Transformers: The Last Knight
(D+ or 1.5/4 stars)
Please, please, plleeaassse let 'Transformers: The Last Knight' - the 5th installment in Michael Bay's big-budget Hasbro toys franchise be over! Oh, it IS? Great! Wait, there's already a spin-off planned including Bumblebee & Hailee Steinfeld!? Nooo. This one, like the other Transformers flicks, will appeal most to children interested in explosions & crude/crass jokes. As is usually the case, there's violence, never-ending battle sequences, no characterizations & an incoherent plot -- enjoy! The movie starts with a prologue set in the Dark Ages {hmm, okay, promising start}. Merlin (Stanley Tucci, haha), it turns out, wasn't just a wizard ... it turns out that his magical powers came directly from ancient Transformers who had given him a supernatural talisman & weapons (a sacred "staff") to use against King Arthur's enemies. 100s of yrs. later, the sorceress Quintessa (Gemma Chan) commands Optimus Prime to go back to Earth to locate the staff, which she needs to suck Earth dry of all its resources so they can re-populate her planet, Cybertron.
Quintessa changes Optimus Prime into "Nemesis Prime" {
stupid, but okay}, now with eeevil purple eyes + an anti-human mission. Back on Earth, the great Transformer-helper/mechanic/inventor Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) is living 'off-the-grid' in a junkyard with what's left of Optimus Prime's faithful Autobots. Soon Cade Yager, along with gorgeous Oxford English Lit professor, Vivian Wembley (Laura Haddock, Megan Fox lookalike), are ordered by the mysterious astronomer, Sir Edmund Burton (Anthony Hopkins, what are you DOING in this movie!?), who explains that they - along with some help from Autobot friends like Bumblebee, Hound, Hot Rod, Daytrader & Drift - are the keys to finding/using the magical weapons necessary to defeat the forthcoming Transformer apocalypse led by Quintessa & evil Decepticon Megatron. Nonsensical, bludgeoning chaos ensues.
Mess, mess, mess. Going into the film, knowing it'd be the last Michael Bay film in the franchise and, seeing that it involved the Middle Ages ... I was mildly curious. Despite the legendary Knights of the Round Table, it wasn't Merlin's magic that aided Arthur, but the intergalactic Transformers (who've obviously been around a long time) -- that's cool. Surely, this couldn't be the worst of the 5 films yet. Surely, Bay would want to go out on top. Wrongggg. This (roughly-$250 mill budgeted Transformers sequel is pretty unnecessary, mostly unintelligible, & wholly unsatisfying unless you want your eyes, ears & brain to glaze over during the copious pixelated action set pieces & battles. The dialogue is insipid. Nearly everything that comes out of these characters mouths is dumb. Intended humor ... sinks like a rock. Furthermore, the "plot" is AS confusing as it is uninteresting; patched together from 3 writers, 6(!) editors & our favorite helmer, Michael Bay {ugh}.
Audiences know what to expect with these film, but this is still a big disappointment, for me. Even amid the mind-numbing destruction, the best part of this franchise has BEEN the Transformers themselves, yet this installment rests heavily on the boring humans who spout idiotic dialogue within the juvenile, confusing plotlines. Michael Bay insists on pummeling us with a relentless intensity. Pauses for characterizations and/or exposition are rare, but when they DO occur, they're boring & muddled. He doesn't CARE if you like or even GET the story, only that you're distracted/lulled by the visual & aural onslaught. These big actioners make me drowsy. Trying to keep my eyes open during the tedious expositions scenes + the endless parade of pixelated muck during the battles ... is a chore for me.
