I just wanna say that 9 minutes into this movie, I already wanted to die
youre not even gonna get some dumbass intro i just wanna get this shit over with

Editing

Normally I start with a plot breakdown first and leave editing and shit for last but it is so bad in this movie that I have to get it out the way first

I dunno what the hell happened here but the editing in this movie is fucking garbage. Like when merlin gets those ancient transformers out of the cave, in a movie that didn’t have ******ed monkeys making it there would be this cool scene of them stepping out, but in this movie suddenly theres just a robot outta nowhere, no footstep sounds or anything. Or conversations happening but then characters walk to completely different areas while the conversation timing doesn’t change at all.


course I also gotta mention the camera shifting. For some reason in between shots the aspect ratio changes? This is fine if like one scene shifts and then it goes back afterwards, but its literally in between shots. Shits like the most amateur thing you could do

the pacing too just goes way too fucking fast most of the time too. Like you get introduced to these random ass kids, then 5 seconds later they find a transformer, then 5 seconds later action scene happens. Slow the hell down. Even that medieval scene that goes on for way too long pacing is so goddamn fast I don’t even know what the hell is happening most of the time. It ruins what little scenes even had the potential to be good because it goes so fast nothing actually sticks.

A lot of this movie is just “suddenly this happens”. Suddenly barricade is here, suddenly cade is surrounded, suddenly theres hound, suddenly wheelie, suddenly a character is here now, suddenly a character is sitting down instead of standing up like in the last shot. It feels like this shit is being held together by tuc tape


Plot

Transformers bad or whatever who cares

Course this fucking movie has to continue that “autobots not welcome on earth” bullshit that all these movies are obsessed with. Instead of ksi we got another abbreviated military group, I already forgot their name. prolly the most memorable thing about them is that they have those grasshoppers from mgs4 and mini advanced TIEs.

Look I actually like the idea of humanity vs transformers, but it never made any sense in these movies and especially not now after the autobots having saved the planet for the fourth fucking time. Not like this shit even matters cause its dropped completely like an hour into the movie with no actual conclusion or anything. Just an excuse to have everyone just fuck around for a bit until the actual plot can kick in. except this lasts for an hour. They kinda show up later ig but theyre on there for actions scenes at that point

Its just this boring endless fucking white noise that just goes on and on and nothing happens at all apart from a bunch of unlikeable assholes bickering and other assholes saying it’s the end times

The staff or smth

The staff is p much just the McGuffin of this movie, some ancient long lost cybertronian technology again, great. The first 40 minutes they keep talking how it’s the end times and this could destroy everything, but for all we know this staff only controls some dragon. The problem with this plot is once again the pacing, and also that it just doesn’t know what the hell to do with itself, suddenly theres a taliman, suddenly theres a book that’s important, suddenly cybertron is coming back somehow and for some reason, SUDDENLY FUCKING EARTH IS UNICRON. The fact it takes this fucking movie an hour to actually get to the part it explains what the plot of the movie is makes me think that this movie was made bad on purpose. Anway the staff does smth and cade is a knight and the woman is merlins descendant. So you got a transformers movie where the transformer characters got fuck all to do with the actual plot and are just there
great
Look all this shit is just “bring cebertren beck” for the 5th time, whatever, who cares. Except now everyone somehow knows that the world is going to end and they repeat it 4 billion times

anyway this is p much just the plot up until the end of the movie, but since this is a bay movie there aint much to say about the ending, its mostly just mindless action with barely any plot. except now its like an hour or so about a bunch of bullshit that i cant say anything about cause its just action or other crap that doesnt matter, like some shitty romance subplot, basically just the same as dotm

Transformers part of history

So this was one of the big advertisement things this movie had ig, this whole idea that transformers have been around for centuries on earth. Guess making itself a dogshit movie aint enough for tlk, it has to fuck over the previous ones too by making no sense
lets just get into this shit

· Why were transformers on earth? The reason in 07 is cause the allspark is there, but now they’ve been there for centuries? What were they looking for the fucking thing for 2000 years or some shit?

· Why did bumblebee or optimus never mention this?

