Transformers 6 (cancelled) Transformers One Bumblebee (by release date)
"I was around a campfire the other day regaling a bunch of out-of-towners with the story of Transformers 1-5 and they couldn't come up with one logical explanation as to why these movies are twelve-and-a-half hours combined [...] There are also terrible action pieces, shitty editing, no character development, an incoherent story, and there is also the illusion of female empowerment embodied by two characters who could have been way more awesome. So you can keep your truth, dick. We can't understand it or appreciate it."
— CinemaSins
"Here’s where the chorus of Critic-Proof Franchises kicks in. Michael Bay made this for fans of the franchise and not the notoriously-hard-on-it critics. Diehards will ignore that I liked the first film and parts of the third and fourth films (the second is still a cinematic abomination). I get it. We love to forgive the failures of franchises we adore. Even critics do that. But even fans of this series have to take a hard look at the outright, shocking laziness of this movie—one that does the bare minimum to get butts in seats. Even in bad action movies, there’s often a glimpse of artistic potential gone awry or attempts to entertain that just didn’t work. I began to actively try to find that here, to find a way to see how this went off the rails. I came to the conclusion that no one cared. There’s just so little effort to make sense or make it interesting, even for the fans. It was a contractual obligation and a paycheck. They could have called it “Transformers: Someone Needs a New Beach House.” "
— Brian, Tallerico, RogerEbert.com
Transformers: The Last Knight is a 2017 science fiction action film based on Hasbro's Transformers toy line. It is the sequel to Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) and the fifth installment in the Transformers film series. The film is directed by Michael Bay from a screenplay by Art Marcum, Matt Holloway, and Ken Nolan. It stars Mark Wahlberg reprising his role from Age of Extinction, while Josh Duhamel reprises his role from the first three films, and Stanley Tucci and Anthony Hopkins join the cast. Inventor Cade Yeager is gifted a Talisman by a dying Transformer knight, and is soon recruited by an eccentric British professor to save the world from the impending threat of Unicron.
It premiered on June 18, 2017, at the Odeon Leicester Square in London and was released in the United States on June 21, by Paramount Pictures. The film received negative reviews from critics, grossing $605.4 million worldwide against a production budget between $217–260 million and losing Paramount an estimated $100 million on the theatrical release with marketing and distribution costs factored in. A prequel, titled Bumblebee, was released in December 2018.
In 484 AD, Merlin finds the Knights of Iacon, a group of Transformers hiding on Earth, seeking their help to aid King Arthur and his knights. They hand him a staff and help Arthur defeat the Saxons, but warn Merlin to hide the staff.
In the present following the events of Hong Kong, Optimus Prime arrives on the ruins of Cybertron and meets the Cybertronian goddess Quintessa, who brainwashes him into becoming Nemesis Prime and sends him to Earth to retrieve Merlin's staff, which will restore Cybertron by taking Earth's energy core.
On Earth, a new paramilitary task force called the Transformers Reaction Force (TRF) continues to hunt Transformers, while some of its U.S. military personnel, including former NEST members Colonel William Lennox and General Morshower, are reluctantly against its actions. Cade Yeager, an ally to the Autobots, hides Transformer refugees in his junkyard. In a war-torn Chicago, Cade and Bumblebee meet a scavenger named Izabella and her Transformer companion, Sqweeks, before encountering a dying Transformer who gives them a talisman. The TRF confronts Cade, only to be stopped by Bumblebee, Lennox, and Hound before letting them go.
Megatron, having abandoned his Galvatron identity, his remaining Decepticons, and the U.S. government learn of the talisman's value and reluctantly join forces to retrieve it and track Bumblebee to Cade's scrapyard. While the Autobots and the Dinobots fend off the Decepticons and the TRF, Cade, his assistant Jimmy, Izabella, and Sqweeks deal with a swarm of TRF drones sent after them. Cogman, a human-sized Transformer, appears and invites Cade to the United Kingdom to meet his employer, Sir Edmund Burton, who is connected to the Transformers. Burton asks another Transformer, Hot Rod, to find Viviane Wembly, a University of Oxford professor.
