‘Transformers: The Last Knight’ Review

So it’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be, but it might have been written by 8th graders.

Everyone’s favorite franchise is back! That was a joke, the more this franchise goes on the angrier people seem to get. I remember way back when the first Transformers came out and I dragged a bunch of my friends to the theatre to go see it. They all thought it was going to be horrible, and they really didn’t know too much about it, unlike myself who like now, was a nerd. All I remember was after the initial scene of Blackout going after the military base, they all looked at me and said, “this is going to be awesome,” then Megan Fox came onto the screen and well then they were really sold. I love the first Transformers, it’s honestly in my top 20 favourite movies of all time lists, but ever since the original, they haven’t really been able to make a better movie. The best part about the original, besides it having Shia LaBeouf in it, was they really kept it simple. The plot wasn’t insanely confusing and it was really easy to follow. Ever since, Michael Bay, who is back in the directors chair for the 5th and last time for this franchise, just really likes to make things BIGGER, and way more confusing each time out. All I’ve ever wanted was for them to recreate the magic from the first one, and just go back to the stuff that made it so awesome. But well I think at this point Bay has just become a world-class prick, and honestly does this on purpose. Transformers: The Last Knight, isn’t the worst of the franchise, but it’s just the cherry on top of what can only be describe as a less than stellar summer movie season so far. I wish I could just go back to Megan Fox opening up the hood of Bumblebee, because those were good times, I even had the poster in my university dorm room.

So here’s the thing, I’m not even going to attempt to tell you what this movie is about, because to be perfectly honest, I’m not even sure myself. One thing is certain though; this movie starts off in medieval times, as we see King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table team up with Transformers. I know, and that’s where we get introduced to this magic staff, that only certain people can use. Honestly that’s all you really need to know, for a simple concept, boy do they really make it seem like you’re trying to learn a new language throughout this movie! The magic staff is the key to the whole movie, that’s all you need to know, magic staff and well explosions! Again Mark Wahlberg is back as everyone’s favorite inventor Cade Yeager (that’s his actual name), and he’s trying to save and rescue the remaining Autobots around Earth. He’s also like the most wanted man on the face of the Earth, but manages to stay hidden, in a junk yard, along with like half a dozen giant robots…..Josh Duhamel is back as Lennox, appearing in the first three movies, so now he leads a team called TRF, their job is to hunt down any Transformers and well kill them. We get introduced to two new female characters in this movie, and they were just meh. So we got a little firecracker Izabella, who has no home or family and goes around fixing Transformers, they try to play her out to be this kind of badass kid, but most of the time, she’s just being ridiculous and any 14 year old, would no doubt shit themselves if they were dealing with giant robots. Next we have Laura Haddock (who I love from the Inbetweeners movie) who is the love interest of Cade. But she’s also very vital to the story line, but I won’t really go into it, seeing how it’s in the spoiler territory. All I can say is I’m pretty sure they wanted to bring back either Megan Fox or get Sophie Turner for this role. Because she is these two girls mixed, actually at some points in the movie, I could swear it was Megan Fox on screen. So that kind of took me out of the movie, like why are they casting someone who looks identical to her? Oh I know it’s because Michael Bay is just messing with us at this point right? Sir Anthony Hopkins is in this also, well because sometimes you just need a good payday. He tries I guess, but like, all he’s really doing is filling us in on plot details and giving a few monologues. BE BETTER ANTHONY! That’s all I’m saying about the plot and characters, because the plot doesn’t matter, or the characters.

Don’t get me wrong, Michael Bay, you know how to shoot action scenes. He knows how to do things on the biggest and most grand scale. I’ll give him that, and I think the action and the fighting in this movie, was the best of the series so far. I went to this movie solely based on the fact that I knew there would be incredible action, and he didn’t disappoint. I’m even going to go as far to say that well, the Bumblebee vs. Optimus fight is better than the Batman vs. Superman fight. When the first trailer hit and I saw that these two guys were going to throw down, I knew I would have to be their watching it in IMAX. Like I don’t get why Bay has to make such great looking movies, but care so little about everything else. My god this script was probably written by 8th graders. There are so many talented writers that need a chance, and yet you turn out garbage like this. There is no reason why we can’t have an incredible Transformers movie, but it seems like all Bay cares about is explosions, product placement and introducing the world to new hot girls. Seeing how this is his fifth movie, maybe he could take a little pride in his overall work, because he shoots actions almost better than anyone, and I think he’s really good at getting the most out of his cast. He’s also an asshole for shooting this movie in three different aspect ratios, so throughout the entire movie, the screen keeps getting bigger and smaller, depending on what camera he used to shoot that particular scene. 3D glasses make movies hard enough to watch, imagine the screen changing sizes every 10 seconds.

At the end of the day, yeah this movie isn’t very good, fans and critics alike are destroying it, but I had to find out for myself. The 10-15 good minutes of this movie, and by that, I mean like 10-15 minutes of just pure awesomeness, reasons I go to the movies for. But it’s 2 hours and 28 minutes, they could have cut 30 minutes loose. But Bay is notorious for making extremely long movies. Those great minutes almost make up for everything else, because I’ll remember that Bumblebee vs. Optimus fight for a long time, because it was just so breathtakingly beautiful. I just don’t understand why everything else has to be just so terrible. This is a money making franchise, it will probably still make upwards of 700 million dollars, so maybe Paramount just doesn’t care about fan service anymore. Michael Bay is done as director and I think it’s time for some fresh blood to get in there and overhaul this thing for the better. We need better human characters, if they are going to be in these movies as much as they are. But more focus needs to be on the Transformers themselves and if I had it my way, I would say to hell with the humans and replace them with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Just for one movie, and see how it goes, I think that could be a really fun movie, it beats watching Mark Wahlberg be a superhero and a 14 year old girl some how fight Decepticons, it’s just not worth my time anymore. But I continue to give this franchise money, because of moments like Bee vs. Optimus and the other incredible action sequences, it’s a love/hate thing for sure, because it just doesn’t make sense to me, why these movies can’t be great. They are making like 14 more, so I guess they have plenty of time to correct this course, or simply just take more of my money. I’m a sucker for robots, what can I say….

Check ya later,

Nate’s Movie Tour Reviews – Transformers: The Last Knight = 52/100