Movie Review - TF5 The Last Knight

[griffin]

Transformers 5 - The Last Knight

Release in Australia - June 22nd 2017 (advance screenings June 20th)

SPOILERS (seriously, if you haven't seen it yet and plan to, why are you looking at a review topic about it?)

Post your reviews, thoughts, comments, and vote on the poll... and/or give a score out of 5 or 10.


http://www.toycollectors.com.au/news/2017/062001.jpg

[DELTAprime]

I'm looking forward to the spoilers just so I can know the jist of the story. But I don't plan to see it in cinema.

[Paulbot]

I have one question: did the aspect ratio keep jumping for everyone else (between angles in a scene!) or did I get a cinema with a bad print? It's one thing to go tall for the imax battle scenes but to change at random between points of view shots? I mean, at a basic film making level that's unforgivable!

Actually, make that two. At the end in big bold above the title top billing letters, the credits said Stanley Tucci was in this? Um, did I miss his cameo when I took a toilet break during the submarine adventure? Wait never mind IMDB solved this one for me. I knew that was someone I recognised under the makeup

[Polursine]

Thoroughly enjoyed it. Can't rate movies for shit.
Few gripes.







Nemesis Prime as a non-clone?? Why not have the original Optimus imprisoned, Quintessa clones him, which results in Bumblebee killing him, everyone being sad, then loljokes he's actually alive again.

All this hype over Hot Rod for what?

Soo. About that Megatron naming again? Did he renounce his Galvatroniness?

Onslaught and Mohawk lasting bugger all. Considering the former is a tactician.

Drift and Crosshairs did what now in the movie at all?

Grimlock not in the final battle (especially considering he's a Knight and all). Did we see Swoop/Strafe at all? Where'd the mini dinos come from?

Cogman didn't get to exercise his Headmaster skills. Coulda combined with the Astin Martin and did a few swings of the sword. Nor did Zeus Nitro get his fabled/wanted head taken off by Cogman either

What did Dragonstorm do after dropping Optimus back into battle?

Ended a little disappointingly. Much better than DotM or AoE mind you. Even had a pseudo end credits scene :O

[BigTransformerTrev]

I'll pop up a proper review when I get a chance but I thought it was damn fun! :D

[lfpnrg]

I'll probably check it out again before I gather my thoughts but I found the movie quite enjoyable.

[CaminusPrime]

Ok well so i did enjoy that movie, Cogman and the comedy overall was pretty on point it this one. Not as cheap as usual. Ended very well in my opinion. My complaints are that there was a ton of potential that was wasted and lack of context, specifically on the megatron(/Galvatron???) topic.
Hot rod's accent will likely be dropped in the future and they kinda hinted at it.
Cybertron was tiny, like same size as the moon, tiny. Should have been to scale like DOTM
Very much screwed with continuity at times, if they had an extra half an hour could have contextualised it that much more. Like where megatron came from specifically.
Onslaught was a waste, even drift commented "can't get anymore dead than that" also drift is MIA in the last scene, completely gone, did he die? Bumblebees voice is great.
Submarine, was it a transformer? I thought it was but it did literally nothing after going from A-B....
Simmons was legnedary, it was good to see some old faces back.


Thinking back, yes I absolutely enjoyed that movie, will likely see it again while it's still at the movies. But I do think it could have been that slight bit longer to properly contextualise everything properly. I really hope there's like some deleted scenes or something. An extended directors cut, just make it longer. Everything in the movie was great! It just felt cut back, overly trimmed i suppose. The ending fight was pretty short admittedly but it was good in my opinion. It sets up the next movie quite smoothly. Also no after credits sequences or anything. My friend and i waited until it was completely over which surprisingly credits were like a minute long.

Summary: Good yet few context flaws and wasted potential. Would see again but it left me wanting more

[DELTAprime]

I have one question: did the aspect ratio keep jumping for everyone else (between angles in a scene!)

That drives me insane in AoE. Did it also switch from digital cameras with no film grain to film cameras with obvious film grain?

[griffin]

The cinema I was in was over half empty, so it doesn't look good for this one. If it was looking like it would do well, the seats would have been sold out, as would Thursday.
There was a lot of mild humour in this one, and the audience seemed to respond accordingly... but it was all just way too confusing and disjointed to enjoy.
There was so many things that could have been left out just to speed up the movie (like the whole WW2 plot device), and reduce the number of things that didn't make sense or wasn't explained.
There were a number of times when robot characters would appear and disappear without explanation (like Wheelie, Cogman and even Optimus at the end, flying off and then later seen riding Dragonstorm)... and once again, a number of Decepticons were killed off quickly without much screentime or lines. It's no wonder we don't have many Decepticon toys... and one of the few Decepticons who has a toy (Berzerker), had about 5 seconds on screen and didn't even transform.

The big twist is something that a lot of fans might not be happy with, because when it was introduced in the TFPrime cartoon, it was hated by the fandom for re-writing the mythology behind the character of Unicron. It was as if one of the new writers in the writers room had watched TFPrime and thought that the character of Unicron was only ever in the core of Earth.
It does set up the likely plot for the 7th Transformers movie (after the Bumblebee movie), with Unicron still there, and Quintessa on Earth still wanting to destroy him... and Cybertron is still in orbit of Earth.
So much for the advertising saying that it was the last chapter and the final battle. If they do a reboot for the 6th or 7th movie, all of those remaining plot elements will be left unresolved.
It was good to see that Barricade had his "Punish and Enslave" motto on him, and I think on the knuckledusters... despite the car on-set having "Protect and Serve" seen on it.
And like the first movie, he disappears before the end of the movie, so he's still alive somewhere... and so is Megatron.

One thing I found really bad with the editing was near the end when Cade and the soldiers left the ship that came out of the ocean, and met up with the black guy and the girl, the knights and Optimus left the ship with Cade, but they were running with the black guy, to meet Cade. Um... they were on the ship together, but now they were meeting up just because it probably looked good visually to film it like that.

Also, if Merlin is a Witwiccan, which becomes Witwicky in the present day, and Viviane is the last surviving genetic relative of Merlin... does that mean Sam and his family are officially dead? Or did I misinterpret Sir Burton's rambling of Merlin's family tree?

There is a lot to rant about, but I can't be bothered. Those of us who went with me tonight, spent about an hour chatting about various things... and I'd prefer to see what other people think about it.

For me, I thought it was interesting, and just above average, but equal worst with TF4. (at least we didn't have cube-forming bots this time)

I give it a 6 out of 10.



Actually, make that two. At the end in big bold above the title top billing letters, the credits said Stanley Tucci was in this? Um, did I miss his cameo when I took a toilet break during the submarine adventure? Wait never mind IMDB solved this one for me. I knew that was someone I recognised under the makeup

Yeah, I only recognised him when he was talking to the red knight bot... it took a while because of all the hair. :p
It reminded me that I heard that he was in this movie, but didn't realise he was going to be a new character. It's odd to have an actor do two different characters when it has nothing to do with the story (like being distant relatives), but at least it isn't as bad as the two Morshowers, who are supposed to be different characters.



Cogman didn't get to exercise his Headmaster skills. Coulda combined with the Astin Martin and did a few swings of the sword. Nor did Zeus Nitro get his fabled/wanted head taken off by Cogman either


I was really hoping that Bay telling people at the Q&A event that he wasn't able to do it (http://www.otca.com.au/boards/showpost.php?p=564815&postcount=171), wasn't true, but unfortunately it didn't... which is a waste of a gimmick (a gimmick that must have been in the script for Hasbro to put it in the two toys, and for Sir Burton to call him a Headmaster when he first met Cade and Viviane.

[doublespy]

Fully enjoyed the 'bot scene and action. There were some fantastic transformation sequences. Plot wise it's arguably one of the better in the franchise, right next to movie 1; but that's not hard to achieve really.

If I'm not mistaken this one has the most swear words in the franchise to date? Then why the f include two kid-friendly characters in Squeaks and Isabella, who literally did f all. Squeaks didn't even transform??:confused:

I love Cogman, and was fully expecting him to go full headmaster (he was even introduced by Hopkins' character as one), but he never transformed.:confused:

The knight designs are freaking cool. Wish they were better utilized/translated into toys. Now I can't wait to get my hands on Dragonstorm.

The Decepticon suicide squad is also pretty awesome. Although for a minute I thought Nitro was Shockwave.

[GoktimusPrime]

It was... okay. I would rate it as the best live action TF movie sequel (i.e. best other than TF1), but that's not saying much. :p Anyway, I always like to start my reviews on a positive note, so...

PROS
That prologue scene.
Once the story got traction the action was pretty good. It didn't feel like it kept on being punctuated by so many useless and unfunny moments like in some of the other movies. The pacing was reasonably good in that it kept events moving fast enough.
Simmons, who's always just been an exposition-guy, even just played his role literally over the telephone. They didn't need him running around being peed on or showing us his butt or sitting under Transformer janglies etc. - stuff that just bogs down the narrative. He mostly just appeared when he needed to. These sort of subtle shifts really helps improve the pacing of the story.
Embedding Transformers with human history even further was also pretty neat, although some of it raises some continuity questions.
Some of the other people that I spoke to after the film said that they liked Cogman because he's just such a crazy dude... not personally my thing, but if you like that sort of thing then I guess that's cool.
The Decepticons now transforming more properly again and not like flying blocks! And this is the first live action film where Welker plays Megatron (as Megatron).
The story direction feels like it's trying to become more advanced, particularly from a scifi POV. I like how the movie continues straight from Age of Extinction and the continuity between these two movies mesh pretty well (although there are some continuity clashes with the first 3 films). It's good to see that the movies are now establishing events that lead onto the other as it shows some form of foresight rather than just making random and often continuity-clashing crap up (e.g. how the premise of RotF and DotM contradict each other).
No overtly drawn-out inappropriate humour! No-one got peed on, humped, drugged etc. There was some moments of innuendo but they were, for the most part, relatively more subtle (by Bay standards) and brief. Except for one scene it didn't really stall the narrative too much. Seeing Sam Witwicky's "Ladiesman217" avatar was pretty funny. :D
I liked how Nemesis Prime was Optimus Prime corrupted instead of being an evil clone. I really do. The evil clone thing would've honestly been stupid IMO because there's no tragedy in it. Here, Nemesis Prime isn't an evil and thus disposable clone, he's actually Optimus Prime himself. And although he was under Quintessa's control, Prime is still held accountable for his actions (both by the Knights and himself). Thus there is further impetus for Prime to make amends in the final act.
The antagonists' motives have gone back to what they were in the first 3 films - they want to save Cybertron. But now their motives are arguably more defensible because they also want to destroy Unicron. I wasn't sure what Galvatron's motivation was other than just to destroy stuff for the pure sake of it (which makes no sense).
Human technology further mixing with retrofitted Cybertronian tech.
Not nearly as much shameless product placement as previous films. There were some Chinese brand names appearing and that one shot where the baby Dinobot brings Cade a bottle of Bud Light - and naturally vehicle logos - but otherwise there wasn't too much of it.
Optimus Prime and Megatron not dying. Cos really, it's gotten old. Also, the way that Optimus Prime throws Megatron out is reminiscent of how Rodimus Prime chucked Galvatron out in TFTM. :)
Quintessa's godlike power and seeming immortality. Really makes her a far more menacing threat.
When Hopkins' character enters 10 Downing Street via the secret entrance, he pushes a panel with Latin writing on it which appears to be a quote from Cicero: "Quid enim potest esse tam apertum tamque perspicuum" - the rest is cut off but the remaining quote is "quam esse aliquod numen praestantissimae mentis quo haec regantur." The entire quote means, "For what could be so obvious and clear when we look up at the sky and contemplate the heavenly bodies as that they are governed by some exceedingly intelligent divinity?"

CONS
The first act dragged and the junkyard scene was mostly useless. That could've been massively cut down.
The children are all useless, including Isabella.
I didn't find Cogman funny. Yeah, he's a crazy lunatic, but there's nothing particularly clever or witty about that. Better examples of witty humour would be like, "It's custom faded?" or "There is no tighter shirt. We checked." There's nothing really clever about a mentally unhinged robot IMO - although granted his fourth-wall breaking musical stuff was funny. Cogman referring to Hopkins' character as the "coolest" was really badly timed (and timing is really important when delivering humour). I also did like Merlin's line where he paused and decided not to swear to give up women.
So... why can Megatron transform normally now? And why is his name Megatron?
Cogman never transformed. They called him a Headmaster but he never does anything Headmastery. For a non-TFan watching this they might be right in mistakenly thinking that Cogman is a school principal. I was expecting the silver car that he drives to transform into a transtector that he would bond with, but nope.
Bumblebee's ability to come apart and put himself together... what the fff---?!
I really wish that they'd make up their minds about whether Bumblebee can talk or not. Oh, and Optimus Prime claiming that it was the first time that he'd heard Bumblebee's voice since the war for Cybertron... uh, what about TF1 when he said, "I wish to remain with the boy."?!? And the thing with Bumblebee's voice snapping Nemesis Prime out of his daze and making him good again... really? You might as well have Bumblebee call out, "Save... Martha!" :rolleyes:
Why does Optimus Prime ride the dragon to the ignition chamber when he can freakin' fly into space?!
Why doesn't Cybertron's gravity destroy Earth at such close proximity? And how are the humans able to breathe at such altitude? And how are they able to dive down to such depths of the ocean and survive? How did Cade block the Knight's sword? Did the sword have force dampeners?!
ALL of the Transformers are pretty forgettable. None of them have any characterisation. Optimus Prime went on a personal journey in Age of Extinction, but not here. Here he was turned into Nemesis Prime by Quintessa, then made good into Optimus Prime again cos ya know -- save Martha! :p But these were all extrinsically induced changes. The Autobots and Decepticons are all just annoyingly clichéd caricatures. They're all unhinged and incredibly immature for no apparent reason. They're all psychopaths! Just fighting on different sides.
Quintessa was one of the Primes, yet RotF explicitly stated that all of the Primes (except for The Fallen) sacrificed themselves to entomb The Fallen. So does this mean that two of the Originals became corrupted?!?
The "chaste" scene... so NOT funny. Making fun of the fact that Cade hasn't been laid in a long time. Why is this funny? First of all, he's been busy being a freakin' single dad struggling to raise his daughter - and the previous movie explained that he only had eyes for his deceased wife to the point where even Tessa was saying that he needed to move on. But of course, shortly after this he got involved with the Transformers. So sorry, he hasn't had time for a freakin' love life. But the idea of mocking chastity just feels so juvenile to me. Would the Talisman have rejected Cade if he still had all those other virtues but had been recently intimate? Okay, it's no where near as bad as ;that scene' from AoE, but it still could've and should've been easily edited out.
The Knight that Cade found. How did he get there?
What took Prime so long to get to the ignition chamber?
DINOBOTS: (i) Where the hell did Scorn and Strafe go? (ii) Why the hell do they have Dinobot babies? Did Grimlock and Slug... eewww... (iii) What happened to all these Dinobots after the story shifted to the UK? Why didn't they reappear with the other Autobots to reinforce Optimus Prime and the Knights, especially considering that they are knights themselves.
Grimlock being reduced to a joke. <sigh>
Bumblebee's been on Earth since at least WWII, but the first movie established that he was an advanced scout looking for the AllSpark Cube. And if Hot Rod was with him during WWII, then how did they (and other Autobots like the demented tank-dude) become separated? Cos boy Hot Rod's time-gun would've come in reeeaaal handy during some of the critical moments in the previous films! And if Bumblebee's been on Earth for so long, why did he not know about the Seekers?? Cos we saw the Seekers with early to mid 20th Century alt modes, and Jetfire transformed into an SR-71 Blackbird, which was decommissioned in 1999, so ostensibly Jetfire may have remained active until the late 90s - a good decade before we saw him in ROTF. Or why didn't Bumblebee ever know about the Gould's family alliance with the Decepticons? He's a spy for crying out loud... gathering intelligence is kind of his modus operandi.
How is Drift able to balance on top of a rusty car without crushing it? How is Bumblebee able to sit on top of a tin roof without collapsing it?
Some moments of "IDW-syndrome." When parts of Cybertron begin dragging along the ground and collapsing excess parts (as Cybertron begins reforming) we see the Autobots running away. Running. Did they forget that they have car modes? Optimus Prime never even transforms during the whole movie until the very end, and even then just briefly.
Morphing! I hate morphing. Transformers and their technology should transform, not morph! The Knights combining into their gestalt dragon mode - total morphing. The Infernicons transforming into Infernicus (damn I hate these names) - more shameless morphing! The hell...?! It just looks so cheap/lazy compared to proper parts-shifting transformation.
Bumblebee needing to transform and stop midway to shoot Barricade during the car chase... uh, what happened to all the pop out guns that we saw in Dark of the Moon?
As cool as the whole Transformers having influenced human history for a long time thing is, it's also getting really old.
TF1: AllSpark responsible for all modern technology.
ROTF: The Fallen enslaved prehistoric humans, made them build the Pyramids to conceal the solar harvester. The Primes entombed The Fallen and the humans built Petra over the site to hide it.
DOTM: Decepticons responsible for the whole moon mission/space-race thing.
AOE: Quintessa seeded the Earth and created a mass extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs.
TLK: Transformers have been helping humanity since the Dark Ages.
There's nothing inherently wrong with these things, but could we please have a new plot idea?!