Burton explains to Cade, Viviane, and Bumblebee that Transformers have been living amongst mankind for centuries, their existence once guarded by a secret society called the Order of Witwiccans, of which he is the last living member. The talisman can lead to Merlin's staff, buried in a Cybertronian spacecraft under the sea. Viviane is revealed to be the direct descendant of Merlin's bloodline and the only one who can activate the staff. The authorities discover them, forcing the group to flee. Following clues, while evading their pursuers, the group heads to the Royal Navy Museum, where they commandeer the submarine HMS Alliance, also a Transformer, to find the spacecraft while the TRF and the Navy SEALs tail them.
Burton contacts Seymour Simmons, both learning that Earth is Unicron, and the staff will drain the planet's life via an access point under Stonehenge. Locating the ship, Cade and Viviane find Merlin's tomb with Viviane activating Merlin's buried staff, awakening the Knights of Iacon. The TRF and Navy SEALs ambush Cade and Viviane to take the staff, but Viviane is forced to surrender it to Optimus, who has arrived to take the staff. Bumblebee, Cade, and Lennox engage Optimus, during which Bumblebee speaks in his voice for the first time after he is given a spare voice box, stirring Optimus's memories and freeing him from Quintessa's control. The Decepticons ambush Optimus and Cade and steal the staff, having aligned themselves with Quintessa. The Knights arrive to execute Optimus but yield to Cade and join the humans and the Autobots upon seeing Cade's talisman turn into Excalibur. Burton tries to stop Megatron from activating the staff at Stonehenge, only to be killed in the ensuing blast.
As Cybertron ravages Earth, using its thermal energy to reconstitute itself, the Autobots, Dragonstorm, and the humans launch a direct assault on Cybertron to defeat the Decepticons and Quintessa. Viviane removes the staff and stops the transfer. Optimus defeats Megatron while Bumblebee seemingly kills Quintessa. With both worlds saved but now attached, the Autobots leave Earth to rebuild Cybertron.
Meanwhile, Quintessa, who has survived, disguises herself as a human and approaches a group of scientists inspecting one of Unicron's horns and offers them a way to destroy him.
Why He is Nemesis Prime and This Movie is NOTHING
This film's plot is somewhat unoriginal, as it rehashed some of the plots for the first four movies.
Just like in Age of Extinction, the new designs for the Transformers are pretty illogical, as they barely even have vehicle parts on any of the neccessary spots, making their transformations nonsensical. This comes off as disappointing, as the first three films did a great job at this by putting vehicle parts in all the right spots.
Wasted potential (yet again) for new Transformers in this movie of Mohawk, Dreadbot, Nitro Zeus, Onslaught, Berserker, Hot Rod, Daytrader, and Infernocus.
The writing is very messy and poor because it took seven writers for this film's script, it's as if Michael Bay never really cared about these movies anymore.
The jump cuts during many non-action scenes are very choppy and inconsistent. They look like completely different shots when seen separately.
For example when Cade stops his car to talk to the sheriff, he says "Oh hey, chief!". The car was just stopping and surrounded by just when he says "Oh", and then there's a jump cut when he says "hey, chief!" The dust has disappeared.
Much of the events are pointless, confusing and nonsensical considering that the movie's plot is full of retcons, anachronisms, continuity errors, and even plot holes.
Megatron actually became in Galvatron in the last film, but now he's Megatron again with absolutely no explanation given.
Similarly, Colonel Lennox who also wasn't in the previous instalment reappears in this one with literally no explanation why.
Optimus claimed that he hasn't heard Bumblebee speak since the fall of Cybertron, even though he talked (though it was only maybe two lines) in the first movie.
Apparently, Transformers are born as babies but in the previous movie, Lockdown told Optimus "You think you were born? You were built. And your Creators want you back".
In the first movie, Optimus Prime says they learned Earth Language through the World Wide Web, yet in this movie, the transformers can talk English normally during the King Arthur era.
Speaking of which, after the first movie, Bumblebee doesn't talk in the other Transformers movies, but in here, he does without any explanation why. After he does however, he goes back to his pop-culture voice.
Cybertron was said to be destroyed in the previous movies, yet in this movie, it's actually still around, but dying.
When Bumblebee and Optimus are fighting on top of the alien ship, Cade's shirt is torn around the neckline and the arm. But after Cade saves Optimus from the Knights, his shirt is no longer torn.
In one scene Cade breaks open the glass of the dying Knight's ship, completely opening it up. In a shot later on, the glass is intact.
