thebahamasweekly.com - Transformers: The Last Knight

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Transformers: The Last Knight
By Rouén Robinson
Jun 27, 2017 - 8:13:26 PM

The fifth installment in a franchise too overblown for its own good...

Humans battle each other and alien robot beings in a war that spans centuries as a larger threat to the planet looms. To stop this planetary menace an ancient artifact must be uncovered by the descendant of the only one to wield it, but as the battle rages on between two worlds allies may become villains in service of the greater good.

Cade Yeager is a struggling inventor and single father who is one of the most wanted people in the world for helping the Autobots fight against the human led Transformer Reaction Force. Izabela is a young teen living with outcast Transformers after the death of her parents from a Decepticon attack who wants to help in the effort against the TRF. Viviane Wembly is a professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford who happens to have ties to a legendary object of power that may be the key to saving the planet. Sir Edmund Burton is a nobleman who happens to be the last living memberof the Witwiccan Order that is responsible for keeping the secret of Transformers involvement in Earth’s history. Quintessa is a sorceress of Cybertron who is looking to replenish the planet's resources by destroying Unicron with the help of her brainwashed minion Nemesis Prime.

Transformers: The Last Knight is an uneven mess of explosions and crude humor that only confuses the cinematic mythos of the franchise. I understand that this is a juggernaut created to sell merchandise, but I still get the feeling that the animated series that have been its primary form of advertisement for decades has more talented writers than the films. I was hoping that this installment would try to get certain storylines in the franchise back on track but instead it just retcons certain parts of the previous films to make everything a convoluted jumble. Everyone is wasted in this film due to the fact that it has no idea what to do with the cast apart from having them act more robotic than the cgi cast members which are also underutilized. Michael Bay gives us his most lazily directed effort to date as he reminds us that he can make us pay to see an overlong advertisement for the military, cars and beer in a movie aimed at teens shot in different aspect ratios. There was a point when I would have have harped on the sexualization of Isabela Moner from the trailers, but she is not in the actual movie enough to be worth the trouble and at least they don’t mention any Romeo & Juliet law clauses like in the last film. I have not even touched on the fact that this film borrows heavily from other movies from Star Wars to Suicide Squad as it becomes a parody of itself while still wanting to take itself way too seriously.

I rate this movie rating of 1 & 1/2 out of 5.

In Theaters

See other reviews by Rouén HERE.

Rouén Robinson has been an avid moviegoer since childhood and has been critiquing motion pictures for almost a decade. He has been a film critic for The Cinemas on Tempo and was a judge for FLIFF On Location: Grand Bahama Island, an off shoot of the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (FLIFF). Rouén lives in Grand Bahama and can be reached at redr1976@icloud.com and on Twitter @thereelrouen