OVERALL
It's a fun popcorn movie, much like the first one. Although the pacing is a bit slow at first, once it builds momentum then it's paced pretty well. Not a great movie, but it's alright. ★★★

P.S.: I want a toy of BB7.

[Shirokaze]

Okay, so reading everyone's comments, my thoughts are going to come across as harsh. I don't want this to be misconstrued as Bay bashing, I really enjoyed movies 1-3 and I've tried to put my brand loyalty aside for this one, and approach it like an enthusiastic movie goer.

TLK is not a bad Transformers movie, it's just a bad movie. Never mind that the whole thing basically could've been re-skinned to a story of any extraterrestrial race invading earth, but it just felt so choppy and poorly paced I couldn't enjoy it. I'm just so flabbergasted that I'm just going to present my review to you the same way this movie was to us: a series points strung together half-heatedly in hopes that you'll get something coherent out of it.

The little girl - I cared so little about her that I don't even remember her name. She feels shoehorned in to widen the demographic. Literally did nothing and wasn't around long enough to establish the bond that the audience is supposed to believe she and Marky Mark have.
Cogman - Cool character, humour on point. The term headmaster was mentioned and they went nowhere with it. He didn't transform at all and then just disappeared after old mate died.
Mark Wahlberg - The film could easily have been called Transformers 5: Caed Jaeger slides everywhere. He literally just slides places the entire movie.
Dinobots - They just pissed off to who knows where.
Galvatron - Oh right, he wasn't in the movie.
Continuity issues - Oh boy. Not even getting into this.
Bumblebee - The writers can't make up their mind whether he should talk normally or not. Seriously pick one and stick with it.
Optimus - He feels the need to tell everybody that "I AM OPTIMUS PRIME" all of the time. After a little fight with Bumblebee he then snaps out of his possession far too easily and all that build up is wasted.
The big girl - so let me get this straight, the knights of Cybertron stole the staff, a precious, all powerful item from Quintessa, only to fly half way across the galaxy and give it to some bloke they befriended so he could control the dragon. Except this dragon was actually a combiner made up of the knights..... so why did he need the staff again? So then the staff imprints on Merlin's DNA for some reason? And the knights build a space ship to bury him in and go into stasis, except it's not just a tomb, it's also a key to Unicron that is inserted via Stone Henge. Also the key to accessing the tombship is a WW2 submarine just to confuse you more.
The submarine - I feel like this was supposed to be the body of headmaster cogman, but it was cut from the final movie. Caed and girl go to her father's place to find where the staff is, and are directed to the sub by a note. But Anthony Hopkins and Cogman already knew to meet them there. Hopkins then waltzes in like he owns the place and appears to know everything about the sub already.
Megatron - No explanation for why he has a knight-themed skin now?

There's so much more, I'm going to have to continue this another day. But for now I'll leave it at 2/10.

[griffin]

Anthony Hopkin was the shining light in this movie, with some really great acting... until about the submarine scene, where a number of his lines and scenes were noticeably lifeless.

Cogman was fascinating (for a little while), but was probably the entertaining element for the non-fans because he didn't transform or fight the giant robots... I just got tired of his psychopathic behaviour, distracting attention from other elements that were more important at the time.

Just like with Berzerker, what is with all the Scorn toys in the TF5 toyline since he didn't appear in the movie at all... and no toys of characters actually in this movie.

Sooo... are the baby dinos Cybertronians, and if they are, why didn't they transform into tiny robots at all? Or are they like Ravage, and don't have an alt-mode, or humanoid mode?

If all of the Cybertronian knights were at the bottom of the sea, why was one flying around in a small spaceship for the TRF to shoot down (which the kids find at the start of the movie). And with at least four of the 12 Knights dead by the end of the movie (one at the start, about three by Optimus and the TRF at the bottom of the ocean), the remaining 8 were still able to form Dragonstorm, to look the same as when all 12 formed him during the Dark Ages.

And the US Military - they didn't support the TRF at the start of the movie (Lennox was suggested to be working undercover in the TRF to track down Megatron), but when they learn about the staff, they want to help the TRF and the Decepticons hunt down the Autobots. Are they independent at all, or is it just like in TF2 and TF3, with the humans turning on the Autobots very quickly.

Once again, we have a Michael Bay TFs movie that is riddled with contradictions, confusion and loose ends... and we were led to believe that a writers room of quality writers should have prevented that. (or, the script was indeed air-tight, but the director just kept changing scenes as he was filming them, to make them look impressive on their own, at the expense of specific details needed for the overall plot)

[GoktimusPrime]

yeah, the relationship between the military and TRF totally confused the crap out of me, but I was wondering if it was something that I'd missed, cos I missed a few lines thanks to sitting next to a heavy nose breather and restless 5 year old in front of me. :rolleyes:

Hopkins' death was also lame. Seriously, after shooting Megatron why did he just continue standing there in the open? Why not hide behind one of the runes? He wasn't even trying to take another shot, he was just casually standing there waiting to be shot. Although Cogman's lament was pretty cool and highlights how he actually allows himself to become emotionally attached to each of his human masters and mourns whenever they die (and the "curse"' of being immortal). But this awesome moment was totally ruined by Cogman telling him that he was the 'coolest' master that he ever had. *sigh*

So glad that I used a free coupon to watch this and didn't pay any money for it. :o

P.S.: On another positive note, I do like how a black dude was cast as Sir Moriaen in King Arthur's court. This is actually accurate to the original telling of the Arthurian legend, as Sir Moriaen is the son of Sir Aglovale de Galis - who was a white man but married a "beautiful black princess" and thus Moriaen is their Moorish son.

[Krayt]

The Knight that Cade found. How did he get there?


You realise he was in the pilot seat of a ship downed by the TRF?

[Krayt]

P.S.: On another positive note, I do like how a black dude was cast as Sir Moriaen in King Arthur's court. This is actually accurate to the original telling of the Arthurian legend, as Sir Moriaen is the son of Sir Aglovale de Galis - who was a white man but married a "beautiful black princess" and thus Moriaen is their Moorish son.

You mean cast as Saebert

[griffin]

You realise he was in the pilot seat of a ship downed by the TRF?

That was the point - how did he get there if all the other Knights were deep at the bottom of the ocean, rusting away after 1600 years being dormant. Why send just one Knight to protect such an important relic, and if they knew that now was the right time for the prophecy to play out, why wouldn't the rest of the knights be awake and ready.

[Krayt]

Perfect world, Mr Knight would have arrived, searched world, found Cade/Simmons/Edmund/Cogman.... Used tailsmen to find suitable human... Instructed in way to reach other 12 and raise them from the deep.

Stupid TRF screwing things up...

We need a novel or prequel comic to flesh it out.... Final guardian Knight woken by Quintessas actions, launches from Cybertron base and seeks out brothers

[griffin]

That was the one good thing about the IDW movie comics, was how they actually filled in all the holes and made sense of things that weren't explained in the movies... sometimes taking several issues across 2 or 3 stories to do it. :p

But unfortunately, the sales just weren't there, and they had to stop with the third movie.

[BigTransformerTrev]

Well, I'm going to uphold my oath to stay out of the Transformer movie topics as I don't want to make anyone feel that they are not completely free to express their opinion. In fact I'm not going to read this topic from this point on as the gnarled little argumentative part of me already wants to debate a few of the comments that have been made at this early point :p:o:D.

Anyway, I'm going to post a link to my review of the movie I put on my blog HERE (http://www.bigangrytrev.com/1358-2/)and anyone that is interested in my take on the flick is welcome to read it (and agree or disagree in the comments section ;)).


The only other thing I will say here is:

This movie had Autobots, Decepticons, Quintessons, Combiners, Cybertron AND Unicron - that's a pretty impressive friggin lineup! :D


Enjoy your discussion peeps! :)

[ILikeSoundwave]

*Sigh* I had such high hopes for this movie and I don't know why when I think about it now maybe it was because of the writers room and them moving the franchise towards a cinematic universe direction thingy. But overall it was super disappointing. Me and my friends were standing in line at the Paramount event with our Last Knight cups and popcorn boxes unable to believe that the past year of speculating and re-watching trailers over and over again would come to a close. I've watch all Transformer movies on opening day and thoroughly enjoyed watching them all for the first time but I was completely lost and had no clue what was going on last night. :p:o

Stuff I disliked:
*All good of the good stuff was shown in the trailers
*Too much Humans. At the beginning in the Junkyard I thought the Transformers had a very nice and generous amount of screentime but once Cade and Bee went to London it was all Human from there.
*There were no proper fights in the movie other than Prime v Bee. AOE had Prime v Lockdown, Prime v Galvatron, Bee v Stinger and a couple more.
I was honestly hoping for an epic Prime v Megatron battle at the end.
*Characters showed up and vanished. Grimlock and Slug were last seen destroying a few TRF vehicles and are never heard of again. Drift and Crosshairs were seen prepping for the final battle but were nowhere to be seen in it. Barricade was at Stonehenge and was never seen after that.
*Decepticons had a actual proper introduction and all half of them died 5 minutes later *cough* Onslaught. What a waste, especially when some of them looked to have actual character like Mohawk.
*Megatron didn't feel like Megatron, every time he was on screen he was always just talking getting the staff, getting the talisman. He never talked about anything else so we didn't get any background information or any motives (other than fixing Cybertron).
*Quintessa was maybe a highlight for me but they also didn't provide us much about her or why she was there, why she showed up now etc.
*The plot was messy and confusing and the fast pacing of the movie didn't help at all. I don't understand why it was all happening like why did the horns start appearing, why did Quintessa bring Cybertron at the time she did, it all felt very coincidental.
*Prime was evil for like 5-10mins. In my opinion he should've stayed at way until the end or sometime in the final battle.
*Dragonstorm was very underused.
*Score wasn't memorable.
*Topspin with Leadfoot's head and a Latino accent?
*I have a few more but I can't be bothered anymore.

Stuff I liked:
*Thought Cogman was funny a few times, would've been nice to see him kick some ass in the final battle.
*Anthony Hopkins' character was pretty good, enjoyed him.
*Visuals were far better than AOE.
*Like I said before Quintessa was kinda cool, I liked the tease in the post credits scene.

Questions I need answered:
So what is the purpose of the Last Knight? Vivian was Merlin's decedent so she could use the staff but what was Cade's role as the Last Knight?
Why did Megatron, Nitro and Barricade go to Stonehenge? Did they activate something there I don't remember? Because Megatron right after that fly away and gave the staff to Quintessa to begin the process.
So Megatron had that red stuff on his face as well, was he being controlled by Quintessa?
Why did Edmond Burton just try to shoot Megatron point blank like that?
Why did TRF release Megatron and the Decepticons to go after the Autobots? TRF had their coordinates and knew they had the talisman why need the Cons?

Maybe I set my expectations a bit too high, I don't why it is Micheal Bay after all. Hopefully I'll enjoy it more the second time around.

[Deonasis]

I am glad i saw it but like most of the previous BayTF films it hurt my head like an extended brain freeze. There is so much good stuff going on in the film but some useless scenes drag on and the important ones look like they are edited with a confetti gun.

Saddened once again by a TF movie I can't recommend to my non-Tf friends.

And I need a quality animated gif of Cogman killing deep sea tuna. I didnt notice he fired himself out the torpedo tube but when he was back onboard it was such an unexpected scene (Cogman has a few of these) and long enough that I loved it and lol'd.

In the future it would be a fascinating to learn about how these massive films are made between the Studio, Bay, writers, advertisers, military, and Hasbro.

2/5

[GoktimusPrime]

*Megatron didn't feel like Megatron, every time he was on screen he was always just talking getting the staff, getting the talisman. He never talked about anything else so we didn't get any background information or any motives (other than fixing Cybertron).
In all fairness, Movie Megatron's primary motivation was always about the salvation and restoration of Cybertron. This is why he hunted the AllSpark Cube, Solar Harvester and Space Bridge. Quintessa wishes to revive Cybertron, thus her goals align with Megatron's.


*Topspin with Leadfoot's head and a Latino accent?
↑THIS! :rolleyes:


Why did TRF release Megatron and the Decepticons to go after the Autobots? TRF had their coordinates and knew they had the talisman why need the Cons?
To find the staff. Both factions had a common objective and were planning on betraying each other at the end. Not the greatest of plans...


Hopefully I'll enjoy it more the second time around.
I doubt it. :p

And I need a quality animated gif of Cogman killing deep sea tuna. I didnt notice he fired himself out the torpedo tube but when he was back onboard it was such an unexpected scene (Cogman has a few of these) and long enough that I loved it and lol'd.
I especially loved the scene where Cogman transformed and... oh wait... that never happened. Silly me for expecting these Transformers to transform. :o

[Sutton]

While DOTM and TF1 are still far and away my favourites, this one is a respectable 3rd.