· Why were they involved in ww1 and 2, or any human conflict?

· Why did hotrod not show up at all in the previous movies if hes an autobot?

· Why did hotrod never mention the staff existed before and was like “hey maybe go find this thing before it destroys the world idk”

· Why did the autobots or at least optimus not know it existed? Aint he a cybertronian history nerd or some shit?

I don’t get why this even needs to be here, just say some ancient assholes went to earth for whatever reason and never came back. Clearly they did cause of those markings quintessa showed prime. Why add all this other bullshit? Its not even a plot point, all it does is make the previous movies even worse


Scenes

Opening medieval battle

The opening to this movie is weird as shit

Its basically just this massive medieval battle that goes on for way too long. Its kinda cool ig but this is a transformer movie, why spend this long on smth that doesn’t even really matter much apart from “transformer ancient”
guess the best way to describe is to say that it feels more like the finale of a different movie than an opening. Worst part about it is prolly merlin. I aint surprised Michael bay turned him into a drunk cause “funnie funnie.” But like why the hell would Arthur trust this drunken idiot and why does merlin have this speech as if were supposed to care about him and the people hes fighting with and what the hell does he mean by “please don’t let our world die too” is this one battle gonna change the whole damn planet or some shit? You assholes haven’t even found America yet. Again this feels more like the ending to a movie than an opening

Canopys death

This is prolly one of the best examples of the pacing being dogshit, since in the span of like 5 minutes were introduced to like 8 different characters (none of them matter to the plot). The thing is with canopy is that like 20 seconds after we meet him he starts dying. Like his death scene is longer than his screentime of being not dying. But like, why the hell should I care about him? You shove him in my face for 20 seconds and then he dies, so who cares? Why wasn’t this one of the other 5 billion autobots from the other movies whos fate was left ambiguous? As shitty as the ratchet death scene from aoe was, at least they tried to make it have an impact. This does nothing

That weird ass suicide squad scene

I don’t get this scene
40 minutes in we get this goofy ass suicide squad like introduction to these decepticons. Why the hell theyre even capturing decepticons, who fucking knows. But its yarring as all hell and comes outta nowhere.
also most of these decepticons die like 5 minutes later, so who cares?

Autobots vs decepticons in that tiny city

So this is the first time we get to see transformers actually fighting each other, its 50 minutes into the fucking movie. Course the scene sucks ass too. First that Isabella girl starts screeching in front of all the decepticons and somehow doesn’t get blown up in 5 seconds
then the fight starts and almost all the decepticons die in like 10 seconds, ok

That one scene with those old British women

For some reason theres suddenly this scene where they talk about whats her faces love life. Keep in mind at this point we haven’t seen her for like 30 minutes, I literally forgot she even existed.
anyway this is just one of those Michael bay scenes that’s an exaggerated version of those awkward conversations we have irl, and its just as annoying and awkward here

optimus vs bumblebee

this scene barely even matters, it lasts like 5 seconds and ends with bumblebee somehow getting his voice back because plot, right. i mean all it is is a fight between two characters i dont like and it has no impact at all. only thing special about it is that its one of the few scenes where transformers actually fight each other

Characters

Humans

Cade: one of the first thing cade does in this movie is threaten a child, do I even need to say anymore or.

All the other human chars aint worth talking about theme, for the most part theyre just there. Like Isabella is annoying as shit but she disappears an hour in. and then Anthony Hopkins is just there, simmons and lennox are also just there

Transformers

Optimus: Great, get to talk about this asshole again. Every movie I start to hate this piece of shit even more, lucky me he aint in the movie much. Basically prime for some reason said “fuck you” to literally everyone and left the autobots to just figure out what the hell to do themselves with no one actually in charge? Why? Isn’t this the same asshole who threatened grimlock to fight his battle for him and his “family”? guess your family aint that important then huh?
I cant believe people defend this asshole
and then suddenly he turns into nemesis prime because unicron is earth or whatever, yeah sure
and then he gets to earth, becomes normal again and wants to be executed for, reasons. guess commiting war crimes was okay with him but beating up bumblebee is unforgiveable. part of me doesnt even think he was brainwashed since he says "i will never betray you again"

