*sighs* Another Transformers movie. I'm not going to waste too much energy writing this review because this incoherent franchise has gone beyond comprehension. All I can say is that this movie is a tad better than the fourth movie and it still sucked.
Forgive me for not making this review coherent because this movie definitely lacks coherence. So, the movie opens in England in the Dark Ages in which King Arthur and his knights are in the middle of an epic battle, losing men left and right. Arthur awaits his last hope, Merlin (Stanley Tucci) to help them. But, most knights dismiss him as a drunk. Nevertheless, Merlin finds a Cybertronian Knight and asks for help in the fight. The Knight presents Merlin with a powerful staff which allows him to control Dragonstorm. Merlin brings the enemies down with that staff.
In the present day, Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen) is seen floating in space while frozen. The Transformers have been deemed illegal on Earth as most of the Autobots have gone into hiding. The Transformers Reaction Force, led by Santos (Santiago Cabrera), are hired to eliminate any Transformers. Meanwhile, Optimus comes across to the home planet of Cybertron, nearly in ruins. One of the creators, Quintessa, manipulates him into destroying the Earth, claiming that the planet is Cybertron's enemy, Unicron. She thinks that it could be Cybertron once again.
Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) is also in hiding because he had teamed up with the Autobots in the last movie. He is at a junkyard with other fellow robots. Cade has been followed by Izabella (Isabela Moner) and its Autobot friend, Sqweeks after an attack in Chicago. She is a survivor from the battle of Chicago from the third movie. She wants to help fight and because she has no family, Cade allows her to stay. Oxford professor Vivianne Wembly (Laura Haddock) is taken to the mansion of Sir Edward Burton (Anthony Hopkins), where she meets Cade. He explains why they are here and also the legacy of the Witwiccan order since King Arthur. And, he reveals who is the Last Knight and it is ridiculous.
Oh my God...you know what? I'm going to do something different. Let's save my criticisms. I'll comment that most of the visual effects are crisp and sharper than ever. I will admit that in the last movie the special effects looked odd. The opening is cool and it could have worked as a short movie. Isabela Moner and Mark Wahlberg are decent but the characters are not as fleshed out.
This is one of the most confusing movies I have ever seen from both a narrative standpoint and an editing standpoint. It's basically a standard "destroy the world" story in which the bad guys, the Deceptions, would want to fry all human life on Earth so they can transform Earth into their own planet. But, then, the action sequences are noisy, convoluted and there were, at times, that I was lost as to who was fighting who in the climax in Stonehenge. There is way too many sub-stories going on regarding Yeager's personal story, the main story, the subplot surrounding Izabella and the flashbacks regarding King Arthur. It's noise and a disorganized structure. In addition to that, you have the standard cliches you see in a Michael Bay movie: a lot of patriotic shots, slo-mo shots, robotic stereotypes, a sexualized character and one of the worst characters ever which is a butler. And, plus, the dialogue is what kills the movie again. It felt so artificial and not as fluid.
I will admit that there is a story in here but he and his crew needed to strip so much away to make it a tighter Transformers movie. It could have been an hour and a half. But, nope, he needed to add an hour more to add more spectacle than story. That's what I do not understand. Michael Bay wants to just have cool spectacle and Industrial Light and Magic can take care of the visual effects. Why he cannot focus on the story more? And, then he creates the story and then just adds as much tripe as he can. It seems he plainly abandons the story on purpose with so much fluff that we, the audience, want to get the hell out of the theater. The movie is like a merry-go-round that starts fine but then it accelerates to a quick pace and you cannot step down for two and a half hours. Is it entertaining? No. It's dumbfounded and mind-numbing. It's better than the second and fourth movies but there's not achievement in the narrative just in the visuals. But, I cannot give him the benefit of the doubt. Bay knows better.
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