Just frustrates me how, with a little extra work in the editing room, they could be soooo much better. I particularly hate how these movies have a habit of characters just disappearing for no reason.

Wouldn't Grimlock have been handy to have in the final battle? :confused:

[CaminusPrime]

New thought, why the f*** was Optimus just offline in space

[GoktimusPrime]

While DOTM and TF1 are still far and away my favourites, this one is a respectable 3rd.
Considering that the competition are ROTF and AOE, that's not hard. :p

New thought, why the f*** was Optimus just offline in space
Cos space is freakin' massive and he most likely ran out of fuel by the time he exited our solar system (let alone galaxy). My initial thoughts was, "Well that was stupid idea, wasn't it?" :rolleyes: It's incredible that he even had enough fuel to escape Earth's gravity and make it into orbit, let alone embark on a long space voyage. Transformers have previously been shown to use spacecraft to travel between worlds such as the Ark, the Nemesis (where The Fallen was seen), the Xanthium etc. Only those with jet modes like Megatron and Starscream seem to have the ability of achieving and sustaining interstellar flight, and they can only do this in their alt modes.

[CaminusPrime]

Considering that the competition are ROTF and AOE, that's not hard. :p

Cos space is freakin' massive and he most likely ran out of fuel by the time he exited our solar system (let alone galaxy). My initial thoughts was, "Well that was stupid idea, wasn't it?" :rolleyes: It's incredible that he even had enough fuel to escape Earth's gravity and make it into orbit, let alone embark on a long space voyage. Transformers have previously been shown to use spacecraft to travel between worlds such as the Ark, the Nemesis (where The Fallen was seen), the Xanthium etc. Only those with jet modes like Megatron and Starscream seem to have the ability of achieving and sustaining interstellar flight, and they can only do this in their alt modes.

Well they did have their protoform modes capable of space travel.... but this is a whole new level of why? honestly he looked damaged or something but then he reaches cybertron and is just like ok cool I'm good. Just casually taking a space nap, sure...

[Sutton]

Cos space is freakin' massive and he most likely ran out of fuel by the time he exited our solar system (let alone galaxy). My initial thoughts was, "Well that was stupid idea, wasn't it?" :rolleyes: It's incredible that he even had enough fuel to escape Earth's gravity and make it into orbit, let alone embark on a long space voyage. Transformers have previously been shown to use spacecraft to travel between worlds such as the Ark, the Nemesis (where The Fallen was seen), the Xanthium etc. Only those with jet modes like Megatron and Starscream seem to have the ability of achieving and sustaining interstellar flight, and they can only do this in their alt modes.

Never mind the question, where the hell did his Astroboy boots even come from anyway? From that time he grabbed a sword and his forearms got excited?

Probably the biggest disappointment with this movie is that there was all this BIG TALK that the writers were going to address all the inconsistencies of the previous movies, fix plot holes etc...when in reality they fixed very little and just added their own brand new continuity problems.

[GoktimusPrime]

Never mind the question, where the hell did his Astroboy boots even come from anyway? From that time he grabbed a sword and his forearms got excited?
Yup...

- Since WHEN did Optimus Prime possess interstellar flight capability in robot mode??? :o Maybe I missed something... maybe it was something he took from Lockdown. I hope so, because if he had the ability this whole time, then there's a lot of other stuff before that otherwise makes NO sense if he could freakin' FLY... without a Jetwing... in freakin' robot mode... wha--??
And everyone's assuming that he only gained the power after the grabbed the sword - okay, fine. So why didn't he FLY into Hong Kong? It would've surely been faster than riding on Grimlock's back! Why didn't he fly while fighting the Vehicons? Cos air superiority rocks! Everyone knows that it's always easier fighting from the high ground. Sun Tzu also talks about this in "The Art of War," and there are countless historical and present day examples - e.g. mounted cavalry vs footman, modern day air strikes, fighting a standing opponent vs a grounded opponent (it's much easier to kick someone while they're down and you're standing!), Obi-Wan vs Anakin et al.

And the scene where Lockdown was dragging everything into his ship with his super magnet. Optimus could've used his jets to just freakin' fly up and shoot that magnet with greater speed and accuracy. Then there was Optimus Prime vs Lockdown. On the ground, Optimus Prime nearly lost the fight to Lockdown... being impaled by his own sword and all. He would've died if not for Tessa and Shane's help. But alternatively, Optimus Prime could have flown and just shot Lockdown from the air! Then again, the last time Optimus Prime tried air-to-surface combat, he ended up dangling upside down in wires for 20 minutes waiting for the Wreckers to cut him loose. :rolleyes:

It was really such a daft plan. "I'm gonna find the Creators myself!" Really?
How do you know where they are? Are you planning on just flying aimlessly through space calling for them until they hear you? What if you run out of power before that happens? And even if you don't, let's say he finds them and he still has a good amount of Energon left in his tank. What if their forces outnumber and/or are stronger than you? Shouldn't you, ya know, get some intelligence before just charging in? In The Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote an entire freakin' chapter called "The Use of Spies." Who knew that intelligence and counter-intelligence could win wars, eh? :p If only he had access to an advanced scout... who's yellow and black... :p :rolleyes:

"Know your enemy as you know yourself and you shall not fear the results of a hundred battles." - Sun Tzu
"Screw that, I'mma comin' for yooouu!" - Optimus Prime

[Deonasis]

Regarding the float through space and shabby look, I believe he went into a low power mode including a continual repeat of his transmission (like a beacon) to wait for contact. He did not know where his creators were so he was just out there with hope they would respond to his message.

[GoktimusPrime]

And they did.

After watching the movie I was talking with other fans about how impossible it would be for Optimus Prime to have accidentally crashed on Cybertron after floating in space for goodness knows how long. And we know that Cybertron was mobile, so clearly Quintessa intercepted the signal and brought Cybertron to him.

Oh, and Optimus Prime (and Cybertron) must somehow be capable of faster than light speed space travel! :eek: Now think about that. Aside from the sheer impossibility also consider the vast amounts of energy it would take to achieve that kind of speed. Cos obviously if either Optimus Prime or Cybertron are moving even at light speed, it would still take millions of years for them to travel between Earth and the next galaxy and back. The fact that they did it in only a few years implies that they must have been travelling much, much faster than the speed of light.

Now of course, the other alternative is to use wormholes, which is the idea of the Space Bridge. But of course, the Space Bridge was destroyed in Dark of the Moon. Even if Quintessa managed to repair it, I highly doubt that Optimus Prime had a freakin' built in Space Bridge! :rolleyes: Cos if so, he could be teleporting all over the place like Nightcrawler. Grab Vivian, open a portal, step into the Ignition Chamber, grab the staff, warp out. Or you could plan some really difficult siege that would cost many lives with a high chance of failure. Yeah.

[Sutton]

It's a weird, weird inconsistent universe.

Movie 1 and 2, TFs arrive via burning 'Rocklord' modes.

Then in Movie 3, they have ships - the Ark, the Xantium (that brought the second wave of Autobots, apparently).

In Movie 4, most of the original Autobots have just disappeared, replaced by a new crew that came from *never explained*

And now in Movie 5, we're back to burning Rocklord arrivals.

Did the writer's room just sit around get drunk and stoned or what? Or did they actually come up with a bunch of really sweet ideas, and Bay just went 'f--k it, that's too much plot, I'll write my own'.

[Verno]

It's the first time I've walked out of one of these films with a smile on my face. It was fantastic!

[Omega Metro]

I liked it......except the ending:confused:

[Magnus]

I quite liked it.

It seems like this was actually the best of the five movies we've had so far in terms of pacing. I didn't feel like there were points where the movie dragged or the plot was slowing down. This could be due to the new writing team; then again, the fact that this movie had a lot of robot screen time, spread throughout the movie, helped. On that topic, for all the 'no plot' complaints that the Transformers movies get, they actually have quite involved plots, and this one is no different.

It felt like a lot of effort went into worldbuilding/lore with this one, introducing new ideas and concepts as well as building on the knighthood theme Ehren Kruger introduced in Age of Extinction, which made for interesting viewing between all the action, so I was never bored. In fact, I feel like I need to watch it again to take it all in.

I haven't even seen that many movies with Anthony Hopkins in them, but I have this mental image of him as a classy, reserved elder statesman sort, so it was unusual seeing him as the quirky Edmund Burton, who doesn't hesitate to speak his mind or do what he thinks is necessary. Now I'm imagining he took the role to have a bit of fun.

It was good to see Josh Duhamel and John Turturro back, as well as the Wheelie cameo and hearing Topspin speak, but I was somewhat bummed that Tyrese Gibson didn't appear, since there was talk of him returning.

I'm definitely curious to see where this leads with Transformers 6.

[Meister]

Ok didn't realise this thread existed and posted the following in another thread:

Took the kids to watch it this afternoon, pretty much the same as all the others. In terms of how it compares with all the others, I would rank it above revenge of the fallen and age of extinction, and below the original and dark of the moon. Again, just like all the others, it is it's own individual pop song, still no sign of a rock opera. If you can leave your brain at the door and enjoy the pretty lights, whilst forgetting most of what came before it, you will be entertained, it is, like all the others, an action packed popcorn movie. Good effects, cool action sequences, and heaps of explosions.

[GoktimusPrime]

The coarse language has dissuaded me from bringing my child to see this film. So unnecessary. :(

It's a weird, weird inconsistent universe.

Movie 1 and 2, TFs arrive via burning 'Rocklord' modes.

Then in Movie 3, they have ships - the Ark, the Xantium (that brought the second wave of Autobots, apparently).

In Movie 4, most of the original Autobots have just disappeared, replaced by a new crew that came from *never explained*

And now in Movie 5, we're back to burning Rocklord arrivals.
lol, tru dat. :D

I didn't feel like there were points where the movie dragged or the plot was slowing down.
I found the pacing in the first act to be slow, especially in the junkyard. Guh. But I agree that the pacing in the rest of the film was pretty good. There was far less down time and everything kept on moving fairly quickly. :)

How long a movie feels is more important than how long it actually is. That junkyard scene was probably only about 10 minutes long, but it felt like half an hour. :( The Fellowship of the Rings on the other hand is about 3 hours long but it feels like 2. Anything that feels longer than it actually is means that it isn't engaging the audience very well. Just think about being in a boring lesson vs being in an exciting lesson. Good lessons feel shorter whereas boring lessons can feel like an eternity. ;)

[Meister]

Also, the way that Optimus Prime throws Megatron out is reminiscent of how Rodimus Prime chucked Galvatron out in TFTM. :)
My son commented with the same observation shortly after seeing that scene :)

['07Camaro]

My overall thoughts about this movie is similar to Gok's: It's the best of the sequels but no were near as good as the first one. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the movie :)

PROS:
+ Improved CGI: At least in comparison to AOE. The movie looks visually and aesthetically pleasing from most angles: establishing shots, action sequences and more. Granted, it doesn't reach DOTM levels, but it certainly does make for some satisfying eye candy.

+ Megatron with Starscream's head scene: One of my favourite scenes in the movie. The dialogue he has towards his "old, treacherous friend" kinda reminds me of the way Megatron and Starscream interacted with each other in the G1 cartoon.

+ TF1 references: As someone who got into the franchise by the 2007 movie, I really appreciated the minor references to the first one such as Sam's Ebay profile picture.

+ More transformation sequences: There were a lot of transformation sequences in this movie, probably the most I've seen in all of the movies. This is more related to the CGI, in which the textures, lighting etc. make it more enjoyable to watch. As a bonus, the deceptions don't transform by dissolving into these tiny fragments like in AOE.

+ Captain Lennox and Seymour Simmons: 2 of my favourite humans from the first one are more or less the same as they were in the previous films, which isn't a bad thing.

+ World War 2 sequence: Seperate movie staring Bumblebee and Hot Rod, anyone?

+ Anthony Hopkins: He was very fun to watch, especially when he talks about lore he hasn't even heard of before. I honestly wouldn't mind him being a prominent human character in an anthology Transformers movie.

+ Optimus kicking Megs off Cybertron: Nice homage to the '86 movie. Didn't even knew that was a reference till I got on here.

+ Barricade's knuckledusters: Glad how they changed them to "Punish" and "Enslave" instead of "Protect" and "Serve". It's just more appropriate for Barricade


CONS:

- Forced humour: Does a Transformers need to be comedy only to be considered good? I swear, there is not one scene where the writers and Michael Bay didn't place in a cringe-worthy joke. 98% of those jokes made were a complete miss. The only funny part was when no one in the theatre laughed at those jokes at all.

- Under-developed characters:: To make way for all of the exposition, the movie didn't give enough time to explain who the new characters are and how their personalities change within the events that transpired. So they all felt like lifeless action figures who I had little to no care about.

- Decepticons: They posed no imminent threat to the humans and the Autobots in this movie, but were really taking a backseat to Quintessa. Even Megatron did nothing. What's worse is that these guys have a life span of a mayfly. Onslaught legit had 5 seconds of screen time only to be killed immediately after. RIP Bayformer Combaticons :( At least they didn't kill off Megatron again.

- Izabella: All of this marketing centralising her and she, along with Sqweeks, were completely useless in the whole movie. If you take them out of the whole story, then I bet $50 the movie would be the exact same. This also include Cade's friend at the junkyard.

- Bumblebee vs Optimus Prime: The most anti-climatic action scene out of the movieverse, period. All of the money shots we've seen in the trailers, tv spots etc. make up the entire battle. There were little to no new scenes and the fight went on for about a minute. The whole Bumblebee's voice thing would've actually worked though...if it weren't for the fact that Bumblebee actually spoke at the end of the first one. It should've been under consideration.

- Dinobots: For having 20 minutes of screen time in AOE, I thought it was gonna be addressed in this movie....It got worse. First, where's Strafe and Scorn? Second, how do they create the Mini Dinobots? ARGH.

- Excessive Profanity: I have not seen a movie in which the characters say certain curse words so many times. For a movie who's demographic involves children, not a very good move. Even I got somewhat concerned.

QUESTIONS (oh boy...):

- How is Starscream's head intact after it was practically blown up in DOTM?
- So Optimus, how's that seed doing?
- Who is Quintessa? What's her backstory? Etc.
- How did Barricade survive the Chicago War?
- How is Galvatron now Megatron? Where did he get the new body from?
- Where did Brains go?
- Where did Wheelie come from?
- So is Drift no longer a triplechanger?
- What was the point of the McLaran?
- So Cogman is a headmaster, huh? Can I see him transform?
- Decepticons do bank robberies?
- Why did Sir Edmond shoot Megatron before standing in the open for Megs to kill him?

And that's all I gotta say about the movie. Despite the flaws it has and all of the questions I have, I had a good time watching this movie. It'd definitely be my second favourite of the bunch.

