of the Rings, needs a reminder when his many years in God’s creation wore on him.

There is much good to be found in the Transformers franchise even now, when the forces of darkness have been and are trying to destroy it. Demons never try to destroy something that isn’t already good or doesn’t have some good in it, and the fact that they tried to make Optimus Prime a they/them in the Earthspark series means there is something of worth in the franchise. There is more to it than meets the eye.

So no, I don’t dislike the human characters in the franchise. I want more and better human characters in future series so that we can remember there is more to the real world than meets the eye. That there are in fact “transformers” – Autobots and Decepticons – in the real world. But they are stronger than either of those mechanical stand ins, and they are better known as angels and demons. And if that is the case, we ought to be more careful of what we see and find in the world around us. It may not be that our car is an Autobot, but we do have a guardian angel on our side.

Perhaps we should get to know him or her better to get to know God better. We should also remember that our angels are saddened and hurt when we sin, too. If we would have them happy as we would make God happy, we should be careful not to betray either of them.

It is, after all, what we were made to do.

What Is Your Reason?