Transformers: The Last Knight ** (2017, Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Hopkins, Josh Duhamel, Laura Haddock) – Movie Review

So here we go on the fifth part of the long-running kids’ action adventure saga, based on the Hasbro toys. That idea might excite some kids but it fills a lot of grown-ups with dread.

Actually, it is more the second part, the sequel to the 2014 Transformers: Age of Extinction reboot, following the cruel, swingeing cull of the original cast. As with missing Brendan Fraser in The Mummy and Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man, Shia LaBoef is much missed from Transformers. This reminds me of just what an awful place Hollywood is.

Michael Bay is back as director, for the last time, he says. Star Mark Wahlberg is out too, after saying he’d probably do three or four more. They are making the right decisions. It is high time to move on.

Wahlberg made quite a good job of fronting the 2014 reboot, personalising a ridiculously CGI-led and CGI-dominated fantasy film, creating a human centre and beating heart of a little quasi family as desert auto-shop man Cade Yeager, with Nicola Peltz as his daughter Tessa and Jack Reynor as her boyfriend Shane Dyson. I was quite looking forward to the new adventure of this trio. But Peltz and Reynor are both cruelly dumped, with Tessa’s role reduced to being a character Yeager continually talks about and occasionally phones! Depressing, or what? I like continuity with my soap operas.

But, let’s say one thing about The Last Knight, it is a marvellous looking movie, with a state of the art production and visual effects, as befits the most expensive Transformers film, with a budget of $260 million. You could make 20 movies for this cost. Looking and being good, Gifted (2017) cost a low budget of $7 million. You could make 37 movies for this cost.

Understandably denied permission to shoot an explosion at Stonehenge, they simply built a set of Stonehenge. Why, because they can, because they can afford to. Why do we actually need Stonehenge at all, when we can have a much smarter-looking set of Stonehenge?

Oh, they did film at Stonehenge. That is Sir Anthony Hopkins actually there. And they did film at the door of 10 Downing Street. That is Sir Anthony Hopkins there. And that is Blenheim Palace, decorated as a Nazi headquarters for the World War II scenes, understandably upsetting British war veterans.

I would expect nominations, even wins, for Best Achievement in Visual Effects Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture. That would be richly deserved. There might also be a nomination, or even win, for a Sequel or Remake That Shouldn’t Have Been Made.

They had obviously no idea where to go with Transformers after Transformers: Age of Extinction. So they started up a writers’ room, and two desperate ideas were pitched – the Arthurian legend and the awful reality of World War Two. I’m not fond of messing with the Arthurian myth like this, but I hate the idea of trivialising World War Two, like Wonder Woman trivialises World War One. History isn’t a campy joke like this. What next, Wonder Woman and Transformers versus Adolf Hitler? Get me to the writer’s soon ASAP!

[Incidentallly, the WW2 setting unfortunately reminds us that Michael Bay made Pearl Harbor (2001).]

The Last Knight is as pointless and bewildering as can be imagined. I had no idea what was going on, not any time ever during the movie. It is absolutely, crazily surreal in its peculiar plotlines. Remember the wizard Merlin and King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table? How could you not. Every week there’s a new show or film about them. Enough already!

The movie starts 1600 years ago. That’s a long way back, but we’ve got two and a quarters hours of running time. Here the Transformers get to meet Merlin, or he him, and we find out that behind the Round Table there sat 12 Knights and behind them 12 Transformers. This idea is still doing my head in. Sadly we don’t really get to meet King Arthur (Liam Garrigan) properly. Guy Ritchie killed him off in his recent movie King Arthur.

[Spoiler alert] It ends with Wahlberg setting off in a submarine, parked conveniently as a tourist attraction by the Thames, finding Merlin’s watery grave, opening the tomb, and finding Excalibur, I guess, and now he’s The Last Knight. But now it’s good night from the Good Knight, because Wahlberg’s had enough. We’ve probably had enough, too, but I guess this juggernaut won’t end here.

I’ve been having this great idea for Transformers 6. Optimus Prime gets to meet Sherlock Holmes and Queen Elizabeth, maybe both Queen Elizabeths, I and II, as we are time travelling. Look, they’d better make Transformers 6 in the UK again. We need the money.

Wahlberg again makes quite a good job of fronting the show, though no acting is required. He runs and falls over nicely. And he gets to share some uncomfy screen time with a honking and hooting Hopkins, gilding the lily something shocking as Sir Edmund Burton, who holds the key to, well just about anything.

No idea why Hopkins is doing this (the film, or gilding the lily), but he is. They must have asked him to do it, so he has obliged. He really needs to do three or four of the above mentioned low-budget $7 million films to atone for this, and get back to some proper acting.

Laura Haddock is all jolly hockey sticks as the English upper-class, over-educated heroine Vivian Wembley. It is not the actress’s fault. She plays it as it is written. It is a horrible stereotype, but there it is. The previously capable Oxford-educated English woman melts at the sight of the sexy blue-collar American man and turns to mush. In real life Haddock is married to Sam Claflin, who seems much more suitable for her than Wahlberg.

The Brits are all given the cheesy comedy to do, complete with duff lines. Cue Maggie Steed as Viviane’s Grandmum, Sara Stewart as Viviane’s Mum, Phoebe Nicholls as Aunt Helen and Rebecca Front as Aunt Marie. I’m glad they are all working, but it is not good work. Americans find us funny. Not sure why. Oh yes, they don’t understand us. Transformers is over in the UK just to be touristy.

Weirdly, Josh Duhamel has survived the series, playing Colonel William Lennox. Now a bit grizzled looking and grey at the temples, Josh is as handsome as ever, posing grandly. He would have made a great hero for the series, But Josh doesn’t have star power. He’s got good billing this time, third, I think, and a fair amount to do, but his role is just as useless as ever. He’s a stand-and-watch and react cypher.

Who else? Wahlberg gets a new sidekick, a daughter substitute, in Izabella (played by the 15-year-old Isabela Moner). She’s an insistent pain, and a bit of a moner, but, luckily, she disappears for most of the movie. Santiago Cabrera has quite a lot to do as military man Santos, but it is to no avail. John Turturro is back as Agent Simmons. He seems to be in Cuba, but none of it makes any sense. Like the film it’s eye-catching, flashy, showy, globe-trotting and empty.

For a kids’ film, the action is quite strong and intense, which certainly helps to keep the film busy and lively.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

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