SUPER HYPED up for the BB movie now :D


EDIT: After seeing the movie again, I decided to change some stuff on my previous comment.

- I got rid of the Autobot development pro because I realised how stupid I was for thinking that TLK did any development on them. We still don't know a whole lot about them, and this movie didn't help AT ALL.
- I limited my Megatron pro to only talk about the scene where he holds Starscream's head, since it was my favourite Megatron moment out of the movie, and not the way the character was executed.
- Got rid of the refugee pro, realised it was the same as the other movies, another stupid comment.
- Edited the Decepticon pro but still think they were kinda useless.
- Got rid of some questions cause they were answered
- Profanity was another problem I had with the movie as well
- Added a pro in relation to Barricade

[MayzaPrime]

I thought Drift was driving the Autobot ship... thats why he wasnt in the final scene

[GoktimusPrime]

+ Megatron: Ok, I know Megatron hardly did anything and got his butt handed to him with ease by Optimus, but I feel like his character and personality was closer to the G1 iteration than Hugo Weaving's Meatron. Aside from the fact that he's voiced by Frank Welker, he feels closer to G1 in certain scenes.
Uh... there are so many different versions of G1 Megatron. If you mean the G1 cartoon, then that's really not the greatest version as G1 cartoon Megs was fairly ineffective. His most recurring piece of dialogue was, "Decepticons, retreat!" :rolleyes:


For example, the scene where Megatron is holding Starscream's head, talking about how he should've been alive to witness Earth's destruction. One of my favourite scenes in th movie.
That's actually more of a reference to G2 than G1, as there was a moment where G2 Megatron looked at Bludgeon's head Hamlet style and lamented killing him for a brief moment.


+ More transformation sequences: There were a lot of transformation sequences in this movie, probably the most I've seen in all of the movies. This is more related to the CGI, in which the textures, lighting etc. make it more enjoyable to watch. As a bonus, the deceptions don't transform by dissolving into these tiny fragments like in AOE.
Yeah, but the transformations are really more morphing than proper transforming. Watch this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMHM6uTW8SU) showing AoE Optimus Prime transforming in slow motion, and you can see the entire back half of the truck mode being swallowed up into his back! :eek: That's stupid! Compare this with this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veyX-miC4VM) showing Optimus Prime's wonderfully detailed transformation from the first movie. Everything goes somewhere. Okay, quasi-morphing transforming is a LOT better than "Flying Tetris" transforming, sure... but still not as good as full proper parts-shifting transformations like we saw in the first three films. :(

The shift towards morphing transformations was a real bone of contention for Beast Machines. Odd how there's a lot less controversy over it now. :confused:


+ Transformers as refugees: I'm kinda intrigued with this plot point. To me, it kinda has a District 9 feel to it. Nevertheless, it appeals to me how the Transformers have become apart of human society, even if they are being discriminated.
I disagree.

Firstly, the whole refugee thing was already established from ROTF, so it's not a new thing to this movie. All the new arrivals are arriving asylum seekers, and Galloway's character mentions that the Autobots are living under granted asylum and asked Optimus Prime if the Autobots would leave peacefully if this asylum were to be withdrawn.

District 9 is really more of a direct parallel with human racism, with many things mirroring how humans have treated (and continue to treat) each other IRL. In TLK all Cybertronians have been declared public enemies and are being indiscriminately hunted. Also, the Transformers are combatants. The D9 aliens were sick and starving when they arrived on Earth. Yes, both the Transformers and D9 aliens are refugees with no home to return to - but that's about where the similarity ends. Everything else about them, including the way that they are viewed and treated by humans, is completely different.


+ Slightly developed Autobots: The junkyard scenes gave us some insight on the relationship between each of the Autobots as a means of getting to know them more. Even if they tell us a little.
What insight? That the Autobots are a bunch of surly and immature children? :confused: More importantly, that scene did nothing to advance the plot. The story stalled during that scene, and any character or moment that stalls the story isn't a good thing. This is why so many Star Wars fans hate Jar Jar Binks (and also why many G1 fans hate Wheelie and Daniel).


- Forced humour: Does a Transformers need to be comedy only to be considered good? I swear, there is not one scene where the writers and Michael Bay didn't place in a cringe-worthy joke. 98% of those jokes made were a complete miss. The only funny part was when no one in the theatre laughed at those jokes at all.
I found Merlin's comedic moment to be funny. :)
"I'll give up booze and gambling and wom--- I'll give up booze and gambling!" (or something like that)


- Under-developed human characters (+Quintessa): To make way for all of the exposition, the movie didn't give enough time to explain who they are and how their personalities change within the events that transpired. So they all felt like lifeless action figures who I had little to no care about.
The Transformers were never developed as characters either, and this movie is CALLED "Transformers." :eek:


- Decepticons: What did they ever do to be treated the way there were? They posed no imminent threat to the humans and the Autobots, but became simple pawns to Quintessa's plans. Even Megatron did nothing. What's worse is that these guys have a life span of a mayfly. Onslaught legit had 5 seconds of screen time only to be killed immediately after. RIP Bayformer Combaticons :( At least they didn't kill off Megatron again.
Disagree. The Decepticons were already imprisoned, stating that they were already dangerous dudes who'd done other stuff before. You even see some flashback scenes of some of the bad things they've done. And "Megatron did nothing"??? :confused: Seriously? What about the body count from the previous films, or the fact that Megatron brought this war to Earth. He's a war criminal!


- If Vivian Wembley were said to be the last remaining decendant of Merlin and the Witwikkans, does that mean Sam and ron Witwiky died?
Witwiccan is an order, the Order of Witwiccans. Not a family name. Sam appears to have been retroactive inducted into the Order because of his contribution to the relations between Autobots and humans. Witwicky is a Polish/Ukrainian surname whereas "Witwicca" is English, meaning, "knowledge of sorcery." So the names aren't even from the same language source despite coincidental similarity in spelling and pronunciation (we call these "false cognates" in languages).


- How does Merlin's staff have so much power? Where does it come from?
The Knights gave it to him. It's an ancient Cybertronian artifact.

- How did Cybertron get to the size of the Moon? I though it was twice the size of Earth from DOTM. Did it cyberform or something?
Bigger than Earth (https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-7d7e236a70b2e3cba63d72fd1cec6008). But remember that Cybertron was very badly damaged when the Space Bridge closed and snapped a good chunk of the planet off. Perhaps this is all that remains - giving greater motivation to rebuild it.

But yeah, I otherwise agree with your other comments. :)

['07Camaro]

And "Megatron did nothing"??? :confused: Seriously? What about the body count from the previous films, or the fact that Megatron brought this war to Earth. He's a war criminal!

By Megatron not doing anything, I meant he did nothing in this film, not the previous ones. I'm aware he did many things in those movies, but this one I feel like he didn't really do anything.

[SharkyMcShark]

I saw it last night.

It lands somewhere between being irredeemably terrible and completely bland.

As a fan of Transformers the incredible amount of inconsistencies between this and the previous films annoyed me. Starscream's intact head, Prime not remembering Bumblebees's voice, the fact that Megatron being killed and then cloned as Galvatron basically hand waved completely in Hopkins' initial exposition dump and never properly addressed are a few.

There were certainly numerous small touches I quite lked that added to the lore but with the above in mind it is a bit like saying that at least the man murdering you appears nicely dressed. More and more every film in this series cannot decide on and tries to rewrite the Transformers on Earth origin and the fate of the characters from the previous film - some are forgotten completely after being shown to survive, some are killed and brought back with no explanation, some are killed off screen and later brought back with no explanation, some turnup between films with no explanation.

The thing that baffles me about the above is that for five films this has essentially been a one man show, so you'd think it wouldn't be hard to get right.

So yeah, as a fan of Transformers this was essentially a mess.

As a fan of movies in general it didn't fare well either.

I'm happy to accept that this is a big dumb movie aimed at kids so the fact that a planet crashing into Earth didn't immediately result in an extinction level event, and the usual loose grasp on geography and the passage of time are things I will let slip.

The plot is too busy and convoluted. Too many layers, many of which are completely abandoned without resolution by the end or which add essentially nothing to the plot but are nonetheless given time in what is already too long a film.

Visually the film was too busy. There wasn't enough Transformer on Transformer combat and the final battle was the least interesting final battle in any of these films. It suffered a lot from a lack of scale - people fighting on a massive open field on a partially CGI platform with CGI robots suspended in mid air surrounded by other CGI platforms and pillars.

I know that three of the previous four films had final battles set in cities, but there's a reason that this is what happens in monster and robot films, and its not just because the audience likes to watch cities getting trashed. It's because it provides an incredibly easy shorthand for the scale of what is happening. The end of TLK had none of that. It was the most bland and meaningless ending of any of these films.

The characters were a developmental graveyard, robot and human. The romance was forced, Vivan had to be told outright of her special powers, and aside from that every character was essentially one dimensional.

Scale was an issue too. Where do we go from here? An alien planet has rammed into Earth and wiped our moon out. All that can be done really is to escalate in TF6. One of the nice touches that I liked was the Transformers randomly crashing down and having to be arrested angle we got for about 15 seconds during the Hopkins exposition dump. Given that humans are imprisoning them now, instead of the Autobots and humans just killing them on sight like at the start of ROTF, I'd much rather see a whole film about that than some epoch defining planet shenanigans.

It was a waste of a movie. I expected more because of this whole writers room and Transformers Cinematic Universe talk, and shouldn't have.

Postscript pet peeve: a whole bloody movie and we don't see Optimus Prime transform once.

[Shirokaze]

Accidentally caught the last bit of AOE on free to air last night, and Lockdown makes comment about how he's rounded up the Knights and Optimus was the last one....... except now the Knights have been on earth in stasis since Merlin died. Different set of Knights? :rolleyes:

[GoktimusPrime]

By Megatron not doing anything, I meant he did nothing in this film, not the previous ones. I'm aware he did many things in those movies, but this one I feel like he didn't really do anything.
By this logic then Darth Vader didn't do anything bad and didn't deserve to have anything bad happen to him in Return of the Jedi.

I'm happy to accept that this is a big dumb movie aimed at kids
Only with so much swearing that you can't bring your kids to watch it. :rolleyes:

The characters were a developmental graveyard, robot and human.
"Developmental graveyard" ←love this expression. :D So damn true too.

Scale was an issue too. Where do we go from here? An alien planet has rammed into Earth and wiped our moon out.
I thought that the moon was merely scraped, not obliterated. #tisbutascratch
The Earth would be seriously messed up if the moon were to be destroyed. Of course, the Earth should've been messed up due to Cybertron being within such close proximity! But we already saw this happen before in Dark of the Moon without anything happening to the Earth. Even the G1 cartoon tried to address this issue in "The Ultimate Doom" - and that's a cartoon aimed purely at kids! It's almost as if Cybertron is devoid of mass.

[FatalityPitt]

By this logic then Darth Vader didn't do anything bad and didn't deserve to have anything bad happen to him in Return of the Jedi.

I think what he was suggesting was that Megatron's role in this film was minor. The real villain in the film was Quintessa, and it felt like Megatron was only there because Michael Bay was obligated to have him show up - So Hasbro can sell Megatron toys!! They could have left Megatron out of the film entirely, and say he spent the whole event in a basement trolling on 4chan (and probably cyber-stalking Sam Witwicky), and it wouldn't have made much difference to the plot.

Having read a lot of Marvel/DC comics in my life, I've noticed that at least 1 of 3 things eventually happen to the villains:
1) They die.
2) They get reformed and turn into an anti-hero.
3) They get reduced down to being a comedy-relief character and training dummy for the main hero.

I think movie Megatron is headed towards the 3rd direction.

[shockNwave]

I went into this movie expecting a lack of depth and whiz-bang special FX and that's exactly what I got. I have to admit the FX are the most epic out of all the movies excluding the morphing which is not cool but a damn sight better than little cubes and marbles transforming into all sorts of objects.

To finish off, I'd like to say I read a review of TLK in the Herald Sun (which was scathing of course) that said this is Michael Bay's last Transformers movie. Let's hope that's truth and not rumour because if a character like Thunderwing* is to be introduced then a director with the intelligence of Chris Nolan will be needed.

*Thunderwing is possibly the most psychologically complex character among transformers due to being a contradictory and paradoxical decepticon with an obsessive compulsive disorder.

[GoktimusPrime]

I think what he was suggesting was that Megatron's role in this film was minor.
↓:confused: :confused: :confused:↓

- Decepticons: What did they ever do to be treated the way there were? They posed no imminent threat to the humans and the Autobots, but became simple pawns to Quintessa's plans. Even Megatron did nothing.


The real villain in the film was Quintessa, and it felt like Megatron was only there because Michael Bay was obligated to have him show up - So Hasbro can sell Megatron toys!!
Megatron hasn't been the main villain since the first movie, and even then just in the last act when he finally thawed out.
ROTF main villain: The Fallen. Megatron was his lackey.
DOTM main villain: Sentinel Prime. Megatron was his lackey (then he betrayed Sentinel when he realised this)
AoE main villain: Lockdown, emissary of Quintessa.
TLK main villain: Quintessa

[DaptoDog]

Watched it this avo with my wife. Had to endure her whinging all the way home about how it was the worst of the five. So for non-TF fans I think they are over it, as evidenced by the relatively poor box office figures so far in the US.

As for me, I'd rank it well behind TF1 and DOTM (which I consider tied for best in the series) but ahead of AOE and ROTF (which I still consider to be the worst).

Loved Cogman. Loved the Steve Buscemi, Stanley Tucci and John Turturro cameos. Was surprised about how big a role Anthony Hopkins had and thought he was enjoyable. Laura Haddock was a much stronger actor than the two previous female leads (and hotter).

I'm not familiar with the TFPrime ending so I was excited to see Unicron introduced.

However, while I don't go in expecting a great story, this one was very convoluted and there were one too many plot devices.

The ending was quite weak. Quintessa is a god and yet was taken out so easily by Bumblebee. Though I did like the credits scene.

There were too many Transformers in this film. Crosshairs was great in AOE but had basically no action scenes. Drift was an afterthought. And that Suicide Squad set up was stupid. Infernicus was easily dispatched, Combiners should be super hard to defeat.

I agree with Gok about the bad language (which keeps getting worse). For a franchise that is all about selling toys to kids, you would think they would make these movies more kid friendly. I would love to be able to see this with my 8 year old (though I see this doesn't stop some other parents).

In the end, this film lacked the moments that TF1 and DOTM had. I've read a number of people's reviews where the movie holds up much better on a second viewing. Will most likely wait for the Blu-ray.

[reillyd]

I mainly have more questions than comments.

But the gravity/Cybertron thing. Given that we have frequently seen mass-density shifting and size shifting it didn't bother me so much, plus it looked to be largely hollow anyway. I thought it was just a broken shard of Cybertron (because, DoTM space bridge) and not the planet proper.


