Transformers: The Last Knight (’17 review)

3 outta 5

Transformers: The Last Knight is what one would expect from a Transformers movie, it’s too damn long, a dopey and unnecessarily convoluted plot, really loud acting and giant robot smashing.  The movie skips around so much from different locales and tones that it almost has the vibe of an abstract, crazy art film that relies less on logical coherence and more on assaulting the viewer with visuals.   This probably won’t covert any newcomers, actually it would probably actively irritate them, but fans will dig how crazy it is.

Giant robot Transformer Optiums Prime (Peter Cullen) has disappeared into the unknown to find his creators and kill them because they’re jerks.  But when he finds one, Quintessa (Gemma Chan), she rewires him for evil and sets the dead planet Cybertron on course for Earth.  On the blue marble, Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) is protecting fugitive Autobots and ends up looking after teenage runaway and friend to Autobots, Izabella (Isabela  Moner).   Things get weirder when Yeager is taken by a wacky Transformer, Cogman (Jim Carter) to meet the head of a secret society, Sir Edmund (Anthony Hopkins) who informs him of the history of humans and Transformers.  Along the way they pick up a bookworm professor, Vivian (Laura Haddock) but the evil Decepticons are on their tail and Prime is coming to destroy Earth.

The plots in the Transformers movies have been a bit wonky.  The 1^st one is about discovery, the 2^nd one awkwardly hammers in ancient Transformers, the 3^rd one is basically just a war movie, and the 4^th one had humans trying to make Transformers for profit.  This instalment goes annoyingly back to ancient Transformers and a tired “Chosen One” narrative with Yeager.  Basically, the only way to integrate humans into the robot action is to imbue them with some sort of mystical power.  Heck, Vivan tags along only because by her touching an ancient Transformer staff it lights up blue (this is supposedly important for some reason).

This is really about spectacle.  The Last Knight is the 5^th Transformer movie directed by Michael Bay in a decade.   Bay was always more of an R-rated action guy, his heyday was the late ‘90s with The Rock and Bad Boys.  The Transformers movies have let him indulge in his ultra-violence roots because the robots can kill each other in rather messy ways featuring splattering goo and dismemberment but its okay because they aren’t people, just giant robots.

There’s a bunch of cool shots with robots literally defying gravity (and physics) as they punch and shoot other robots in mid-air.  There’s also the dead planet Cybertron digging space hooks into Earth.  It’s a great visual and probably has the largest scale global catastrophe the series has done.  The movie opens with a flashback to King Arthur fighting hordes while Merlin (Stanley Tucci, enjoyably hammy) convinces an ancient Transformer to come help him and it awesomely climaxes with a three headed Transformer dragon wreaking havoc.  For a few minutes it becomes Game of Thrones with robo-dragons. 

Optimus Prime is held back quite a lot, he’s featured almost more in the advertising than the movie.  He could be the last Transformer knight named Sir Not Appearing in This Film.   The last entry, Age of Extinction, he was out of character and rather vicious and bloodthirsty, which is amped up here. There is a significant length, about over an hour and a half, until Prime arrives to do evil. This lasts for approximately two scenes. At least when Optimus turns back into a good guy, he seems like the noble hero he should be.  Peter Cullen once again supplies the iconic voice of Optimus Prime even if Optiums kind of speaks in soundbites about freedom.  Voicing Megatron is Frank Welker, who provided the voice of the character in the 80s animated series.  It’s very fun to get a scene where Megatron gloats over Prime like something out of the original cartoon. 

Wahlberg looks actively irritated and confused most of the film and it’s hard to tell if that was the character or the actor. He bounces lines off of Haddock who looks remarkably like Megan Fox, except British.  Moner gets a great introductory scene where her Autobot friend is gunned down but then she’s shoehorned in as an irritating sidekick with a mini-robot buddy. Chan as the evil deity pulling Prime’s strings says a few things menacingly however she does have a fascinating post-credits scene.  Probably the best stuff is Hopkins as the old British Exposition Guy as he has a lot of funny random asides where he babbles nonsense, straddling the line between serious and silly.  He’s too good to be boring.  Hopkins exit from the movie is downright baffling as his character randomly wanders into a heavy fire zone for no discernible reason other than to ensure Hopkins isn’t stuck in the franchise for seven more movies. Cogsworth the Transformer Butler is rather hilarious, ping-ponging from distinguished to insane, even at one point providing background music Hopkins speeches.

Transformers: The Last Knight doesn’t quite feel like soulless franchise extension, it actually seems to be swinging for the fences to offer up crazy robot stuff not seen before.  It’s noisy, abrasive and often perplexing but unabashedly so.