In the flashback scene when Sir Edmund tells about Arthur and his knights working together with the Transformers, the environment where the Round Table is placed is shown as a Gothic style cathedral ruin. In reality Gothic style didn't appear until the 12th century, so cc. 700 years later. The clothing also show similar anachronisms.
We see Merlin drinking out of a glass bottle with a grooved neck that is clearly for a screw on cap. That's at least a few hundred years ahead of its time.
While the submersibles are following the submarine into the alien space ship the Navy Seal says "we are about to lose radio contact".... radio waves cannot pass though water therefore radios are not used for under water communication.
The gravity of an approaching "planet-sized object" (namely Cybertron) would effect Earth, most notably massive tidal changes. However, the only changes seen are from physical impacts.
Towards the end of the movie Colonel Lennox states that the Osprey's flight ceiling is 12,000 ft and the target where the battle will be taking place is at 21,000 ft, "nearly double" and the air would be too thin for the Osprey's rotors to "bite". This is incorrect. The Osprey's operational flight ceiling is in fact 25,000 ft, well within the operational area.
When Bumblebee shoots Barricade in London, driving past a side road, you can see a normal police car next to a regular car waiting, but in the close up of the Decepticon crashing/blowing up on to that street the cars have changed.
Apparently, there is a secret society called the "Order of Witwiccans" dedicated to protecting Transformers and keeping them secret. However, Bumblebee is seen fighting in World War II, indicating that this conspiracy to keep them secret would not have lasted so long since the Nazis could have easily exposed them. To rub more salt on the wound, this scene attracted controversy as the battle took place at Adolf Hitler's headquarters. In reality, Michael Bay had draped swastika flags over Winston Churchill's (a brave Englishman who helped fight bravely against the Nazis and Adolf Hitler) home. This left WWII veterans appalled.
This also doesn't make any sense; it would've more sense to introduce it around the second Transformers movie. Keeping it hidden until the fifth movie makes no sense. This is also wasted potential to make the main human protagonist in the first three movies, Sam Witwicky, more stronger and likeable.
The movie also suggests that scientists Frederick Douglass and Harriett Tubman were part of this society, but CinemaSins pointed out that this wouldn't have made any sense as their knowledge would have been on more important stuff. Because of this, CinemaSins added 500 additional sins to the movie.
A little rapid hand-watch Transformer apparently killed Adolf Hitler for some reason?
Sir Edmund Burton says that an Autobot would pass on to every Witwicky and serve them, yet Sam Witwicky and his parents were shocked to know about the Transformers.
Chicago is still a destroyed city despite being rebuilt in the previous film.
Barricade somehow survived the Battle of Chicago with no explanation of how he escaped.
In the previous film, Lockdown mentioned that there are multiple creators. But in this film, Quintessa is the only creator.
Speaking of Quintessa, she is called the "Prime of Life". But in Revenge of the Fallen, it is stated that Optimus Prime is the last Prime (The Fallen and Sentinel Prime are both exceptions because The Fallen was the original Decepticon, while Sentinel was still in stasis on the Ark).
The biggest plot-hole of them all is when Megatron negotiates with Lennox about releasing certain Decepticons out of prison. which doesn't make sense since Megatron can free them himself or the Deceptions can free themselves since they're large robots. It doesn't help the fact that N.E.S.T. should have destroyed them so there's no reason for them to "arrest" them other than for making this scene. Also, how is it even possible to arrest one Autobot, let alone five Decepticons?!. The movie doesn't even explain why they were in there except for Dreadbot who, believe-it-or-not, was in for a friggin' bank robbery. Why would a Decepticon need to rob a human bank? That also goes unexplained.
The acting from good actors such as Mark Wahlberg as Cade Yeager and Stanley Tucci are still poor, even more than Shia LaBeouf as Sam Witwicky, and Laura Haddock also gives a bad performance as Vivianne Wembly.
Some characters from the previous film, peculiarly Grimlock, don't appear in this film.
The Dinobots are much flanderized and out of character. In the previous movie, they were brave warriors, but here they act more like as pets instead of brave fighting at all, they don't even fight in the final battle.
What's worse is that the movie is mashing fantasy/medieval with sci-fi, which is a huge missed potential for them to not fight or even have bigger roles.