Questions which I am hoping someone smarter can answer

Q1: Does the spark reside in the head, and so can Starscream be revived.
Q2: How on earth did Starscream die in the first place (Lockdown?)
Q3: What happened to all the sparks Lockdown harvested. I had hoped to see them get revived, if Megatron can come back for the umpteenth time.
Q4: Did anyone else think Quintessa looks adorable (in her shimmering metal mode) and have unnatural thoughts? #justaskingforafriend

['07Camaro]

↓:confused: :confused: :confused:↓

I want to make a massive apology to you. What Fatality said was what I actually meant. It was stupid of me to include that question, but the point was that taking Megatron out of the movie wouldn't make any changes to the film's plot. I edited my comment with the pros and cons as well because I had a different thought after watching the movie a second time. Again, I apologise for the confusion I've caused.


I thought Drift was driving the Autobot ship... thats why he wasnt in the final scene

Oh yeah, I didn't even think about that. It makes sense now :D

[SharkyMcShark]

I mainly have more questions than comments.

But the gravity/Cybertron thing. Given that we have frequently seen mass-density shifting and size shifting it didn't bother me so much, plus it looked to be largely hollow anyway. I thought it was just a broken shard of Cybertron (because, DoTM space bridge) and not the planet proper.


Questions which I am hoping someone smarter can answer

Q1: Does the spark reside in the head, and so can Starscream be revived.
Q2: How on earth did Starscream die in the first place (Lockdown?)
Q3: What happened to all the sparks Lockdown harvested. I had hoped to see them get revived, if Megatron can come back for the umpteenth time.
Q4: Did anyone else think Quintessa looks adorable (in her shimmering metal mode) and have unnatural thoughts? #justaskingforafriend

For 1 and 2, the spark of Ratchet and Optimus were both shown in their chest, as well as various transformers in the films leaking bright blue stuff and dying from chest shots, so probably the chest.

Starscream died in DOTM after having a bomb go off in his head that blew up his head and upper torso.

[GoktimusPrime]

Although Mega-Galvatron was revived just from his head. Ah, let's face it, there's just no coherent logic between these movies.

[millhouse]

So a buddy and I went to see this last night (free tickets from a local comic shop that had a competition).

The story - just awful. As expected.

Visually? Some of the best VFX I've seen in cinema. The car chase through the UK was far more coherent than a lot of Bay's other TF work. The shifting ratios didn't bother me (although I assume it would look better on a real IMAX screen). The look was incredible.

But man, that script. Impossible to overcome.

[AJ_Prime]

I really enjoyed it. I saw it in 3d and the visuals were stunning, I found myself literally saying 'wow' out aloud as I felt I was actually in some of those scenes. One thing Bay does well is cinematography and attention to detail with lighting etc to get realism in the scenes.

Sure, the plot had more holes in it than a sieve but seriously, who went along expecting a solid storyline? I did enjoy the reference at the end about working together in order to rebuild the planets. To me it seemed like a hint towards climate change action. Nice little subliminal message in there.

It did feel as though some of the characters were built up to play more of a part than they did, but I suspect they figured that the more characters they include the in movie, the more toys they can sell. And essentially, that is what G1 was all about too.

I thought Cogman was quite a humorous character and I loved the fact that they included a chase scene with a McLaren P1, my favourite car (next to the F1).

It did seem that we saw more of Mark Walberg's flesh in this film than the female lead, but oh well at least there was plenty of robot fighting action to detract from it.

[GoktimusPrime]

The thing that gets me with, "It's a good movie if you switch your brain off" is... it shouldn't be. Why can't the movie be both an exciting action film and a good story? (e.g. The Empire Strikes Back, Beast Wars, Lord of the Rings etc.) :confused: It's not as if action and story are mutually exclusive. What I find odd is how so many people are forgiving of Michael Bay despite making no real effort to improve, yet are incredibly harsh against George Lucas, despite notable efforts to improve from past mistakes.

e.g. Jar Jar Binks
* Phantom Menace: totally annoying and screen-time wasting character who contributes almost nothing to the plot
* Attack of the Clone: only appears in a few scenes and role is far more significant to the plot (i.e. helps Palpatine to pass the Clone Army creation Act).
* Revenge of the Sith: only makes a single cameo appearance during Padmé's funeral. No dialogue.
And there are numerous other examples, but I'm not gonna derail this discussion with an essay-long post about the Star Wars Prequels. :p
The point is that with the Star Wars Prequels we can see progress being made. Bay on the other hand keeps on taking one step forwards and three steps back, but everyone's like, "Oh well, that's Bay." But when Lucas tried to improve, everyone's like, "THE PREQUELS SUCK! THERE ARE NO PREQUELS! (except for Rogue One)" etc. :o Not to mention that Lucas ultimately sold the rights to Star Wars and then donated the US$4 million that Disney paid to fund children's education (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/disney-deal-george-lucas-will-384947). #onionninjas :)


I really enjoyed it. I saw it in 3d and the visuals were stunning, I found myself literally saying 'wow' out aloud as I felt I was actually in some of those scenes. One thing Bay does well is cinematography and attention to detail with lighting etc to get realism in the scenes.
That's true. One of Bay's strengths is definitely, "Giant Effing Robots." :)

[Doubledealer]

Absolute garbage. I walked out after 50 minutes. :p

[christalcase]

I finally watched it today and it is not as bad as I thought but still felt it was a poor movie. I put it slightly better than Age of Extinction, 4/10. It felt sloppy and scenes were cutting too fast that made it disjointed.

I had to roll my eyes at the Transformers being yet again responsible for several major points in human history. I liked Unicron being Earth and Cogman (although he got tiring as the movie went on).

Not many people were watching in the same session but I noticed that there were plenty of gasps of disbelief and sighs at various points in the movie where it felt cliched and awkward.

Not sure how to word it properly but wished they toned down the "fantasy" element and went back to how "grounded" the first film was. I honestly would not be disappointed if they stopped making these films for a few years and rebooted it.

[GoktimusPrime]

I think one way to gauge if a movie is any good or not is to see what the Honest Trailers boys do with it. I just watched Logan for the first time (missed it in cinemas but rented it on Blu Ray) - this is an example of what an action movie should be like. Thrilling action with a character-driven story that elicits emotional investment from the audience. The Honest Trailer for Logan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_SyrpYk-Ik) really couldn't find anything bad to say about it, and the Honest Trailer guys live to rip films apart! (that's the whole fun of their videos ;)) Wonder Woman is another movie which is really well done IMHO - again, loads of cool action coupled with an excellent character-driven story.

Is it weird that I'm looking forward to the Honest Trailer for The Last Knight more than I was actually looking forward to the film itself? :p

[Starscream77]

So I got around to watching it on the weekend.

Now before I rate it let me say yes I am a G1 fanboy however I do not hate the Bay films in general (AOE was close though) and actually am a fan of movie 1 & 3.

The Last Knight from start to finish is a trainwreck, a dogs breakfast, a turd.
I could think of almost no good comments to make... it was a decent shot when Megs holds Screamers head and makes his comment.. Um Onslaught looked promising and then gone... Um .... Um

I would go 2/10 and it only gets 2 cause the Baysplosions look good

Reboot time

[Handsprime]

Here's my review:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Really I don't know what to say. It has it's awesome moments (it's definitely an improvement to AOE), but it's still filled with flaws. Like how did Galvatron become Megatron? Who is Canopy and why should I care about his death? Some of the robots just appear out of nowhere and aren't mentioned again. Heck even the production of the film is flawed. What's up with the Aspect Ratio? Also at times some of the Transformers look fake and even disappear in certain shots!

However I did like the film when it had it's awesome moments. And as mentioned an improvement from AOE (which imo felt empty). I would say it's my 3rd favorite of the series (Dark of the moon is 2nd and the '07 is 1st while ROTF is 4th and AOE is 5th)

5/10

[Ralph Wiggum]

Well, I finally saw this last night at Hoyts. I watched it with my partner who is doing her masters in Medieval history and so knows the Arthurian legends back to front. So when the movie opens with "England - Dark Ages" and baysplosions rock the battlefield, we both just cracked up.

Pretty much everyone in this thread has summed up all my thoughts on the good, bad and ugly. Overall the movie is on the same level (barely above if I want to be generous) as Age of Extinction. Nowhere near the awesomeness of the very first movie. I had seriously hoped that not having Ehren Kruger writing would improve the movie, but nope.

My partner did ask though: if the knight who passed on his talisman to Cade ended up dying, then does that mean Dragonstorm is missing a piece? :confused:

[griffin]

At the end of the movie Dragonstorm was missing 4 of the 12 knights that formed him at the start of the movie... one dies with Cade and Optimus killed 3 in Merlins tomb.

[Kranix]

I didn't expect to do so but I enjoyed this movie. It wasn't something to dwell on the details but just turn your brain off and enjoy. It does make me reflect on the stupidity shown in some of the earlier movies, mainly with the human characters. It was much better in that regard. Still, I have enjoyed all the movies on a basic level and will keep watching them. I rate this in the top 3.

[1AZRAEL1]

Quite enjoyed it, pretty sure I enjoyed more than AOE. Was half expecting to hear, or see, the Dude pop up somewhere. If people catch my drift lol.

[griffin]

Saw the movie for a second time today. I think I spent most of my attention looking for details and bits that weren't the primary focus of each scene... to look for anything I missed the first time.
It actually made a lot less sense the second time around, as you know what is about to happen, so the absence of setting up or introductions of plot devices is a lot more obvious. And the things that didn't make sense the first time (especially certain characters), looked even more obvious and worse this time around.
After this second viewing, I actually now rate this one worse than TF4 (to me). At least with TF4, I have been able to rewatch it a few times, and just fast-forward the few scenes that I don't like. I'm trying to think of a scene in TF5 that I would want to re-watch, compared to the previous four movies having segments and scenes that I like re-watching again and again.
I still recommend fans seeing it once... even if you wait until it is free on TV.

The submarine bugged me, now that I was able to verify in a second viewing that it was supposed to be a Transformer, but then doesn't transform or show signs of sentience. I don't know what is worse, a redundant character who could be removed from the movie and not change the plot, or a necessary character who is underused.

And something I didn't pick up on with the first viewing that really makes no sense, is at the start of the movie when Merlin was trying to get the Knight's attention, he says that he knows about their world being destroyed and that he wants their help to prevent his from being destroyed. Well... that was in 484AD, and the Knight's ship looked to have been crashed many thousands of years before that... but Cybertron was intact during the Dark of the Moon.

And why 12 Knights? (which are obviously ancient because they betrayed Quintessa a long time ago)
Is it just coincidence that is the same number as the ancient Primes in ROTF... and is it coincidence that Optimus and the Dinobots are Knights, but not the same as the 12 Cybertronian Knights who betrayed Quintessa.

It seems like there were a lot of cooks in the writers room, but no head chef to make sure that the recipe made sense in the end.

[GoktimusPrime]

I had one more free movie coupon left, so I could've watched The Last Knight for a second time. But I decided to watch Spider-Man: Homecoming instead, and I stand by my choice. :)


The submarine bugged me, now that I was able to verify in a second viewing that it was supposed to be a Transformer, but then doesn't transform or show signs of sentience. I don't know what is worse, a redundant character who could be removed from the movie and not change the plot, or a necessary character who is underused.
Then the submarine's name should be Slamdance. :D

[klystron]

Better than AOE, but as Griffin said, we'll have to see how it stacks up in the rewatch department. Definitely not a cringy as the previous one, but just as many plot holes.
There seemed to be way too much packed into it. When the writers were spit-balling ideas, instead of cutting some out, they must have decided to just use all of them.

Few things irked me:
(this is not an exhaustive list)
I felt Megatron was under-powered and under-used. And he seemed to disappear for a great chunk of time.
I hated how some transformers never even transformed.
Did that talisman contribute anything?
What the hell is an ignition chamber and how was it playing a vital role?
Humans/Autobots spent more time fighting drones in the abandoned town than the Decepticons, who gave up when they meet some resistance.

But at the time I enjoyed myself and don't feel that my $9 was wasted. Def a big screen action flick. Just make sure you turn your brain off.

On another note, I cant begin to tell you how excited I am at the prospect of getting:
a submarine transformer
a spitfire transformer (1 second of screen time qualifies, right?)
a WW1 tank transformer
and a Citroen DS transformer.

Course, I wont be holding my breath for these, but I can live in hope.

[Omega Metro]

I watched it for the second time today. I gotta say I enjoy it right up until the spaceship thing starts rising above the ocean and then the whole thing just turns to crap. The last 30-45 minutes is just awful. I just don't understand why Cybertron is dragging its bits all over Earth or why Cybertron even has grass and rolling hills growing on it. The whole thing seemed to just end without any real resolution.

[Seraphim Prime]

I saw this last night, and was tempted part way to give up and go home, but stayed just so I knew what happened.

The film felt less like a movie and more like a series of set pieces linked by a tenuous thread.

The shame is that there was so much in it that could have been good, but was not given the time in the film to engage with it.

The script felt like it was trying to do too much, and could have been refined a lot more to drill down on what they wanted their core story to be and then remove the superfluous.

I want to give a more in depth critique, but my head just gets swamped with the cacophony of incongruities, from both a narrative and a filmmaking point of view, that it just feels like a storm of discontent.

The worst of the five in my opinion, which is said because there was a lot of individual things that I liked.

[CBratron]

I want to see it just to know what everyone else is complaining about but avoiding it because every ticket sold is validation for more sequels.

[GoktimusPrime]

I want to see it just to know what everyone else is complaining about but avoiding it because every ticket sold is validation for more sequels.
That's why I used a free voucher.

[GoktimusPrime]

Watched the Last Knight last night.

The movie made LESS sense when I watched it again. :eek: :confused: I need to sit down sometime and watch it again with a notepad and write down all the things that don't make sense. It's endless. My wife was watching it for the first time and fell asleep by the time we reached the junkyard scene.

And there's even more swearing in this film than I recalled. We only watched it after our daughter went to bed, cos yeah... really not at all a kid-appropriate film. :( And so much of the swearing is just unnecessary too. I might get away with showing it if the swearing were happening in times of extreme stress or crises, but a lot of these characters just swear as if it were part of their daily vocabulary. :( :mad: It's as if the script were written by some angst-ridden teenager.

[Krayt]

Watched the Last Knight last night.

The movie made LESS sense when I watched it again. :eek: :confused: I need to sit down sometime and watch it again with a notepad and write down all the things that don't make sense. It's endless. My wife was watching it for the first time and fell asleep by the time we reached the junkyard scene.

And there's even more swearing in this film than I recalled. We only watched it after our daughter went to bed, cos yeah... really not at all a kid-appropriate film. :( And so much of the swearing is just unnecessary too. I might get away with showing it if the swearing were happening in times of extreme stress or crises, but a lot of these characters just swear as if it were part of their daily vocabulary. :( :mad: It's as if the script were written by some angst-ridden teenager.


Mature (M)
M – not recommended for children under 15; may include moderate levels of violence, language or themes.
The content is moderate in impact.

Films and computer games classified M (Mature) contain content of a moderate impact and are recommended for teenagers aged 15 years and over.

