The Transformers movie franchise has gotten had bad rap throughout the course of its life. While the first movie is generally praised, each subsequent sequel received a worse reception than the previous one for various reasons. I’ve been a fan and supporter of the series from the start and have liked each movie, with 2014’s Age of Extinction being my least favorite of them all.
With each new movie and set of bad reviews that come out for them, I always end up thinking that people go into these movies expecting something that they shouldn’t expect from a movie about giant fighting robots from space that can transform. It’s not going to have the story or nuance of a Christopher Nolan movie, so why expect that? So last night, I finally got around to watching 2017’s Transformers: The Last Knight and boy was I surprised by it. The movie is by far the worst movie in the franchise and is just not a good movie at all for a laundry list of reasons.
First off let’s talk about the story because there’s A LOT of it here in this movie. After the last movie, Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen) has gone off to Cybertron to meet his creators and get to the bottom of just what their goals are. He meets the robot Quintessa (voiced by Gemma Chan) who wants to destroy the Earth and needs another ancient Transformer artifact that’s on Earth to do so. This artifact is Merlin’s staff, an item that was given to him from one of the robots back in the Dark Ages to help change the course of a battle. So Quintessa turns Optimus to the dark side and they set a course for Earth. At the same time on Earth, we have Cade Yeager (played again by Mark Wahlberg) being a fugitive and Transformer protector that gets caught up in this plot to find Merlin’s staff, along with the young new character Izabella (played by Isabella Moner) and the rest of the Autobots from the previous film. But wait, there’s more!
We also have a new military task force that’s hunting down the Transformers called the TRF, and they’re also looking for this staff so that they can keep it safe in their custody. Then there’s Anthony Hopkins’ character, Sir Edmund Burton, who’s trying to help Cade and Merlin’s last descendant Viviane Wembley (played by Laura Haddock) find the staff so they can save the planet. And if that wasn’t enough for you, Megatron is back and also looking for the staff so that he can give it to Quintessa and destroy the planet, although how he knows of her existence or her plan is a mystery that’s never actually explained. I told you there was a lot of story. There are a number of other characters at play here that I didn’t mention because there’s just so much going on.
Just about every scene in the movie is jam packed with story. Not only does this keep the characters from being developed in any real way, but it causes things to become convoluted and confusing. The movie moves along at a fast pace too, so information is constantly flying at you without much time for it to be processed. That’s doubly true whenever Anthony Hopkins is on screen, as his character is the exposition machine that doesn’t stop talking. Sometimes he doesn’t even have to be on screen to give exposition.
Things aren’t helped though by what is probably the movie’s biggest problem, the editing. It’s like the people that were tasked with editing the movie realized that they had an hour to put the movie together before their deadline was up, so they just threw scenes together in a way that they felt got them from one scene to the next, regardless of whether or not it made sense or flowed naturally at all. This is a problem right from the start of the and it never gets any better throughout the two and a half hours of the movie.
There’s also the things that are just unnecessary in the movie. Do we really need a scene with Mark and Laura’s characters having a candle lit dinner to try and force a romance between them when their hasn’t been any romantic tension beforehand, and when they’re in the middle of a crucial part of their journey? No, but for some reason that’s in there. Do we need a number of scenes that are supposed to be humorous, but end up being longer than they should be and are just annoying? Of course not, but they’re here too. Oh, and did we really need the Suicide Squad styled scene of Megatron’s allies being released from prison? Definitely not, especially when they’re all inessential to the movie and are killed about ten minutes later, but you better believe that it’s in the movie.
Even though there’s a lot wrong with the movie, there is some good in there, however little it may be. Although Anthony Hopkins is relegated to delivering exposition in the movie, he seems to be having the time of his life in the role and has plenty of fun with it. It’s hard not to crack a smile as he asserts his authority over the Prime Minister of England and tells him to shut up and do as he commands. Alongside Hopkins’ character is his robot butler Cogman (voiced by Jim Carter). Cogman is one of the highlights of the movie, as he’s consistently funny and actually pretty damn cool too. I wouldn’t mind seeing a movie with these two going on some type of journey together.
The special effects are top notch as well, and I spent a lot of the time during the movie just thinking about how great they’ve gotten throughout the series. It pays to have good special effects during the big set pieces of the movie, and those don’t disappoint either, particularly the last one. In fact, the movie’s final 30-45 minutes are honestly the best part of the movie. As all of the players come together for the final battle, things get insane and it’s a fun spectacle to watch unfold. Unfortunately, this last part of the movie doesn’t override all the crap that came before it.
I don’t understand how things got this point, but Transformers: The Last Knight is a really bad movie. It’s story is all over the place and thanks to some really REALLY poor editing, it’s an incoherent mess (seriously, were those editors doing a last minute rush job?). Sure there’s a highlight here or there, but not enough to salvage this movie and make it into a decent entry into the series. Here’s to hoping that this year’s prequel/spinoff Bumblebee fares better.
TheComfySpot 