Transformers: The Last Knight, 2017.
Directed by Michael Bay.
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Hopkins, Josh Duhamel, Laura Haddock, Isabela Moner, Peter Cullen, Ken Watanabe, John Goodman, Tony Hale, Santiago Cabrera, Frank Welker, Erik Aadahl, Jim Carter, Steve Buscemi, Omar Sy, Reno Wilson, Jerrod Carmichael, Stanley Tucci, Gemma Chan, John DiMaggio, Tom Kenny, Jess Harnell, and John Turturro.
SYNOPSIS:
This movie has no plot.
“Move bitch, get out the way” – Sir Anthony Hopkins as an English historian during a high-speed vehicle chase in Transformers: The Last Knight.
If that right there doesn’t tell you just how unbearably awful the latest relentless onslaught of nonsensical epic scale action from director Michael Bay is, then:
“Move your fat ass” – Sir Anthony Hopkins in a rush trying to do something on a submarine (God only knows what anyone is trying to accomplish in this movie besides chasing after deus ex machina objects from thousands of years ago that can save worlds) talking to a citizen in Transformers: The Last Knight.
Need more evidence? Okay, how about the scene where Cade (Mark Wahlberg returning from the previous installment titled Age of Extinction) and Vivian (another highly educated British historian, played by Laura Haddock) are upstairs in Vivian’s bedroom looking for the super secret clue to an ancient staff that somehow can save the world. Nothing out of the ordinary there, but this is a Michael Bay film, which means that downstairs is a bunch of old women hearing noises and gleefully assuming the two are banging. One of them also accidentally inquires if Cade has a sex dungeon.
Somewhere between some of the least funny humor known to mankind is a story buried deep within multiple writers smashing together multiple forgettable characters and equally forgettable action sequences. Transformers: The Last Knight was doomed from the beginning when a Transformer gave a drunk Merlin magic powers and a dragon to help King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table defeat… an army. To be fair, it’s never clear who the hell is fighting who here; it’s just a cacophony of bulky hunks of metal colliding with each other and bullets being fired off from a distance in the background. Anyway, apparently every few thousand years a group of noble and honorable warriors get together to save humanity, which at this point should be taking extreme legal action to ensure that Michael Bay can never make another one of these movies again. I know he says this is the last one for real this time, but society can’t take any more chances.
At this point, I would like to include a tweet from Michael Bay:
Reports of #transformers The Last Knight being over 3hrs is wrong. It's shorter than the last 3 movies by a lot.
— Michael Bay (@michaelbay) June 1, 2017
It’s STILL 149 minutes and the longest movie I have seen so far this year out of 100 films. Taking a quick glance at upcoming releases tells me that this length won’t be usurped anytime soon. On another note, if Transformers: The Last Knight actually was over three hours I would have drunk myself into a stupor 20 minutes in. Actually, that’s what watching this movie is like. You hear some chatter from other screenings and critics that the movie is an incoherent mess, so you come into the movie challenged ready to prove the rest wrong and proclaim “I understand it, here’s what happened”!. Things are going decently for the first 30 minutes or so, and then things get rocky, and before you know it you literally have no idea what is going on, as if a movie could physically become shit-faced inebriated.
Even the action blatantly steals concepts from previous films, such as military skydiving sequences, because you know, 449 of those in Dark of the Moon wasn’t enough. The more I continue to write this review, the more I began to ask myself how in the blue hell could a movie with so much spectacle just… go on and on without viewers ever once feeling that something cool just happened. I will admit the ending battle featuring a snazzy wide-angle zero gravity segment was something different and refreshing for the franchise, but at over 2 hours in all investment is long gone. Look, Transformers: The Last Knight has impressive CGI and is pretty a look at; that’s a given. However, at some point, viewers have to begin to ask themselves when all the money in the world to create the best effects possible still isn’t enough to push something beyond garbage tier filmmaking. Transformers: The Last Knight isn’t simply a polished turd, it’s like if Hercules took a God-sized shit on Earth and sprayed it with Fabreze.
Even the robots themselves are still lame, racist caricatures uttering stereotypical slang. And if it’s not that, it’s fat jokes about Autobot Hound (John Goodman). As a backhanded compliment, I suppose there is less objectification of primary female characters, but one of the females is presented as 14, and does the movie really deserve a point for, you know, basic human decency? Probably not.
The best and most exciting part of Transformers: The Last Knight was when my food was delivered or the ‘silence your phone’ advert. It certainly wasn’t watching Cade joke around with the robots for 15 minutes in a junkyard, and telling a Dinobot to drop a car from his mouth as if it were a bone. What a disaster of a blockbuster, but at least this one doesn’t have a gargantuan Decepticon with massive robot testicles.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★
Robert Kojder – Chief Film Critic of Flickering Myth. Check here for new reviews weekly, friend me on Facebook, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com