Review #1,251: 'Transformers: The Last Knight' (2017)

A few years ago, after the Shia LaBeouf-starring Transformers trilogy came to a close with Dark of the Moon, Michael Bay made the welcome announcement that he was to leave the franchise he'd been working on day-in day-out for the past 5 years, causing critics - and film buffs forcing themselves to endure such cinematic waste - to rejoice in the process. This, of course, wasn't true, as he came back to the series to helm Age of Extinction in 2014, this time starring the considerably buffer frame of Mark Wahlberg. I don't remember much of what happened - other than incoherent special effects bashing each other and blowing things up - but there was certainly no extinction, and whatever happened in that film inspired Bay to explore new stories in the Transformers universe. And so here we are with number five - The Last Knight.

He's tricked us before into believing that we were finally moving into a world free of Bay's Transformers movies, so there's no reason to believe his new claims that The Last Knight will indeed be his last foray into the stories of the Autobots and Decepticons (although its always been much more about the humans). There's a Bumblebee spin-off starring Hailee Steinfeld already shooting, and the climax here certainly leads us to believe that there's even more to come. The Last Knight runs at a whopping 149 minutes (which is actually one of the shortest in the series), and every one of those minutes feels like a lifetime as Bay amps up everything the majority of people have come to hate about the franchise. Huge planets are smashed into each other, characters share awkward and painfully unfunny banter, and the camera leers so much at the franchise's latest hotty (a professor who dresses like a stripper played by Laura Haddock) that you almost long for the acting talents of Megan Fox.

Wahlberg returns as Cade Yeager, the inventor-turned-outlaw who still hasn't realised how ridiculous his name is, and now sports an equally ridiculous haircut. Following the events of the previous film, all Transformers have now been declared criminals, and the Transformer Reaction Force has been set up to eradicate the alien robots. Only more are arriving on Earth every day, so Optimus Prime has travelled back to his home planet to confront his maker for answers. Yeager is protecting many of the surviving Autobots at his junk yard, but soon finds himself caught up in events when a strange alien talisman attaches itself to his arm from the ship of a dead Transformer. Giant horns have emerged from the ground in various locations throughout the world, and it all somehow ties into a tale going back to the time of King Arthur and Merlin (the latter played by a game Stanley Tucci). Decepticons want the talisman for some reason, and by this time I'd given up.

The first hour is spent trying to explain the plot to the audience, while the rest is spent exploring aimless sub-plots, one involving a tough orphan child living in the ruins of a previous battle, designed to appeal to the young crowd. Within the first twenty minutes, it shamelessly rips-off Game of Thrones and Stranger Things, TV shows of a quality Bay could only dream of creating. By the time Anthony Hopkins shows up to collect his pay cheque, you'll be too worn out to tolerate his bumbling, exposition-tool shtick. Bay isn't interested in correcting the mistakes he has been criticised for in the past: The Last Knight is custom-made to appease the audience who willingly pay to see this migraine-inducing nonsense every couple of years. Yet judging for the film's rather uninspiring box-office take, even they are getting tired of it. With the exception of 2007's sporadically enjoyable first film, this franchise has left me angry, outraged, depressed and physically sick, but never had I felt indifferent. The Last Knight left me feeling nothing at all, other than incredibly sleepy.


Directed by: Michael Bay
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Hopkins, Josh Duhamel, Laura Haddock, Isabela Moner, Stanley Tucci
Country: China/Canada/USA

Rating: *

Tom Gillespie