Jungle
Transformers: The Last Knight

Transformers: The Last Knight

Movie
Director(s): 
In Theatres: 
Jun 21, 2017
Grade:
F
Running Time: 
149 minutes

The Transformers franchise has always favored explosions over its narrative, but The Last Knight takes that to absolutely absurd levels. For starters, it’s practically non-existent. The entire two hour and 30 minute film is one action-packed set piece after another with little connecting them. It’s the worst film of the franchise, which is saying a lot considering how the past couple of films have been.

 

The Last Knight’s story can be broken into three senseless acts. The first, and most interesting act, is about King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table who are the first to discover the Transformer race on Earth. Arthur and Merlin are able to turn the tide of battle with the help of their advanced technology, a powerful staff that allows them to command the three-headed dragon Transformer Dragonstorm. Fast forward to the present day, and wars continue to wage between humans and Transformers. Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) is on the run as part of the resistance when he is given an amulet by a dying Transformer and declared the Last Knight. As events unfold, Yeager must team up with historians Sir Edmund Burton (Anthony Hopkins) and Viviane Wembly (Laura Haddock) to find Merlin’s staff and prevent the destruction of the whole planet. Meanwhile, Optimus Prime is busy floating in space searching for his creator following the events of the last film. After discovering her within a destroyed Cybertron, Optimus is mind controlled into returning to earth and retrieving the staff, which is the key to restoring his home world.

 

If all of that sounds messy and convoluted that’s because it is. It’s surprisingly, too, because Anthony Hopkins’ character is only there to provide exposition with these long and drawn out speeches, and yet his words do very little to actually explain what is going on. The film jumps from moment to moment with no regard to its story as it makes references to things that never happened or just completely ignores other things entirely. It’s easy to forget about the new characters introduced early on in the film because they disappear for most of the second act, only to randomly show up in the end. It’s all shocking because one would think that with such a long running time Michael Bay would be able to piece together at least something that resembles a story.

 

I could somewhat forgive the story if the action scenes were good, but sadly that is not the case here, either. Like its predecessors, The Last Knight is nothing but flashy robot fighting that neither spectacular nor imaginative. Bigger does not necessarily mean better. It’s the same ridiculous and over-the-top action we’ve seen from Bay in the past. There’s nothing new here. At one point they even try to turn a polo match into a full on action scene with these slow and dramatic shots with intense music, but like most of the film it just doesn’t work.

 

Transformers: The Last Knight is a mess of a film. I’d say this is the worst the franchise could do, but that’s what I said about Age of Extinction and look at what’s happened. It’s a big budgeted blockbuster that will likely make over $1B at the box office, but make no mistake, it’s a downright bad film that has exhausted any hope I previously had for the franchise.

Matt Rodriguez
Review by Matt Rodriguez
Follow him @ Twitter
Friend him @ Facebook