From Paramount Pictures, Hasbro and director Michael Bay comes the fifth entry of the franchise – Transformers: The Last Knight. Starring Peter Cullen, John Goodman, Mark Wahlberg, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, Stanley Tucci, Isabela Moner. Jerrod Carmichael, Laura Haddock, Santiago Cabrera and Liam Carrigan. The film hits blu-ray today September 26, 2017.
Humans are at war with the Transformers, and Optimus Prime is gone. The key to saving the future lies buried in the secrets of the past and the hidden history of Transformers on Earth. Now, it’s up to the unlikely alliance of inventor Cade Yeager, Bumblebee, an English lord and an Oxford professor to save the world.
Review
The shortest, perhaps dumbest in the Transformers franchise since number 2 ‘Revenge of The Fallen’ explodes onto Blu-ray today and it is a stunning summer blockbuster. Now… that doesn’t mean it’s good, but I’ve learned to rethink my approach on this franchise – and the problem is that I haven’t been treating these movies for what they are – kids films. Loud, vulgar and violent — kids movies. Once you start to lump the Transformers films alongside shows like Power Rangers and the Transformers cartoons, then the movies look like a work of art. The Last Knight is visually remarkable, easily the best looking film of the bunch and we are five deep with no signs of slowing down. Hell this one even ends on a cliffhanger promising literally the biggest foe in Transformers mythology.
I was confused as to what happened between Transformers 4 and 5, because Mark Wahlberg’s Cade Yeager is now a fugitive robot medic of sorts and yet ANOTHER anti-transformers military squad is hunting down both good and bad bots. This isn’t the vibe I was expecting, but this sort of weird post-apocalyptic setting really works well in the Transformers movies. As much as I hated Wahlberg in Age of Extinction, he’s actually quite good in The Last Knight and dare I say the only character that actually develops over the course of the convoluted and nonsensical plot. This of course includes the reveal that Transformers have been on Earth since the beginning of time and that they even fought alongside King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, with Merlin carrying a “magical staff” (made of Transformer shit obviously) and now Anthony Hopkins has been preserving that legacy in the UK, with his trusty robot sidekick Cogman (voiced by the butler from Downton Abbey).
I’ve always hated the comedic relief robots in the Transformers movies. All of them. The little ones, the dumb twins from Revenge of The Fallen — none of them really worked for me. But Cogman – I loved. There’s a hysterical scene where Hopkins is telling Cade about the history of the Transformers and we cut to Cogman playing the piano dramatically, revealing that it isn’t the score intensifying – it’s just Cogman. It’s actually a really, really funny gag and I legit laughed out loud. Not every joke lands. I don’t need to see Cogman shouting “Move, Bitch get out the way” while he and Hopkins drive recklessly through the streets, but I do appreciate the effort put into making a great funny sidekick for once in these movies.
It isn’t the best (that honour goes to Dark of The Moon by a mile), but The Last Knight is visually incredible and the action is perfect. For once I could actually tell what was going on during the fights and the battles were wonderfully staged, especially near the end. I was puzzled at the constant switching of the aspect ratio and this is the first time I’ve ever noticed it. My seven year old daughter couldn’t handle it either, so I don’t know why Michael Bay felt the need to constantly be switching between THREE different aspect ratios (widescreen, fullscreen and one inbetween), but it was really jarring. I know he filmed with IMAX cameras, but for the home release I think it does hinder the experience a little.
Special Features
Michael Bay’s mom is in this movie! I loved the “One More Giant Effin’ Movie’ feature, which essentially just showed Bay yelling at his crew and blowing stuff up. It was charming and silly and it kind of shows Bay as a human for once and not some pyrotechnics crazed overlord we all assume he is. It made me like the guy more and that’s kinda cool. There’s an entire disc dedicated to the bonus features and they’re all stacked, so if you like behind-the-scenes stuff, the Blu-ray is a must have for any Transformers fan.
- Merging Mythologies – Explore the secret TRANSFORMERS history
- Climbing the Ranks – Military training
- The Royal Treatment: Transformers in the UK
- Motors and Magic
- Alien Landscape: Cybertron
- One More Giant Effin’ Movie
Rating: [star rating=”3″]