Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)

[baumer]

Discuss

[BOOYAH SUCKAS]

Best movie of all time.... in the sucking ass genre 

[baumer]

6 hours ago, BOOYAH SUCKAS said:

Best movie of all time.... in the sucking ass genre 

 

What an amazing review....it tells me so much why you hated it.

[Rsyu]

Better than Age of Extinction I guess so an improvement but still, a disappointment overall. My biggest problem with the Transformers series is that I think it has come to a point where the ultimate ending is never in doubt and the plot is just an excuse to get there. A line that was pushed from the beginning of the film to the end was "No sacrifice, no victory". Okay so they got the victory but was it ever in doubt? Moreover, there was no sacrifice in getting there (well, aside from the dozen or so cities that were scraped off like an old scab from a skin... totally unrelatable though). There are some good moments here and there, and I found myself enjoying some of the characters (Cogman and Hopkins was great), but I caught myself thinking at times; "okay so now I get the general gist and direction of the film, quit dragging and get on with it". Unsurprisingly, the film failed to surprise me and the familiar tropes of the protagonist battling against all odds to save humanity felt like old ground that had been covered before and covered again. I used to be okay with that but I guess my taste in movies has changed over the years. Visually it is stunning though, which for me was one of its few saving graces. 

 

Rating: C+

Edited June 21, 2017 by Rsyu

[kaijukurt]

I liked it.

 

1>>>>>5/3/2 (depending on my mood)>>>>4 for me

 

IMO the film did a better job staying focused on the main plot than 3 & 4 (as far as I remember those two films)

 

Plus I liked how the robots were more involved in the action compared with people-only action scenes. Seems to me like the robots were way more involved in the plot compared to the previous films. 

 

Anthony hopkins (along with the robo-butler) was fun to watch!! And the movie didnt actually focus on the kids to my surprise.

 

Plot was cool, I liked the whole medieval aspect of it. And the action was great especially with more decepticon stuff. Makes me realized that these films would be way less interesting to me without decepticons for the autobots to beat up.

 

Not a big fan of the whole "certain autobot/decepticon appears in one scene and thats it" though :/ 

 

The triceratops dinobot appears for one scene, Grimlock disappears halfway, the other dinobots are nowhere to be found (replaced by tiny baby dinobots for some reason), and a cool Cat excavator autobot makes a brief appearance out of the blue with the autobots...so random. But nothing new to the franchise. 

 

3/4 for me.

[vc2002]

Well, let's face it, it's a TF movie and only Baumer's review matters.

[That One Girl]

My honest review of this movie:

 

LMAO!??!?!?!??!?!?! HOW THE FUCK WAS THIS "SCRIPT" GREENLIT  BY A MAJOR STUDIO.  THIS IS ONE OF THE FUNNIEST, STUPIDEST, MOST INCOMPREHENSIBLE MOVIES I'VE EVER SEEN.  YET WITH ALL OF THIS, I CAN'T BRING MYSELF TO HATE IT.  THERE'S SO MANY FUCKING HILARIOUS MOMENTS THAT IT HAS TO BE SEEN TO BE BELIEVED.

 

D-

[BoxOfficeZ]

What a terrible movie. 

 

The visuals salvaged it a bit, but..... wtf was up with the aspect ratio changing constantly. Very horrible editing. Felt like someone playing with a camera zooming in and out constantly. I swear there were at least five different aspect ratios.

 

D+

[bartonfink]

The movie's like new robot character Cogman. Desultory, shameless, insane, fascinating.  

[Webslinger]

I'll have much, much more to say later, but the good/bad news (if you're someone whose anticipation for these movies has to do with ironic hate-watching) is that it's marginally better than Age of Extinction and possibly also Dark of the Moon (of course, the corollary is that it's also definitely worse than Revenge of the Fallen).

 

The moment that had me laughing my ass off, however, was when we first see the very fetching female lead giving a serious presentation on Arthurian legends with glasses on and her hair in a tight bun. All I could think of was the joke script for Michael Bay's version of The Dark Knight that circulated the internet in 2008, which described its female lead as follows: "She is the hottest woman in the world, but she wears glasses because she is also the smartest woman in the world."

