Transformers: The Last Knight - Review
This review of Transformers: The Last Knight is spoiler-free!
Transformers has been a franchise of diminishing returns since the original film. Similar to another franchise of this same kind (Pirates of the Caribbean), the sequels are more focused on gathering more money from the audience and don't care about being viewed well critically. I was actually a huge fan of the original Transformers movie where the stakes were fairly simple, get the cube and help to keep it out of the hands of the Decepticons. With beautiful visual work, I never felt the characters had been portrayed as well in a film setting as they did in that movie. But now we have The Last Knight, and I have quite a few things I have to discuss.
First things first, The Last Knight's ad campaign seemed to bring up the idea of time-travel for the Transformers, which was completely avoided in the movie as a whole. The story revolves around the original Transformers and their role in shaping human history up until this point (they've always been here so-to-speak). I'm not a fan of this idea right away simply because it seems as though with every new film that comes in this series they are retconning previous films and just trying to make the story more interesting. It almost in a sense reminds me of the X-Men universe where continuity doesn't matter, but it should as these are all films in the same world using the same characters.
If you go into Transformers anymore expecting a strong story with great characters, I'm sorry to tell you that that is just not something that will be coming anymore. Michael Bay himself seems to acknowledge the usual tropes that come along with creating a Transformers film: a star main character (Mark Wahlberg), an attractive female lead who at times feels shoehorned (Laura Haddock), and great action. Mark Wahlberg does his job as the star to try to carry the film, but he succumbs to the usual pitfalls that come with these films. Without realizing it, you should connect the dots in your head that this film really doesn't have a different plot than any of the others. Find the object that can save the world essentially. It's a tiring trend for these films and I only wish they could have done more to create a more coherent and enjoyable story overall.
I wish I could discuss great visuals as these films always seem to have, but there was multiple points throughout this movie that I actually felt they degraded from previous movies. Megatron specifically looked very poorly done and it took me out of the movie whenever he was on screen because his animations just looked terrible. If you couldn't tell by now, this movie severely disappointed me in pretty much every possible department.
Overall, The Last Knight may well be the worst Transformers movie to date. It took a character that I rather enjoyed in the previous film in Cade, and turned him into another usual suspect for this franchise like they have previously done with Sam Witwicky. In my opinion, the only hope for this franchise to continue into the future is through a new director and a new direction. If neither of those things occur, this franchise is doomed to become yet another cash-grabbing lifeless series.
