The Transformers films serve as a smug reminder that no matter how criminally unwatchable blockbusters have become, people will still show up and have an awful time. The latest instalment in the franchise, Transformers: The Last Knight, continues the trend established by preceding entries by shoving bad characters and convoluted concepts down our waiting throats. While markedly better than its predecessor, Transformers: The Last Knight exhausts where it should excite, confuses where it should convey, and infuriates where it should intrigue. It’s a franchise that should perish rather than persist, even if the fifth chapter boasts a quality that was predictably absent from the middle three entries.
As an ice-crusted Optimus Prime floats through space, Cade Yeager (Wahlberg) finds himself on the run from the Transformers Reaction Force, a military-run operation tasked with ridding the planet of transformers. Meanwhile, Sir Edmund Burton (Hopkins) seeks out Vivian Wembley (Haddock), an Oxford professor who comes from important stock. Burton enlists Yeager’s help with finding an artefact that, if wielded by the right person, could turn the tide in the impending war between Cybertron and Earth.
Director Michael Bay populates his story with characters that feel shoehorned in as though to appease those who disliked the omission of franchise favourites in Age of Extinction. John Turturro’s Seymour Simmons spends the entire movie in Cuba feeding Anthony Hopkins information, and Bay expects us to welcome his inclusion with an open mind and shut mouth. Josh Duhamel’s William Lennox returns as nobody’s favourite gun-toting, orders-giving colonel who somehow becomes less and less important as the film stretches past the two-hour mark. In fact, everything becomes less important past the two-hour mark. Such is Bay’s style.
Thankfully, the dearth of gratuitous posterior shots and groan-inducing humour lends itself to the film’s marginal success as popcorn entertainment, which is remarkable considering Bay’s propensity for indulging in the tasteless. Instead of forcing us up Nicola Peltz’s shorts, he forces us up the only place where they can be as clueless and disconnected as he is: his own ass. A world where everyone lives up Michael Bay’s ass is a terrifying one, but it’s one we have willingly paid for since 2007. Such is our style.
Put simply, Bay’s latest directorial effort fails as entertainment and succeeds as amusement. At this point, all we can really do is chuckle at the theatre and cry at home knowing that we will absolutely be back for the inevitable sequel.
The Last Knight isn’t what we wanted it to be, but by god, is it what we expected it to be!
TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT / CERT: 12A / DIRECTOR: MICHAEL BAY / SCREENPLAY: ART MARCUM, MATT HOLLOWAY, KEN NOLAN / STARRING: MARK WAHLBERG, ANTHONY HOPKINS, JOSH DUHAMEL, LAURA HADDOCK / RELEASE DATE: JUNE 22ND
Expected Rating: 3 out of 10
Actual Rating: 
