Film Review: Transformers 5: The Last Knight

Genre: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

Cert: 12A

Director: Michael Bay

Screenwriter: (screenplay) Art Marcum & Matt Holloway, Ken Nolan, (story by) Akiva Goldsman and Art Marcum, Matt Holloway, Ken Nolan.

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Hopkins, Josh Duhamel, Laura Haddock, Santiago Cabrera, Isabela Moner, Jerrod Carmichael, Stanley Tucci, Liam Garrigan, Martin McCreadie, Rob Whitcomb, Marcus Fraser, John Hollingworth, Daniel Adegboyega, Ben Webb

Running time:  2h 29min  

Parents advised reading before viewing a film as some scene may contain scenes unsuitable for younger viewers.

Sex & Nudity: A woman wears a dress that shows mild cleavage. Another character jokes about her taking it off.

Some women make crude jokes about finding a man for a woman to date, said one potential candidate is into "BBWs" and another has a dungeon.

These same women listen in on events taking place in another room, thinking they are hearing two characters have sex.

A girl describes a transformer as her boyfriend.

Violence & Gore: Intense robot violence throughout. Robots shoot at each other, fight with swords, fists and grappling manoeuvres, and explode into metal pieces when hit. Humans fight with guns and swords.

The robot deaths are not as graphic as previous entries in the series.

Profanity:  One barely audible f-word said by a robot. Several uses of shit, damn and other comparable words. Some religious exclamations.

Alcohol/Drugs/Smoking: One character is seen to drink, and is described as a drunk.

Frightening/Intense Scenes:  Official MPAA rating: PG-13 for violence and intense sequences of sci-fi action, language, and some innuendo

Story: Optimus Prime finds his dead home planet, Cybertron, in which he comes to find he was responsible for its destruction. He finds a way to bring Cybertron back to life, but in order to do so, Optimus needs to find an artefact that is on Earth.

Likes: Transformers 5: Last Knight is finally upon us, but what do we expect from this fifth instalment? Well, there is some good and bad news and I will try to go into detail without spoilers, as this is a non-spoiler review.

Since a young age, I've always been a fan of the Transformers franchise, as I grew up watching Transformers when it hit our screen in the 80s. The fan in me wants to praise everything about this film; but, as a critic, I must take myself away from the fan base and judge the film as a whole.

The Transformers series directed by Michael Bay has been met with a lot of hostility and mixed reviews; some warranted bad reviews, some not so much--with people saying this franchise ruined people's childhoods.

Yet, they fail to realize, since the Transformers franchise came out with the animated series, it has changed almost seven times, as well as from its original format, which warrants the “film ruined my childhood” comment a little over the top.

This film starts off great, as we see in the trailers of Transformers 5, they have been around for centuries. From the trailer, we get this medieval battle, giving the audience this background that allows mystic and magic to revolve around history.

The connection to King Arthur was a great idea for magic, especially with Merlin’s character and the cybernetic machines back then. They appear to give Merlin this powerful re-imagining of a wizard to be feared in those times.

One thing about this film is at least it was entertaining enough to be good, but, unfortunately, this is about how far it goes. Don't get me wrong--I love the Transformers films for what they are and their entertainment value, but this one seemed to be disjointed with its scriptwriting concept, which I will explain in the dislikes.

I love the way this film gave Bumble Bee a background story from seasoned actor Sir Anthony Hopkins, who played Sir Edmund Burton. The film portrayed Bumble Bee to be much older than we thought and on earth a lot longer than we realized; this was brilliantly kept out of the trailers from the audience as a little surprise in the film.

Throughout most parts, Hopkins put a lot of humour into his role, like he was allowed to just let loose.  It great to see that the seasoned actor still has that commanding style in his acting.

Which is great as he’s one of the best actor around, special the mechanical butler Cogman (Voiced brilliantly by Jim Carter), gave the film this comic relief which almost everyone was laughing at. For a small robot, he was extremely fast, strong and a little psychotic but extremely funny at times as you will see for yourself if you go watch this film on the big screen.

Mark Wahlberg returns as Cade Yeager, which this time around was actually given a good character script which made him shine more throughout this film giving him a more emotional concept while keeping the badass image of his character.

