Transformers: The Last Knight

It's time to stop Mr Bay.

Director: Michael Bay
Writers: Art Marcum (Story and Screenplay)
                Matt Holloway (Story and Screenplay)
                Ken Nolan (Story and Screenplay)
                Akiva Goldsman (Story)
Runtime: Too long for a late night screening - 2hr 29minutes

Plot: Shit was there even one? I'll just take the IMDb one because I really remember nothing about a plot in this film, something about Optimus Prime being evil to save his home planet for this mermaid robot or something but that's just a tool. - Autobots and Decepticons are at war, with humans on the sidelines. Optimus Prime is gone. The key to saving our future lies buried in the secrets of the past, in the hidden history of the Transformers on Earth.

Full disclaimer, I've only seen the Transformers films that have Shia in them and I thought they were alright. They got gradually worse but you see I was never paying attention to any of them, I knew they were terrible so I didn't care about them. This one, however, I did care about, because of Mark Wahlberg. Not for his acting, but his face and body. Don't get me wrong he's a good actor, just...not in this film, he's pretty bland so I think just having him in the film is good enough to get women in the seats. Didn't work in the screening I was in but whatever. Also, I'm aware that what I said was a bit sexist but after the comments made in this film about women, I think I've been given a free pass this once.

Let's get into it then, outside of Wahlberg's body, what else was good? Uh...well it's got a Dr Claw Decepticon and John Goodman is somewhere in there too. That's pretty cool. After looking up who was who I saw that Dr Claw Decepticon was Megatron and I know for a fact that that Decepticon didn't have Dr Claw's voice, so unless he was uncredited for another Transformer for a couple of lines I don't know. I just picked up on it and...I dunno man, I'm just kinda rambling to make this a paragraph.

Moving on from one little ramble to another, it looks like someone wants to connect this universe to the Once Upon A Time series. If you've not seen it and you have some time I suggest you look at it, it's pretty good. All seasons on Netflix. So how's that work out? What evidence do I have? Admittedly, it's not a lot of evidence, but I'm not saying this is gonna be a real theory or whatever but this film involves King Arthur played by Liam Garrigan, who does Garrigan play in Once Upon A Time? King Arthur. that's all the evidence I have so that means one of two things, this guy either looks like the ideal King Arthur or someone watched the show and thought "bruh, we gotta get this guy".

Right, getting down to it now, the film has all of those Michael Bay things such as not holding a shot in a fight scene for longer than a fifth of a millisecond, the misogyny, the explosions. But with all that, comes some relatively new things. Such as adding characters, that I think you're meant to care about because they have some sort of connection with other characters which is dumb because to care about characters you have to have more than a couple scenes and have something for these characters to relate to the audience with.

The lack of being able to hold a shot literally gave me a headache and I felt pretty sick and dizzy when the climax finally ended. Throughout all the fighting and shaking camera I couldn't see what the hell was even going on I mean, I get the thing where having the camera move more than humanly possible is to give off the feeling of...panic and such, but whenever I've been in a panic I've been aware of what's going on around me. Maybe I've just not been in a situation where this much panic has taken over my body that I can't fucking see shit but...

The misogyny in this was just...weird, and I mean just outright odd. Of course, there's the complete disregard of the woman's education with a Doctorate, a Philosophy degree and some other stuff and yet her family is written as these women who don't seem to care nor are proud of her for getting all these things, rather they want her to find a man. They look for a man in the personal ads in the paper which...who does that anymore? For real, there are so many online sites they could sign her up for but whatever. This family's weird though like they're excited to find someone who has a dungeon, when she brings back Wahlberg they trash her dead father's office, probably trashing valuable artefacts and papers and such which is bad enough but then shouting practically, out of your mouth, phrases that are obviously meant to sound somewhat sexual like...who shouts that? Then her family get excited that she's brought Mark Wahlberg home (who wouldn't be amirite?) they gather at the bottom of the stairs and listen in, then one of them says she's gonna go up and check on them like...honey no, don't do that. There's a scene where she gets kidnapped by Anthony Hopkins Transformer car which she has apparently been driving for a while, but that's whatever. She's smart enough to try and free herself and she's wearing a cute and professional pants suit. Why is the pants suit relevant? Because when she gets to Hopkins castle, she fights the Transformer and in the next scene she enters in a dress which literally shows off half of her bra. Where did Hopkins get that dress from? How did he know her size? Why is half of her bra showing??? Gross.

The explosions are...overused at best, nothing all that great. Spoiler!! There is an explosion in which it hits the ground right next to where Hopkins is stood, I'm not sure if it actually hits him or not but he gets thrown a few feet in the air and dies quietly and seemingly painlessly. I reject that. He died when that explosion hit. He died on impact when he hit the floor. He was dead long before his death scene. If the explosion hit him he was dead then, blown to pieces. He was not thrown a few feet in the air. Fuck that.

Another insult to basic science is in one little moment that I just...I can't let it go. The planet Cybertron is getting closer to Earth and in the process, practically destroys the moon. No big deal right? NO that's a big deal. The Earth would be fucked. Do you know what the moon does for us? It affects the tides, it lights up the night via reflection of the sun, I think it affects the rotation of the Earth but I'm literally going off GCSE Science here but I know that if we didn't have the moon, if it was destroyed by another planet getting closer and closer to us, Earth is fucked. They say something about destroying something on this other planet but they don't seem to get rid of the actual planet in our atmosphere, in our gravitational pull. Those scientists shouldn't be celebrating. But like I said, I'm going off GCSE Science and I'm probably ignorant to the true effects, I only vaguely know the basics.

Overall, I think it was trash, but that's because this wasn't directed at me. This was directed at the 3 13-year-old boys sat in front of me and they seemed to enjoy it enough. It's not harmful or anything, it's not...the worst thing I've ever seen and trust me, I've seen some really terrible films. Apprently there are 14 more Transformers films already written, one of them tempting Bay to stick around and direct it, but as of writing this is Bay's last time directing a Transformer film. Maybe the next 14 will pick up...

That's it for today, Peace Out.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film please go and support its creators by buying tickets to go see it in cinemas / buying the DVD or Bluray when the time comes.