"Transformers: The Last Knight" Review
True story: When I saw Transformers 4, I was so nauseous from the action and editing and stupidity, I actually vomited. To this day, "Transformers: Age of Extinction" is the only movie that made me physically ill. This new Transformers movie isn't as bad but it's still terrible.
Michael Bay’s "Transformers: The Last Knight" is an interesting experiment on what happens if a filmmaker was given infinite money to make something just because he can. There's a story in here about retrieving a staff and saving the world but there's also a plot in here about Suicide Squad robots, BB-8 and C-3PO, a forced romance between inventor Cade Yeager (are we still seriously sticking with this name?) played by Mark Wahlberg and Laura Haddock, who plays the archetype Michael Bay hot girl (except this time, she has a PhD!) and something about the military again, and Cybertron crashing into Earth Melancholia-style, Optimus Prime being brainwashed by a villain who only has around ten lines of dialogue, Xcalibur and Earth being Unicron (don't worry, those two things seem super important but the movie just kind of forgets about them for some reason), a girl who wants to do... something... oh, and Anthony Hopkins is in it. Also John Turturro, John Goodman and Steve Buscemi are in it (if these three actors seem to be pointing towards a Big Lebowski reference, it's not). Oh, also Megatron is working with the villain even though at no point do these characters appear on-screen together. Oh, and also, it's about Bumblebee getting his voice back. If this seems like a super confusing and unfocused description of an equally confusing and unfocused plot, it's because it is. I don't remember what actually happened. It has too many ideas and too many plots and too many characters. Nothing is fleshed out and there are no answers... Just sharp grey objects exploding into each other and lots of helicopters during sunset. Every scene in this movie takes place either during sunrise or sunset!
The movie (fifth in the franchise) tries really hard to satisfy the most primitive urges of the male reptilian mind with its fetishization of explosions and shiny, tanned female characters -though that would be an insult to men, reptiles, explosions, and women everywhere. The premise only requires the heroes to find the MacGuffin, but it does this in the most convoluted way possible, because why not? The last two movies have already drilled so deep into the grave than the other two films had already dug, so, why stop now? People clearly asked for another wacky and weirdly racist adventure and so here’s another wacky and weirdly racist adventure for everyone!
For someone who's known for explosions, Michael Bay doesn't understand the physics behind them. All explosions are literal fireworks and they all come with sparks for some reason. The action is the most incomprehensible thing ever. Every shot is dynamic and is cut to another different dynamic shot. It's done so quickly and frequently that the audience wouldn't have time to adjust to the new shot and is made even worse considering how shaky the camera work is. No geography is ever established during its action set pieces. Robots just fight and shoot at each other with no sense of tension or stakes or danger, like dude, this is too much and it's all happening too quickly and it's too loud, holy fuck is this a loud movie.
This movie was made for no one. No Transformers fan in their right mind would want to watch this. No movie goer is gonna come out of this and be able to explain to you what they had just sat through for two and a half hours. As soon as the credits rolled I got up from the seat and went for the door. Then there was an after credits scene and I said "I'm done, I don't give a fuck." and left without turning back. DO NOT watch this movie. You might think to yourself "Maybe the explosions will be fun!" it's not. It looks ridiculous and it's a sad excuse for a movie and it's impossible to follow and insults everyone and everything.