Posts with Transformers fans disparaging The Last Knight are everywhere. There's no doubt it's a flawed movie, but does it deserve the hatred it gets? There are certainly plenty of valid criticisms, but I'd say the difference in quality between, say, Revenge of the Fallen and The Last Knight as overall films are minimal. Could it be that, while a flawed film, that it also has plenty of good things present? I'd say yes.

So let's start! I may include some criticisms within my list, but that's more to contrast with the positive qualities I am trying to point out present within the film. I'll try to keep things specific to The Last Knight. The visuals, score by Jablonsky, etc., are common to every film, so with that's said let's go!

Some Pretty Sweet Designs

Megatron, Barricade, Infernocus, and Cogman all look great! The first two are my favorite Bayverse Decepticon designs. Barricade looks so much better than in 2007 with his rounded alt mode kibble and more solid-looking body. Infernocus looks like something out of "Madman's Paradise." More on that later.

TLK Megatron

Yes, I think TLK Megatron should have played a larger role, and his transition from Galvatron should have been shown or explained, but I can honestly say I loved every second Megatron was on screen in the film. First off, the design I already mentioned. In addition, Welker does a fantastic job as always. Three, this Megatron is able to take on multiple Autobots at once. Like in Age of Extinction, he only retreats from a gigantic Dinobots. And even his, "Decepticons, Retreat!" is something that happened so many times in the G1 cartoon.

And I really think his character is underrated on this. Here's a world-weary Megatron sick of Earth who just wants Cybertron back,s o he can go back home, and he's willing to work with humans. I don't think Megatron should just be this violent brute who just kills humans any time they get near him. On the contrary, Megatron should be cerebral and willing to play around with humans to get what he wants. Again, it was Welker's voice acting that really brought him to life.

Madman's Paradise

There are some interesting parallels between The Last Knight and "Madman's Paradise," which is one of my favorite Sunbow episodes.

Both feature a Quintesson (Not made clear in The Last Knight, but there's definitely inspiration) sorcerer/sorceress with vague motivations as the main antagonist. Both Quintessa and Mara Al-Utha can change into human form. Both use deception to convince powerful Autobots in Optimus and Grimlock, respectively, to fight on their side. The ancient enemy of both is a powerful dragon! The Golden One can transform into a powerful dragon, and the Guardian Knights combine into Dragonstorm!

Even Infernocus, himself a servant of Quintessa, vaguely resembles a mechanical, evil-looking alien Ent or tree-like being, and Mara Al-Utha uses both wooden warriors as in his castle as well as has tree-like centaur people as enemies! That may be a coincidence, but it's still pretty gnarly either way!

Heartfelt Moments

As cheesy as they may have been, there were some nice moments in the film that actually were genuine attempts at bringing a little heart into the movie I think. I love Merlin's speech to the Guardian Knight at the beginning of the film, as he's explaining how flawed he is as a person, but that doesn't mean he and his world should be allowed to die. I also enjoy Prime's lamentation on how he endangered Earth after being awakened from his spell.

Daytrader

Yeah, his concept art is bizarre to say the least, but I enjoyed Daytrader for the one scene he appeared in. He was a nice contrast to the Pathetic Dirty Foursome, a self-interested but knowledgeable swindler interested in his own business, but who also can come through on his promises.

Pathetic Dirty Foursome

Even if I liked them better in Age of Extinction, it was still really great seeing my favorite team of Autobots back a second time! Whether it was their interpersonal banter or seeing them in action again, I enjoyed them.

Hot Rod

Yeah, he doesn't become Rodimus, and I'm not fond of his design, but he and his time-slowing gun do play a role in the film, and I really like his cockiness, Omar Sy's voice acting, and his kidnapping of Vivian. He was certainly more enjoyable than the likes of Dino Sideswipe in RotF and DotM, that's for sure.

Izzy

I wish the film focused more on Izzy than Vivian, because I thought Izzy was the far more interesting character as an orphan whose only friends were Transformers, and her speech to Sqweeks on Cybertron made me laugh.

