Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)
Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)
Directed by Michael Bay
Story by Akiva Goldsman, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway and Ken Nolan
Screenplay by Art Marcum, Matt Holloway and Ken Nolan
Based on Hasbro’s Transformers toy line
Rated PG-13
Yes, I saw Transformers: The Last Knight. Was it good?
Of course not!
End of review.
OK, I suppose you want something a tad more substantive in a review. I will try, but there is so much wrong with this film (which are admittedly the exact same flaws that have plagued this movie franchise since the beginning) that it’s hard to know which ones to single out as the most problematic. It’s like being a single mosquito in a nudist colony. Where do you begin?
I suppose I could start by summarizing the plot but that would imply that there was a cohesive one to begin with. From what I can remember, the story involves Transformers being involved with King Arthur and his knights in the Dark Ages. Then we have the point that any and all Transformers are considered illegal on Earth and are being hunted by pretty much all governments around the world. Next there's Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg from the fourth movie) getting one of the old knight tokens that makes him a chosen knight or something like that. We then have a professor named Vivian Wembley (the lovely Laura Haddock) who is a descendant of the wizard Merlin (Stanley Tucci) who got his magic from the Transformers and thus she is needed to wield Merlin’s staff to keep it from unfriendly hands (she is also in the film to be Marky Mark's love interest). And last but certainly not least we have the planet Earth being something called Galvatron and many things that don’t matter. Oh, and Anthony Hopkins is in this movie. Just FYI.
I’m not even certain that any of the plot points or other elements in these movies are consistent in their continuity and I don’t think the filmmakers care anymore. There has been so much material thrown in from different parts of the franchise into the movies that it feels that they picked them out of a hat and decided that they would use certain elements in certain films. They are picked up and discarded in the movies with such abandon that it does make one wonder how they all connect with each other in the grand scheme of things. I am fairly certain that a Transformers fan somewhere can answer that somehow but I don’t know and I don’t care. Looking for any kind of cohesiveness in this movie franchise is an exercise in futility that rivals looking for a watchable episode of American Dad.
As far as characters go, there are simply too many of them in each film. Each film has roughly 3-4 leading characters, I guess 10’s of supporting characters and however many comic relief characters they can squeeze in to insert stupid jokes even if they occur at the most inappropriate times. There never has been much to say about the human characters in the movies as they are not welcome for the most part. Having a few humans to accompany the Autobots on adventures, to my knowledge, always was something the series had and I can live with that but the Transformers themselves are pushed aside in favor of human characters.
The human characters are irritating, unlikeable (well Mark Wahlberg was ok I guess) and in all too many cases add nothing to the story. A good example in The Last Knight is the character Izabella played by Isabela Moner. The movie establishes her character as someone who could be of good use to Cade with her knowledge of how to repair Transformers and other related knowledge. Heck, some of the advertisements went as far as to feature her prominently which gave the impression of her being a major figure in the film. Nope. About midway through the movie she is more or less dropped from the story and when she turns up again with the rest of the Autobots, I completely forgot she was in the movie and she pretty much does nothing in the climax. That character is just one of countless examples of characters like this in all of the movies be they supporting or major roles and just serves to show how uniformly terrible the writing is.
It really is not an exaggeration of how much of a non-presence the Transformers are in their own movies. Not only are they sidelined by human characters in every film but it nearly impossible to tell them apart a lot of the time. Apart from Optimus Prime and Bumble Bee, none of the Transformers, be they Autobot or Decepticon, have really any distinctive look to them and thus many who watch the movies end up confused as to which one is which when they are fighting each other. One way to tell them apart is squint your eyes and see what the color of their eyes are as Autobots seem to have blue eyes and Decepticons have red. If your audience has to resort to doing that to identify characters, that is bad news. There have been some attempts to relieve this identity problem with some of the Transformers by making them more distinctive in later installments. Some examples include Ken Watanabe bot, John Goodman bot and John DiMaggio bot. No, I don’t know the actual Autobot names because the movies didn’t give me a reason to remember them. Like the humans, the Transformers are not written as characters. Whereas the humans are written to be either idiotic, stereotypical, or idiotically stereotypical, the Transformers exist as entities to make things go boom and be another form of pop culture dispensers. The only stand out among every character in every film is Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime who has owned the role since the beginning. His voice is awesome and despite the awful material he seems to remain professional about it and seems to enjoy playing the character.
