Transformers: The Last Knight is a giant middle finger to filmmaking and the whole of human civilization. I have never walked out of a movie, but this joins a very short list of films that made me seriously consider doing so. Not everyone in my theater made it to the end. We lost some good people along the way. I wanted them to stay. They started this thing with me and I wanted them to stand with me at the end. But when they got up and I saw the utter defeat in their eyes, having cracked under pressure amid the constant barrage of bullshit, I saw that it was not to be. But I persisted and made it to the end so that I can now warn the world of the cruelties of man.
I assure you that the following is a legitimate attempt to summarize the plot of this film and not merely the ravings of a madman. Back in medieval England, the Transformers formed an alliance with King Arthur. Merlin was not a powerful wizard, but a drunk whose magic was actually powers granted to him from the Transformers that he wields through a staff. Using this staff, he summons a mecha-dragon to aid Arthur and the Transformers in battle to rule England. Later on, the Transformers also killed Hitler. In the present day, Anthony Hopkins and his sassy robot butler are the guardians of the family that descended from Merlin and, therefore, are the only ones that can use the staff. This family includes Shia Labeouf’s character from the first three films, a fact that was oddly never mentioned before. Meanwhile, a woman/squid/robot thing has taken control of Cybertron and has set it on a collision course with Earth because Earth is the longtime sworn enemy of Cybertron (which was also oddly never mentioned before). This plot has something to do with Pangea and Stonehenge, but fuck me if I understood how or why. The squid-woman-robot turns Optimus evil and he goes on a rampage. Anthony Hopkins must find the only living descendent of Merlin to get the staff and save the world (it’s a woman, so I guess Shia’s character is dead now). Oh, and Mark Wahlberg is back and was given a talisman that makes him the spiritual successor to Arthur and allows him to use Excalibur.
Did you fucking get all of that? Can you explain it to me? I guess I finally got to see Merlin this summer, although I’m surprised that it was in Transformers and not the movie titled King fucking Arthur. As is usually the case with these films, the last 8 hours or so is a long battle scene, but I had no idea what was happening by that point. I didn’t know who was fighting who, or why, or where they were, or what they were trying to do. My brain couldn’t take it anymore and shut down. I couldn’t handle the endless assault of nonsense and pointless action scenes that are shot so poorly that you can’t tell what’s happening. It is all sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Everyone associated with this should be ashamed of themselves. I like Mark Wahlberg, but he clearly couldn’t give less of a shit. The man hasn’t looked this oddly disinterested since he fingered Reese Witherspoon on a roller coaster. Anthony fucking Hopkins, what the hell? This is a man that turned down the role of Alfred in Batman Begins because he thought the concept was silly. Now, twelve years later, here he is flipping people off while his robot butler swerves his car around mechanical dinosaurs. What the fuck happened to you, Anthony? Michael Bay is one of the worst directors in Hollywood, but this is pushing it even for him. I assume that this man goes home at night and furiously masturbates to pictures of aircraft carriers. I want someone to put a video together from all of the footage in Bay’s movies of aircraft carriers, slow-motion shots of flags waiving on aircraft carriers, jets taking off from aircraft carriers and men solemnly looking through binoculars while standing on, you guessed it, fucking aircraft carriers. It took three fucking people to write this script and the result is not so much a plot as it is the result of an ad lib with extra shoehorned exposition. Nowhere in this rambling, incoherent mess did the filmmakers come close to anything resembling a rational thought. I award them no points and may god have mercy on their souls.
This is a 2 and ½ hour movie. When I first checked my watch thinking that it must be almost over, I was filled with sheer terror to see that only 40 minutes had passed. I then thought that perhaps this isn’t really a film. Perhaps it is some sort of psychological endurance test. If I made it to the end, bells would ring as I entered the theater lobby and I would be greeted with applause and champagne. But, alas, there was no celebration as I left the theater. I was given no fanfare that night. I was merely left to wander into the night alone, somberly contemplating the madness that I had just witnessed. It is now the following morning and I remain without answers.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformers:_The_Last_Knight#/media/File:Transformers_The_Last_Knight_poster.jpg
