Surreal, yet spectacular
The title explains the choice of the principal setting: England, that green and pleasant land, bookends the latest chapter of The Transformers which hurtles at breakneck speed over several time zones across the globe. Helmed with characteristic pyrotechnics by Michael Bay, the film incorporates the legendary Knights of the Round Table as the backstory of the Transformers and their nemesis, a malevolent female “deity” who promises to restore their home planet if they pulverise planet Earth which she has renamed Unicorn.
First, they must acquire a number of mysterious objects from the Arthurian kingdom: a mystical talisman which attaches itself to widower Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg). In Bay’s re-imagining of Arthurian lore, the prologue transports viewers to prehistoric Stonehenge and 4th century Cornwall where Merlin (Stanley Tucci) is no wizard at all but a drunk who connects with the Transformers hiding in a cave. They give him a wondrous staff and a dragon to help Arthur and his Knights.
As the script tells it, the Transformers have been present at almost every crucial period in history; starting as back up for Arthur’s Knights, Galileo, WW1 and WW2, and finally, modern day (dystopian) US of A and UK, where the Round Table has surfaced 1600 years after Camelot.
It’s all very genteel and upper-crusty in Bay’s Britain. None of those messy multicultural streets stained with the blood of innocents shed by murderous jihadis. One stately residence is inhabited by an Earl (Anthony Hopkins) who’s into the Transformers. There’s a Merlin descendant in the shape of a beauteous Oxford don (Laura Haddock); only Miss Wembley doesn’t know it and tells little children Merlin and Arthur are non-existent. We are not amused when she sneers at Cade’s self-imposed celibacy.
Well then. Everything rushes along on epic Bay-esque scale. The British PM is insulted and the US 5th Fleet sails into British waters. Spectacular battles are also fought in outer space where the sets are just as surreal as the American junkyard, the White Cliffs of Dover, the Deceptions. And oh, the faceoff between Optimus Prime and Bumble Bee.