Transformers : The Last Knight

DominoQQ | Remember 10 years ago when director Michael Bay took the simply designed cartoon Transformers of the ‘80s and made them into ultra-complex, shiny beings with so many moving parts they made no sense? Well, what Bay did to the Transformers themselves is what he’s done to the fifth film in the franchise, The Last Knight. 

PokerQ   |  The Last Knight has so much story in it, so much useless information pummeled into every single scene, there is no room for anything else. There’s no room for nuance, no room for character development, no room for logic, emotion, or even true excitement (admittedly, Bay has never excelled at putting any of these things on camera, at least during the Transformers movies). It’s a non-stop, pedal-to-the-metal, overstuffed symphony of exposition filled with more bad moments than good. And the whole thing is executed with such a staggering over-seriousness that even when it attempts moments of levity, they almost always fall flat.

Just like the rest of the series, Michael Bay’s fifth Transformers film sees the Autobots (good) fight the Decepticons (naughty) for little more reason than that’s simply what they do. And, just like the rest, it tries to crowbar Transformers lore into human history and legends, almost to the point where it seems like Earth belongs more to these big old cars with faces than to us. This time around it’s King Arthur and the Crusades, where we see that Merlin (played by a particularly silly Stanley Tucci) was given a magic staff by a Transformer, and that staff is now the key to saving the Transformers’ home planet of Cybertron.. 

Ratudomino  |  If that sounds familiar, it’s because that same idea is literally what happens in almost every single Transformers movie to date. In the first film it was a dusty pair of glasses that held the key to saving Cybertron and now it’s a big stick. It was a flimsy excuse for a plot then, and it’s tired and flimsy now.

AduQ | There’s also no end of befuddling bots. Some have got celebrity voices - Steve Buscemi, Omar Sy, and John Goodman all bang out metallic quips - but the action moves at such an intense pace that it’s hard to distinguish bot from bot. This is particularly true of newcomer Canopy, who looks almost exactly like series regular Bumblebee except for a dirty pile of bricks stuck to his back. Add the similarities between the Transformers to an already convoluted plot, and the whole thing ends up 

jumping around like a massive, shiny mess.

BandarQ | Where Bay does impress though is his massive set pieces involving the humans. One particularly exciting action sequence involves Wahlberg running up a fallen space station which is being attacked not only by Decepticons but by giant tidal waves too. 

 Sakong | This occurs way too far into the film though after you’ve spent more than two hours following these characters around the globe. The same goes for the much-teased fight between Bumblebee and Optimus Prime and what should have been an iconic showdown just leaves you hoping for a quick resolution between these warring friends.