Extremely cliched dialogue that tries to be deep, but instead comes off as cringeworthy. A major example being Cogman telling Cade "My master is fond of saying that all the important decisions in life often come down to just one moment." Which is also a false statement, as most of the constant important decisions one makes in life have nothing to do with one another and all are dedicated to a different situation that aren't connected to each other in the slightest.
Yet again, given that it was directed by Michael Bay, the film still continues overuses obvious explosion effects.
And speaking of Michael Bay, he still gives terrible direction again. He, like the sequels, ends up being nominated at the Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Director, but unlike the second and four movie and like the third movie, he never won the awards where he lost to Tony Leondis for The Emoji Movie (which came out the same year as this movie).
Some of the robots/transformers are way obvious rip-offs from Star Wars, such as Squeeks being an obvious clone of R2-D2, and Cogman being an obvious clone of C-3PO as stated by Crosshairs.
Unfunny humor such as the scene where they talk about how long it's been since Cade Yeager had sex.
Similar to Grindor from Revenge of the Fallen, most members of Megatron's crew are reused, for CGI models. This proves that the animators were too lazy to make new ones.
Similar to the fourth film, Michael Bay trolled fans by making them think that the Aston Martin and McLaren in London were gonna be new characters, which ended up being false.
The intense fight between Optimus Prime and Bumblebee ends with a Martha moment, with Bumblebee saying, "I am Bumblebee. I am your oldest friend, Optimus. I would lay down my life for you." just before Optimus could stab him.
There is no reason why or how Bumblebee suddenly started talking.
This actually makes Optimus change his mind and decides to become friends with Bumblebee and Cade because he hadn't heard Bumblebee's voice since Cybertron.
The soundtrack, while still pretty good as mentioned down below, isn't quite as memorable, compared to previous installments in the franchise.
It keeps switching aspect ratios. Unlike most of Christopher Nolan's movies, which switch from widescreen during dialogue scenes to IMAX during major action sequences or establishing shots, this switches from 1.85:1 (TV aspect ratio, close to IMAX), 2.00:1 (Univisium aspect ratio, popular on Netflix), and 2.35:1 (common cinema aspect ratio) at random points every second, even during conversations, which is very distracting and noticeable. It doesn't even help the fact it took six editors to edit this movie.
Speaking of said editing, the movie also has numerous frame-rate drops.
And speaking of the aspect ratios changing, this movie was released only a month before Dunkirk, which did it infinitely better than this movie.
The action sequences are so bland, lazy, poorly messed up and a step back from the previous installments and are very disorienting to watch.
False advertising: The trailers, posters, TV spots and promotion renders made it look like Optimus Prime was going to be the main antagonist of the film with the most notable example is him killing the Infernocons and him "fighting" the dragon-Knight since he has purple eyes. But he doesn't get the important role in the movie, before the third act. The trailer also suggests that Izabella is a major character, but she only has about one minute of screentime.
Speaking of which, the whole movie made it so extremely obvious that Optimus Prime is the evil Autobot right from the first time we see him on screen.
The poster also depicts Cade with a sword. However, the sword only appears during the final 40 or so minutes.
Just like A Good Day to Die Hard, the cinematography is completely lazy and terrible as makes it feel more like a direct-to-video and/or made for a TV movie.
So much unneeded padding, slow pacing and pointless filler that makes it boring to watch.
There's no character development for anyone, except for Megatron.
Just like the previous film, this film focuses more on establishing sequels than focusing on its own story.
The TRF (Transformers Reaction Force) serve little to no actual purpose until the final act (to quote CinemaSins' Everything Wrong With Transformers: The Last Knight "The TRF in this movie display omnipotence and ineptitude in equal portions.").
A TRF drone actually tried to wrestle Cade (this actually happened).
Optimus Prime's portrayal in this movie is still as problematic as in the previous sequels as he's still overly murderous.
Bad release date: It was released a few weeks after Wonder Woman and a week before Despicable Me 3 and a month before Spider-Man: Homecoming, which are far better movies than this and would do a lot better at the box office, causing this movie to flop, and kill the Bayformers series for good.
Since it ended the main Bayformers films on a sour note, the ending is completely abysmal and nothing more than shameless clichéd sequel-baiting which did not happen due to underperforming at the box office, as this film killed the main Transformers film series, and forced Paramount and Hasbro to focus on prequel or stand alone films instead.
Redeeming Qualities
Great voice acting from the Autobots, thanks to the cast reprising their roles.