The beautiful Laura Haddock was brought into the film ( most would say as a replacement for Megan Fox), which--come on isn't true because Laura can actually act (laugh out loud). Her role in the film actually has a much bigger role to play than the other female actress that have joined this franchise, which has normally been the typical bimbo stereotype. which is refreshing to see.

Laura plays this very strong, independent, well-educated woman with a history major. When she met Cade for the first time, there is this America and British chemistry going on between them as the bantering and flirting start going around--although most the scene did feel forced in the romance side.

As before, certain things have been changed and adapted from the original look with the Transformers themselves, as we have seen through this movie franchise. Mainly, one of which--unless you know the lure of Transformers--you might not recognize who this one is. If you don't know who Quintessa is, she one of the Quintesson (Transformer makers and leaders of Cybertron).

But isn't the Quintesson meant to have three heads? f you have watched the animated “Transformers: The Movie,”  you will recognize this name.
This is because it’s not the three-headed Quintesson most of us know of because it’s the Quintesson judges. Quintessa is the Quintesson leader which was voiced in the original animated film in 1989 by Roger C. Carmel. In Transformers 5: Last Knight, it is voiced brilliantly by Gemma Chan

As for the action of the film, it is very fast paced. Thankfully, there is no shaky camera effect which is the biggest pet peeve I have in movies because it ruins the scene being portrayed. As before, the film does rely on a lot of a lot of C.G.I. moments which is needed and it does bring great, entertaining film to watch.

But is it worth watching? Yes, if you loved the first four films, it’s a great film but not perfect. But then what film has ever been perfect? Although it's far from what it could've of been, it's still got entertainment value which works for the film.

Dislikes: Here is where I have to rip into this film, as the story just feels disjointed and the flaws are bad.

This is the one thing that really did kind of piss me off; they bring in one of the most famous and fan favourite Autobots and he only get’s little screen time. the way he is portrayed on screen is horrible.

Yes, I am talking about Hot Rod. I mean seriously Hot Rod was one of the main characters from the original animated series that should've been in the film from the start. When they finally bring him in, he gets only 10 minutes of screen time with a stupid voice. Come on! Have some respect for source material here  

Number one problem: Megatron’s new look. This has no continuation from the last film. f you remember, Megatron was able to use nano bite which became digitally transformed (not mechanically) into a truck, but now he is in a knight-looking armour and a jet looking Decepticon.  Really?

Can someone not see the problem with this in the film? Maybe it’s just me nitpicking here, but that, to me alone, seems off. I’m not sure if others felt the same way that has watched this, but that how it felt to me.

(Spoiler Alert) The drunk Merlin concept thing I did feel was a disrespect for English history. I don't think this character should’ve been done this way because some might be offended by this.

The story does feel disjointed in part of this film as cities are completely destroyed, killing millions of people when the main event in the film happens, not one person in the film address this at the end.

So are they gonna address this is the next film or pretend it never happened? I mean, this is bad concept script writing for any film to address.

The other two things are the altitude and that they are at not being funny. Maybe I’m nitpicking, but the air wouldn't be breathable, especially with all the running around they are doing. This is a big flaw in the film as they would be dying from altitude sickness, which climbers get from climbing Mount Everest, and they were even higher.

Why wasn't this addressed in the film concept? This is one of the flaws in the film which does bring you out of the film story being shown. For example, Optimus just disappears for like 20 minute and, then returns in at the last minute. HUH?  I mean, what the hell was he doing for those 20 minutes while the rest were struggling to fight? This just didn’t make sense

Bad concept writing is what destroys a film's storyline, especially with a pointless end credit scene, which--let's be honest--was just to set up a next film and pretty pointless as we already know what's in the ground because his name was already mentioned several times throughout the film.

Let’s just hope for the next film they improve the concept writing and not be so lazy with it. Yeah, I know we are asking for a miracle

The question to you guys that have seen the film, did you enjoy the film or do you agree with what I've said in that the film feels rushed and all over the place?  

Overall: Great entertainment, good acting, a story is a slight let down, but watchable.

Rating: 5 out of 5 for entertainment / 6.7 out of 10 Last Knight concept.