Transformers: The Last Knight
Transformers: The Last Knight
Transformers: The Last Knight
变形金刚5：最后的骑士
Directed by:
Michael BayCinematography:
Jonathan SelaComposer:
Steve JablonskyCast:
Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Hopkins, Josh Duhamel, Laura Haddock, Isabela Merced, Santiago Cabrera, John Turturro, Stanley Tucci, Peter Cullen, Jean Dujardin (more)VOD (3)
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Transformers: The Last Knight is the fifth instalment in the film series based on the 1980s cartoons. With the battle between the human race and the Transformers raging on, mechanic and single parent Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) forms an alliance with English Lord Sir Edmund Burton (Anthony Hopkins) in an attempt to figure out why the Transformers keep returning to Earth. Meanwhile, Autobots leader Optimus Prime (voice of Peter Cullen) learns he was responsible for the death of his home world Cybertron. Desperate to make amends, he returns to Earth in search of a mysterious artefact which could bring Cybertron back to life and will seemingly do anything to achieve his goal. The cast also includes Laura Haddock, Stanley Tucci, Isabela Moner and Tyrese Gibson. (Paramount Home Entertainment)
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“I don’t know what you’re smoking in that pipe, man.” That's exactly what I missed in Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur – a three-headed robodragon! Michael Bay has never known moderation, nor has he ever had any reverence for narrative logic or respect for the limits of good taste, but he ostentatiously mocks them only in The Last Knight. However, he only rarely attempts to mask the imbecility of his ideas with self-parodic exaggeration and a knowing wink at the viewer. It is not enough to show him a drunken medieval wizard. He has to make him say something along the lines of like “I’m drunk” and turn up the bottle. One of the few hints of self-awareness is Cade’s remark about the striptease outfit worn by Viviane Wembly (a name straight out of a Moore-era Bond film), a holder of three academic degrees with perfect body proportions, who is dressed and photographed through most of the film so that we notice her legs, ass and breasts (expensive sports cars are traditionally also the objects of similar fetishisation). ___ The screenplay was apparently based on a recording of a conversation among a group of teenagers about everything that they would like to see in their dream movie. An update of the Arthurian myth with robot knights? Sure. The watch that killed Hitler? Why not? Dinobots breathing fire and vomiting police cars? You got ’em. Anthony Hopkins acting like an adolescent? Of course. This literary jumble was subsequently entrusted to a hyperactive child named Michael Bay, who has enough trouble sustaining an idea and maintaining causality between individual scenes, let alone across a two-and-a-half-hour narrative. Even though I conscientiously took notes throughout the film and paid maximum attention to what the characters were saying and doing, I cannot reconstruct the plot a mere hour (let alone a day) after the screening so that there aren’t numerous gaps in logic and a number of unanswered questions such as “how did character X get from point A to point B?”, “what role did characters Y and Z play in the narrative?”, "what made anyone assume that anyone else would act that way?” I really don’t know what John Turturro and a teenage girl with a robot conspicuously reminiscent of WALL-E were doing in the film, or why a Transformer named Hot Rod attempted to speak with a funny French accent (if we ignore the fact that Bay apparently finds national, ethnic and gender stereotypes funny). I suppose the filmmakers didn’t know either, assuming that the target audience (kids up to the age of 15) would not ask similar questions. ___ At the same time, however, I spent the whole time wondering if perhaps Michael Bay was ahead of his time and made an avant-garde masterpiece, the most technically sophisticated bit of Dadaist art ever, which viewers will admire in a few decades just as much as we admire Man with a Movie Camera today. If The Last Knight can evoke anything other than a feeling of apathy and intellectual defeat (because you have failed in your attempt to find any meaning or order in it), it is amazement at how it looks from start to finish (at least in 3D and IMAX). It remains true that few people are able to direct such epic, uncluttered and breathtaking 3D action scenes like Michael Bay, who can no longer be bothered to take the story into consideration. And why should he? Story is dead, long live the cinema of (purely non-intellectual) attractions! It was astonishing and I was royally entertained, but if I had to watch it again, my head would explode. 60%
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Maybe it’s a bit more moderate and not as soul-destroying as the fourth film, but it’s still the worst film of the series, and of Bay's entire production line. Everything that ever made his films bad is multiplied here to monstrous proportions. The appearance is as polished as a Mercedes prototype and as voluptuous as the curves of Oxford doctor Laura Haddock. Every (and I mean every, as I realized after an hour) shot is over-stylized kitsch, which is also subordinated to the fact that if the protagonists are supposed to stand in the counter-shot of the falling sun, the sunset will last the whole day (check your watch during the finale). And somewhere beneath the surface of this twisted fetish is a plot that makes not a drop of sense. The series has never been brimming with deep intelligence, but it has always balanced it with a certain amount of craziness and lowbrow fun (Devastator's balls). Here, the plot goes nowhere for the first hour, and with the move to England, it loses the last vestiges of normal creative progression about building, development, continuity, and at least a drop of logic. Everything is absent, and even though Anthony Hopkins feels this is one big creative misstep, he nevertheless enjoys it with sloppy elegance. And that's it. Michael Bay is the last knight of cinematic ridiculousness.
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Absolutely unnecessarily overcomplicated trash and the worst Transformers ever. Seriously. I liked the previous film, but this is not so much a jump as a fall down, which is not saved even by the special effects or action and it’s nowhere near as good as any of the previous films. This time people do not matter to the screenwriters or the director at all, the storyline is a downright parody (but unfunny)... And on top of that, it's awfully long. It’s too bad, I was expecting to have fun.
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Digital Bayfest. Each shot could make great wallpaper. Tony Hopkins in cool slow motion strides toward Stonehenge to destroy Megatron, a metal dragon spewing fire, Bumblebee slaughtering Nazis, Optimus chopping off heads etc. a visual feast from start to finish. It’s just that it’s so exhausting to watch. No solid ground to grip on to, the storyline is confusing. It jumps from character to character. Actors roll off their lines, but say nothing to the viewer. The finale is probably the biggest caning ever in Transformers, but it’s so damn difficult to reach it. Even the TV cartoons thirty years ago made more sense. Jablonsky’s music however is awesome. He gave it his best.
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151 minutes. Of that, some 60 minutes could go immediately. And cut the rest. And just leave the finale. And throw that out, too... The Fifth Transformers were a pain to watch. Michael Bay more or less does what you expect him to do, but otherwise it's a schizophrenic spectacle. At one point it feels like a kids' movie. then we get some big military sci-fi, followed by a teen comedy featuring Anthony Hopkins instead of Stiffler, and then there's some robot carnage for a while. Bayhem works properly. If it entertained you before, it will entertain you this time. Unfortunately Transformers loses on all other fronts. The characters fail to engage, the humour is hammy, the plot moves in weird jumps so that most of the time I had no idea what was happening on screen or whether Mark Wahlberg and Josh Duhamel were already buddies or still adversaries. And I really can't say that I remember anything positive from those two and a half hours. So, in the end, I was most impressed with the opening hour, which doesn't even try to pretend to have any purpose other than to introduce as many cute little robots as possible taking a toy store by storm. This cynical and pragmatic approach deserves respect.
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Photo © Paramount Pictures
