Transformers: The Last Knight is the 5th in this franchise from director Michael Bay, and hopefully his last. So, is it any good? I’m sure you can already guess the answer…
I’m going to flat out skip the mind numbing medieval battle at the start. Fast forward 1600 years to the present day where the Transformers and humans are at war. Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg), Bumblebee, and a handful of robots are public enemy number one. They’re being tracked down by a military force called the “TRF” whose job is to eradicate the robots as the government still sees them as a planetary threat.
Optimus Prime is searching for his maker. He crash lands on his home planet Cybertron, he’s put under the trance of the evil Quintessa and told that he must destroy Earth in order for Cybertron to live. He then disappears completely for majority of the runtime, as we follow Cade who comes into contact with an ancient talisman that puts him on the radar of Sir Edmund Burton (Anthony Hopkins). Burton also needs Oxford professor Vivian Wembley (Laura Haddock – who is a dead ringer for Megan Fox) in order to find Merlin’s staff that will stop the incoming Cybertron from destroying Earth. Are you confused yet?
Being a fan of the original Transformers cartoon and earlier movies, I just felt like this sequel wasn’t necessary. I’ve enjoyed the franchise up to this point, and I always attempt to go into a screening with a fresh and non-biased outlook, but when my colleagues all passed an opportunity to see this I really wanted to prove them wrong, that T5 was going to kick ass… but the only ass it kicked was mine.
Not only did I leave The Last Knight feeling disappointed and braindead, I kept checking my watch countless times throughout the movie which I never do, hoping that by some miracle it would show us something fresh and exciting. While I’m sure other critics will pick apart this mess of a movie, it feels pointless to do so. The best thing that can happen to the Transformers franchise at this point is to either reboot it, try a prequel movie, or just stop it altogether. Whatever it is, it needs to happen without Michael Bay.
TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT is in cinemas now.