Transformers 5: the last straw…
IN THE words of Detox from RuPaul’s Drag Race: “I’ve had it, officially!” The fifth instalment in the Transformers franchise brings more bad humour, doubles up on the visual noise and is one of the worst movies this year.
I have been a Transformers fanboy since I was a child. When I say fanboy, I mean FANBOY. I can recite episodes from Beast Wars, Beast Machines, Transformers the anime series, Transformers Energon, Cybertron and Unicron. Not forgetting the amazing Transformers Prime spin-off series that shows how amazing the characters from the movie can actually be.
Under the direction of Michael Bay and whatever 12-year-old writes the scripts, a little piece of my soul breaks every time I leave the cinema after one of the movies. The first film was not bad. However, every film since then has been a pile of garbage. I slept through most of the third one because it made no sense and was an explosion fest.
Transformers: The Last Knight is yet another explosion-filled, humourless, two-and-a-half-hour waste of time. The really sad part is that in the hand of anyone else this could actually be one of the best film franchises. However, the fact that Michael Bay cares about the Transformers as much as Melania loves the Trumpster is infuriating. For example, Optimus Prime and Megatron are collectively in this film for 20 minutes. You read right. In a two-and-ahalf-hour movie, the supposed main protagonist and antagonist are on screen for 20 minutes!
This is the biggest problem with the franchise: Bay refuses to give any real personality to any of the Transformers – except when he makes them an egregious stereotype. Most of the films focus on pointless human characters who do nothing except waste screen time.
Remember that annoying little girl in the trailers, Izabella (Isabela Moner): she serves no purpose whatsoever. She only adds to human clutter with no desirable story arc or useful skill.
As for the script, even Sir Anthony Hopkins couldn’t do anything with Bay’s Michael Bayisms.
The way Bay has bastardised the Transformers mythology is infuriating. I’m fine with directors and writers taking something and adapting it for a film. However, when you have a rich mythology with interesting characters and a compelling story, why ignore all of that to create something that is illconceived and makes no sense?
Nothing in this film makes sense. Why are humans able to capture highly advanced giant sentient robots from a different planet? How has no one noticed that Transformers have been on the planet since World War II? Why is the fate of two worlds left up to a human descendant of Merlin? Why is Optimus Prime reciting a monologue when the Earth is about to be destroyed? Why does Optimus Prime still say “I am Optimus Prime”? We know who you are. Stop talking and go save the world, please.