Children under 15 may legally access this material because it is an advisory category. However, M classified films and computer games may include classifiable elements such as violence and nudity of moderate impact that are not recommended for children under 15 years.

Parents and guardians may need to find out more about the film or computer game’s specific content, before deciding whether the material is suitable for their child.

[GoktimusPrime]

Yesterday I started re-watching the movie for the purposes of reviewing (rather than just watching then posting afterthoughts). I survived through the first half before my brain rebelled and I stopped after that. So I'll review the other 1.5h of this movie later. :rolleyes: Some of these points have certainly been mentioned in other posts, but anyway, here's my review on Hour 1:

Mythological Accuracy: Sir Moriaen
The film depicts one of Arthur's Knights being portrayed by a black actor. This is accurate to the original legend of King Arthur which describes Sir Moriaen as being a dark-skinned Moor, as his mother was a Moorish princess and his father was white (Sir Aglovale de Galis) and also a knight of the round table. Thus Moriaen is considered nobility by birthright. Now people might argue that having a black noble in 5th Century England is nigh-impossible, but as I said, it's not necessarily historically accurate but mythologically accurate, according to Arthurian canon. Because the story of Arthur itself is pretty much more fiction than fact anyway. :p But speaking of historical inaccuracies...
The invading Anglos are wearing spiked and horned helmets and armour. As we all know, this was something that 19th Century opera performers invented to make Viking operas look more dramatic. In reality, Germanic warriors never had spiked or horned helmets or armour. Conversely Arthur's knights aren't even wearing helmets. :eek:
It seems to be a cheap ploy to make the invaders look inhuman by covering their faces but make Arthur's knights look more 'heroic' by having their faces uncovered. Speaking of armour, Arthur's knights are wearing solid plated breastplates... 1000 years too soon!
But considering that the breastplates glow with blue energy when Merlin activates Quintessa's staff, it's safe to say that the armour given to Arthur and his knights were crafted by Cybertronians so okay, I can let that slide.
Arthur and his knights have a symbol - a circle with a perfectly symmetrical cross in the centre. This sorta looks like a Celtic cross, which would make sense as the Celts were already Christianised by the 5th Century and the invading Anglos would've still been Pagan - but the cross is the wrong shape. It should be more of a 十 rather than a ＋ (i.e. the vertical line should be longer than the horizontal). But we also see this cross on the Talisman of Iacon and Cade's sword. So is this actually a Celtic cross or a Cybertronian (Iaconian?) symbol which is coincidentally cross-shaped?
The latter makes more sense - I'd say it's an Iaconian cross. Merlin likely allowed Arthur and his knights to believe that it was a Celtic cross, which would also make sense for him because unless Merlin convinced Arthur that his "magics" came from God, then he would've likely been executed for sorcery. But then we also see some of the Knights doubting Merlin (which in turn means that they'd be doubting god - unless they're doubting Merlin's ability to channel god's power... gah, so much of this doesn't make sense!).
The Anglos are using counterweight trebuchets. 700 years before it would be invented! Yes, the Chinese had trebuchets since the fourth century B.C.E., but: a) those were traction trebuchets, not counterweight trebuchets, and b) this story is set in 5th Century England, not China!
Their trebuchets are also launching flaming spiked balls. It's true that siege engines did launch thermal projectiles, but in this period I think that the projectiles themselves might have been more likely to be clay earthen pots filled with combustible materials. Iron-cast vessels did come along later,
but I suspect that the 5th century would've been too early. Also... in the movie they explode! Okay... if this battle were happening in the Eastern Roman Empire, then sure, I could believe that they would've exploded magnificently because the Byzantines made use of Greek fire. But in other parts of the world outside of the Eastern Rome and Greece? Uh...
NO. This is because the Greeks and Byzantines fiercely guarded the secret of making Greek fire. It was so well protected that even now nobody knows how Greek fire was made! The Ancient Greeks and Byzantines took the secret of Greek fire to their graves. The closest thing we have now to Greek fire is napalm.
Why does the dragon need Merlin to command it with the staff? :confused: We later see Dragonstorm operating independently, even fighting against Quintessa's forces when she possessed the staff.
Why is there a Cybertronian Knight in Chicago?
Speaking of the Chicago scene -- those kids. Utterly annoying and completely useless. They did NOT need to be in this film at all. And they were behaving so unrealistically. You have big drone robots blowing stuff up around you, but yeah, one of them feels the need to flirt with the girl and another kid feels the need to make smart-alec quips. :eek: They're not brave, they're stupid! And they swear a lot for no apparent reason.
That Bumblebee falling apart and fighting TRF soldiers while reassembling scene... has got to be one of the stupidest fight scenes in cinematic history. I could literally write an entire chapter on how this makes no sense. And later one after Bumblebee has finished fighting Nemesis Prime, we see Bumblebee's parts returning to him as he puts himself back together! :eek: Okay, so this means that he always has this ability... so why didn't he use it against Nemesis Prime? Like when he has him pinned, why not disassemble and reassemble? Cos that'd make it impossible for Nemesis Prime to ever immobilise you - it's a potentially really useful ability. Why didn't Bumblebee use this ability at the ignition engine and then use his parts to collectively take out that gun emplacement (which Sqweeks ultimately takes out)? And when the TRF and MI6 guys came to Folgarn castle. And why hasn't Bumblebee ever used this ability before in previous movies?!??! This makes no sense!
Is Lennox TRF or US Army? He wears both uniforms in different scenes.
What is the chain of command between TRF and the Army? Cos they often bicker like children... which doesn't bloody happen in the military or a military alliance.
How the hell is Barricade alive again? We saw Bumblebee brutally kill him in Dark of the Moon!
Why are Megatron and Barricade having a private conversation in English? I can believe that they didn't know that the humans were listening in - that's fine. But why are they speaking in English with each other? For whose benefit are they doing that for? And we can't even suspend disbelief that it's simply Decepticonese translated for the audience as English because the spying humans can understand every single word!
Don't tell me that their surveillance equipment is built with a Star Trek Universal Translator or the Tardis' translation matrix! :rolleyes: Makes no sense!
Optimus Prime floating in space covered in ice. Where did the ice come from? Also, if he's run out of power, how does he miraculously power up again after crashing on Cybertron? How is it that he just casually gets up and walks away from that crater too (yet he's vulnerable to punches and kicks in a fight)? In previous films we know that Cybertronians have atmospheric entry modes to protect them upon crash landings, like Optimus Prime's Rock Lord mode. But here Optimus Prime simply crashes onto Cybertron's surface in robot mode! And he appears to be hot which implies that Cybertron has some atmosphere. Also...
How does Cybertron have greenery?
Why is Optimus Prime so shocked at the devastation on Cybertron?
He was the one who did it when he thwarted Sentinel Prime and Megatron's plan of space-bridging Cybertron to Earth! He chose to sacrifice Cybertron to save Earth... so why is he all surprised that Cybertron is damaged and then why does he go all angry at Quintessa and blaming her for what's happened?!? Is Optimus Prime bi-polar?!
Vivienne falls off her horse during a game of polo and nobody cares.
Whiplash? Concussion? Who cares?!
Vivienne swears while talking about Arthurian legend to a group of students. *sigh* She's meant to be a highly intelligent professor but she needs to resort to swearing to engage her students. *facepalm* Continuing Revenge of the Fallen's time-honoured tradition of Let's Make University Academics Creepy!
That junkyard scene. It reminds me of the pod race in The Phantom Menace - yes, it serves a purpose, but it should be MUCH MUCH MUCH shorter. And there's a lot of useless stuff that should've been omitted like:
* Grimlock munching on Chief Sherman's cruiser
* The baby Dinobots
* The childish squabbling between the Autobots
Mmmm... casual racism...
* Daytrader telling Drift that his Japanese accent is unintelligible. Later in the film Vivienne struggles to understand Hot Rod's French accent and Hot Rod laments about how he hates his accent but can't get rid of it. Cos yeah, making fun of foreign accents is funny now!
* Cade referring to Izabella as "Little J-Lo." Right up there with calling Shane "Lucky Charms." It's as if he can't get by meeting anyone of an ethnic minority without giving them an ethnic nickname. Although I do like how Chief Sherman totally shot him down with this ("But coming from you it sounds vaguely racist").
Why is the NASA guy so dismissive of the JPL (https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/) guy when discussing Earth's imminent doom? :confused: Don't bore me with this geek crap, I've got lunch! It makes... no sense...
Apparently Hound doesn't know the difference between an adjective and and adverb. Neither does Izabella, but she's been homeless and probably out of school since she was 8 years old so it's understandable. Hound is an advanced alien robot who downloaded Earth's languages from the internet.
Now you could argue that the internet is loaded with grammatical inaccuracies and that a computer brain might mistake it for correct grammar... might would be true for an artificial intelligence. But the Transformers aren't artificially intelligent. They are a fully sentient and sapient species who should and would be able to detect and determine errors in natural language. Okay, they might occasionally make a few mistakes as linguistic faux pas, and we saw this in the first movie when Optimus Prime used the common online saying of, "My bad." But that's a clever nuanced thing... this isn't... it's just illiteracy.
Lennox tells one of the lawyers, "You know who they always kill firsT?
Lawyers." Now why would you say this?!? Their mission is to negotiate a deal with Megatron. Why mentally unhinge one of your major players just prior to these negotiations? She needs your emotional support if anything!
"Dreadbot" ←just a stupid name. Feels like a working name that they were using which was meant to be replaced with something better but it never happened. Cos in ROTF Scavenger was called Wheelbot and Rampage is Skipjack - and both are listed as such in the credits. But at least neither of them were referred to by those names in the film itself. Here we hear Megatron saying, "Dreadbot" and his name appears in text on screen. It sounds so... PlaySkool. In a movie chock full of swearing.
So Berserker doesn't get released which means he doesn't make much of an appearance in this film... yet characters like Mohawk and Onslaught,
who do get released and make a more prominent appearance, have no toys?!? :/ Haaasssbbbbrroooooo!
Cade and Izabella replace Bumblebee's voice module from his "mouth"
(what luck that Daytrader was able to find another voice module in the exact same shape and size as Bumblebee's mouthpiece! What are the odds of that?!) yet we see Bumblebee remove it from his throat. Also in the first movie Ratchet zaps Bumblebee's throat when he talks about how he lost his voice. If anything you'd think that the vocal circuit would be an internal organ thing like transformation cogs etc.
Dinobots bursting out of the ground... cos... uh... yeeeaaah :rolleyes:
After the Dinobots take out some of the TRF guys, the TRF leader gets all angry and wants revenge. Cos that's totally professional. He then physically assaults Lennox to get him out of the way. If Lennox is his superior officer then isn't that a gaolable offence? #courtmartial
Why was Sqweeks hiding behind a thin sheet of metal? Why didn't Izabella ensure that he had a better hiding spot? From the Chicago scene we know that Sqweeks is better at hiding than this.
Izabella tells Cade that the TRF drones have a mother drone just like the ones back in Chicago. Back in Chicago? Did I miss something?
Why did Cogman dive out of the way when the drone swooped in to attack Cade? Cogman's mission was to deliver Cade alive to Lord Chuml--,
Folgarn. Cogman is incredibly strong and he can shoot missiles from his mouth! He could've easily taken down that drone.
Morshower casually orders Lennox's team (along with TRF) to go to the UK. Does this make Morshower a TRF officer or an Army officer? How are these Americans able to casually enter another country like that? In ROTF we see the Americans contact Egyptian and Jordanian forces rather than just deploying troops into their territories without consent. Okay, we do see MI6 and British police cooperating with TRF/US Army guys which implies that there's official cooperation happening. But a quick line before then like saying that they would call MI6 while Lennox and his guys are inbound would've helped clear this up. They did it in ROTF.
Earth = Unicron. I think that this might make little to no sense for the general non-fan audience. At best it must just seem ridiculous. At least Transformers Prime actually explained why and how Unicron became Earth.
You got time to have people swearing all over the place but not enough time for Quintessa or any of the Transformers to simply state that Unicron is the Earth's core and how the Earth formed around his slumbering form? Really?

...sigh... another hour and a half of this to endure...

[SharkyMcShark]

School holidays left you with nothing to do Gok?

[philby]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_ice

[GoktimusPrime]

School holidays left you with nothing to do Gok?
More like an interlude from non-stop marking. :(

[shockNwave]

When this movie is reduced to $15 or better yet, a bargain bin price then I'll be glad to own it on DVD.

[KingGrimlock]

Why does the dragon need Merlin to command it with the staff?

My guess is it doesnt necessarily allow him to control the dragon, merely to signal the other cybertronian knights that he was chosen and worthy to listen too and that they shouldnt kill him.

[GoktimusPrime]

My guess is it doesnt necessarily allow him to control the dragon, merely to signal the other cybertronian knights that he was chosen and worthy to listen too and that they shouldnt kill him.
I assumed that's what the breastplates were for. I don't think that these knights are that stupid, are they?

