Transformers: The Last Knight (Dir. Michael Bay, 2h 29m)

Fuck this movie. Fuck this fucking movie. Fuck Michael Bay and his fucking obsession with fucking explosions, his fucking inability to plot a fucking coherent narrative and in fucking the fucking lens with military fucking hardware, cars that no-one can fucking afford and more fucking explosions than a crazed fucking new holiday called Independent Guy Fauxes Eve , fuck Akiva Goldsman and the other writers and their total inablity to even begin to portray characters that in other writers hands are fucking deep and fucking interesting, and philo-fucking-sophical, and in some cases childhood-fucking-icons. Fuck this film and its preying upon children and nostalgic adults with its co-opting and bowdlerisation of a much loved childhood franchise, fuck Mattel for their greed and their absolute fucking undermining of their own carefully crafted universe and most of all...just..fuck Michael Bay. 

Transformers, now five films into the increasingly illfavoured series, focuses (for those somehow under several tonne of rock but now emerging blinking into the light) upon the war betweeen two groups of giant transforming robots, the heroic Autobots and the despicable Decepticons and their various battles upon Earth. Whilst the first film is a decent, if quickly dated action flick, complete with height-of-their-powers Linkin Park and height-of-his-powers Shia Lebouf, the frachise has slumped greatly, with Bay's films going from enjoyable popcorn fests to a cinematic deathmarch, with Bay's films ramping up special effects (and in particular slow-motion, explosions and slow-motion explosions, often involving military hardware and/or robots fighting each other) in lieu of plot, character development, or indeed any semblance of enjoyment. 

With Lebouf and most of the original cast jumping off in the Chicago-destroying Dark of the Moon, it's now Mark Walberg, as inventor Cade Jaeger (presumably no relation to Eren), who acts as the human interest of the film as a crowd of a-list actors act as the series other major special effect-Shakespearean/classically trained actors spouting plot whilst Walberg and co stand around gape-mouthed. Joining us as the acting special effect this time? Sir Anthony Hopkins. Joining us as token female for this film? Uh, two female charaters! Izabelle (a street-wise tomboy) and Viviane (uh, British.).

But, this being a Transformers film, before we drop into the plot proper, it's exposition a-clock, and for that we need to go back to the mid 5th century, where Bay welds the Arthurian mythos, and Last Knight's big mythos arc onto the Transfomers, with Arthur being supported by 12 rogue Transformers, who go on to be hidden throughout history. And, honestly? This is the best part of the film; the lack of air and fast moving machinery, with the exception of a MECHA-THREE HEADED DRAGON (that looks like a lawyer-worrying King Ghidorah rip-off) mean that the pitched battle scenes actually flow decently, the knights of the (Cybertronian) Round Table, both human and robotic are well realised and Bay's take on the Arthurian mythos is tantalisingly decent.

Unfortunately, Optimus Prime, having decided that he must find his creators on the missing, presumed destroyed, Cybertron, then floats into the clutches of not entirely benevolent female robot lady (heck, are there any female Transformers in Bay's series that aren't either pure evil or canon-fodder?) and becomes evil. Dun dun...dun. Meanwhile, on earth, the film merrily flicks between Jaeger, who tries to keep the remaining Autobots safe, and takes in stray Izabelle, Oxford professor Viviane who is decidedly British, with polo-playing, snark and bizarrely marriage-focused relatives, and whatever Anthony Hopkins (playing last member of the Witwiccan order, Sir Edmund Burton) has read on the day's script, sighed and managed to work through and somehow give gravitas.

Oh, and the world's going to end in three days, Megatron isn't dead (again), and is sent (unsuccessfully) to defeat Jaeger, huge claws (later revealled to belong to planet munching, planet sized, previously voiced by Orson Welles, Unicron) are now sticking through the earth's crust, Jaeger now has a weird metallic talisman attached to his arm, and Cybertron is now wending its way into Earth's orbit to destroy it. Jaeger and Bumblebee, once again without voicebox, are transported to Sir Edmund who introduces him to fellow chosen one, Vivianne who is the last living relative of Merlin who mande the initial deal with the Transformers, and the trio set off to find the staff that Merlin was given, with an Anti-Transformer taskforce, Megatron and the remaining Deceptacons in chase.

Reaching the sunken crashed ship in which Merlin is found to be buried, Prime, now renamed and reformatted as Nemesis Prime, acts at the vanguard of Cybertron's return, defeats many of the Knight guarding the staff, and attempts to escape. Bumbleebee gives chase and eventually brings Optimus back to his senses, ready for the final battle, Megatron steals the staff, and Jaeger finds he has Excalibur attached to his arm and promptly realises he is the Last Knight. And the last forty-five minutes is a poorly executed mess of a bloated setpiece, ending with Megatron ejected via a window in the place the staff is being used to suck the Earth (or rather Unicron) of its essence, the female villain is seemingly defeated, only to turn up in the credits, now human, and Prime and co, with Cybertron now attached to Earth, send a message into space to find the rest of the Transformers.

This film is...a mess. At its best, it's barely holding together, elsewhere the film just falls flat on its face, repeatedly. The fights are louder, the battles longer and Bay pushes the patience of his audience to the maximum; with three editors aboard to try and piece this mess together, it's a wonder it makes any sense. A child whacking two action figures together whilst his father films and does the voices would be easier to follow.
Every single setpiece, with the possible exception of the opening battle is so messy, so ill-discplined, so utterly flouting any and all rules of cinematic narrative that when two shots link together, it's nothing short of a latter-day miracle. Bay has unlearned how to direct, and this film is a perfect example of how his slow-motion, quasi-pornographic style of filming has in short, destroyed any ability he ever had of telling a story. Bay cannot direct, and is in danger of finally pushing his audience too far.
Every non-Transformer actor is on autopilot, with only Hopkins actually seeming to enjoy himself. Vivianne is boring, Jaeger is boring and Izabelle is barely in this film long enough to leave any impression. The film leaves a bad taste in your mouth, a headache in the front of your skull and you want nothing more than to strangle the life out of Michael Bay as he has strangled the life out of a once loved series.

Rating: Avoid at All Costs.