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Movie Review: Transformers: The Last Knight - The Good, The Bad And The Cool
- Details
- Category: Blogs
- Published: Wednesday, 21 June 2017 14:09
- Written by Lupe R Haas
The good news is TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT is an improvement over the last three TRANSFORMER movies, but the bad news is the connect-the-dots plot may fry your brain circuits by the end. The targeted movie crowd (young boys) will be distracted by the shiny toys and robots so they won't mind. Isabela Moner, a new human-sized Transformer and Sir Anthony Hopkins are nice additions to this tired franchise.
Michael Bay has often said he makes the TRANSFORMERS movie for boys, and THE LAST KNIGHT proves Bay is making it for his 8-year-old self. There's enough shiny, fast cars, high-tech military gadgets, new transformers and a Megan Fox look-alike to keep the boys happy while the rest of us use our brain to make sense of this new Transformers mythology dating back to King Arthur's Round Table and his magic man Merlin.
At least they threw away the cookie-cutter plot that afflicted the last few movies to try something new, albeit convoluted. It feels slightly fresh at times but only because of the new cast.
In TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT, all Transformers are fugitives as is Mark Wahlberg’s Cade who is harboring a few in his junk yard. He comes across a technically-savvy 14-year-old orphan named Izabella who forces her way onto Cade’s mission to save the Autobots. More Transformers are inexplicably crash landing on Earth so there’s a slew of new transforming robots to annoy us including one voiced by Steve Buscemi, but the kiddies will love all the funny sounding newbies, and returning favorites.
While Cade is locating new Transformers and saving them from a military unit created to destroy them, he finds one who bestows on him an alien artifact that holds the key to something. Across the pond, an English Lord played by Sir Anthony Hopkins is part of a secret society dating back to King Arthur’s roundtable and a powerful alien scepter that in the wrong hands will bring destruction to Earth.
Meanwhile on Cybertron, the Transformers creator, Quintessa has corrupted Optimus Prime to do her bidding of destroying the human race. While on Earth, Megatron is plotting his own revenge on the human race and seeking the all-powerful scepter. Are you lost yet?
So there’s a lot going on in THE LAST KNIGHT with tons of historical information and clues being thrown at you a la NATIONAL TREASURE movies. Luckily between the historical set ups, we get some cool actions scenes featuring high-tech military weapons and drones, along with the expected cheesy dialogue and the funny one-liners.
I’ve finally figured out why director Michael Bay won’t hand over the reigns for the franchise. Every new TRANSFORMER movie, he gets to play with new sport cars, and since we jump the Atlantic to England in the fifth installment, we get to see some pretty cool English rides racing in a tighter space. It was a nice change of pace.
The British humor added a nice touch to the familiar formula. Sir Anthony Hopkins brought his touch of class to the movie along with his android man servant, Cogman who provides most of the real laughs.
Newcomer Isabella Moner is a welcome addition along with her own little robot creation, however, her character starts out strong, but gets lost in the overload of scenarios, and suddenly re-appears for the climactic scene. Othere characters are wasted as merely sidekicks, but that's plagued this franchise from the start.
Once again the visuals don’t disappoint, and that’s always been the saving grace for these movies. You don’t go for the story, but for the bang. And there's plenty of that.
TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT is now playing in movie theaters.