Transformers: The Last Knight (fifth movie)

[quigonkenny]

Say what you want, but "A Decepticon Raider in King Arthur's Court" was one of the original cartoon's best and most memorable episodes. I'm all for taking inspiration from G1.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Originally Posted by Chosen_Hero

^Ever think that Merlin (if that is where the movie is going) might be a scientist that uses Cybertronian tech and makes everyone think it's magic? And maybe what they called Dragons and other magical creatures were actually Cybertronians. And, as it has been said before in the movies that Transformers have visited Earth since ancient times and have been part of shaping human history and technological advancement, the story in the movies might not be the best but it's all there to make the pretty easy connections without the need to jump to "time travel".

Well, did you notice the question marks all over my comments? I posted that because I’m not sure about anything yet, and I’m not judging the product before it being made. And believe it or not, I also want this movie to be good, or at least a good enjoyable fun considering all the award-winning brain-cells involved in making the script. AoE is a giant torture to watch (thank god I didn’t see it in theaters) that it almost killed the remaining enthusiasm I got for the Bayformers which started sparking again after DotM. Yet many Bayformers fans argued that AoE is the best entry in the series. *shaking my head in disbelief*

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

We have a teaser:

YouTube

https://youtu.be/AntcyqJ6brc

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[Renegade334]

00:12 Mecha-King Ghidorah crossover confirmed.

[Faux Mecha]

i am not sure that was supposed to be Unicron or Gobotron (the home world of the Gobots) or both......

[Renegade334]

YouTube

https://youtu.be/rwDNaK-fwAM

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*sigh* Looks like Optimus is the new Sentinel...

I thought he was "reprogrammed" courtesy of this "maker", but it seems that he still made that choice consciously.

[quigonkenny]

Originally Posted by Renegade334

*sigh* Looks like Optimus is the new Sentinel...

I thought he was "reprogrammed" courtesy of this "maker", but it seems that he still made that choice consciously.

Assuming we're seeing things as they are in the movie, it looks like his eyes are changing as he's responding, so there's probably some mindfuckery going on.

[MrTerrorist]

These transformer movies plot doesn't make sense anymore. They keep retconing when the Cybertronians first came to Earth and who created them.

[B214]

They're preparing for a crossover with G. I. Joe.

[Seafoam]

Michael Bay is (supposedly) done after this movie, so I'm sorta hoping they just do a universal reset ending for this movie. I know that leaves a bad taste in everyone's mouth usually... but it's severely needed here, and G.I. Joe is already confirmed to get a reboot instead of using the old movie's universe.

[quigonkenny]

Originally Posted by Seafoam

Michael Bay is (supposedly) done after this movie, so I'm sorta hoping they just do a universal reset ending for this movie. I know that leaves a bad taste in everyone's mouth usually... but it's severely needed here, and G.I. Joe is already confirmed to get a reboot instead of using the old movie's universe.

Let's hope that if we get a full reset on Transformers, we get to go back to something more like G1, both in design and setting. I always liked the idea of our Autobots and Decepticons having been stuck on Earth for millions of years while things on Cybertron only got worse, nearly making their whole reason for leaving moot. And of course the G1 designs were so iconic. Much better than this over-complex CG mess.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Originally Posted by quigonkenny

Let's hope that if we get a full reset on Transformers, we get to go back to something more like G1, both in design and setting. I always liked the idea of our Autobots and Decepticons having been stuck on Earth for millions of years while things on Cybertron only got worse, nearly making their whole reason for leaving moot. And of course the G1 designs were so iconic. Much better than this over-complex CG mess.

The sad thing is, reboot won't happen as long as Bayformers movies make fucktons of dough. And with Paramount being in dire need of money after a long string of duds movies these past years, they're not gonna take "unnecessary risk" of rebooting the formula that's been giving them billions.

That said, I actually don't hate the movie's designs. Optimus, Bumblebee, Ironhide, Jazz, Ratchet, Arcee, Sideswipe, Megatron, Barricade, Brawl, Soundwave (the satellite ver.), Ravage, Laserbeak, Dinobots, etc look good. They just need more colors, more unique features and more solid & simple outer armors to make it better. It's a crying shame that the sequels' stories & direction suck Devastator balls coz I think the first Bayformers was a brilliant introductory movie (partly thanks to Steven Spielberg who reined Bay in before he let him loose on the sequels).

