View Poll Results: TF5 Last Knight Movie - worth watching?

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  • Yes, the best one so far

    6 8.96%
  • Yes, but not the best one

    29 43.28%
  • No, it was disappointing

    18 26.87%
  • I don't plan to see it

    14 20.90%
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Thread: Movie Review - TF5 The Last Knight

  1. #11
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    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. 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.

    • 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!"

    • 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! 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.

  2. #12
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    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.

  3. #13
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    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)

  4. #14
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    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.

    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.

    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.

  5. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime View Post
    • 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?

  6. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime View Post
    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

  7. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by Krayt View Post
    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.

  8. #18
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    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

  9. #19
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    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.

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

  10. #20
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    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 .

    Anyway, I'm going to post a link to my review of the movie I put on my blog HERE 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!


    Enjoy your discussion peeps!

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