Mark Wahlberg is at his wise-cracky worst, here. I enjoyed him (and his addition) in the last flick in 2014. But he seems so vacant & uninterested this time around. As mentioned, Anthony Hopkins' presence here is odd & suspect; cash grab? We get moments with John Turturro & Josh Duhamel (from prior films), but who cares? There are smaller roles here like Cogman, Hopkins' persnickety robot butler (voiced by Downton Abbey's Jim Carter). The worst addition is an orphan girl named Izabella (played by Isabela Moner); no point in having her in the story. And the voices of John Goodman, Omar Sy, Ken Watanabe & Steve Buscemi are lent to the Autobots. But amid all the incoherence, sensory asaults, & world-ending destruction, you won't care about anyone -- they're cardboard figures. It's all such crap. Overlong, video game-like crap. Great special effects? Sure. But crap is crap.
Quintessa changes Optimus Prime into "Nemesis Prime" {
stupid, but okay}, now with eeevil purple eyes + an anti-human mission. Back on Earth, the great Transformer-helper/mechanic/inventor Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) is living 'off-the-grid' in a junkyard with what's left of Optimus Prime's faithful Autobots. Soon Cade Yager, along with gorgeous Oxford English Lit professor, Vivian Wembley (Laura Haddock, Megan Fox lookalike), are ordered by the mysterious astronomer, Sir Edmund Burton (Anthony Hopkins, what are you DOING in this movie!?), who explains that they - along with some help from Autobot friends like Bumblebee, Hound, Hot Rod, Daytrader & Drift - are the keys to finding/using the magical weapons necessary to defeat the forthcoming Transformer apocalypse led by Quintessa & evil Decepticon Megatron. Nonsensical, bludgeoning chaos ensues.
Mess, mess, mess. Going into the film, knowing it'd be the last Michael Bay film in the franchise and, seeing that it involved the Middle Ages ... I was mildly curious. Despite the legendary Knights of the Round Table, it wasn't Merlin's magic that aided Arthur, but the intergalactic Transformers (who've obviously been around a long time) -- that's cool. Surely, this couldn't be the worst of the 5 films yet. Surely, Bay would want to go out on top. Wrongggg. This (roughly-$250 mill budgeted Transformers sequel is pretty unnecessary, mostly unintelligible, & wholly unsatisfying unless you want your eyes, ears & brain to glaze over during the copious pixelated action set pieces & battles. The dialogue is insipid. Nearly everything that comes out of these characters mouths is dumb. Intended humor ... sinks like a rock. Furthermore, the "plot" is AS confusing as it is uninteresting; patched together from 3 writers, 6(!) editors & our favorite helmer, Michael Bay {ugh}.
Audiences know what to expect with these film, but this is still a big disappointment, for me. Even amid the mind-numbing destruction, the best part of this franchise has BEEN the Transformers themselves, yet this installment rests heavily on the boring humans who spout idiotic dialogue within the juvenile, confusing plotlines. Michael Bay insists on pummeling us with a relentless intensity. Pauses for characterizations and/or exposition are rare, but when they DO occur, they're boring & muddled. He doesn't CARE if you like or even GET the story, only that you're distracted/lulled by the visual & aural onslaught. These big actioners make me drowsy. Trying to keep my eyes open during the tedious expositions scenes + the endless parade of pixelated muck during the battles ... is a chore for me.
Mark Wahlberg is at his wise-cracky worst, here. I enjoyed him (and his addition) in the last flick in 2014. But he seems so vacant & uninterested this time around. As mentioned, Anthony Hopkins' presence here is odd & suspect; cash grab? We get moments with John Turturro & Josh Duhamel (from prior films), but who cares? There are smaller roles here like Cogman, Hopkins' persnickety robot butler (voiced by Downton Abbey's Jim Carter). The worst addition is an orphan girl named Izabella (played by Isabela Moner); no point in having her in the story. And the voices of John Goodman, Omar Sy, Ken Watanabe & Steve Buscemi are lent to the Autobots. But amid all the incoherence, sensory asaults, & world-ending destruction, you won't care about anyone -- they're cardboard figures. It's all such crap. Overlong, video game-like crap. Great special effects? Sure. But crap is crap.