Transformers: The Last Knight Review
Finally…thank goodness we’ve made it to the final Michael Bay directed Transformer movie with Transformers: The Last Knight. Is this a fitting end to this franchise? Or is it just as messy and bad as the other movies? Let’s find out!
The Good:
When it comes to this movie, I think it’s very flawed. It’s not a good movie, but I found it very entertaining. It’s so bonkers, weird, and wild that I had a lot of fun with it. It’s one of those movies that is solid example of so bad it’s good. On a plot level, this movie is not good. But I was kind of eating this movie up when it comes to the entertainment value. It has a bunch of big Transformers action through-out the entire movie, you get plenty of jokes that whether they are good or bad they do kind of make you laugh. It’s one of those movies that I can’t really defend when it comes to the story, but entertaining I could defend.
Also this movie like all of the other ones does deliver some great and fun Transformer action. You get Optimus Prime fighting Bumblebee on this water craft of some sort. You get all of this cool Transformers action that is a lot of fun to watch. It's a big spectacle action that all has something in it that catches your eye and makes it fun and entertaining to watch.
And this movie does deliver some solid visual effects here, movies like this need visual effects for it to work. And all of them do, when you big Transformer action I believe it on screen. And these movies had a big budget and you can see the big budget on screen.
Finally, I thought that Mark Whalberg and Anthony Hopkins were a lot of fun in this movie. Mark Whalberg is playing Mark Whalberg in this movie, and I think it’s fun. He’s always a lot of fun in these types of movies. And then you have the legendary Anthony Hopkins in here as a man that recruits Whalberg into the action. And when you hear that legendary actor, Anthony Hopkins is in Transformers 5 you think “why?”. And as you’re watching it you think…“why?”. But in the movie his character is actually a lot of fun, he’s a badass type character and it’s a lot of fun to see somebody like Anthony Hopkins play that type of role in a movie like this.
The Bad:
And the big thing with this movie is that it just has way too many things going on. If you don’t know the pre-production story of this movie. Basically Michael Bay took a bunch of top level screen writers to writer’s brainstorm weekend to brainstorm ideas for Transformer sequels. Coming from that weekend they announced they had like 15 different ideas. This movie feels like they took all fifteen of those ideas and squished them together into this movie. So you get a movie that has way too many things going on that you can’t follow what’s happening. You get Optimus Prime turning evil, parts of the United States are in this post apocalyptic state, Mark Whalberg finds a kid that helps him, Mark Whalberg finds love (not with the kid), you get connections to the Transformers going back to the Nazis, and so much stuff going on. That all of it feels undeveloped and unfocused. Like on paper having Optimus Prime turn evil and Mark Whalberg, Bumblebee, and the remaining Transformers having to stop him. That sounds like a great direction for this franchise. But when you have all of this other stuff crowding in, the movie feels unfocused and not coherent. And with it having so many plot lines and stuff going on, it means the run time has to be like 2 ½ hours long, so it feels overly long and dragged out.
Another issue with this movie is that the aspect ratio constantly changes. And that happens because Michael Bay shot every scene with a different cameo, so that size of the screen is changing constantly. And it’s not just every scene, sometimes multiple times in one scene the aspect ratio is going up and down. And it’s so distracting, at points you’re paying more attention to that then on the actual plot of the movie. When that’s happening…you know that’s not a good sign, when the aspect ratio is the thing you notice the most while watching this movie.
Also this is a movie that is jam packed with cringe worthy moments. And this is the case for every movie in this franchise, and I do get why Michael Bay hasn’t learned any better. Not all of these cringy jokes need to be in your movie. Cringy jokes aren’t funny, have humor but have it come organically from the characters. It’s so frustrating watching these movies and all of the jokes happening…but laughing at none of them.
Finally, I feel like this movie has a lot of wasted potential in it. Like I said earlier, I feel like if the movie had a more focused plot a lot of the plot lines could be really cool. Like Optimus Prime, turning evil is a great idea, but it’s wasted. As I was watching, I was thinking to myself. This movie had all of the right pieces to be something really cool, but it wasn’t.
Final Thoughts: Transformers: The Last Knight is an improvement over the last one for me. But it’s still not a good movie. It’s deeply flawed when it comes to the story, aspect ratio, humor, and potential. But there is some entertainment to be had here. This is an example of a movie that I think is so bad it’s good.
The Score: 7.3/10 (C)
Comments