[Kvikk Lunsj]

Who is the last night and what do Nazi have to do with the film?

[DAR]

I've heard there's a pretty decent 60-90 minutes somewhere in there.

[Biggestgeekever]

I came to the decision half way during this movie that, barring incredible once-a-decade reviews, this is the last Transformers film I will ever see in any format. I will not even bother reading a plot synopsis on Wikipedia. As my mind glazed over during the rapid-fire explanation of the Transformers secret history, I realized—between the aspect ratio shifting no less than 200 times, almost no instances of Transformers fighting each other, a sequence taken straight out of Suicide Squad, another worthless Mark Walberg performance, unbearably bad scenes with Tony Hale, and completely pointless cameos—that no matter who is at the helm of films that exist in this franchise, they are certain to not be a net positive experience for me. Anthony Hopkins and his butler did have me cackling like a maniac (and occasionally, it was intentional!), so hurray for small miracles.

 

The last hour is somehow even worse. Optimus Prime, who the marketing has insisted is the primary villain, is in the movie for about 20 minutes. He spends 5 of these as a bad guy, with a face turn brought about in a way very reminiscent of the "Martha Moment" in BvS. There is a sheer scale to the action that is unprecedented for the series, but that turns out to be more window dressing than anything. One of the main battles of the finale is essentially a poor imitation of any WW2 storming-the-beach/fortress sequence with modern weapons and giant robots, with the main focus on these insufferable human characters. Insanely, Optimus Prime spends most of this sequence out of frame flying on the back of Dragonstorm. The movie does not bother to explain exactly what he was doing prior, and so it comes off as he lets the rest of the heroes get destroyed for no reason. Quintessa is so poorly developed as a villain she makes some of the worst MCU villains seem nuanced, and the mid-credits scene confirming her survival felt like one final twist of the knife

 

This was not quite the worst of the franchise for me, by virtue of Revenge of the Fallen barely functioning as a film and containing two of the most offensive characters in recent history. But I can imagine there will be, and are, many that will feel this is Michael Bay's worst effort to date. It's very, very, very bad.

 

F

[Webslinger]

Oh man. This movie is such a chaotic mess that I feel like there's no better way to capture the film's scatterbrained approach than with equally scatterbrained commentary.

 

- It feels like at least half-a-dozen movies crammed into one. That's not even hyperbole, either. Seriously, here's just a short glimpse into the subplots that compete for screentime at one point or another: 1.) King Arthur with Transformers (which, admittedly, may have been better than the last two live action King Arthur flicks); 2.) The scrappy adolescent orphan's efforts to survive on her own and the half-explored arc in which she becomes Marky Mark's surrogate daughter; 3.) The continued adventures of Marky Mark (still a less ridiculous name than Cade Yeager, so we'll go with that throughout the review); 4.) Anthony Hopkins and his robot servant's ramblings about the coming apocalypse; 5.) The sexy professor's arc from an accomplished woman whom everyone rags on for not having a man to becoming Marky Mark's love interest; 6.) The U.S. Government reaching out to Megatron and a team of Decepticons lifted from prisons to form a last-resort team of bad guys to do the good guys' bidding - I was waiting for Megatron to say "So what are we, then: some kind of... suicide squad?"; 7.) Optimus Prime - yes, he's really in this movie! - being brainwashed into helping his creator destroy Earth. And honestly, I might even be missing a few subplots here and there. It makes Batman v. Superman look focused by comparison.

 

- On one hand, I'm glad that we're no longer subjected to Shia LaBeouf screaming "No no no no no no no!" and exploiting every possible way to act like a tool. On the other hand, nothing in his characterization rings quite as hilarious as the film's attempt to retroactively pass his family off as - wait for it; like, seriously, wait for it; in fact, do yourself a favor and sit down if you're not already - members of a long line of nobles called - I'm serious, sit down if you're not - the... - I swear I'm not making this shit up - WITWICCANS. Not ten minutes before Sir Anthony Hopkins reveals that name, I was thinking "Well, at least this movie doesn't have anything as stupid as Transformium."

