Transformers: The Last Knight
Year: 2017
Director: Michael Bay
Starring: Peter Cullen, Josh Duhamel, Laura Haddock, Anthony Hopkins & Mark Wahlberg
Runtime: 154 mins
BBFC: 12
Published: 27/07/20
Director: Michael Bay
Starring: Peter Cullen, Josh Duhamel, Laura Haddock, Anthony Hopkins & Mark Wahlberg
Runtime: 154 mins
BBFC: 12
Published: 27/07/20
The saying goes that all great things must come to an end, but something the saying does not mention is that thankfully so must all bad things. As I have stated time and again I have a soft spot for Michael Bay’s Transformers films and do not look upon them as harshly as many other critics, but the final film in the series (as there are unlikely to be anymore since the series got rebooted with 2018’s Bumblebee), The Last Knight, is one of the few exceptions in this series where I can wholeheartedly agree with the critics. Transformers: The Last Knight is simply atrocious and there are almost no redeeming qualities about it, so let’s ride this train one last time and watch it derail itself, shall we?
The film opens detailing how King Arthur and his aide Merlin were so powerful not because of magic, but because of technology given to them by Transformers hiding on Earth. This included a staff which became Merlin’s legendary tool of power. Skip forward a few hundred years to modern day Earth, because of the decimation of Chicago in Dark of the Moon and the equally catastrophic battle in Beijing during Age of Extinction, Transformers of all kinds have been officially outlawed across the globe and anyone found harbouring the alien fugitives is subject to great punishment whilst the Transformers themselves will be swiftly imprisoned.
Cade Yeager, our everyman hero from Age of Extinction, is now a wanted man for being a known Transformer ally. He is given a medallion by a dying Autobot that quite literally grafts itself to him. Yeager is then taken by Sir Edmund Burton and introduced to Viviane Wembly. Burton explains to both of them that Transformers have been around for almost all of human history and aided in many of the great historical moments such as the death of Adolf Hitler, and of course with King Arthur and the knights of the round table. Burton explains that Viviane belongs to a family with an extremely long lineage that links her to Merlin, meaning that she can control Merlin’s staff and must do so soon in order to stop the destruction of Earth.
Meanwhile Optimus Prime find himself back on Cybertron and is put under the control of his alleged creator, Quintessa. She orders Prime to help her return Cybertron back to its former glory by draining Earth of its natural life force, also revealing to Prime that Earth is in fact Unicron, the arch enemy of Cybertron. This is the destruction that Viviane and Cade must stop.
The film opens detailing how King Arthur and his aide Merlin were so powerful not because of magic, but because of technology given to them by Transformers hiding on Earth. This included a staff which became Merlin’s legendary tool of power. Skip forward a few hundred years to modern day Earth, because of the decimation of Chicago in Dark of the Moon and the equally catastrophic battle in Beijing during Age of Extinction, Transformers of all kinds have been officially outlawed across the globe and anyone found harbouring the alien fugitives is subject to great punishment whilst the Transformers themselves will be swiftly imprisoned.
Cade Yeager, our everyman hero from Age of Extinction, is now a wanted man for being a known Transformer ally. He is given a medallion by a dying Autobot that quite literally grafts itself to him. Yeager is then taken by Sir Edmund Burton and introduced to Viviane Wembly. Burton explains to both of them that Transformers have been around for almost all of human history and aided in many of the great historical moments such as the death of Adolf Hitler, and of course with King Arthur and the knights of the round table. Burton explains that Viviane belongs to a family with an extremely long lineage that links her to Merlin, meaning that she can control Merlin’s staff and must do so soon in order to stop the destruction of Earth.
Meanwhile Optimus Prime find himself back on Cybertron and is put under the control of his alleged creator, Quintessa. She orders Prime to help her return Cybertron back to its former glory by draining Earth of its natural life force, also revealing to Prime that Earth is in fact Unicron, the arch enemy of Cybertron. This is the destruction that Viviane and Cade must stop.
