Movie Review - TF5 The Last Knight

[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.

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?" 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.

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?" 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?" 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??? 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.

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? If only he had access to an advanced scout... who's yellow and black...

"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! 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! 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!

[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?