Edit:
And why the hell Optimus, Megatron & other transformers resort to mostly fighting and carrying melee weapons like medieval warriors since the climax of movie 4? Where are their advanced ranged weaponry that can take out a US military base with only few shots? Where are their jamming capabilities and sonic/EMP blast go since the first movie? We need more cannons, blasters, missiles, and lasers wielded by the transformers, not medieval weapons. This is not Iron-Blooded Orphans (cool series, btw).

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Latest Trailer:

YouTube

https://youtu.be/R4nrFuJedyk

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All I got to say is: we got ourselves a Parts-former .
*Those who are familiar with Gunpla should get the joke*

[MrTerrorist]

The Transformers Movies Keep Getting Weirder

[Chosen_Hero]

Originally Posted by Obelisk ze Tormentor

Edit:
And why the hell Optimus, Megatron & other transformers resort to mostly fighting and carrying melee weapons like medieval warriors since the climax of movie 4? Where are their advanced ranged weaponry that can take out a US military base with only few shots? Where are their jamming capabilities and sonic/EMP blast go since the first movie? We need more cannons, blasters, missiles, and lasers wielded by the transformers, not medieval weapons. This is not Iron-Blooded Orphans (cool series, btw).

Why do Gundams carry sword/maces/beam swords/lances/beam scythes/knives and shileds when they can just infinitely spam giantic beams or conventional ammo at each other?

Because close combat is cool as fuck.

I don't get why you would complain about one while defending the other like it makes more sense when both are guilty of the same exact thing.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Originally Posted by Chosen_Hero

Why do Gundams carry sword/maces/beam swords/lances/beam scythes/knives and shileds when they can just infinitely spam giantic beams or conventional ammo at each other?

Because close combat is cool as fuck.

I don't get why you would complain about one while defending the other like it makes more sense when both are guilty of the same exact thing.

I somehow missed your reply all this time.

As for reasons for my beef with Bayformers, there are a couple:

• Consistency: the transformers are first shown in the first movie with advanced weaponry that’s ranging from radar & communication jamming to arm-plasma cannon that can wipe out an entire US base in the opening scene alone. Yes, they also have melee & close combat weapons for when they can’t use their guns, just like the Gundams. Still, it’s established in every Gundam series that their guns & cannons can ran out of ammo, while Bumblebee’s arm-cannon seems to be able to function as long as it’s not destroyed which should be an indication of energy-based weapons of the other transformers. So, why not keep using them? IIRC Optimus had two big guns, one used bullet while the other is energy-based. That’s part of the reasons why I like TF1 and tolerate TF2 & TF3.
• It becomes even sillier when the villains actually bend to the plot and somehow forgot that they have ranged weapons earlier in the story. One example of that is Lockdown in TF4 who didn’t use his head-cannon and his other ranged weapons to its utmost potential and lost to the “Knight” Optimus and a bunch of humans in close combat, and finally killed by a sword just for plot’s sake. Just…why?

In Gundams, most MS pilots almost always use ranged weapons first and resort to melee weapons only when they can't use the ranged anymore. Heck, there are Gundams which are specialized for ranged battles and have little to no melee weapons such as: Gundam Heavyarms, Gundam Leopard, Buster Gundam, Stargazer Gundam, etc. They're proofs that the Gundam universe treat ranged-weapons seriously. Of course there are exceptions like Gundam Epyon that uses its special whip & uber-energy saber, and also all the MSs in IBO that prioritized the more effective ranged weapons because their universe is made that way from the start, unlike Bayformers.

[Renegade334]

Originally Posted by Obelisk ze Tormentor

I somehow missed your reply all this time.

As for reasons for my beef with Bayformers, there are a couple:

• Consistency: the transformers are first shown in the first movie with advanced weaponry that’s ranging from radar & communication jamming to arm-plasma cannon that can wipe out an entire US base in the opening scene alone. Yes, they also have melee & close combat weapons for when they can’t use their guns, just like the Gundams. Still, it’s established in every Gundam series that their guns & cannons can ran out of ammo, while Bumblebee’s arm-cannon seems to be able to function as long as it’s not destroyed which should be an indication of energy-based weapons of the other transformers. So, why not keep using them? IIRC Optimus had two big guns, one used bullet while the other is energy-based. That’s part of the reasons why I like TF1 and tolerate TF2 & TF3.

