MOVIE REVIEW – Bigger, louder, and stupider than ever before. That’s how we could sum up the latest entry in the Transformers franchise – which is supposed to be an adaptation of the Hasbro toys in the first place.

 

I don’t know if Michael Bay cares about those big, transforming robots anymore, but this – supposed to be – the last chapter in his Transformers series is perhaps the worse movie he ever created. And while that’s not saying much, it’s still not an excuse to this convoluted, loud, idiotic mess, which takes away 2 and half hours of your life which you will never get back.

You are not prepared!

“Deep down inside, you begin to wonder: Has my life been wasted?” That is Academy Award-winning Anthony Hopkins talking, as he shovels another steaming load of mythological exposition for the benefit of Mark Wahlberg, who plays the subtitle of this fifth “Transformers” movie: “The Last Knight.” Or “Knight of the Living Dead.” Indeed, as a zombie viewer, the film wiped my memory, my faculties, and my windshield clean sometime around minute 40 of its 146 minutes.

“Transformers: The Last Knight” is 2½ hours long and consists principally of machines fighting each other. At other times, the machines are fighting people, and these fights go on and on. The soundtrack booms soar and thunders, and there’s also clanking, grunting and of course the usual explosions. To be honest, it’s all about as exciting as watching two drawings fight each other on a computer monitor.

As directed by Michael Bay and written by a handful of creative geniuses, it’s often impossible to discern which machine is good and which is bad, but sometimes there’s a dead giveaway. For example, on occasion one machine will indicate, in a roundabout sort of way, that he opposes the continuation of human life on Earth, after that the other machine will come back with a pithy riposte. And from that, we can glean our preferred side in the contest. That sometimes helps to produce something approaching a rooting interest, but not much.

The only good Transformer is a dead Transformer

The story takes place in a near future where things are even worse than they are right now. Entire areas of the planet have become pretty damaged, and more Transformers are landing on Earth every day, and we have no idea, why. Absolutely no idea! But they still keep coming! Why, oh why?!

Well, I’ll tell you the secret. It seems that the Transformer’s planet is dying (yes, they have a planet), but they have a plan to revive their world. Brace yourself; it’s a plan we’re not going to like, not one bit: They want to suck all the life, juice and energy out of the Earth, through a process which would, of course, result in the death and destruction of every living thing. That’s not good.

Marky Mark is back again

Mark Wahlberg’s ridiculously named Autobot ally Cade Yeager is still around and kicking, though, and it’s not long before he stumbles upon one of the film’s half-dozen MacGuffins, which further leads him to an alien staff once wielded by Merlin himself (don’t ask, I beg of you) and an age-old conspiracy that stinks of narrative nonsense.

Along the way, the idiotic screenplay – which doesn’t even bother with the basic transitioning of its characters from A to B locations, or lending anyone an ounce of motivation beyond “I like things that go boom” – entangles everyone from Anthony Hopkins’s exposition-spouting British Lord to Laura Haddock’s Oxford history professor, who has the important role of appearing in a sexy evening robe, so Bay can shoot her from such a low angle that she’s literally spilling out of her dress. (We can almost hear Bay’s heavy panting behind the camera.)

No one cares

Not one single actor pays much attention to what they’re doing, and can we blame them? Advertisements deploy more challenging scripts, and traffic cops offer more nuanced direction. Stanley Tucci, as an awkward and muttering Merlin, seems particularly preoccupied, perhaps calculating how many mortgage payments his eight minutes of screen time will cover.

Bay has repeatedly said The Last Knight is his Transformers last movie, though it appears he doesn’t gives a damn after part three. His formerly unique hyper-aggressive style of filmmaking – blunt but fluid, meat-headed in substance but subversive in style – was once put to such wildly gonzo use in all-time action classics The Rock, Bad Boys II and, yes, the first Transformers. Any trace of that style, any ambition at all, is absent here – as if a movie was directed by a very well-funded ghost.

Stupid movie, free headache

If nothing else — and really, there is nothing else — you get your money’s worth with “Transformers: The Last Knight.”

It’s bigger and louder and, if not longer (checking in at a mere two hours and 28 minutes), certainly stupider than ever before. Your ticket covers not only your 3D glasses but an inevitable headache, at no extra charge.

-BadSector-