TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT
The Autobots take a turn for the Arthurian in their new bombastic Baybuster.
Even multi-billion-dollar franchises need to shake things up from time to time. After spending the last decade befriending/killing humans, flattening cities, and fetishising the most beautiful cars on the planet to highly lucrative effect, the Transformers are heading to Camelot (or should that be Came-bot?) for the fifth instalment in Michael Bay’s mega-franchise. Yes, in a revelation that the Arthurian scholars never let slip, it turns out that King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table were in league with Cybertron’s finest – a legacy that forms the key narrative thread of The Last Knight. “One of the interesting things about the
Transformers mythology that people don’t realise is how deep it is,” explains Lorenzo di Bonaventura, a producer on the series ever since Shia LaBeouf’s Chevrolet Camaro revealed it had a mind of its own. “It goes back six billion years, and a lot of the classic elements of the mythology are to do with honour and virtue, and standing up for what’s right, so on that level, when you think about the larger concepts shared between the two, they actually mirror each other quite well. It’s when we get
into magicians, Merlin and things like that that it begins to deviate.”
If flashbacks to ye olde England sound like something of a handbrake turn for a franchise that’s better known for its unique brand of slow-motion Bayhem than the subtlety of its drama, that’s the intention. After Age Of
Extinction became the biggest international grosser of 2014 (thanks in part to a phenomenal performance in the Far East), a 14-strong writers’ room was assembled with a mission to brainstorm where the series should go next.
“One of the hard challenges to keep going on a franchise is how you keep yourself personally interested and excited about it,” di Bonaventura tells SFX. “We felt in a way that the three Shia LaBeouf movies were one thing, that the last movie was a transition out of them, and now we have the opportunity to stand on our own away from our other movies – not in a negative way, but how do we be different?
“So I think The Last Knight doesn’t feel like a fifth movie,” he continues, “it feels more like a first movie in a way. We’re a small group of people [managing the series], so having really smart people with us looking at it – turning it 10 degrees, sometimes 180 – provided us a way of telling a story that broke us out of the cycle we were in. So while some of the Transformers mythology is clearly thought through, if you have a story that is six billion years long, there are plenty of gaps to be filled. Part of what the writers’ room did is fill some of those gaps.”
ROBOT WARS
The decision to change things around should not be confused for an attempt to, ahem, transform the DNA of the franchise. “Why would we abandon the elements that have been successful?” di Bonaventura asks. “There are certain things you just have to have in the series.”
The action, for example, is set to be bigger than ever, with Bay shooting much of the movie with pioneering IMAX 3D cameras. And there’ll also, of course, be bloody great robots stomping around, transforming, doing their thing… The only problem is, they’re not particularly popular on Earth these days – that’s what happens when you get yourself a reputation for wiping out major conurbations. Autobot leader Optimus Prime was last seen flying through space, yelling, “I’m coming for you!” at his creators. We’re warned not to expect a cuddly or touchy-feely Prime this time out...
“Well, you can see in [one of the trailers] that Optimus and Bumblebee are coming to blows,” di Bonaventura teases. “Optimus is in a very difficult position. He’s been told that what he thought was going on is wrong, and that he’s partially responsible for the destruction of Cybertron, so he’s going to be given a choice in this movie: Earth or Cybertron. He really is not the hero that we’re used to, and yet we’ll completely understand his mission.”
Moving down the order of physical size, Mark Wahlberg’s Cade is back for a second spin behind Bumblebee’s wheel after debuting in Age Of Extinction. He’s joined by a strong British contingent including Sir Anthony Hopkins – who describes Michael Bay as “a genius” – and Da Vinci’s Demons’ Laura Haddock. All three characters will have a key part to play in the movie’s Arthurian quest.
“One of the things that’s consistently been very
OPTIMUS PRIME IS IN A DIFFICULT SITUATION – HE ISN’T THE HERO WE’RE USED TO
hard in this series is to give the human characters as much to do as we would like,” di Bonaventura admits. “If you think about it, you’ve got a six-foot character versus a 36-foot character who’s much more powerful – who’s more interesting? Often our human characters have been reduced to carrying this thing, or hiding that thing, so are they central to the story? By bringing in the Arthurian myth and what it meant in the past, it puts Mark Wahlberg and Laura Haddock as the two central characters in the story. For the first time their job eclipses anybody else’s.
“While Optimus is left with this big decision which is a big deal, those two characters have a very specific relationship that comes through in the story,” he continues. “It’s not the sword in the stone, but in the way that the sword gave that myth its central base, they become part of the whole mythology coming out of the Arthurian legend. I think it’s completely different to anything we’ve done.”
Given the licence to print money the Robots in Disguise possess – not to mention Hasbro’s obvious desire to shift toys – it would take a disaster of Cybertronian proportions for this to be the last we see of the Decepticons and Autobots. But where will the franchise go next?
“What The Last Knight has done is open a can of worms, in a good way,” says di
Bonaventura. “There’s lots of different ways to go now. We haven’t started the script for the sixth film yet, but my suspicion is that we’ll go in a different direction. I don’t think anyone knows where we’re going next, but we do know there were several ideas that came out of that writers’ room that we’re intrigued about, and we now want to spend more time talking about.”
Perhaps a bigger question is whether Bay, the director who’s shepherded all five
Transformers movies, will be back behind the camera. He’s hinted strongly that this fifth outing is a good place to stop.
“He’s more than hinted it!” laughs di Bonaventura. “He’s stated it several times now, but he’s also stated it several times on other movies. I believe that when he gets through the darkness and all the pressure on this, he may return, you never know. But one of the things that’s fun about working with Michael is that he looks at it that every movie has to top the one that went before. He likes excess and he likes pushing himself and everybody around him. So there’s no question we’re trying to make the best film of the series. We’ve all been enthused with that energy – we’ll let the audience decide what they think of it.”
The Last Knight opens on 23 June.