Last Knight less than meets the eye
Michael Bay’s latest Transformers effort is really loud, really long and really lame
There’s a scene in the new
Transformers where someone asks why endless waves of sentient robots keep crashing to Earth and causing mayhem. And it was at that point I realized this dreadful sci-fi series had become a metaphor for itself.
Loud, interminable and nearly incomprehensible, The Last Knight is like — what? Listening to a lecture on particle physics by Gilbert Gottfried? Cranking up an ancient phonograph to maximum volume and setting the speed to 162/3?
Close. But the experience of watching Transformers: The Last
Knight is best described as “like watching Transformers: The Last
Knight.” Except longer. By the time I got out, I thought I might have missed the next instalment, even though it doesn’t open until next summer. (It’s a standalone Bumblebee prequel, by the way, in case you want to know what life was like for a self-aware yellow Camaro back in the ‘80s.)
The plot is best ignored and should probably come with a mental health warning, but if I must ... Remember the first liveaction Transformers movie (10 years ago!) with the all-powerful Allspark? Or its sequel, Revenge
of the Fallen, with the all-powerful Matrix of Leadership? Or Dark
of the Moon, with the all-powerful Space Bridge? Or Age of Extinction, with the all-powerful element Transformium?
Well, firstly, congratulations on the memories; I had to look all that up, and I write about these things for a living. Secondly, forget all that, and get ready for the all-powerful Staff, which can only be found by the all-powerful Talisman, and is hidden in a sunken alien spaceship that can only be accessed by an ancient submarine. It’s as if Ridley Scott and James Cameron had a sci-fi symposium and then gave director Michael Bay all their worst ideas, duct-taped together.
The seeker of the Staff is a guy whose name sounds like a stiff drink — Cade Yeager, played by Mark Wahlberg in his second
Transformers outing. He shouts most of his dialogue, in part to be heard over the explosions, but also perhaps on the mistaken assumption that sound quantity trumps screenwriting quality.
The four-man writing team included professional script doctor Akiva Goldsman, whose biggest blunder was not declaring the screenplay dead on arrival.
Cade is paired with Vivian Wembley, the latest in a line of
Transformers hotties. Played by Laura Haddock, Vivian is a doctor of letters, although most of them are “Why?” and the occasional “Oh.” She and Cade go on a world-spanning rampage that destroys parts of London, most of Stonehenge, and whatever bits of the Pyramids survived the other movies.
They’re meant to be an item, although Bay really needs to learn that his preferred method of plot development — smashing two things together — may work on submarines, cars, robots and even planets, but is not guaranteed to create emotional intimacy. Mostly, Cade and Vivian just stare dumbly at one another, which at least preserves the all-important PG-13 rating in America.
There are a few returning faces like Stanley Tucci and John Turturro, the latter literally phoning in his performance from Cuba. But the main new character is Sir Edmund Burton, an expert in both Transformers and Arthurian legend, and played by another Sir, Anthony Hopkins. His face mostly registers disbelief, though whether for the size of his paycheque or the lunacy of his dialogue I couldn’t say.
Oh, and there’s also Isabela Moner as Izabella, a homeless Hispanic girl who brings along Sqweek, just the latest racial-stereotype-bot in the Transformers-verse.
I’m pretty sure the little rust bucket cries “Ay Chihuahua!” at several points in the film. There’s also a gaggle of Transformers old and new, including Jim Carter
(Downton Abbey’s head butler) as Cogman, a head case butler who alternates between obsequious and psychopathic behaviour. Gemma Chan provides the voice of Quintessa, the nearest thing this movie has to a villain if you don’t count the director.
The half-star I’m giving this pile of scrap is for the flashback scene where The Last Knight briefly transforms into Inglourious Transfourmer Basterds.
It was over too soon, which is not something that can be said about the rest of the film. There’s a lot of chatter from the characters about how things are over, but between its 2.5-hour running time, the upcoming Bumblebee movie and at least two more sequels, the end is not nearly as nigh as you might hope.