Earth seems to be a super-magnet for the robots of the universe.
Autobot leader Optimus Prime may be seeking enlightenment somewhere in deep space. And the Decepticon bad-bot Megatron, well, who knows where he’s skulking about. But no matter: A huge number of other robots have come crashing down on our planet’s surface lately. And Earth’s human authorities are having a hard time keeping track of them all.
Turns out, though, that there’s reason for all that Earth-bound robo-traffic. It has to do with the hidden history of Transformers on Earth.
Never heard of it? Well, that’s ’cause it’s hidden.
You see, that secret story involves a long line of English lords who have kept the secrets … secret. There was even a group of Transformer Knights, now residing on the ocean floor, who once joined up with King Arthur way back when. And there’s a pretty Oxford professor, Vivian Wembley, descended from Merlin the magician, who unknowingly has access to an incredibly powerful artifact that could reshape the universe.
All of those strangely interconnected historical threads are also tied to—get this—a middle-aged junkyard owner named Cade Yeager. Cade possesses a certain robotic talisman that makes him none other than a knight of the Transformer order. (Even though he’s human and not a Transformer. Details, details.) And it’s up to him to save the Earth from an ancient robot goddess who’s determined to destroy the Earth.
(Pant, pant.)
OK, if you’re thinking that none of that makes much sense … well, don’t look at me. I’m not an English lord.
Now, let’s just go watch stuff blow up.
Although the fifth Transformers flick is mostly a random, ongoing cacophony of destruction, there are moments of bravery and heroism. One character declares that “without personal sacrifice, there can be no victory.” Someone else suggests that we all can be heroes if we have the fortitude to step forward in a crisis.
Accordingly, a number of people put their lives on the line to save others. For instance, both Cade and Vivian run headlong into almost certain death to save mankind. Cade’s daughter, meanwhile, speaks of her love for her dad.
Though Merlin is called a magician, it’s clear that his “magic” is actually futuristic alien technology. Elsewhere, a robotic entity called Quintessa claims to be the Transformer “god” that created Optimus Prime. An earthly “apocalypse” is tied into Quintessa’s Earth-destroying plans.
Vivian wears formfitting dresses that are often low-cut and cleavage-baring as well. She and Cade also wear tight t-shirts. Cade, for his part, lifts his shirt to reveal his chiseled midriff. The two of them kiss.
Vivian’s aunts talk about setting her up with someone and explore the option of that potential love interest being a woman. After meeting, Vivian and Cade rifle loudly through her father’s study. With all the ensuing thumping and grunting, the listening aunts think the couple is having sex.
A snarky robot looks at a picture of a slick vehicle and comments on all the “junk in the trunk” the car is carrying.
Swirling, blasting, detonating, transforming death and destruction are this pic’s modus operandi. The devastation starts in the film’s opening moments and only takes brief pauses in the 150 minutes that follow.
We watch ancient knights being run through by swords; crushed and set afire by huge fireball projectiles; trampled under charging horses; thrown about by a gigantic robotic dragon. Nazis get blasted by cannons and riddled with automatic gunfire. Men and their vehicles tumble end over end and are sent hurtling into to each other. Military trucks and aircraft riddle groups of civilians and a small town with high-caliber gunfire. Robots shoot and throw men around in slow motion. Robot combatants rip and hack off enemies’ heads and limbs. Car chases involving powerful supercars cause significant city destruction.
On a larger scale, scores of robot entities ignite massive detonations that destroy buildings and landscapes. Massive structures crash to Earth, killing crowds below. Nearly city-sized constructs demolish major metropolitan areas and carve up sections of the moon. And amid all those high-powered blasts and explosions, it’s said that a particular weapon is overheating the Earth’s core and causing it to grow perilously close to popping like an “overheated bag of Jiffy Pop.”
Two f-words and about 35 s-words are joined by many uses of “b–ch,” “h-ll,” “d–n” and “a–.” God’s name is misused four or five times. Other crudities such as “mofo,” “d-ckhead” and the British vulgarity “bugger” are spit out by the robots, also. Someone uses a crude hand gesture.
In ancient days, Merlin is depicted as a booze-swilling drunkard and con man. He guzzles from a bottle on several occassions. Back in our time, Cade drinks a bottle of beer. The English lord Sir Edmund Burton smokes a pipe, and Cade wonders if he’s smoking something other than tobacco.
Kids defy authority several times. Government officials make deceptive choices in an attempt to obtain a powerful weapon. A researcher talks of a dissolvable paper made of goat scrotum.
The Michael Bay-directed Transformer films have always been high-strung affairs. They’re famous (or infamous, perhaps) for tons of frenetic action and enough big-budget CGI to nearly warrant a seizure warning on the front end.
Transformers: The Last Knight somehow kicks that formula up another notch. This pic veers from warring scenes on a battlefield in the Middle Ages, to warring scenes in Nazi Germany, to warring scenes in a futuristic quarantined alien zone, to warring scenes in a sprawling junkyard, to warring scenes in London, to warring scenes at the bottom of the ocean, to warring scenes at Stonehenge, to warring scenes in outer space.
Yep, that’s a whole lotta warring.
Explosions abound, as do dead humans, ripped robos, and scores of characters all over the world. Oh, and there’s an abundance of human characters and robotic ones spewing a lot of foul language for a PG-13 film.
What there is very little of, however, is any kind of story that makes sense. If past films in the franchise were barely coherent, this one pulls out all the stops and feels like little more than a disjointed rapid-fire image-spew—pumped up by an IV line of Red Bull.
The predictable result? Two-and-a-half hours of bots reshaping themselves into vehicles and slashing, bashing constructs. But, frankly, Michael Bay’s latest Transformer movie never transforms itself into anything worth watching.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
