Transformers; The Last Knight: Everything you think you know is a lie, a Deception, a Decepticon?

So... Live Action Transformers Cinematic Universe... this is a thing now... And this movie's only goal is to quickly get the lore in that's needed to make the universe work going forward... Bayformers' version of Batman in blue vs Batman in black: Dawn of the Jesus symbolism if you would... and Bay's in charge of the movie that'll do it... Can you imagine my reaction when I heard that news? I can assure you, others took it far better than I did. But, with this (hopefully) being Bay's last movie in this series, and going forward we might be able to better dissect the flaws of this franchise going forward. Well... I've gone this far, let's get this out of the way. Transformers: The Last Knight.

Before getting into it, allow me to recap my thoughts on the franchise going forward as the last four were all done in the first year of this site and... well let's just say some of the criticism from Pokémon Zeta's review was very much noted. 

• Movie 1: I do actually like as a general audience member. It is awful when you're reviewing it, but I do genuinely think it holds up better than some of the later movies. The cruder humour I can live with in movie 1, I just wish that they dialled them back for the later movies, which they didn't. 

• Movie 2: The writers’ strike could easily be at fault for a lot of the problems here, but at the same time it didn't feel like an improvement over the first movie, to the point where I don't know how much of the problems were the writers’ strike. The jokes were awful, the new main characters are awful, it seems like the concept of aging can be boiled down to "I don't age because I'm a fragging god". On top of that, I have issues with some of the more minor details, which just get amplified in later movies like "how has our technology not evolved further thanks to the Autobots and Decepticons?" "How are the global governments hiding giant robots and their technology?" "Why is the US government willing to let those who know about them to go free?" and other things like that.

• Movie 3: This movie was just boring to me. Nothing else really to it as a lot of the problems with movie 2 are back, the movie was so similar to the first two movies (which is a big problem as the second movie was so similar to the first one) that nothing felt like a surprise. The battle in Chicago went on for way too long, and nothing really interesting happened in it aside from a worm cutting a building in half and Prime upright killing Megs and Sentinel Prime almost in cold blood.
   
• Movie 4: I hate this movie on a technical level. It felt so lazy and so rushed due to all the editing issues in the movie. More times than not I'm willing to let editing and animation errors slide, because things like that happen. But what aggravates me is that there were so many of them, and they still thought that it was fine to release to cinemas. It's the difference between a pathfinding bug in a game, and things like the faces not loading in cut scenes, or facial animations looking awful and unnatural released in the era of motion capture. One I can let slide because there are going to be things that not all AI is going to be able to handle, and the others are so obvious that there should be no reason for the problems to exist in a released product.

Those are abridged versions of my thoughts on the films. I'm willing to go further to anyone who's curious (or if you can stomach the reviews, they're still public). With that out of the way...

HOW THE HELL ARE YOU STILL ALIVE YOU ANNOYING BLUE PRICK?! Could the Government really not catch a RC Truck ?

For the purpose of this story analysis, I'm going to go too far into most of the lore dump. Mostly because, at time of writing, we don't know what's just backstory and what's going to be a movie. As for what's left then. In another move that takes away the awe of the arrival of the Autobots in movie 1, it turns out there were Transformers in the age of Knights, and Arthurian Legend is apparently true in this universe. Now what is that you may ask, for those who might not know of this legend. Well, you might know it under a different name, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Still don't know? Look it up online then, time and place for info like that and it’s not here. During a losing battle, a very, very, very drunk Merlin travels to a crashed Cybertronian ship he discovered before the movie to get the help of the twelve Knights of Cybertron, who bestow onto him a staff, before combining into a dragon and going to aid King Arthur's forces. Put a pin in that, we'll come back to that.

In the present time, out in space, Optimus Prime manages to return to Cybertron to find it in ruin with no idea why (hmm, I wonder why... might it have something to do with the destruction of the Space Bridge in movie 3 during mid transport of Cybertron?). On Cybertron, Prime is kidnapped by our villain for the movie, Quintessa who manages to brainwash Optimus, turning him into Nemesis Prime while Quintessa manages to move Cybertron to earth, the plan being to drain earth's core, using the energy to rebuild Cybertron... and with a bit of news that I'll talk about later, I'm honestly on board with that plan.