 

- Despite the Witwiccan nonsense, I do still feel that this installment at least tries marginally harder than Age of Extinction. Unlike that film, which hit us with three setpieces massive enough to act as climaxes, this one tries to spend a sufficient time developing its story and characters before getting to the protracted sequence in which viewers' eyes glaze over despite the visual and aural mayhem (Bayhem?) unfolding before their eyes and ears. The trouble is that said "story and character development" is the kind of historical and mythological mumbojumbo so mind-blowingly dumb that it makes Dan Brown's oeuvre look like Team of Rivals.

 

- Oh, Marky Mark. He's a legitimately talented actor and it's a shame that he hasn't translated his Oscar nomination for The Departed (speaking of: more than a decade later, I still can't believe he was the only cast member to score a nomination in a film that also starred Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, and Jack Nicholson) into worthier roles. His charisma is wasted in this franchise.

 

- You know who isn't wasted in this franchise, though? STANLEY TUCCI! I wished the entire movie could have been two-and-a-half hours of his drunken Merlin bumbling about on a horse and occasionally interacting with robots. His performances in these movies work so brilliantly because he knows he's slumming hard and he absolutely owns it. Anthony Hopkins also tries his damndest to take the "I know this is shit, so let me have fun with it!" route, but he's not quite as effective as Tucci.

 

- There's at least a halfway-decent movie buried in this mess, and it's the subplot about the adolescent orphan girl. She's the only interesting character in the entire film, and she has an infinitely more believable bond with Mark Wahlberg than his character's daughter in the previous film (a low bar to clear, yes, but still...). So of course, that subplot gets nipped in the bud less than halfway through so that we can get tons of exposition before an overblown finale.

 

- You'll notice that I've said surprisingly little about Optimus Prime until the very end of this review, but such a strategy reflects the movie quite well. Despite being the most prominent robot, he's barely in the film until the two-hour mark, and there's about as little tension to the question of "Can Optimus be turned good again?" in this film as there was to "Is Optimus really dead?" in the second and third films. If only the makers of Pirates of the Caribbean 5 had taken a similar approach to Jack Sparrow...

 

- You may also noticed that I have said "shit" more often than usual in this review. That decision also reflects the film quite well. You could get pretty sloshed doing a drinking game in which "drink every time they say 'shit'" is the only rule. Seriously, it feels like they were trying to match the South Park episode that had a tracker for s-bombs in the bottom right corner of the screen.

 

- Let's be honest: this movie blew chunks, and so will the next one. That being said, I'll still see them anyway because they're damn fun to hate-watch. I can't think of another series whose actual jokes land with a thud while virtually everything else is unintentionally hilarious.

 

C-, I guess

Edited June 22, 2017 by Webslinger

[baumer]

I was all set to succumb to the fact that this was a bad film.  The first 45 minutes is just off.  It doesn't really feel like it's going anywhere.  However I did enjoy the character of Izabelle and I thought the actress who played her did a terrific job.  

 

And then there was a clear shift in the tone of the movie once Anthony Hopkins gets Vivan and Cale together.  And then from there it just goes into over drive.  I felt from then on it was some of the best Transformers stuff Bay has done.  There's real tension and emotion ominpresent once they get to the submarine.  I thought Wahlberg and Laura Haddock had some very good chemistry.  

 

But the Transformers series sinks or swims with Bay and there are times in this fifth film that he has never been better, never been more high octane and never been more focused.  There's so much going on that it's hard to keep up at times but when you finally put it all together, and when it all comes together, it works beautifully.  Hopkins shines here as well.  

 

It's also comforting to get some of the original cast back in the film.  Duhamel, Turturro and even though he's not an original, it's good to see Tucci in a small role too.  I still think it's missing Shia and if they could somehow get him to come back it would just complete the circle.  

 

I liked the story line about the long line of Mason like names who have spent a life time protecting the Transformers secrets.  

 

It's not a movie without flaws but thankfully most of those flaws are in the first 45 minutes of the movie.  As I said, once it gets good, it's really, really good.

