‘Transformers: The Last Knight’ Review

The Transformers franchise is one of the most infamous franchises in all of Hollywood. The first one started things out promisingly, but after that, it has all been downhill. 

However, the Transformers movies are some of the highest-grossing films of all time so it makes sense financially for Paramount to greenlight a fifth movie. Unfortunately, the filmmakers of Transformers don’t care about making the fifth film any better than its previous installments.

Plot

I can’t believe I’m saying this about a Transformers movie, but the plot of this movie is honestly difficult to explain because there is so much going on. Mark Wahlberg and Laura Haddock are recruited by Anthony Hopkins to find Merlin’s staff so that they can stop Cybertron from taking over the Earth. 

Optimus Prime has apparently turned against the world now and is helping Cybertron. I don’t really know why Merlin was important to the plot or why the Autobots are still seen as evil, but whatever. Just look at the pretty explosions.

Characters

There is very little put into developing these characters. Wahlberg has a somewhat interesting character in this movie. They try to give him some emotional moments with his daughter, who is not in this movie, but it never really works. 

Wahlberg is fine in this movie, his character is just not well written. Haddock is also fine in this movie, but her character is not very interesting. There is a relationship between these two characters that is so forced and comes from nowhere. They have very poor chemistry in this movie.

Hopkins is entertaining as always but all he does is explain the information that is necessary for this movie. He also has some strange dialogue for an acclaimed actor like Hopkins to be delivering. There is also a new character in this movie played by Isabela Moner who is so useless in this movie. Her character is so forced into this movie for no reason whatsoever.

The best part of this movie is, as usual, the Transformers. Bumblebee is always a great character and he is cool in this one too. There are a couple of new features that he has that look pretty cool. Optimus Prime is also back and while he is a cool character, he really isn’t in this movie for very long. 

There are a couple of new Transformers as well. One new robot has the ability to manipulate time, which is cool, but the movie never explains where he got that power. There is also another transformer named Cogman who is more annoying than he is helpful.

The villain in this movie is really bad. Quintessa (Gemma Chan) has very minimal screen time and she never is very threatening. Megatron comes back in this movie, and he is more intimidating but he doesn’t have a lot of screen time either.

Direction

Michael Bay simply does a terrible job at directing this movie. The only scenes that are somewhat well done are the action scenes but even then they’re still not great. There are explosions that come from nowhere and the editing is just terrible. There are times where the action will be occurring and it will jump to two characters talking out of nowhere. It takes all the momentum out of the scene.

The comedy in this movie is also really bad. Bay does not really know how to shoot a comedic scene. The dialogue is truly awful. Anytime anybody tries to say anything funny it falls completely flat, especially when the robots try to be funny. It’s also just really cheesy and dumb dialogue.

This movie also way too long. A good 30 minutes could have been cut from this movie because there are a lot of subplots that really don’t amount to anything. The plot where Optimus Prime is now evil did not have to be in this movie. It never amounts to anything.

The final segment is definitely the best part of this movie. The action is good and a lot of the effects are cool. The effects are probably the best thing about this movie. While everything else falls apart, the actual production of this movie is well done.

Final Thoughts

I usually tend to enjoy cheesy, action movies that are cool, but really don’t have any substance. This is a film where I can’t even fully appreciate the action because everything else around it is so bad. The action itself can be headache-inducing with loud explosions and constantly changing aspect ratios. 

If you enjoyed the other Transformers movies, then maybe you will like this one, but it is still pretty bad compared to the other movies and that is saying something. The people who made this movie clearly didn’t care about it, and neither should you.

Rating: 3/10