Cade Yeager (unlike movie four, this movie cares about Marky Mark's character name this time, so I remembered it) is now a fugitive alongside the Autobots and some of the Dinobots (Grimlock and Slug, no idea what happened to the others, though they and Strafe also have baby versions of themselves... which are actually really cute. I do like the mini Dinobots) of Movie 4. In an attempt to rescue a newly arrived Transformer, Cade is given a talisman that gives him the title of The Last Knight... yes, the titular Last Knight is him. Megatron (who is also working for Quintessa), is after the talisman so that he can find Quintessa's staff, which is what the Knights give to Merlin at the start of the movie. Only two characters can use the staff as a result of this. Quintessa, and the new semi token female human of the movie, Viviane Wembly, who is a descendant of Merlin. From there, the story basically becomes like the others, though there are enough variations for me to call it an actual sequel. While the plot is still "get the thing before the bad guys do" the presentation of it does at least feel different enough thanks to the lore dump and location changes. For one thing, the final battle isn't in an Earth city or town now, it’s on Cybertronian turf, either a space ship, or on Cybertron itself. That alone makes the final battle feel different... look at this point I'm trying my hardest here to find a Bayformers movie that actually feels like a different movie, I'll take anything I can get.

 

But now, for the lore dump. For you see, the history of the Transformers coming to Earth has been covered up by the Illuminati... I mean, the Witwiccan order... why didn't they just go with Illuminati? Moving on. Basically, since the creation of the planet itself, Earth has played a part in Cybertronian History, and Transformers have played a part of our history. Every major moment throughout history, Transformers have been a part of, including Adolf Hitler being killed by a watch... maybe that helps the fact that the scene in Nazi Germany was shot at Winston Churchill's home... probably not though. My big problem with this is just the fact that it does throw a lot of the previous movies under the bus, like this was meant to be a reboot. I'll post some pictures about it between paragraphs, but you may recognize the bad photoshops of characters appearing in the pictures like Optimus Prime, Ironhide, Bumblebee, Shockwave and more. If they were other characters, I'd be all for this, but because they made them characters that have already been in the movies, it's a sign of laziness which clashes with the previous movies (I'll get back to that later). This helps with potential for later movies, but in this movie, its where the Dawn of the Jesus Symbolism comes in, as it grinds the pace of the movie to a halt. 

 

Pacing is actually a big problem for this movie in general. The plot dump half way isn't the only example of this. Apparently an extra 40 (ish) minutes was cut from the movie, and it shows both visually and in the sound design. With the exception of the dump at the half way point, this movie feels so rushed that it’s hard to keep up. But for some reason, they kept some of the stupider things in the movie, such as four women related to Viviane acting along the same lines as Sam's mother in the first three movies (though thankfully aren't around anywhere near as long to be as annoying), Baby Strafe fetching a Bud Light for Cade, and a few wasted minutes of my life dedicated to saying one of the core principles of a Knight being that they haven't had sex in a long time (I am so glad this isn't on YouTube because this wouldn't be deemed ad friendly). 

As a result of all the editing though, most of the editing errors got caught. I only noticed a reaction to a CGI action being a tad too soon, and the opening logos having some of the most awkward editing I've ever seen in a movie. Also, there is another time where the time of day seems to go all over the place, still annoying now as it was then (am I the only one who notices these kinds of things?). So, yay, they improved... kind of... The soundtrack was butchered in the process and one very, very, VERY big problem was ignored. To those who saw the movie in cinemas and were hoping they'd fix it, they didn't. For those who don't know. The aspect ratio of the movie (those black bars you see at the top and bottom of a movie) are all over the place. Now, I was watching the standard DVD release of the movie (one of 14 releases of the movie?!) on my laptop, and it was really distracting for me, to the point where it was almost giving me a headache. I've heard it is even worse if you saw it in Imax. I just... how do you miss that? I actually don't know what's more insulting, all the editing errors in Age of Extinction, or messing up the aspect ratio to the point where it can change almost frame by frame. 

This is why I hate bloom lighting. This was around a second long

In terms of characters, this movie has got one core advantage over all the others, and I include movie 1 in that. This is the best core cast the movies have put out. My main issue with the movies prior (especially movie 2 and 3) is that the world just felt full of either idiots, assholes, or a combination of the two. Movie 4 was, on retrospect, a step forward in that area, though there was far more room to grow, and I'm glad that this movie built on that. We still don't spend a lot of time with the Autobots (I think Drift and Crosshairs have around 5 lines in the entire script), but newer characters do fill that void. For one thing, more Decepticons talk! PRAISE PRIMUS, DECEPTICONS TALK IN THIS MOVIE! Looking back on the movies, the only characters I remember talking who were aligned with the Decepticons were Megatron (and Galvatron), Barricade (for 2-3 lines), Starscream, Frenzy, Soundwave, Laserbeak, and the Doctor bot thing from Movie 2, though Lockdown as a "technically he is a Decepticon". Granted, I'm not a fan of most of these Decepticons (who came up with the names Dreadbot, Mohawk and Berserker? Nitro Zeus falls into that category too for dumb names, but has a good personality for a Decepticon and the toys just call him Nitro which I prefer. I also like the Brittan Autobots (however the plane and tank do raise the question of "how does aging work in these movies?" and "how do robots get Dementia?". The two standouts though are Cogman who I liked a surprising amount (considering the last comedic relief Autobots...) and Hot Rod, who manages to stay on the "this is meant to be funny" side of the French stereotypes, and reminds me a lot of Cybertron Mudflap. 