Anyway, here's my thoughts on the rest of the film...
Viviane's mother and aunts bugging her to find a partner - utterly pointless. Adds nothing and wastes screen time.
How was Viviane able to smash through Hot Rod's window with a polo club?! The first movie established that Cybertronians are shielded (and only high energy things like Sabot rounds can penetrate it) - and we've seen other Transformers take an incredible amount of punishment that would wreck ordinary vehicles (collisions, falls etc.). Huh?
Viviane hopes that she's been abducted by one of the "famous ones" like Soundwave or Shockwave. How the hell does she know who they are? How are there famous ones at all? This isn't Deadpool.
Why would Lord Folgarn allow a demented Autobot (Bulldog) to keep live ammunition? What if he'd actually hit Cade and killed him? He could've had Cogman remove that ammo or otherwise disable his weapons.
Folgarn recognises Bumblebee from his childhood but Bumblebee doesn't recognise Folgarn. It'd be interesting if the upcoming Bumblebee movie were to show this, even if briefly. e.g. a quick flashback to Bumblebee working with an older Witwiccan with little boy Folgarn in the background -
that would explain why Folgarn would remember 'Bee but not vice versa
Why is Cade so impatient with Folgarn? He just flew across the Atlantic... where's he gonna go?
"Her my First Transformers (http://tfwiki.net/wiki/First_Transformers) experience." Niiice. :D
Oh look, more casual racism with mocking Hot Rod's French accent and Cade and Viviane having a go at each other for being different nationalities.
Yay.
Viviane seems awfully calm when Cogman jumps on Cade! I get that Folgarn may have seen this before, but why isn't it freaking Viviane out?
Not even a gasp. Should someone check her for a pulse?
Folgarn says that Cogman is a Headmaster. This adds to the theory that he was meant to be a Headmaster and that the Aston Martin car that he initially drives was his Transtector (the toy design team have referred to it as a Transtector). We know that Nitro's head is removable and compatible with a Titan Master - so the theory is that Cogman was meant to remove the head and hijack Nitro Zeus' body as his Transtector. This would have been awesome to see but a shame that it was omitted. I suspect that it would've happened during the Stonehenge fight.
Old photos in Folgarn's castle showing that the Transformers have been on Earth for ages. These include:
* Ironhide (with GM Topkick kibble!) towing tall sail ships.
* Hound with George Washington's forces
* Optimus Prime standing in the middle of a crowd of fighting British musketeers. Note that it is basically this image (http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/transformersdarkofthemoon/images/a/a5/MovieOptimusPrime_promorender3.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/2000?cb=20120118122511) but with Optimus Prime's Dark of the Moon stomach and a cannon added to his shoulder.
* Drift and another Samurai looking Autobot with other Samurai. Drift has his car grill even though this photo couldn't have been taken any later than 1877. The CGI on these Autobots are like... G2 intro level of quality. Beast Wars looks so much better. I get that they didn't want to spend a lot of money on a split second shot, but at least blur the image to hide the cheap CGI!
* Ironhide, again with his GM Topkick robot form, walking with WWI or WWII soldiers (they're in silhouette so I couldn't tell).
* Bulldog is seen in good condition with WWI soldiers - finally a picture that makes sense!
* A photo dated 1901 showing Hot Rod in his current Lamborghini robot mode! Didn't he just acquire that like half an hour prior to this scene (delivering Viviane to the castle)? And pretty sure that they didn't have Lamborghini Centenarios in 1901. Also, we see Hot Rod transform into a WWII German personnel carrier truck in the WWII flashback - about forty years after that photo.
Sam's mugshot - lol
WWII flashback - we finally see Bumblebee as a Volkswagen!
Cade quoting Arthur C Clarke's third law to Viviane was pretty cool and I like how it explains that Cybertronian technology contributed to the origins of magic/sorcery. It's similar to how the Decepticon Pretenders in Masterforce were the origins of human monster stories
Why would the Knights exclusively use melee weapons (swords)? These are advanced space-faring alien robots. I don't object to Transformers using melee weapons per se, clearly they're tough enough to keep fighting even after being shot half the time, but sure the melee weapon should be a secondary weapon with a gun as their primary weapon. We saw this in previous films, like how Optimus Prime has those forearm thermal blades, but he still has flip out guns. Guns are better than swords! Volcanus has guns. Be like Volcanus.
Cogman trying to make the moment more epic -- okay, this is actually a genuinely funny joke! And unlike some of the other poor attempts at humour it's not crude and it importantly it doesn't interrupt the narrative flow. The story doesn't stall to deliver this joke. Instead, the joke just runs with the film. That's how jokes should be delivered. It's a well timed joke and it was brief. Much like the "tighter shirt" joke from Revenge of the Fallen. It's a good way to break tension without stopping the narrative.
Theeen the story becomes completely stalled to make fun of Cade's chastity. *sigh* This is exactly how you don't deliver a joke in a film.
It really serves no purpose and the story drags to a halt to tell it. And it also reeks of that ridiculous macho attitude that somehow being chaste makes a person less worthy than someone who's intimately active. *sigh*
Folgarn reads a quote in Olde Cybertronian which Cade heard the Knight in Chicago say just once and Cade recognises that line! :eek: Huh---how?! Imagine if a complete stranger fell over and you helped him up, then he said something to you in a language that you've never heard before. Then days later someone else says that exact line again in that language... how would you recognise it? It could've been in Old Pict for all he knew. Cade constantly makes casual racist remarks towards other humans but suddenly he can recognise dead Cybertronian tongue when he hears it?
The staff is the reason that the Transformers keep coming to Earth?
Really? Not... the AllSpark Cube? Or the Solar Harvester? Or Sentinel Prime's Space Bridge? How do these all even tie in with the staff? :confused:
When TRF & MI6 arrive, why doesn't Hot Rod stay behind and keep re-zapping them with his time gun? That would eliminate the need for a dangerous chase and potential mission failure.
It's cool and funny how Simmons has returned in this film to provide exposition... entirely over the telephone. :D That giant Cuban flag on the wall behind Simmons... in case you didn't get the point that he's in Cuba
The scene where Cade and Viviane are ransacking her father's study and the aunts and mother mistake them for having a raunchy hanky panky session - see, that's also funny and it doesn't stall the narrative. The story keeps apace (because they need to find her father's secret message) but also delivers some cheeky humour. And this scene would have been just as funny without the previous scene of her relos harassing her about finding a partner.
They think they're getting it on and then want to spy - that's the funny part and that's all you need.
Simmon's "dissolving scrotums" line... cos jokes about balls never get old, right? :rolleyes:
Wait... how can continental drift displace Unicron's horns? The Earth is pretty much like a shell for Unicron and until Cybertron's approach, those horns were retracted. So... how? And even if they could, wouldn't that mess up Unicron? Cos if those horns were initially part of his maw, then he's incredibly deformed and mangled now! :o
"British TRF!" - okay, this answers my previous question about the international jurisdiction of TRF. So evidently they are able to operate with different global branches in any country where they have a presence, which is apparently anywhere but Cuba. Wow... North Korea TRF?
Barricade is chasing Bumblebee in London still scanned as an American police car and nobody from MI6 or TRF noticed? Why didn't he scan a British police car to blend in better? The MPS' motto is "Total Policing," so I guess Barricade's version might be, "Total Punishing" or "Total Enslaving." Plus it'd give Hasbro a reason to sell another Barricade toy
It would've been neat to actually see the HMS Alliance jump its moors.
Or ya know... transform (especially after docking with the Knights' ship)
Why would Cogman refer to the Alliance as an alien ship? It's a fellow Transformer like him!
The Alliance vs nuclear sub undersea fight was pretty damn cool to watch! :D
Did Folgarn seriously expect to walk in through the main entrance of 10 Downing Street demanding to see the PM? Then he gets irate when they don't let him (how dare they do their jobs!) and he even swears at a bobby! They should've arrested him!
Cogman claims to serve Cade and Viviane "sushi." It's actually sashimi.
And where did he get the vegetables and garnish from? Or a really sharp knife.
Seeing Cybertron colliding with the ISS and even the crew aboard looking out the window as Cybertron approaches, with everyone being helpless to save them... damn!! :eek: The astronauts all reacted fairly calmly to their impending doom, but believe it or not that's fairly realistic. Astronauts are very highly professionally trained and don't crack under pressure. The Apollo 13 mission is a good example of this. The movie shows the crew freaking out and getting all emotional, which was done for dramatic purposes, but if you listen to the real recordings of the transmissions the crew were actually totally calm and collected. Believe it or not, astronauts actually train for really messed up scenarios.
The writing on the Round Table is in Olde Cybertronian, but the writing found inside the Knights' ship is in Celtic?! :o
One dead Knight in Chicago and a few more taken out during the fight inside the ship. After this scene we only ever see 8 Knights, yet it's still enough to merge and form Dragonstorm. So, uh... huh? Does that make the other four back up members that weren't crucial to forming Dragonstorm?
And what luck that these expendable Knights were the ones who were taken out.
The Knights' ship surfaces very quickly from the ocean depths to the surface. How did all the humans not get affected by decompression sickness? How are they even still conscious?!?
Bumblebee vs Nemesis Prime -- why didn't Bumblebee disconnect and reconnect parts of himself during the fight to gain an upper hand like he did against TRF? It would've made it impossible for Nemesis Prime to ever pin him down. At the end of the fight we see Bumblebee's ripped off parts reconnecting with him! So he clearly still has this ability.
What's the deal with Bumblebee's voice? Has he lost it or is it back?
Or does it just come back when it's convenient? Oh, and apparently just hearing it was enough to snap Optimus Prime out of Quintessa's stupor. Sure, why not. SAVE... MARTHA!
Why would the Knights want to kill Optimus Prime when he was enslaved by Quintessa as Nemesis Prime? As former Knights of Quintessa you think that they'd be aware of her powers. Why didn't Optimus Prime explain to them that he was under Quintessa's control? Or was he not? Did Quintessa simply strip him of his moral code but otherwise didn't directly control him? (similar to what BM Megatron did to Silverbolt and Rhinox) --
it'd be good if the film could briefly explain this. Maybe if they spent less time making scrotum jokes.
Megatron rips the staff out of Optimus Prime's chest, but later his chest is A-Okay!
Optimus Prime refers to the Knights as "my brothers." Does he meant this literally or figuratively/collectively? Because these Knights should be way older than Optimus Prime who we know isn't one of the Original Primes or is necessarily even that old (by Cybertronian standards). He wasn't even Prime when the Autobot-Decepticon war broke out, Sentinel Prime was Autobot leader until the Ark was lost. These Knights may be just as old if not older than the Original 13 Primes. Would the Dinobots know who these Knights are? Are the Dinobots Knights that are as old as these Knights, or did they come later? Optimus Prime told the Dinobots to "recognise one of their own,"
so does that mean that Optimus was a Dinobot? Or is it again just figurative and saying that they're part of the same club (Knights)? Does this mean that Sentinel Prime was a Knight? I... I...
The loss of Earth's electromagnetic field wouldn't make everything on it explode like popcorn in a microwave (wow, Michael Bay is really obsessed with explosions). A lot of technology would be messed up and over a long time we would start experiencing higher rates of diseases due to higher exposure to cosmic radiation. This would take years. And decades or possibly centuries later, we would eventually lose our atmosphere and oceans. This is what happened to Mars. It used to have oceans and an atmosphere until it lost half of its magnetic field. So yeah, the Earth would be screwed,
but not as quickly or as dramatically as the JPL guy is suggesting.
Why does Folgarn stand idly after shooting Megatron and the fight between the Decepticons and the British Army started? It would've been cool to see Cogman decapitate Nitro Zeus and drive the Decepticons away before disconnected and rushing to Folgarn's side. No?
Interesting to see that the Knights are not Autobots. Makes sense as if they are incredibly ancient that they would have existed and left Cybertron long before the Cybertronian wars started.
Optimus Prime didn't react to seeing his Autobots after his long sojourn into space and stuff. Can't blame Hound for feeling a bit dejected.
Folgarn telling Cogman to "carry on" with his dying breath is obviously a part of the British "stiff upper lip" culture, but was inspired by a similar attitude in Ancient Greece as Spartans also practised this as part of their beliefs in discipline and self-sacrifice. No sacrifice, no victory!
Bits of Cybertron start falling to Earth and everyone's running. Running.
Did the Autobots forget that they can transform into cars? :/ IDW'd!
Viviane comparing the TRF soldiers with the knights of Camelot, cos no sacrifice, no... okay, we get the point
I really liked the part where Cade tells the TRF guys that, unlike them, he never lost faith in Optimus Prime. :D It's something that many of us can relate to as life-long collectors of Transformers who've never stopped collecting. We never lost faith in the franchise even in its darkest moments (e.g. late 1980s to mid-1990s). Right in the feels. <sniff> :o
The aerial fight between RAF fighters, Ospreys and Dragonstorm against the Decepticon fighters was pretty intense, as well as the ospreys' crash landing outside the Ignition Chamber.
They said that the air up there was so thin that it proved problematic for the ospreys to fly... so... how is it breathable?
Couldn't Hound have lobbed a grenade at that auto-gun? When Bumblebee arrived couldn't he have disassembled and swarmed onto that gun from multiple angles? When Hot Rod arrived, couldn't have have stopped the time on the gun? Oh no... let Sqweeks handle it so that he can justify his otherwise completely useless appearance in this film. "Hooray, I'm useful!"
Sqweeks: the Autobot equivalent of Zoidberg
Sqweeks doesn't say the F-word. Believe me, I was listening out for all the swear words in a film that really has waaay too many. But this wasn't one of them.
Optimus Prime tells Volcanus, "Did you forget who I am?" --- uh... why should Volcanus know who he is? They met like once before when he arrived on Cybertron and was quickly subdued by Quintessa. Geez, get over yourself.
The humans' attempt to sever the Ignition Chamber, while ultimately futile, was a logical strategic step from the humans' POV. :) It was an interesting way to up the plot complication by creating a reason to remove almost all of the Autobots' human allies off the island in a way that felt believable
When trying to break into the Ignition Chamber why doesn't Hot Rod stop the time? They're being pinned down by enemy fire. Stop the time!
How weak are Hound's bullets?!? He fires a whole heap of them at Megatron inside a time dilation bubble, but when they hit him they just...
make him fall down? Optimus Prime deals more damage with his hands and a kick. What's the point of having firearms that are weaker than your fists?
The guns from the earlier films dealt out way more damage.
The Ignition Chamber's free-fall scene looked really cool. :)
When Optimus Prime's hands reach into the time bubble to grab Cade and Viviane out, his hands are moving faster than they are falling.
https://image.ibb.co/mfThVb/meme_dilation.jpg
IDW's Lost Light series showed a more realistic depiction of time dilation with its time-displacement cell (where Overlord was imprisoned). Hound's bullets can't fly any faster but Prime's hands can. Okay.
As they escape the Ignition Chamber this is the only time that we see Optimus Prime in truck mode in the entire film.
I like the moral of the story that Optimus Prime delivers in his epilogue:
We can all be heroes if we have the courage to try. :)
Cade refers to Izabela as "Bro." Umm...
Optimus Prime summons more Autobots to Earth. Again. But maybe they've always been on Earth! Cos Hound and Drift and Hot Rod have... nnnyyyyaaaaaaaaaaaargh!
The credit scene where we see Quintessa in human disguise is the first time that a Cybertronian's voice actor/actress (in this case Gemma Chan) has appeared on film as themselves. It'd be neat if in a future movie we could see Peter Cullen and/or Frank Welker making Stan Lee-style cameo appearances. :D Especially if Cullen could be Optimus Prime's holographic driver (which was the case in the IDW movie comic universe). If Megatron decided to become an Earth vehicle again he could have Welker as the holographic pilot or driver. Even if his face is obscured by a helmet it'd still be cool to know that it's him (similar with say Daniel Craig's appearance in The Force Awakens).

And that's it!

[Krayt]

Is Lennox TRF or US Army? He wears both uniforms in different scenes.
What is the chain of command between TRF and the Army? Cos they often bicker like children... which doesn't bloody happen in the military or a military alliance.


Do you even watch the movie? Or just the parts you want to pick on? They clearly have Morshower tell Lennox to "continue his covert infiltration of TRF".

[Lint]

Not a very good film at all and this is coming from someone who thought AoE, despite all it's rough edges, was a step in the right direction for the franchise. Sadly this film has proved that to be completely wrong.

Cogman is the best thing about the film.

[philby]

While i find these long nit-picking critiques a bit groan inducing I do also wonder why is anyone not asking some of these questions during production and if they are, what are the answers?

[griffin]

While i find these long nit-picking critiques a bit groan inducing I do also wonder why is anyone not asking some of these questions during production and if they are, what are the answers?

I imagine the answer would have been, "you're fired".
It comes down to how flexible the director is with their vision... and the only people who can overrule a director is the movie studio. Since Paramount and Hasbro were desperately needing Bay, they wouldn't have done anything to risk having him quit.
(Usually if a director has their work changed/shortened by a studio they will either refuse to be credited for it or produce a director's cut.)