Knights

Yeah, like with many other things between AoE and TLK, TLK didn't really try to make things consistent with its predecessor, but I still love the idea of robotic knights, and I do like how the Knights are portrayed as a group, even if they aren't distinguishable personality-wise from each other, and a lot of my favorite moments in the films feature the Knights.

Hopkins and Cogman

Even if I wasn't a fan of the Witwiccan stuff, Hopkins is still great and sells the crap out of his ridiculous role. And Cogman is great as his most loyal and deadly servant. A lot of the funniest parts of the film involve these two.

The Museum Scene

I don't know, I just really love the scene at Oxford with Vivian talking about romanticized tales from the Dark Ages and then dismissing it as, "Horsesh*t." And in the background are dinosaur skeletons, including Iguanodon and some bones from Cetiosaurus oxoniensis, which were both two of the earliest dinosaurs given scientific names in the early 19th Century. Not as cool as seeing Psittacosaurus and heterodontosaurids with integument inspired by real fossils alive in the Dinobot Island/Savage Land-like world seen in Age of Extinction but still really cool regardless!

Megatron's Squad

They didn't last long, but they were fun while they lasted. I liked the small town setting of the fight, and if they had featured more throughout the film then I think they would have been more memorable.

What did you enjoy from The Last Knight? Even if it's something different, or something that most other fans did not enjoy, that's all right. Variety is the spice of life. I probably would have enjoyed it more if it acted more as a sequel than the springboard for a cinematic universe, but I also can see the positives. There are silver linings to everything.

 

The problem with TLK is, when you break it down into its components like that, it really doesn't have anything particularly bad going for it. A few traces of Michael Bay cringe comedy creep in here or there, but nothing so overt as in RotF, or the awkward Romeo + Juliet laws scene in AoE.

The problem is that the movie doesn't work as a whole. The whole scrappy Isabella + Cade vs. Decepticon remnants would have worked. Continuing the Knight subplot from AoE would have worked. Pick a plot, because the two plots don't work together. Isabella has nothing worthwhile to do with the whole chosen one/prophecy nonsense, so it doesn't work thematically that she's dragged into it nonetheless. It's the same problem that AoE suffered, trying to jam two major plotlines together and turning both into a muddled mess, except in TLK the two subplots were even less related, and seriously clashed in terms of scope.

 

Yes.

Like, you can't just try to avoid the criticism by pretending that some of it is worth sitting through a shit film just to see. Breaking down a film so you only talk about the good parts...why? Nothing of worth actually is learned from that.

Plus, it's been two years. TLK bombed, Bumblebee got retooled, Bumblebee was the most successful Transformers film to date when it comes to the critics, so maybe we should be talking about what worked there compared to what TLK got wrong, instead of trying to praise one of the worst films this decade just because it has 'Transformers' slapped on it. Especially when the titular 'Last Knight' wasn't even a fucking robot in the end anyway!

 

I can forgive Revenge of the Fallen, DOTM, and AOE because they had some entertaining moments. while the Last Knight does have some. it's only a few and it's riddled with unimportant characters, Transformers who are again secondary in their own film. so yeah it does deserve the hate

 

TLK is essentially the very worst of Michael Bay's ADHD directorial style at work. He's actually quite meticulous at setting up specific scenes and moments the way he likes them. Any one specific action sequence or set piece, or even just shot composition (even if his photographic sensibilities are still heavily rooted in the 80s, with all the sunrises/sunsets) can all be quite stunning. But he flits between those without ever applying a critical eye to the big picture, to continuity, so his films have the tendency to become a hollow parade of "cool moments" with no real connective tissue in between.

In the previous four films, he at least had maybe one full script to worth with, so at least those tendencies of his still worked along a fairly linear path towards their intended goal.

For TLK, though, they made a big deal of having that whole "writer's room" thing, with a veritable who's-who of talent brought on board to bolster what the producers rightfully saw as the franchise's weakest link, in its writing. It feels like Bay took the wrong message from this action though, and rather than let them all come together and come up with something fresh and new via committee, he just used it as an even larger grab-bag and cribbed the bits and pieces that he liked from each writer and went to town with those, making zero effort to tie it all together into a cohesive whole.

