There was a point in my screening of Transformers: The Last Knight where the projection’s picture gave out and the audience was left with audio only.
It was one of many scenes of exposition dumps, this time delivered by the character played by Anthony Hopkins. Without the visuals to distract me, the lines that Sir Anthony was delivering became more and more insane. They sounded like the ramblings of a deranged drug addict. This wasn’t Sir Anthony chewing through scenery, it was just what this movie calls dialogue.
I usually review a movie by recalling certain story beats to offer a sense of the plot, but here, I’ll just give you the footnotes and leave you as confused as I was.
Lancelot and the knights of the round table beat some barbarians with a Transformer dragon. In the present day Transformers are outlawed and hunted, except in Cuba for some reason. Mark Wahlberg is fighting the government who is fighting the Transformers. Optimus Prime is in space where he meets God.
Cybertron (which I thought was destroyed but whatever) is now headed to Earth to suck it dry so it can be restored. Marky Mark meets the rest of the human good guys to find several McGuffins to save the day.
There are explosions. There is sexual innuendo. There are fart jokes. Large grey piles of trash metal bump into each other and there’s a big finale in the sky with several fake-out deaths. Oh, and Optimus Prime is evil for a few minutes and Bumblebee fights Nazis in WWII at some point.
Did you get all of that? I can already hear people complain that this series of movies isn’t about story, but is more for car porn, soft core porn, and action, and to those people I say: you’re in for a bad time too.
There are a few shiny new Lambos and Camaros on display, some with custom additions, which make them look horrible. Bumblebee’s car form, for example, looks like it was in an accident on its way to the set and it was just left in the movie as is. If you’re here for cars you’ll be disappointed.
The patented “Bay-woman-ogling” was surprisingly tame here, with the new Megan Fox replacement Laura Haddock treated as a regular character for much of the running time.
The action is passable with decently choreographed scenes peppered with violently overstuffed with fire, brimstone, and sharp metal. If this is the movie’s bread and butter, it is too sorely lacking. Even though this film’s running time is two and a half hours long, it doesn’t feel long enough for the hundreds of scenes packed into it. .
The film rushes from one set piece to the next at a break-neck pace. Half way through you just go numb and hope the screen goes black again.
The only saving grace here is the CGI. Seeing a Transformer change from robot to vehicle (and vice versa) is still a treat, even five movies into the franchise.
When things repeatedly hit the fan and get messy, the artists in charge of it had the skill and the talent to make it look good, even when the cutting and direction try its best to confuse you.
There’s a lot of pretty scenery and sets too. I may be giving this movie too many points for its computer work after seeing the lacklustre effects in Wonder Woman, but it’s all this movie has.
The entire cast here did their job to the best of their abilities, so I won’t give them too much of a hard time considering with what they had to work with. The entire premise, direction and idea of this movie was just so bad that it made everything else irredeemable.
Please don’t see this movie. Please don’t keep supporting Micheal Bay’s attempts at film making. Please stop.