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

Finally got around to seeing this and while I don't regret wasting the hours of my life it took to watch it (like ROTF and the others), this is by no means a good film.

There's a lot more to like in this over other Transformers films, so that was a plpeasent surprise, but as a film by itself its a solid
Meh
from me. Now that I've seen it, I don't have to worry about it any more.

In a way it kind of show that Bay just isn' progressing as a director. The narrative is choppily chucked together, he stilll uses many filters and panning shot and the action scenes are jumpy and sometimes hard to tell what's going on. Also he has a serious hard on for people sliding around. How many scenes were there where we just watched people slide on the floor? I can think of at least three.

The biggest annoyance I found with the film though was there was so many extra scenes that could have been cut and no one would have cared. Gok mentioned one, and really, even though the WW2 bit was cool, it coulda been dropped and changed.

While I'm glad I've seen it, I won't bother watching it again.

[DaptoDog]

Watched my blu ray copy last night, making this my second viewing having watched it at the cinema. In my initial review here I rated it 3rd out of the series, ahead of AOE and ROTF. I also said I heard it holds up better on the second viewing.

Well sadly I need to revise down my overall view of the movie. I now rank it below AOE because I'm happy to rewatch that whereas I liked this even less on the second viewing. I was bored for various parts of the film. Never felt any real excitement / emotion that I did in the other films (eg Dinobots hero sequence in AOE, Ironhide dying in DOTM, Autobots returning in DOTM, Optimus transforming for the first time in the original).

[Omega Metro]

I’ve seen it 3 times now but from now on, I’d like to only watch the scenes with ‘C3PO’ in them. He was very funny.:D

[Ralph Wiggum]

I was watching the 4K version on my TV and holy crap Mark Wahlberg looked so orange with his spray on tan :D

[GoktimusPrime]

Honest Trailer: Transformers The Last Knight (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU4bFiU8F7Y)
Tragically funny cos it's true. :/

[griffin]

Honest Trailer: Transformers The Last Knight (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU4bFiU8F7Y)
Tragically funny cos it's true. :/

Sad, but true... :(

[shockNwave]

When this movie is reduced to $15 or better yet, a bargain bin price then I'll be glad to own it on DVD.

On second thoughts. It's worth having if I can get it without having to pay a cent.

[CHILENO20]

Was flicking through channels on foxtel and it came up so I decided to watch it. Boy what a f***ing mess! So glad I didn't go to the movies or buy it on dvd, what a waste of money and so many holes you just want to throw it away like an old sock!

[Seraphim Prime]

I've said it before and I'll say it again - worst out of the five movies for me.

This is the only movie (not just Transformers movies, but only movie full stop) that I have wanted to leave from part-way through. It was that bad.

People say it's better than ROTF, but I have to disagree because I still feel like I can distil the primary story of ROTF. I know who the characters are and their motivation. Whereas TLK is just a mess of ideas with only a tenuous common thread

[SharkyMcShark]

It's so bad that it sort of transcended any real emotional response on my part.

It is said that the opposite of love is not truly hate, but apathy. This movie really confirms that, in my eyes.

I found this movie so bland it was hard to get worked up about how deficient it was.

[griffin]

I was bored at home yesterday, so put on The Last Knight, last night... which was the third time I had seen it (the first two were at the cinema).

I watched it with the frame of mind of a "general public" non-Transformers fan, and found that it was certainly a feast for the visual and audio senses, and was less confusing if you don't try to understand what is going on, or know anything at all about Transformers (the history or even past live action movies).

I don't expect I will voluntarily watch it again for a few years (like Age of Extinction, which I just can't sit down and watch the whole thing anymore)... probably when it starts screening on free-to-air TV.

It's just annoying that it is left with a sort of cliffhanger, relating to Unicron and Quintessa, and I doubt we will see a resolution to it now.
(it is also annoying that we probably won't ever get toys of all of those bots in this movie that didn't get toys... including the ones that didn't even get to show us their robot mode or alt-mode in the movie)

[philby]

I got around to watching this recently on Foxtel. I was actually expecting it to be a lot worse than it was. Toning down the crazy product placement was good. I quite liked some of the cinematography near the end with the Osprey scenes. However again like Age Of Extinction to me it was like there was potential behind some of the ideas but those were not really executed well and there is again a bunch of stuff that just doesn't really make a lot of sense and wastes time.

Obviously Transformers is a brand targeted generally towards kids and having younger actors makes sense. Why then spend time introducing a young character at the start and then dumping them for the rest of the movie?
I agree with Goktimus about the swearing thing too, F-bombs in this context I think are pretty silly and don't add anything to the movie.
People talk about "suspension of disbelief" when you watch movies and you may need to switch off a little if you are going to watch a movie about gigantic alien robots. Having said that, stuff like Cogman turning into a vintage type plane, flying over from the UK to wherever they had that fight to pick up Cade and then flying back without any kind of interruption or response from UK and USA air force etc is really stretching it to me.
The concept and filming of that scene where the troops get together for a suicide mission with the Osprey drop I thought was really great. But then they just get stuck there and don't really do anything or go anywhere. An example where I think they had a good idea or thought of something that would look pretty cool but wasn't used that well.

Eh I think for now that is enough words used on this movie lol

[griffin]

So... was the old plane they used to get from America to England, supposed to be Cogman, or a Transformer at all?
It is implied that the Submarine was one, but then, Vivian had the ability to activate non-sentient Cybertronian tech as well, so... could the Submarine just have been a transport vessel... or were they both Transformers, and Bay just ran out of money to give us a transformation sequence on-screen (post-production CGI would be one of the last things to do, so if they were running short on money, some transformations might have been sacrificed - like how Cogman was supposed to be a headmaster at some point in the movie, but ended up being cut).

Having that vintage plane in there was probably just an impulsive idea from the director anyway, as he often has items or scenes that look visually impressive, but don't make much sense (and often never explained)... just to make one scene look really good, but it then confuses people watching the whole movie.
Like having the White Cliffs of Dover shown... it looks stunning, but doesn't make sense having them travel past it because of where the Cliffs are located in relation to where they are coming from and going to.

[griffin]

Finally watching the bonus features on the TF5 DVD/BR.

So much potential from the original story ideas, some of which we already knew about during the production of the movie.
But some things I didn't know, that didn't end up in the finished cut of the movie.

Like, Cade Yeager is meant to be a descendant of King Arthur, which would make the concept of Vivian being Merlin's descendant more significant, as it would be a "coming full circle" element of Arthur and Merlin coming together again in battle through their descendants.

The (very) short medieval battle intro scene was meant to be a lot simpler, with most soldiers originally planned to be CGI, but the project kept getting bigger and bigger as Bay came on set and got involved.... it must have added so much to the expense of the movie, resulting in other things getting cut (like the alleged Headmaster scene, with Cogman taking over Nitro's body).

Another thing that I thought was a wasted expense was the early Chicago scene, when the kids find the girl and Sqweeks... they dressed up an abandoned Detroit factory to look like a war torn Chicago, shipping in actual Chicago trains to make it look authentic. (I didn't even notice the trains... let alone know or care if they were authentic Chicago trains.)
Considering the usual lack of authenticity when recreating locations of other cities or countries, I don't know why they even bothered with the expense of doing this, as it probably added another million or two to the budget, for negligible effect.

A lot of the military roles in the movie (soldiers on the TRF and the aircraft carrier command crew) were played by actual military people.

The two movie ideas that were combined to make TF5 were already known (a WW2 mission and King Arthur's knights), but the proposed movie title for the WW2 movie (if it had been made as a standalone movie) was "Operation Skyfire".

A clip from the junkyard that I didn't remember (it may have been cut, or I fell asleep at that point :p ) - Sqweeks knocking Wheelie off the car they were standing on. Actually, there looked to be a fair bit from the junkyard scenes that were cut, by the looks of what they showed us in the bonus feature about Cade's Junkyard.

You get to see the stand-ins for Cogman (car chase and when Burton is dying), and Jim Carter speaking the lines on-set.

They actually got permission to film the front of 10 Downing Street (when Burton tries to get in), and a lot of other areas of central London, because of who Bay is (thanks mostly to his success with the Transformers Movies).

Hotrod had over 100 face concept images done up for them to choose the one that would be his face on the movie.

Something I found funny - in the featurette about the robot characters in this movie, they talk about Drift, Crosshairs and Hound carrying over from TF4, because "Michael really stressed the character development in them".
What character development?

Drift was changed from a Bugatti to a Mercedes because Michael liked the new GTR model that came out, so it had to feature in the movie (requiring an unnecessary change of vehicle mode and colour of one of the main Autobots).

Daytrader's original name was Barterbot.

Megatron's jet mode was inspired by a sword/dagger.

Barricade was only brought back because fans on a fansite had a poll on which movie character they wanted to see come back.
His painted slogan "Punish and Enslave" was changed to "Keep Calm and Hail Megatron" - was that even seen in the movie, because I only remember the original slogan on his car. Maybe it was on an early paintjob of the car, and then changed back due to fan feedback (when we saw early concept art/images of his knuckles saying Protect and Serve).

The robot cast featurette only detailed three Decepticons - Megatron, Barricade and Mohawk. With minimal toys, the Movie Decepticons just get so ignored.

The concepts behind the character of Quintessa was based on the original Gen1 Quintessons, as the Transformers creators.

Cybertron was based on the TF3 Cybertron, not the TF1 Cybertron... and they had to add dirt, so that they could film the battle scenes on actual "land" without having to create a huge alien film set.

Michael Bay's mum is featured, and I think was in the horse polo scene.


Watching the behind the scenes videos, it looks like Michael Bay really loves doing these Transformers movies, and being his most (financially) successful movies, I can see him coming back in the future to direct another one... and Hasbro and Paramount will throw lots of money at him to get him back (like the last few times), because the more money his TFs movies make, the more money they make.
They make him rich, and he seems to really love directing them, and getting to do things and go places (have access to places), that he would otherwise wouldn't.

[SharkyMcShark]

It kind of makes me sad that Bay is director who does general go the extra mile when it comes to stuff like practical effects when you consider that, the first film aside, they are all pretty shit to average.

The first film for example was the first time that an actual real F22 was used for a film.

[Galvatran]

Finally watching the bonus features on the TF5 DVD/BR.
*snip
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wall
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of
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text*
Had to double check poster's username.
:p

[griffin]

Well, the movie had its first screening on free-to-air TV tonight... so I'm guessing there would be some people here who watched it for the first time, and maybe some people who saw it again.

[DaptoDog]

I didn't watch it last night but have found I like it less each time I watch it. It's now my least favourite Transformers movie whereas I used to rank it above ROTF. Such an anticlimactic ending and convoluted story.

[Omega Metro]

I didn't watch it last night but have found I like it less each time I watch it. It's now my least favourite Transformers movie whereas I used to rank it above ROTF. Such an anticlimactic ending and convoluted story.

Back in the day, I used to adore watching these TF movies. Had all the toys. Then something just clicked when I saw TLK at the cinemas. Now I have no desire to watch any of them. Agree, the ending is terrible. ROTF is still my second favourite though, oddly enough.

[Tha_Phantom]

Rewatched it for sh**s and giggles with a couple of mates a month ago. An absolute trainwreck of a film. Michael Bay almost seems to have contempt for the subject matter and the viewing audience.

[Sinnertwin]

Still better than John Wick

[GoktimusPrime]

Watched the first hour (incl. ads)... then I couldn't watch any more. I noticed that Megatron refers to Starscream as "treacherous," but in the Movieverse Starscream has always been steadfastly loyal to Megatron! :eek: What did he ever do for Megatron to refer to his head as "treacherous"?! :eek: :confused:

[Sutton]

The weirdest thing about TF5 is this was after they'd brought in the story group, right? To make the Bayverse more cohesive and have some consistent internal logic?

And instead they just broke the absolute shit out of whatever minimal continuity there already was.

Movies 1 - 3 are a reasonably enjoyable trilogy (DOTM is faaaar and away my favourite, especially once it gets going), with TF4 being an okay 'standalone' movie.

It's best to forget this one even exists, especially since they're never going to bother finishing the story...

[GoktimusPrime]

BAYFORMERS CONTINUITY!

Transformers - Cybertronians were created by the AllSpark Cube. Megatron arrives on Earth in the 19th Century and others follow in the 21st Century. The Transformers can transform. Quest MacGuffin: AllSpark
Revenge of the Fallen - Cybertronians have been on Earth since ancient times. Megatron has been collaborating with the Fallen for millennia and must kill Optimus Prime so that the Fallen may rise again and destroy the Sun and Earth. The first Cybertronians were governed by 7 Primes. The Transformers can transform. Quest MacGuffin: Matrix of Leadership
Dark of the Moon - Decepticons have been on Earth throughout the 20th century manipulating humans to go to the moon. Megatron has been collaborating with Sentinel Prime for millennia and must keep Optimus Prime alive so that he may restore Sentinel Prime. Earth must remain in tact so that the humans can be enslaved to rebuild Cybertron. Megatron is killed. The Transformers can transform. Quest MacGuffin: Sentinel Prime & his space bridge pylons
Age of Extinction - Cybertronians were created by a race of pink fleshy things and they visited Earth in prehistoric times and cyberformed the planet (but Earth got better). The Pinkies send a bounty hunter to Earth. Megatron is rebuilt as Galvatron. Ancient Cybertron had knights (I guess they must've served the Primes). It turns out that Optimus Prime was one of them and the others become Dinobots. The Autobots morph and the Decepticons change by become flying sugar cubes. Quest MacGuffin: the seed
The Last Knight - Cybertronians were created by a single robotic goddess. Optimus Prime is surprised that Cybertron is devastated even though it was already devastated after the loss of the AllSpark and he saw Cybertron damaged by the collapsing space bridge. Cybertronian Knights (not the Dinobots though, they're now reduced to being robotic pets) arrived on Earth in the Middle Ages. Autobots have been active on Earth for centuries (but I guess they never encountered the Seekers and never bothered to do anything during previous Earth-shattering events) with apparent 21st century alt modes. Earth is Unicron, who idly remained dormant when the Star Harvester was activated and when Cybertron entered Earth orbit. Galvatron is Megatron now because... reasons. Bumblebee can disassemble and reassemble himself, an ability that he has never used before and never uses again even in several situations where it would've been really useful. A half dead Cybertron comes back to Earth and Unicron becomes aroused this time. Order of blah blah, human knight yada yada yada. The Transformers all morph, and some can combine by falling on top of each other and just morphing into... some bigger thing. Quest MacGuffin: Merlin's staff

[Ralph Wiggum]

I can?t believe Hollywood still gives the writer of films 3-5, Ehren Kruger, work. Look at the sub-standard tripe he brings out, namely the Ghost in the shell remake and Dumbo. I couldn?t believe they let him co-write Top Gun Maverick. Looks like I?ll write that movie off now.