 

It's not easy to remember the good things after such a wreck. It was the franchise last chance to redeem itself.
The good things from it were the same as always. The cgi, most characters, cinematography, sound effects and score.

 

Point of thread = missed.

The purpose of this thread is to focus on what you think The Last Knight did well, or that at the very least what you enjoyed.

You don't have to enjoy The Last Knight as a whole product. You can still dislike it. You can say, "I hated The Last Knight, but I did like this character...this scene...this design...etc."

That said, if someone did enjoy The Last Knight as a whole, then people can explain that here. And I have actually seen some fine posts defending it on this site. So what did fans here actually enjoy out of it?

 

Actually, I can think of ONE good thing about TLK, to be honest. Something it did very well at.

That it bombed.

It bombed so hard that it made Bumblebee into a reboot that was actually a good film.

 

I'm aware of the intent of this thread, but the problem with these films is that by his very nature, cherry picking "moments" from Bay's films actually turns up an overwhelming amount of positive things.

It's because he fails at the big picture and narrative follow-through that the problems with his films really begins to rear its ugly head.

In your first post here, you practically called out every major scene in the movie, and I pretty much agree with you on most of those points, which is at extreme odds with the reception over the movie itself. Bay doesn't do bad scenes (his cringey sense of humour and sexual objectification aside). Bay does bad movies.

 

As you pointed out earlier, the plot for TLK is horribly at odds with how split it is between two completely different narratives that leave the other hanging when one is getting the focus, since they don't really complement each other in the slightest.

To the point the girl is asked what the hell she's even doing in the middle of a scene and her response is straight up "I don't know".

Ultimately, the problem with a film like TLK is you can't cherry pick scenes, since to use ROTF as an example that film still has absolutely fantastic robot fight scenes (forest battle is still a franchise highlight)...it's just the rest of the entire film weakens their impact because the MAIN focus of the film is on Sam who genuinely isn't a strong enough character to carry the film. Like the pot brownies scene at the beginning, it's really awkward and doen't seem to fit in all that well when taken into consideration what the film is SUPPOSED to be about which is the continuation of an alien war on Earth and not Sam at college.

TLK is much the same because it actually makes the same mistake as that The Mummy Reboot where it spent too much time trying to set up a backstory for the whole 'shared universe' instead of, y'know, the actual primary plot. To the point the Decepticons are almost litterally "hi and die" characters whose biggest impact in the film amounts to ripping off something from another film entirely...not helped by the fact THAT OTHER FILM also was pretty bad.

 

Most of the things you mentioned I didn't care for. I liked Megatron and his squad, but the others on your list didn't appeal to me.

I did like the Autobots assault on the Decepticons at the end, and the mid credit scene...

 

But you see, there is no 100% universal way to view a film. If a viewer watches a movie and has plenty of individual criticisms, but likes the product as a whole, then I'd say that counts as enjoying a film.

BUT if a fan also watches a movie, and they thought it had plenty of enjoyable things in it, but it wasn't compelling as a whole film, they could still potentially find enough things like to enjoy the film. The Last Knight probably falls in this second category for me, but I can still enjoy it for that reason. You see what I mean?

And in my opinion, any individual aspect that individual likes of a film, regardless of what one thought of the whole product, counts as an enjoyable aspect.

So yes, some of the posts in this thread are getting way off topic in terms of what the purpose of this thread is, because the purpose of this thread is for fans to say WHAT they enjoyed in it, REGARDLESS of whether it's the film as a whole product OR just individual aspects. So taking this thread and turning it into something it wasn't to be is absolutely taking things off topic. If the first few posts in this thread actually said something they liked about TLK, even if they hated the film, then that's fine. If someone responds to this thread and rips apart The Last Knight without also stating anything they liked, then that is taking things off topic. I don't even like The Last Knight as much as its predecessors. I have my issues with it, plenty of them, but unlike some I can also see positives, because I can actually look at things with an open mind and not just knee-jerk my way through everything. Let's make this thread Shrektastic and not something Drek.

