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Movie Review: Transformers: The Last Knight

Scott Davis

I’ll get this out of the way now: Transformers: The Last Knight is by far the worst movie of the year, and quite possibly, of the last few years. It’s headache inducing, overlong, incomprehensible, and offensive. I would say that this movie was edited for children who couldn’t keep their attention span focused for more than five seconds, but based on some of the film’s “humor” and language, I wouldn’t recommend any kid seeing this movie. Director Michael Bay has outdone himself here, and this is after I honestly thought the Transformers series could not get any worse after the dreadful Age of Extinction. The new film may be called The Last Knight, but it should also be Bay’s last movie.

I should also mention that I am not a Transformers hater. The first installment came out when I was in the seventh grade and it instantly became one of my favorite movies. Over the years, I have come to accept that it is not a perfect movie, but it is still fun and holds up remarkably well. I was crushed by how awful the second installment, Revenge of the Fallen, was and had given up on the series. The Dark of the Moon was a slight improvement, and you already know my feelings on the fourth film. So, the first film came out at the right age for me and I still love to watch it, but later installments have left me questioning why I ever loved this series in the first place. The Last Knight has left me questioning how we’ve allowed Michael Bay to direct movies for this long.

The Last Knight features the Knights of the Round Table, an evil Optimus Prime, Stonehenge, a re-designed Megatron, an organization called the TRF, and Stanley Tucci as Merlin in a plot so ridiculously convoluted and complicated that makes it Game of Thrones seem as straightforward as a child’s bedtime story. Humans and Transformers are currently not on good terms as humans consider their once robotic allies dangerous, probably because they keep blowing up the planet. Transformers keep falling from the sky in droves and this makes humans wary of another attack. Optimus Prime, who was last seen floating off into space looking for the Creators at the end of Age of Extinction, returns home to Cybertron where he is seduced by Quintessa to help bring an end to the “human race.” There’s a MacGuffin (like there always is in a summer blockbuster) that both humans and robots want that leads to a third-act showdown. There was a lot of chatter the past couple of weeks about The Last Knight’s rumored runtime of 182 minutes long. While that is untrue (the real runtime is 149 minutes) the movie feels like it is well over three hours long. There’s too much going on, featuring too many characters, and too many subplots. I didn’t even mention Sir Anthony Hopkin’s storyline or the main female protagonist’s arc, mainly because it is too convoluted to matter and everything just ends up being blown up so why should anyone care?

This should come as no surprise to anyone who has seen his movies, but director Michael Bay wastes no screen time to develop his stories and even less to develop characters. Bay and his editors think that any shot that doesn’t involve a car transforming into a robot or some other shot with action will bore the audience, which shows their lack of faith in their story and characters. Bay is compelled to bombard the audience with kinetic shots because he knows if the movie stops long enough for people to think about it, it won’t make any sense. This makes for an exhausting experience that is equivalent to being repeatedly bludgeoned on the head with a boombox. It’s nonstop, loud, and makes for a miserable experience. Oh, and the aspect ratio adds to the misery. Someone should explain to Bay what an aspect ratio is.

It’s easy to put most of the blame on Bay, but some needs to get passed onto the film’s writers as well. There’s three credited screenwriters and you can tell that this is a story that was developed by a group rather than a single person. There’s a real difference between movies like this and something like, say, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. That movie was written (and directed) by James Gunn and his unique humor and style are all over that movie. There is no such sense of style or artisanship present anywhere in The Last Knight, which is fine, if it were just entertaining and not offensive. Bay has gotten in trouble in the past over racist and sometimes sexist humor in his movies, but he seemingly doesn’t care. There is literally a scene where a group of women, including her mother, beg Laura Haddock’s character to stop being so smart and just find a guy to date. They refer to her work as unimportant and the only value she will have in life will be determined by who she marries. It’s embarrassing that this movie will be shown on the same screens as Wonder Woman was a couple weeks ago. That movie featured powerful women who were independent and can serve as role models for young girls. In The Last Knight, Bay has a women telling a young woman that her only worth is in finding a man to marry and she should abandon her life’s work. Just imagine Diana Prince putting up with that.

Notice that throughout my bashing of this film, I have not come close to mentioning Mark Wahlberg’s portrayal of Cade Yeager. I am a moderate fan of Wahlberg and enjoy him in comedies like Ted or The Other Guys, but he was terribly miscast in Age of Extinction. He played a failed inventor on a farm, and while there is less farm time in The Last Knight, Wahlberg is just as awful here. It’s hard to blame him because the rest of the acting in the movie is similarly terrible. When Hopkins, who won an Oscar for less than 20 minutes of screen time in Silence of the Lambs, is yelling out profanities and looking at robots like a 12-year-old child, you know it is because of poor filmmaking. Bay has no idea how to convey this ridiculous story, humor, or possibly even worse, his action. The actors are just screaming over the film’s obnoxious volume and none of them ever present any real sense of danger. With all the ridiculousness going around the characters, you would think that Bay would like to add some suspense by putting someone in actual danger. Nope. Instead, we get sweeping shots of Autobots and Decepticons throwing bombs and ammunition at each other. There’s not much any actor can do with that.

It’s become easy to bash the Transformers series at this point, because Paramount could care less what kind of product the series produces. All they see is that Age of Extinction made over a billion dollars worldwide and the global audience wants more of the same. There is no need to invest in writers who develop an interesting story, editors who string together shots that make sense, actors who do more than scream, or more importantly, a director with a more interesting vision. The Last Knight is being confusingly marketed as the last chapter in the Transformers series, which we know is not true because studios love money. This is not only Bay’s last movie (supposedly), but Wahlberg also said he won’t be returning, which is probably the best decision of his career. In the end, Transformers: The Last Knight is the worst kind of summer blockbuster experience, and after Age of Extinction, I was looking for a reason to be back on board Team Bay, but I don’t see myself ever being a Bay fan again.

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Scott Davis

Scott Davis is a recent graduate of Oakland University where he earned a degree in journalism. He worked for the student newspaper on campus, The Oakland Post, where he became the paper's managing editor. He also earned a minor in Cinema Studies at OU. Scott enjoys all things film and TV related, especially the blockbuster kind. He might be the biggest Christopher Nolan fan you know.
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