This is not a SFW instance. NSFW communities will be tagged, and efforts will be made to keep SFW communities clean, but proceed at your own comfort level.
It has been ruthlessly coopted by people who want to see it that way and refuse to believe that any other interpretation could possibly exist.
I freely admit that the the fact that the writers and directors later both changed their gender makes a good case that that was an element of the story.
But, this was also a huge budget action movie produced by a mainstream Hollywood studio in 1999 when the world was far less trans-friendly than even today. There’s no way they would have OK’d a movie that could only be interpreted as a trans allegory.
It has been ruthlessly coopted by people who want to see it that way and refuse to believe that any other interpretation could possibly exist.
I freely admit that the the fact that the writers and directors later both changed their gender makes a good case that that was an element of the story.
But, this was also a huge budget action movie produced by a mainstream Hollywood studio in 1999 when the world was far less trans-friendly than even today. There’s no way they would have OK’d a movie that could only be interpreted as a trans allegory.