Speaking of voice acting, Frank Welker, finally gets to reprise the role of Megatron (As he voiced him in the G1 series and Transformers: Prime).
The CGI is still very cool, just like the previous films.
Cade Yeager is still a tolerable protagonist, despite Mark Wahlberg's performance is not that great as mentioned above.
Unlike the previous film, the filmmakers managed to tone down the product placement and slow-motion sequences.
Although short, Optimus Prime's fight with Bumblebee is epic.
There are some funny moments, such as the scene where Crosshairs calls Cogman a "C-3PO rip-off", and Cogman replying to him by breaking one of his fingers, and when Bumblebee accidentally gets a female Siri voice.
That explains why Cogman is a C-3P0 rip-off as mentioned above.
Some memorable dialogue, such as:
"You need a bigger door!"
"This is so exciting! Oh no, this isn't my damn voice!"
While not quite as memorable as mentioned above, the soundtrack is still pretty good by Steve Jablonsky with outside assistance by Klayton (Celldweller).
Despite looking like a KSI Boss with Shockwave's head, Nitro Zeus became a fan favorite Decepticon.
Megatron's still a good character in the movie and a solid villain (being at his most serious in this film and having more understandable motives as well), and his design in this movie was praised by some old-school fans as he's a bit more faithful to his G1 version and the fact that he looks less feral and more ornate compared to the previous films.
Shane and Tess, who were both heavily disliked characters from the previous movie, are nowhere to be seen. Better yet, it was implied that they have broken up by Cade, who was concerned about what kind of guys she might run into at her college.
This pleases a lot of fans, especially due to how the fandom reacted about Shane carrying a piece of paper in his wallet to justify himself dating a 17-years-old girl.
Outside of explosion effects, the visuals are still well done.
The Paramount Pictures logo variant at the beginning of the film is cool.
Thankfully Bumblebee saved the Transformers franchise a year after this movie came out, and was much better received by critics and audiences.
Reception
Critical response
Transformers: The Last Knight was critically panned by critics, audiences, and fans alike with criticism focused on its excessive runtime, story, direction, narrative, pacing, performances, lack of character development, script, cinematography, and constant format changes throughout and is considered not only the weakest film of the Transformers series, but also one of the worst films of 2017, though the fight scenes, musical score, visuals, and some of the acting received some praise. It was the lowest-rated Transformers film with only a 16% approval rating in Rotten Tomatoes and an average 3.24/10 rating from audiences. The site critic consensus reads, "Cacophonous, thinly plotted, and boasting state-of-the-art special effects, The Last Knight is pretty much what you'd expect from the fifth installment of the Transformers franchise.". On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 27 out of 100, based on 47 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, the same score as the second film, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave a 75% overall positive score and a 55% "definite recommend".
Chris Stuckmann gave this movie rating of C-.
Angry Joe gave a 2/10, but they gave to a 4/10, the reason was because this film is kind of good and entertaining, even this movie is bad, that stated "It's so bad, but it's good".
YouTuber Lukimus Prime hates this movie and regards it as the worst Transformers movie of all time, giving it 4/10 in his trash talk review for the movie.
Box office
Transformers: The Last Knight was a box office bomb, (unless you count the 1986 animated film The Transformers: The Movie, making TLK the second Transformers movie to bomb), grossing $605.4 million, against a production budget of $217 million with an estimated loss of over $100 million for both Paramount and Hasbro, due to overshadowed competition from Despicable Me 3, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man: Homecoming, War for the Planet of the Apes, and Dunkirk with the latter making the less in worldwide earnings when comparing the five films but Transformers: The Last Knight had the least total in North America.
Due to the failure of the movie, its sequels were cancelled and Paramount and Hasbro decided to shift to making prequels to the first five films, starting with Bumblebee.
Accolades
Transformers: The Last Knight was nominated for ten Razzie Awards, but all lost to The Emoji Movie, The Mummy, Daddy's Home 2, Fifty Shades Darker, and Baywatch.
During the release of Ambulance, Michael Bay has revealed that he regretted making this film.
The theatrical version of the end credits for this movie is short, while in the digital releases, they are longer.
Before the film was released, there were rumors that the film's runtime was 182 minutes, however, Michael Bay denied the claims, stating that it's shorter than the last three movies by a lot.