Did you like Sam's mom? Did you want four of her to be in the same room? Did you want them to be British? No? Too bad

While it’s a shame the movies still focus on the human characters, there are attempts to make the humans worthwhile characters. Cade remains a far better character then Sam, Viviane and a minor character in the form of Izabella do bring some far needed balance to the female characters and how they're visually portrayed. Anthony Hopkins as Sir Edmund Burton, while an exposition tool, does have some great moments in the movie like threatening the Prime Minister with a watch, and trying to take on Megatron with an umbrella Kingsman style. Combine those with returning characters like Lennox, Simmons, and General Morshower (did they have to give the character the same last name as the actor?), and you do get one of the best human casts in the movies.

Think Hollywood will ever learn that something this big in our solar system would destroy our planet long before it got into the atmosphere?

Even Quintessa, the main villain of the movie, is one of the better villains in these movies, but she does highlight one big problem with the movies as a whole. Am I the only one who sides themselves more with the Decepticons then the Autobots? I'm serious, the Decepticons come off more as the good guys in these movies then the Autobots and in fact they're in the right completely (from what we know so far) in this movie. For you see, it’s not just a matter of repairing Cybertron in this movie. Quintessa wants to kill Unicron... who is the Earth itself. To any person who knows what that character implies. if you're given a chance to kill Unicron before he wakes up, YOU TAKE IT! Would that mean the death of the human race? Yes. But what's the better plan here? Kill one planet's worth of creatures, or letting the god of chaos and planet eater wake up and kill potentially thousands of planets and their populations? Now, do I think they're going to do that in the next movie? Probably not, but it would still be an interesting thing to see tackle in these movies, as it’s a very tough question for a large chunk of audiences. The only problem is, will they try it? 

The swag is real with this Decepticon.

So, the multi-million dollar question. Is this movie worse than Age of Extinction? I honestly thought it would be based on stories and reports I'd seen before watching the movie, but I cannot say that it is. In fact, I'm willing to go so far as to say it’s one of the better movies in this series (however that would only put it up to a "ehh" when compared to all the other movies I've seen in my life). The reason why I like it better then movies 2, 3 and 4 though is because I saw one thing in it I thought died by movie 2. A spark of potential. A dying one, but one all the same. This gave me the impression of trying to push the movies further, to go beyond just some mindless "ass in seats" wave of product placement, to the point that (with one exception), none of the product placement felt forced, but rather natural fits in the world, something that I wished the other movies (especially Movie 4) did. To me, at least, this shows the room to grow, and I really want to see it grow, not back pedal to the "look, mindless explosions!" style again.

Behold, the difference between Optimus and Nemesis. Some red paint on his face, and purple eyes... truly the most drastic of transformations

 

However, this movie isn't perfect. Far from it. The biggest issue the movie has is its connections to the other movies. Things like the paintings, Viviane knowing the names of Soundwave and Shockwave, and Megatron referring to Starscream as his traitorous friend. Things like those don't make sense in the context of this universe, and would have been better if they had some more care put into connecting Last Knight to the other four movies (Megatron's line to Starscream's head alone is a problem because Starscream never betrayed Megatron, all he did was his job as second in command). It makes it come off as pandering, but not in a way that works for them. On top of the aspect ratio issues, which in turn adds to AoE's biggest problem of the movies coming off as lazy in editing, thinking they can get away with these massive production problems which take away a lot from the experience. It's unacceptable and it better not be becoming a continuing problem. Take care in your work people!

So, Dinobots are a dumb idea, but twelve robots meant to look like knights combining into a giant, three headed dragon isn't? To be fair though, the dragon is awesome.

So where to from here? Well, a Bumblebee movie is in the works for next year directed by Travis Knight, followed by movie 6, and there's a completely CGI movie in the works too. Concept work was shown of an Optimus Primal, and a giant metal snake (which to me would work well for a Beast Wars Starscream) were leaked as being planned for this movie. And with Bay no longer directing, it'll be a matter of finding out how much of an influence his style will play out going forward. I am willing to give the Bumblebee movie and Movie 6 a chance though. I'm not going to form solid opinions on either until we start seeing trailers. For now, though, it's time to call this review/ essay done, time for me to the next review for CNtober, Dexter’s Laboratory, and for you all to enjoy the rest of your day.