The action is the same as it has always been. Chaotic, way overlong, and seems to have been edited by a dyslexic chipmunk on a double espresso. Actually, there were a grand total of 6 credited editors on this film and the film still didn’t flow at a decent pace. There might be a few exciting moments here and there but for the most part the action doesn’t feel like it works in tandem with the narrative. There are action sequences within action sequences within action sequences in between clumsy expositions dumps and stupid gags involving both Transformers and humans. For all the action, Michael-Bayplostions and all the events that unfold across different countries and continents, this movie (as with all the previous installments) isn’t just unexciting, it’s comatose. My sister and I went to see this and if we were the only ones in the theater, we would be talking about other movies we would rather be watching or just riffing it.
All of the Transformers movies, especially the third and fifth films, epitomize the phrase “Screw you and your physics!” There is a difference between suspension of disbelief and then there’s “Movie. Go home. You’re drunk.” Based on what has happened in the third film, there should not even be a fourth or even a fifth film. When the Transformer home world of Cybertron comes to Earth in the third film it comes dangerously close to the point where there should have been visible gravitational distress done to the planet; probably enough to cause massive tidal waves and catastrophic tsunamis as well as a ton of other problems. Never mind the Autobots trying to save the Earth, the Decepticons just killed hundreds of millions if not a couple billion slaves they needed to rebuild their world. And I realize I am by no means a physicist but I would imagine having Cybertron get sucked into some sort of black hole so close to Earth is an extinction level event in and of itself.
Then we have this movie which involves the planet Cybertron (or perhaps the remnants of the planet? I don’t know. It is never made clear how this is different or related to the Cybertron we saw from the third movie) causing the extinction of all life on Earth before it gets to Earth. It smashes into and scrapes across the moon which I am pretty certain has killed hundreds of millions on Earth before the Autobots roll out. I’m also pretty certain that the moon was knocked out of orbit. The movie is pretty much over when Cybertron reaches Earth and parts of it literally scrape across the surface of the Earth which I am fairly certain knocked the Earth off its axis. Do I need to say any more? I am perfectly willing to forgive logical flaws in physics when it comes to science fiction movies, especially if I am engaged in them, but when you push it too far it takes me out of the movie. In their attempt for an epic feel, the film jumps the shark.
Just reading this, some out there may say that all I did in this review was talk about the franchise as a whole and didn’t really discuss one film. You would be correct. There is nothing new to talk about in regards to each movie because they are more or less the same. Talking about one movie, you pretty much talk about all of them. Apart from changes in what can be laughably called story and characters, they feel more or less indistinguishable from one another. Well, I suppose not having Sam Whitwicky, his parents and not having as much of the stupid humor helps a touch but that is not enough of a differentiation. Half the scenes still seem to take place at an eternal magic hour, everything that happens is more or less consequence free and after a certain point with each movie the act of viewing them becomes an endurance test. For all the time and energy put into making each one, they are about nothing. I realize that a lot of what I have covered has been covered by others before me but I feel they all bear repeating.
And it’s not like I hate things that involve giant robots. I in fact love them. I have thoroughly enjoyed stuff like Pacific Rim (2013) anime franchises like Gundam, Macross or Evangelion (ok the Evangelion are technically not robots but you get my point) and other related media. These Transformers didn’t need to turn out the way they did. These could have been good but nobody really bothered to try.
Yeah, the Transformers movies are awful with Revenge of the Fallen (2009) being the worst one in my opinion. That one left me needing aspirin after walking out. What I just discussed above is but a sample of what plagues the movies and I have absolutely no desire to discuss them any further as there is surprisingly too much to talk about. Is there such a thing as a good Michael Bay movie? Believe it or not there is and that movie is The Rock (1996) with Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage and Ed Harris. I recommend you stay home and watch that movie. It really is pretty good and was made back when Bay actually showed some promise.
