Review of Transformers: The Last Knight (2017) by Ariel H — 16 Sep 2017

Pretty much all the criticisms that I had for the last film applies to this film. It's overlong, convoluted, and worst of all, BORING!

It's still better than Age of Extinction and Revenge of the Fallen, but that's hardly a compliment. It doesn't try as hard as either of the movies to be funny, but like every other Michael Bay movie, there were bad attempts at humour and shitty one-liners.

There were some nice use of slow-mo shots and this makes it easier to follow the action. There were only two good scenes in the entire film. The car chase scene in London and the fight scene between Bumblebee and Optimus Prime.

Speaking of Optimus Prime, he's barely in the film. In this 2 and a half hour movie (which is pretty typical for a Transformers movie), I would say that Optimus Prime had a total of 15 minutes of screentime. He's essentially The Joker from Suicide Squad. A lot of fans have defended the limited screentime that The Joker had in Suicide Squad because he's a supporting character, but Optimus Prime has always been an important character in the franchise. Why did we need John Turturro, the black guy, and the bad child actor more than Optimus Prime? I've never been a Transformers fan, but Optimus Prime has always been the best part about the franchise.

And like every other Transformers movie, there's a very long and boring third act action set-piece followed by a monologue from Optimus Prime to end the film. Even when you're starting to enjoy the action, it's ruined by not only bad jokes, but constant changes of aspect ratio. Usually, a big budget movie would film entire scenes (usually important scenes) in IMAX before reverting to its original aspect ratio to make the transition as unobtrusive as possible. But the way Bay uses IMAX, the aspect ratio changes in the same scene with each cut, some of which aren't even a second long. Even shot reverse shot changes aspect ratio. It's distracting and pretty hard to ignore. The same visual mess can be seen in Revenge of the Fallen. It's as if Michael Bay is completely talentless.

I know people enjoy the Transformers movies for the junk food that it is and would ridicule me for expecting decent writing. I've given that up since Revenge of the Fallen. For the past four films, I've tried to enjoy Transformers as a mindless action flick, but Michael Bay has been doing the same thing for all of these films. It's really not too much to ask for more substance when Logan, Wonder Woman, and Guardians of the Galaxy 2 offers much more than mindless visuals and loud explosions. Even Fast & Furious 8 does mindless action better than Transformers. It's a 2/10 for the two good scenes in the entire film.