A Watsonian explanation as to the lack of energy-based weaponry might be the effect it has on the Transformers' own internal batteries/sparks/Energon supply. They probably can't sacrifice too much of it (unless they want to turn into a cranky arthritis-ridden, Jetfire-like bot) and kinetic/chemical-type weaponry is probably more economical.

The extradiegetic (Doylist, if you wish) explanation is that it simply looks cooler. If it's just a pew-pew-pew ballet, viewers will get bored. Shooter scenes tend to be less gripping than the more visceral grapples such as the forest battle in TF2.

• It becomes even sillier when the villains actually bend to the plot and somehow forgot that they have ranged weapons earlier in the story. One example of that is Lockdown in TF4 who didn’t use his head-cannon and his other ranged weapons to its utmost potential and lost to the “Knight” Optimus and a bunch of humans in close combat, and finally killed by a sword just for plot’s sake. Just…why?

To be fair, that head-cannon looks awfully awkward to use in CQB. It's a standoff weapon (a railgun from the looks of it) and the fact that it literally covers Lockdown's head (and his optics) in order to be fired probably also implies a loss of general awareness/viewrange (like looking through a straw - it literally causes tunnel vision). As for his grenades, I guess he can't use them without risking collateral damage or unless he's on an elevated position (like that factory scene where he kills Wahlberg's associate) and out of harm's way to begin with.

[quigonkenny]

Originally Posted by Renegade334

The extradiegetic (Doylist, if you wish) explanation is that it simply looks cooler. If it's just a pew-pew-pew ballet, viewers will get bored. Shooter scenes tend to be less gripping than the more visceral grapples such as the forest battle in TF2.

A "pew-pew ballet" would be a lot more interesting if the sound effects guys in the Bayformers movies were half as original as the ones in the G1 cartoon series. I so very much miss the sound of Optimus' ion blaster...

[Renegade334]

If you ever had a problem with the movies' "Earth was visited by Transformers before" lore, especially the way they keep adding these past meetings with every new movie, wait until you read this article that summarizes human-transformer history, it'll probably cause seizures or Tourette syndrome fits.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-completel...rth-1796111467

And, of course, spoiler warning!

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Here’s a review from a critic who actually knows how to have fun with Bayformers. But even he said that BF5 is the first Bayformers movie that is dull:

Spoiler for saving space:

Originally Posted by Forbes: Scott Mendelson

Transformers: The Last Knight is something I've never been able to say about a Michael Bay Transformers movie. It's... ordinary. While it looks gorgeous and has a few impressive action beats, it feels oddly run-of-the-mill and lacking much of what made the franchise stand out even as big-budget would-be blockbusters became more and more par-for-the-course. Yes, there is something to be said for Bay toning down some of his eccentricities and offering a more kid-friendly Transformers movie, but the film mostly lacks the jaw-dropping absurdity, spectacle and weirdness of the sequels. I'm glad I was able to take my older kids to see this one in glorious IMAX 3D without having to worry about inappropriate jokes and gruesome violence (and, for what it's worth, having never seen any of these films before, they loved it), but there is nothing to replace the utter madness contained in the previous installments. Whether or not it's objectively "worse" than Revenge of the Fallen, it's surely the one I am least likely to ever watch again.

The film starts on an appropriately nutty note, with a flashback to the time of King Arthur and Merlin (played by a cameo-ing Stanley Tucci as a cynical alcoholic) which eventually involves a giant fire-breathing dragon transformer. Okay, so far, so awesome. And then we get an introductory scene for Isabela Moner's Izabella as she protects some uninvited guests playing around in post-invasion Chicago. This stuff is solid, offering a kind of Amblin vibe while offering a Transformers movie where the lead is a young girl. But once the government attacks and Cade (Mark Wahlberg) shows up to the rescue, things slow to a... well, a crawl would be an understatement. Wahlberg is fine here, and the film succeeds in giving him some poignancy without resorting to fridging his daughter from the last movie (she's away at college and he's on the run as a protector of the remaining Transformers), but Vivian goes from proverbial lead to a tag-along sidekick.