The Transformers stories have never been particularly good, but The Last Knight has the most boring story of the franchise. The film comes in at just over 2 hours 30 minutes, but it honestly feels like 10 years. So much could have been cut out of this film to make it a much tighter narrative, like probably over an hour. A 90 minute film would have served this story so much better than a 150 minute one. What this results in is large gaps of film where no story happens whatsoever and instead, we are given tangents that lead nowhere and action sequences that really have no need to happen. Whilst Age of Extinction had a near incoherent story at times, The Last Knight seems to think the answer to that is to have an incredibly boring one that’s barely present in the final product. The worst thing is the story actually has quite a good premise with Optimus Prime being the bad guy and it being literally the end of the world stakes.
The acting is also awful, as per usual. Anthony Hopkins provides a serviceable performance as Burton, but much like Stanley Tucci in Age of Extinction you can tell he’s been roped into this whole thing somehow and he doesn’t really care. Tucci does actually come back briefly as Merlin, but the role is very small, and you can hardly tell it’s Tucci under all that makeup so it’s a shame his talents are wasted on such an insignificant role.
On the bright side the racist and sexist jokes have been toned down. I think Paramount got a bit concerned after the backlash they faced from Age of Extinction and the whole paedophilia thing and some horribly racist stereotypes. Instead now the jokes that do remain are made by women or ethnic minorities so that makes it ok right? Right? Of course it’s not ok, Michael! Christ it’s like dealing with a child at times.
The acting is also awful, as per usual. Anthony Hopkins provides a serviceable performance as Burton, but much like Stanley Tucci in Age of Extinction you can tell he’s been roped into this whole thing somehow and he doesn’t really care. Tucci does actually come back briefly as Merlin, but the role is very small, and you can hardly tell it’s Tucci under all that makeup so it’s a shame his talents are wasted on such an insignificant role.
On the bright side the racist and sexist jokes have been toned down. I think Paramount got a bit concerned after the backlash they faced from Age of Extinction and the whole paedophilia thing and some horribly racist stereotypes. Instead now the jokes that do remain are made by women or ethnic minorities so that makes it ok right? Right? Of course it’s not ok, Michael! Christ it’s like dealing with a child at times.
The Last Knight does have some impressive models for the Transformers as always; but unlike Age of Extinction where the sole saving grace was the action scenes, The Last Knight’s action sequences are underwhelming and forgettable. Also, it appears that Bay simply doesn’t care about the basic rules of filmmaking anymore. The Transformers films have always been a bit of an editing clusterfuck, but The Last Knight takes it to a new level by not only being poorly shot and edited for the most part, but on top of that the aspect ratio for the film changes in almost every shot! It means you can never properly focus on what’s actually happening on screen because all you can see is the image getting bigger or smaller every few seconds. It switches between 3 different aspect ratios on a regular basis and these are: 1:85:1 full screen, 1:79:1 widescreen, and 2:00:1 which is super zoomed in and has really big black bars along the top and bottom meaning the image only uses about a third of your screen space. This is a really techy complaint to make, but it should be immediately obvious to anyone who watches the film that the image size changes literally all the time. Some films use this for artistic effect, and sometimes it’s to do with technical limitations, but Transformers: The Last Knight does not change aspect ratio because of any of these reasons. Instead it is just lazy filmmaking practices on Bay’s part.
Transformers: The Last Knight is an abysmal end to a generally pretty terrible set of films. Although I like most of the films in the series because they are bad films, The Last Knight in particular is an example of a bad film series that crosses the line from funny bad, to just bad. The worst thing is that it leaves the story on a cliffhanger for a conclusion we will evidently never get because the film lost Paramount an estimated $100 million. As I previously stated the series was rebooted with Travis Knight’s Bumblebee, but I would still like to see an end to Bay’s Transformer’s series at some time in the future…I just hope never to endure The Last Knight again.
Transformers: The Last Knight is an abysmal end to a generally pretty terrible set of films. Although I like most of the films in the series because they are bad films, The Last Knight in particular is an example of a bad film series that crosses the line from funny bad, to just bad. The worst thing is that it leaves the story on a cliffhanger for a conclusion we will evidently never get because the film lost Paramount an estimated $100 million. As I previously stated the series was rebooted with Travis Knight’s Bumblebee, but I would still like to see an end to Bay’s Transformer’s series at some time in the future…I just hope never to endure The Last Knight again.