3 Out of 5 Stars
Michael Bay’s Transformers is a franchise that has over the last 7 years struggled to tell a cohesive story while also remaining relevant to viewers, and when that got too difficult the series simply rebooted itself. While I can confidently say if you haven’t been a fan so far this newest entry probably isn’t for you, it maybe Bay’s best effort yet when compared to the sequels that came before it, not counting Age of Extinction’s Shia-less restart that was one of the better films by far. Attempting to put the films before it into some context while once again re-writing events so far, Bay this time channels Transformers: The Movie (1986) to give us the weirdest and possibly the most enjoyable sequel yet.
Transformers: The Last Knight is another overflowing entry that finally attempts to build on the films before it and develop a real mythology around the franchise. The film picks up a few years after Age of Extinction with new Transformers now flocking to the earth and arriving daily as humanity continues to hunt them down to quell the “threat”. Cade (Mark Wahlberg) has charged himself with rescuing the Autobots that arrive as he waits for the return of Optimus who left looking for his makers. They were the ones responsible for hiring the bounty hunter Lockdown that triggered the carnage of the previous film. Fortunately we don’t waste any time as we catch up with the fearless leader when he lands on the remnants of his destroyed homeworld Cybertron, that has been slowly making its way to earth.


Cogman in TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT, from Paramount Pictures.
Bay adheres to the canon of the cartoon, with the Transformers being the creation and slaves of the Quintessons, as Optimus finds his creator Quintessa. She drops a pretty big bombshell that the reason the earth has been so important to the Transformers, is because it is in fact “Unicron” the chaos bringer. For those not in the know Unicorn is a giant transforming monster planet, which feeds on other planets. Quintessa hopes to jump start their dead world back to life with the power of the giant slumbering transformer using Merlin’s staff, that just so happened to be another ancient transformers artifact. Now this is where it gets into more familiar territory for the series as Cade is charged with tracking down the staff with Merlin’s last living ancestor Vivian Wembley (Laura Haddock AKA British Megan Fox) with Megatron again hot on his trail. To throw another wrench in the mix Optimus is turned evil by Quintessa as he is forced to announce to everyone he is now evil which you can tell just by his name “Nemesis Prime®”.

Transformers: The Last Knight is a really weird mix that has Bay infusing his patented Transformers “hunt for the artifact” plot with this odd Knights of the Roundtable vibe as we once again change the role of the Transformers in human history. He does all this while doing double time incorporating previous characters and locations from earlier entries into this film in an attempt to give them some real context to craft a true mythology for his scattered franchise going forward. While it feels almost coherent at times it does require overlooking more than a few details from the previous films that would probably derail these new additions. Like for example if the entire last film was all about looking for Transformium and unleashing the Seed to harvest it, how did no one realize we were already living on a giant ball of Transformium in the form of Unicron?


That being said The Last Knight still feels like Bay’s most honed effort yet both in terms of story and humor in that the laughs here didn’t feel completely inappropriate or as racist as previous entries. The bulk of the films comedy is thanks to Anthony Hopkins and his psychotic robot butler Cogman. Yup you read that right. Hopkins appears to be in rare form and having the time of his life in the film as Sir Edmund Burton the keeper of the secret Transformers history chewing the scenery every time the camera even remotely points in his general direction. It’s that levity that helps keep things moving as the film churns through its 2.5 hours worth of story while busily laying the groundwork for its next entry. The film also has the director continually trying to up the Bayhem from the previous films in the third act that finally felt like something new happened after leveling city after city.


Transformers: The Last Knight has Bay trying to right the course of one of the biggest franchises out there by addressing some of its fan’s biggest concerns. The only problem is will anyone be listening? While the film gets more right than wrong this time around it still suffers from the convoluted story and overwhelming length of previous entries, but to Bay’s defense he had a lot to get done. With a great ensemble that is game to get really weird, Bay unleashes complete and total Bayhem for two and a half hours of robot fueled madness. It’ll be interesting to see what happens from here, now that Bay has left the series on the brink of something possibly amazing. But instead we sadly just might see yet another reboot just when we were finally getting some real progress thanks to Bay finally embracing the weirdness he’s created.