You start to think this is a Force Awakens type game, where the young woman is the real new hero and not the grizzled franchise veteran, but she vanishes after the first act and barely returns even at the very end. Either there was some serious strife about the screenplay or Moner is being set up as a hero for the next round of Transformers films, but either way the picture essentially trades one young female sidekick for another. The second act revolves around one Sir Edmund Exposition Burton (Anthony Hopkins, having a grand old time in an arbitrary role that seems to have been crafted more for the trailers than the movie) and one Vivian Webley (Laura Haddock), an Oxford scholar who ends up playing a pretty significant role in the final battle. But if they wanted to give 46-year old Mark Wahlberg a 31-year old love interest, they could have just brought Megan Fox back.

Haddock is fine, but the film can't decide how far to take its minor inversion on the whole "chosen one" trope at the expense of its top-billed star. We also get some nigh-incomprehensible schtick which takes forever to explain quite simply that Optimus Prime has been convinced by Quintessa to help destroy the Earth so that Cybertron can be reborn. So, yes, Optimus Prime is barely in the movie and you've seen 99% of his action beats in the previews. As we learned in Revenge of the Fallen, where Optimus was dead for an hour or so, the Peter Cullen-voiced leader is the only truly interesting bot of the group (I would pay a lot to listen to him do a reading of "Go the F*** to Sleep). When he's not around, we're very bored. And it doesn't help that none of the characters are allowed to engage in the kind of over-the-top eccentricity that gave this franchise its one-of-a-kind charm. Prime is still a wonderful visual creation, and the picture comes to life when he's allowed to cut loose, but there is shockingly little real action in the film.

There copious scenes of folks running to and from or trying to enter one space ship or another, but there are stunningly few scenes where on Transformer shoots or beats up another Transformer. The film doesn't look remotely cheap, and if anything the film doubles-down on the (sadly progressive) pro-immigration metaphor brought about in Age of Extinction (the first two sequels were neocon parables about how we were right to invade the Middle East and should never leave). But this is the first time since the first movie where it feels like the bots are being held on the sidelines in favor of the human characters. And since the humans are pretty dull this time around (you've also seen 99% of Izabella's hero moments in the trailers), and the dialogue is almost entirely expositional, The Last Knight is something that a Transformers film has never been before: dull.

For 85 minutes, from when Wahlberg and Moner make their escape to when Optimus finally pops back up on the grid, the movie just drifts from one arbitrary plot point to another, without any real direction, urgency or sense of purpose beyond arguing that its adult human leads are fulfilling some kind of destiny. Even the (comparatively few) action scenes fail to impress, with nothing on the scale of Revenge of the Fallen's forest fight, Dark of the Moon's Chicago invasion or Age of Extinction's mid-film spaceship escape or climactic dino battle. I wasn't expecting much from Transformers: The Last Knight, but I darn well expected super-duper action sequences, esteemed actors playing quirky characters spouting ridiculous (or potently political) dialogue (Stanley Tucci and Kelsey Grammar are genuinely good in the last film), some unintentionally offensive moments and a third-act showdown that would make my eyes bleed in glorious IMAX 3D.

I don't necessarily want to say that I missed the racist robots or conversations about the minute details of Texas's "Romeo and Juliet" law, but the filmmakers forgot to replace those elements with anything else of equal or greater entertainment value. This is the first Transformers movie that seems restrained, both in terms of action spectacle and goofy character work. And while it's a more child-friendly confection (there is no lechery, almost no human cruelty and very few on-camera human deaths), it also skimps on anything resembling drama and the gonzo spectacle that is this franchise's stock-and-trade. It turns out, if you take away the stuff that fans and critics have complained about for the last ten years, there isn't much to recommend and you end up with a Transformers movie little different from any number of conventional big-budget studio franchise pictures. Be it due to the film being it sacrificed to the gods of cinematic universe world-building or merely the result of a filmmaker with nothing left to offer in this sandbox, this is the first Transformers picture that feels like it was made on an assembly line.

Transformers: The Last Knight may see itself as the Fast Five of the franchise, but it ends up resembling Saw V. Game over.