Movie review: Transformers: The Last Knight

Hello!

While the majority of the world is already enjoying Spider-Man, I’m watching Transformers: The Last Knight, because the international release schedules hate me. Here we go.

IMDb summary: Autobots and Decepticons are at war, with humans on the sidelines. Optimus Prime is gone. The key to saving our future lies buried in the secrets of the past, in the hidden history of Transformers on Earth.

Writing

The 5th Transformers film was written by Art Marcum and Matt Holloway (Iron Man’s writers), Ken Nolan (Black Hawk Down’s writer), and Akiva Goldsman (writer of Batman & Robin, the Oscar-winning picture A Beautiful Mind, and Ron Howard’s Da Vinci Code films). For a movie with this much going on, I expected it to have at least 8 scripwriters. The narrative (sort of) continued where the last movie left off (I, honestly, barely remember Age of Extinction or the original trilogy – I reviewed all of them in 2014 and wasn’t going to suffer through all of them again this year). The story was so messy. Like I said, the film had so much going on, and yet, it still managed to be pretty boring. Neither of the 4(?) plotlines was given any room to breathe and develop, we were just jumping around them all the time. The dialogue was bland or used as a tool for forced exposition. The jokes fell flat most of the time, although they weren’t as offensive as usual.

Before going to see this film, I was actually quite excited about the promised deconstruction of history and the inclusion of the King Arthur legend (the ‘it’ myth for this summer – King Arthur 2017 review). However, I don’t think it was used in a compelling way. Nevertheless, I will give the scriptwriters one compliment – I thought that they used the Stonehenge and the supercontinent Pangaea real-world tie-ins quite neatly. The rest of the fantastical narrative didn’t make much sense but at least these tie-ins were good.

Transformers films have always had a problem with the female characters. I guess this film was the least problematic in that aspect? The teenage girl was fine in the first act and then she was kinda forgotten for the rest of the movie before reappearing in the third act for no reason. She was just mostly there for Mark Wahlberg’s character to have a replacement daughter. I was really happy that they didn’t use the girl’s scenes from the promotional material in the actual film (the ones with ‘you fight like a girl’). If they included that, I would have begged the Transformers films to go back to sexism rather than attempting to do feminism and damaging the whole cause. The adult female character was fine. I appreciated the fact that she was a scholar, although her other mannerisms made her into a walking British stereotype with a Megan Fox costume.

There was a teaser scene at the beginning of the credits: I don’t know what it means, I don’t want to know and, most importantly, I don’t want to watch more of these movies.

Directing

This was supposedly Michael Bay’s final Transformers film. Despite what you think of him creatively, I have no idea how can anyone objectively think of him as a good director from a technical standpoint. I mean, those ever changing aspect ratios. Why??? They showed immense sloppiness and carelessness. Also, what was up with the constant color and lighting shifts? The action and the CGI – the staples of this franchise – looked fine but they were also all the same: loud noises, big explosions, and quick cuts. I couldn’t tell you who was fighting who, even in the opening battle with the real humans. The two compliments for action I can give is that I liked the shots of the Transformers in car form and I also liked the scene of the different parts of the Bumblebee fighting separately and then rejoining together, while in action.

Acting

The cast of Transformers 5 was way better that the movie deserved. Mark Wahlberg (Patriot’s Day, Deepwater Horizon, Ted 1+2) returned from the 4th film for probably his last outing as the character. The actors from the original trilogy – Josh Duhamel and John Turturro – also returned in their original roles, while Stanley Tucci (Beauty and the Beast, Hunger Games), who previously appeared in the 4th film, had a new role in the 5th film. Who cares, though? Nobody on this movie cared about continuity, so why should we waste out time trying to figure this out? Anthony Hopkins (Noah) also had a role in this film. I wonder what he was promised to appear in this mess. Starlord’s mom from Guardians of the Galaxy Laura Haddock played the main female lead, while Nickelodeon’s Isabela Moner played the teenage girl in the first act, All of the actors delivered okay performances. They weren’t terrible but they didn’t seem to be trying much either, and, honestly, I don’t blame them.

In short, Transformers: The Last Knight is an incoherent mess in all aspects. Nothing can save this franchise and nothing should.

Rate: 2/5

Trailer: Transformers 5 trailer