To keep things on topic, one thing I do like is the dystopian Dakota setting in the first act of the film. And Sherman was a hilarious dude poking fun at previous racial stereotype accusations in the films.

You see, and this is something totally fine. One doesn't have to like the movie or most things in it; the purpose of this thread is just to state somethings one likes in it. I too liked the Autobot assault, even if I think, overall, the film would have benefitted from not having Cybertron come to Earth again.

 

On the contrary, you can learn a lot.

e.g. Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy has been cancelled. But guess what? JK Simmons was great as J Jonah Jameson, was there anyone else who can play him better?

The Transformers movies have met their 'end' also... But what's one great thing in it? Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime.

Do you see what I'm getting at here?

Yes it's been two years. Every time I open up threads like these, I half-expect Autobot Burnout to be there before me.

 

May get hate, Or may not. But I absolutely loved Megatron in TLK. His story from beginning to end of all films, Brings an amazing conclusion. He went through a major transition. From a power hungry warlord. To a simple leader, that wishes fix his errors of corrupt. At least in his view. The designs were astonishing for the film. Awhile most hate it. I loved the history of the knight mythology and learning much more deeper connections intertwined of earth. And as usual Steve Jablonsky outdone himself as usual!. Can't say I hate the film to be honest. The only two things I was upset of was simply, Optimus's corruption didn't last longer and Galvatron. Either way I enjoyed the film.

 

Megatron, Barricade, Nitro Zeus and Mohawk. Loved there designs, voices, all of it.

Izzy was the best human character. Isabella Moner did a great job with this character, and honestly, I wish she had been the main female lead instead of Vivian.

Quintessa was great. Loved her design and her voice work. I'd be very happy to see Gemma Chan reprise that role somewhere down the line.

All of the Authur stuff. Seriously, I was really enjoying those opening minutes, and wished the film focused more on them. A horse did a backflip for crying out loud!

 

The music was nice.

Except for the breakneck pacing and positively inhuman dialogue. Sometimes I wonder just who or what thought anyone or anything would sound like that when they talk. Virtually every scene with Cogman features bizarrely quick dialogue with no space in between lines from characters delivered with that hectic bewilderment Bay thinks humans are almost constantly in a state of. The scene where Cade and the lady are rummaging through her dad's study and the old ladies mistake the noise for sexy time could have actually been funny. Yet the pacing is so fucking fast there's not a single moment for the audience to laugh before the next piece of information is being thrown at them. It's like the movie is in a frantic rush to get to the next scene at all times.

And that London case scene... I'm sorry, but even as components TLK just doesn't work. I've never watched a movie that flat out annoyed me as much as TLK just because it never shut the fuck up or slowed the hell down. How am I, an audience member, supposed to give a shit about what's happening when the movie itself clearly cares so little about the story being told?

 

Megatron's design was cool. Not a bad toyline too.

I think that's all about it.

 

The introduction of the headmaster concept but poorly used.

 

I loved the premise of The Last Knight:
- how Optimus is missing from Earth
- the Autobots + Cade are in hiding
- TRF wiping Transformers from existence at the same time as Transformers consistently arriving on Earth.
The setup is perfect. I just wish it had followed up on AOE's knight storyline rather than making a completely new one with Burton and the Guardian Knights + Quintessa and coming of Cybertron. I feel like whoever came up with that part of the story, either the film writers or the dude who wrote Batman and Robin (forget that dude's name), completely ignored what Ehren Kruger set up. Man, I miss Kruger. Both of his films DOTM and AOE had the best follow up in terms of continuity, and wonder what TLK would have been had he written it.
Either way, I love the first hour of TLK that showcases all of the setup.

 

I don't see how Megatron ever evolved from what he was. He started out wanting to take over Cybertron by destroying Earth and it ended in him wanting the same thing, except this time he received help from Quintessa (like he tried getting help from Sentinel or the Fallen). His story ends in Prime cutting off an appendage of his again. How is that in any way a conclusion? He started out and was defeated in the same manner as the previous films.