 

IMO

 

7/10

[dxmatrixdt]

21 hours ago, Rsyu said:

Better than Age of Extinction I guess so an improvement but still, a disappointment overall. My biggest problem with the Transformers series is that I think it has come to a point where the ultimate ending is never in doubt and the plot is just an excuse to get there. A line that was pushed from the beginning of the film to the end was "No sacrifice, no victory". Okay so they got the victory but was it ever in doubt? Moreover, there was no sacrifice in getting there (well, aside from the dozen or so cities that were scraped off like an old scab from a skin... totally unrelatable though). There are some good moments here and there, and I found myself enjoying some of the characters (Cogman and Hopkins was great), but I caught myself thinking at times; "okay so now I get the general gist and direction of the film, quit dragging and get on with it". Unsurprisingly, the film failed to surprise me and the familiar tropes of the protagonist battling against all odds to save humanity felt like old ground that had been covered before and covered again. I used to be okay with that but I guess my taste in movies has changed over the years. Visually it is stunning though, which for me was one of its few saving graces. 

 

Rating: C+

 

Thought it had some of the best moments yet, but this right here is going to keep me from giving it an A.  These films just wrap is up right away at the end.  I like that kind of pacing but it seems they could just use a little something more.  Also, it seems Optimus gave the same end pep speech he gives every film and that is why I have to lower it to a B+.   Otherwise I was completely thrilled and satisfied every minute during the movie.  It felt like one giant climax for 2 hrs plus (kind of like The Dark Knight).  B+

Edited June 22, 2017 by Matrix4You

[grim22]

What the hell did I just watch? I could give detailed reviews, but that would be more effort than the movie put into the script. Maybe a D leaning to D-. Better than ROTF though.

[RobinHood26]

I was high outta my mind watching it so while my friend groaned and the other legit napped, I some how was able to have a smile on my face the whole time because I ate a "medical" Browine during the trailers, however Terrible movie. 

 

This is most hilarious blockbuster ever made, ever. Ive never seen a movie in my life pay less attention to itself. 10 or more huge just straight up plot holes or unexplained major things. Its beyond non-sensical.

 

The movie itself is a D but points for Bay not listening to a single soul or taking a single note from anyone, he just embraces giving no fucks and playing with toys haha and drugs.

 

C- (70) 

 

Edited June 22, 2017 by Jay Hollywood

[Cochofles]

10 hours ago, baumer said:

I was all set to succumb to the fact that this was a bad film.  The first 45 minutes is just off.  It doesn't really feel like it's going anywhere.  However I did enjoy the character of Izabelle and I thought the actress who played her did a terrific job.  

 

And then there was a clear shift in the tone of the movie once Anthony Hopkins gets Vivan and Cale together.  And then from there it just goes into over drive.  I felt from then on it was some of the best Transformers stuff Bay has done.  There's real tension and emotion ominpresent once they get to the submarine.  I thought Wahlberg and Laura Haddock had some very good chemistry.  

 

But the Transformers series sinks or swims with Bay and there are times in this fifth film that he has never been better, never been more high octane and never been more focused.  There's so much going on that it's hard to keep up at times but when you finally put it all together, and when it all comes together, it works beautifully.  Hopkins shines here as well.  

 

It's also comforting to get some of the original cast back in the film.  Duhamel, Turturro and even though he's not an original, it's good to see Tucci in a small role too.  I still think it's missing Shia and if they could somehow get him to come back it would just complete the circle.  

 

I liked the story line about the long line of Mason like names who have spent a life time protecting the Transformers secrets.  

 

It's not a movie without flaws but thankfully most of those flaws are in the first 45 minutes of the movie.  As I said, once it gets good, it's really, really good.

 

IMO

 

8/10

 

I am so grateful for this review. I had a feeling that many of the people who were saying "I could not understand a thing! It is imcomprehensible!!" were just caught up in the 'Michael Bay/Transformers suck!' frenzy. 

Anyway, I wonder if evan as successful as the TF films are, seeing how their grosses continue decreasing in the USA, the producers could actually do a Fast and Furious, and turn the tide around, creating renewed interest in the franchise. I wonder if bringing Shia and Megan back could do the trick. I never watched anything beyond the first two films; would it be plausible to bring those two back? They are not dead, are they? 

[75Live]

17 hours ago, Dexter of Suburbia said:

Who is the last night and what do Nazi have to do with the film?

 

Cade (Wahlberg) is the last night and the Nazi thing was backstory for Bumblebee