June 25, 2017 · Watch the official trailer
“Transformers: The Last Knight” isn’t a comedy, but director Michael Bay is laughing all the way to the bank.
Now in its fifth iteration, the “Transformers” franchise is vastly more successful than it has any right to be with “The Last Knight” sinking to inexplicable new lows in cinema. Completely gone are coherent, linear plot lines that make any sense, even by the standards set in prior films.
The fact of the matter is that “The Last Knight” doesn’t care if audiences don’t understand what’s going on, only that they enjoy the explosions and metallic carnage along the way. It’s Bay at his most bombastic and self-indulgent.
The plot is as outlandish as it is irrelevant. King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table are about to be slaughtered by an invading force when Merlin calls upon ancient Transformers to provide him with a magical staff and command of a three-headed metallic dragon to turn the tide.
The Knights create a secret order to protect the secret of the Transformers, which is passed on to the likes of Harriet Tubman and Abraham Lincoln. Transformers later help Americans kill Nazis because of course they do.
Bay, along with the four credited writers on the film, blatantly lifts elements from any and every movie franchise he can get his hands on. There’s “Da Vinci Code”-esque jaunt through a fictionalized retelling of history, a “Suicide Squad” inspired sequence as the bad guys round up more villains or the British butler Transformer that isn’t so much a homage to iconic “Star Wars” robot C-3P0 as it is a bad knockoff with a shiny paint job.
At best, “Transformers: The Last Knight” is a send-up of Bay’s increasingly ridiculous movie franchise based on a children’s toy, except it’s unclear whether Bay truly understands how far his films have fallen.
Along for the ride in this CGI-heavy train wreck is Mark Wahlberg, reprising his role as Texas inventor Cade Yeager from 2014’s “Transformers: Age of Extinction.” From the outset, it’s clear to see that Wahlberg’s heart simply isn’t in it and his performance increasingly wears his indifference on his sleeve.
On the other hand, Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins charges into his role as Transformer historian Sir Edmund Burton full bore, as if the part was written in a reimagining of a Shakespearean tragedy. Watching Hopkins cavalierly recite prose about Autobots and Decepticons with such commitment is equally amazing and painstaking to watch.
The clearest sign in how little Bay actually cares about his viewers’ ability to comprehend and enjoy his film is in how “The Last Knight” appears on screen.
Shot using a wide array of cameras, the film jumps from aspect ratio to aspect ratio seemingly at random. At times, the whole screen top to bottom is used, then the screen is chopped in half vertically, then perhaps back to full or maybe something just short of full. No less than eight different aspect ratios are used in the trailer alone. The nonsensical camera work can be rationalized in high-octane action scenes, but it’s equally as prevalent in mundane dialogue that is inexcusably misdirected.
But nothing about “The Last Knight” is supposed to make much sense. That seems to be Bay’s point: that no matter how ridiculous, how frustrating or how scattered his film may get, people will still pay to see things blow up.
When it works, there’s an indulgent decadence to the explosive insanity of Bay’s action films. When it doesn’t work – and “The Last Knight” simply doesn’t work – the results are cringeworthy.
If you’re going to see a fifth “Transformers” movie at all, the only way to watch it is on the big screen. Moviegoers on the fence about “The Last Knight” need to pass on this cinematic wasteland.
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