Saturday, September 16, 2017

The 'Transformers' Franchise Gets More Nonsensical and Inconsistent with 'The Last Knight'

First, let me state where I stand regarding the Transformers franchise.  The consensus is the films are mostly terrible.  I agree with that.  Nowhere are they as fun and appealing as the animated series it’s based from.  Whatever entertainment these movies bring, it’s primarily limited to a handful of visually-impressive action set pieces – because, for whatever failures Michael Bay has as a director, constructing action scenes isn’t one of them.  Still, there are even times these CGI-heavy action sequences get bloated, dizzying, and wobbly.  The scripts don’t make sense.  Most of the human characters are annoying (especially those in the first three ones).  The mythology is convoluted and contradicting.  Transformers, the first one, is unremarkable but actually decent.  Revenge of the Fallen is godawful – the worst among the lot, in my opinion.  Dark Side of the Moon is muddled and problematic, but it gets to “so bad, that it’s entertaining” territory.  Age of Extinction is slightly more coherent, but blander and has a bothersome amount of blatant product placements.  As a whole, they are extremely dumb, messy, lazy, unfocused, and forgettable.
But you know what?  I actually derive some fun in hate-watching these movies.  So though I was certain that Transformers: The Last Knight was going to be bad, there was no way I would miss watching it in some form.

Set three years after the events of Age of Extinction, the movie sees the Transformers –  Autobots and Decepticons alike – once again outlawed and hunted down by humans.  With Optimus Prime gone to space, Cade Yeager is left to take care of the Autobots, and also becomes an outlaw as a result.  He teams up with an English lord and an Oxford professor in order to unlock the secret history of the Transformers, which is tied up with Arthurian legend, and save the world from impending doom – heralded by a returning Optimus Prime himself!
The thing with Transformers movies is to turn your brain off when you go see them.  Because, if you don’t, your brain will be turned to mush from being bombarded with pointless, frustrating, badly-thought-out plot details and storytelling decisions.  And, once again, this approach remains valid with The Last Knight, as it’s as confusing and stupid as ever.

Each new movie in this series will usually have elements that would be inconsistent with information established in previous movies.  Now, I’ve learned to accept that.  But being the fifth movie, it’s as if all its inconsistencies accumulated into it, that I really got annoyed.  As for the story itself, it probably has the most plot holes I’ve ever seen in a Transformers movie.  There are a lot of times this movie implodes by following the logic of the rules it has established.
At one point, I was tempted to list down every nonsensical thing I noticed – Cinema Sins-style (unfamiliar with this?  Go search Youtube).  But having realized that I would probably find something to complain about every minute or so, I eventually opted not to since it’s a waste of time.  And brain cells.

One very noticeable flaw I like to point out though is how the shots kept switching between aspect ratios.  Seriously, this was really irritable all throughout.  There’s no purpose behind it at all.

Even the action – the saving grace of these Transformers movies – isn’t as exciting as usual.  It was as if Michael Bay was just phoning it in.
As for things I liked.  Hmmmm.  The cast, I guess.  Peter Cullen voicing Optimus Prime is always amazing.  Every time he makes a speech, you are so stirred up that you would want to punch someone.  Mark Wahlberg is always likable.  Anthony Hopkins is a legend.  Laura Haddock (Star-Lord’s mom in the prologues of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies) is pretty.  And so is Gemma Chan (from Humans), whom I was surprised of learning in the end – when her character took a human form – is the voice of Quintessa.  But, as usual, the script doesn’t have much to make their characters striking.  Aside from the actors, there’s the fact that it has giant robots – something delightful, at least in concept, in a very basic level.  Also, there are two or three jokes that I honestly laughed at.  My favorite is when this butler Transformer played the organ while Anthony Hopkins’ character was delivering some exposition.

But other than these, I truly can’t remember anything else that struck me positively.  Heck, I didn’t even enjoy hate-watching it as much as I usually do with Transformers movies.
At this point, I’ll be fine with the studio just focusing on making more of this in the series.  That would distract their attention from the idea of adapting Beast Wars: Transformers – a show I was deeply fond of.  I cringe at the thought of Beast Wars being adapted with the same treatment that these Transformers movies are getting.

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