Bumblebee: its funny how despite basically becoming the face of the franchise for years, movie bee barely does anything, hes just there. This movie is the same story, except now he has the power to not die. How? Why? Why is he the only one? Stop asking questions, youre putting more thought into this than the writers did

Squeeks: I aint gonna spend too much time on this dumbass thing, its just cheap mascot bait banking off of minions
at least try to hide it

Cogman: cogman is prolly the transformer with the most personality, just sucks that his personality is fucking annoying. Hes funny for like the first 5 minutes but after that I just wanted him to go away
he also looks nothing like a transformer

Megatron: im only mentioning him because I gotta, but theres nothing to megs. He works for quintessa now somehow and for some reason, and literally just gets his ass kicked constantly

Hot rod: hes French, that’s it. Oh and he has a weapon that stops time and don’t you fucking forget cause he reminds you it stops time every single fucking time he uses it
how does that shit even work? Sounds pretty fucking useful, why does only hot rod have it?

Quintessa: she even a transformer? Who cares.
theres a lot of reasons why quintessa is prolly the worst villain in these movies. She claims all kinds of shit like being the “prime of life (seriously?)” and optimus’ creator, but shes also called the great deceiver or smth, so we don’t actually know if shes lying or not. For all we know she could just be some random ass alien who dropped by on cybertron for some energon subway or smth

she has zero presence through most of the movie, only really being there in the beginning and in the end. why does she do what she does? fuck knows, who cares anyway

Other shit

-Why is dragonstorm or whatevers first attack to just crash his ass on the battlefield instead of doing some cool shit like I dunno, spit fire?

-how the hell are humans able to spy on transformers with zero effort without the transformers noticing

-when prime crashes on cybertron hes grunting and shit, but his mouth aint even open

-people including me have bitched about these movies not having enough transformer interaction. This one does, but it sucks. Its literally just them bickering and fighting like children

-why do the drones just give up on chasing cade

- w h y t h e f u c k I s t h e e a r t h I s u n I c r o n re v e a l e d I n t h r o w a w a y d I a l o g u e

-hot rods va changes from the deeper one to the “little lady no” one between shots

-so in the bayverse its cannon that some dumbass transformer watch killed Hitler

-why are they so obsessed with being American or English

-the submarine is a transformer ig

-how did cade not know what the talisman did after it took a fucking bullet for him, the hell do you think it does dumbass

-why does cybertron have grass

Conclusion

 

I liked it.







Cause it ended the Bayverse.

 

I think you're being too kind to this movie.

 

I actually enjoy watching The Last Knight. Please don't attack me.

 

I think it's safe to say that TLK is the epitome of "I had no expectations and I still left disappointed".

 

TLK is the only TF movie that physically annoys me to the point of turning it off.

Had I not been locked into the theater I probably wouldn't have ever finished it. Every minute spent in London is just complete irritation and headache. It's so inhumanly edited and shot.

 

Personally, I enjoyed it. I won't try to defend it as a technically great film, but I also wouldn't defend the others as great films. I'd argue only the first one is 'good', and even that's debatable as far as I'm concerned. After the darker "take us seriously" approach that DOTM and AOE took, I like how TLK returned the series to a fun carefree adventure romp that feels more in-line with the first two films. It's almost like ROTF, but without the excessive stupid and stereotypical comedy.

TLK might actually have been my favorite of the series if the middle act didn't slow down so much. I really like the first act, up until Cade and Bee leave with Cogman. That whole 'post apocalyptic' portion is arguably my favorite stuff in the whole series, I love the aesthetic and the world it set up. I honestly wish the entire movie was just about Cade and the Autobots rescuing surviving Transformers. But then it becomes exposition at Burton's castle, which kind of wrecks the momentum the first act had going. I'm actually less concerned with the whole "it destroys the lore/continuity" aspect that a lot of people complain about, and more concerned with how it destroys the pacing, story, and aesthetic of the first act. But the final battle is pretty cool, even if it wasn't entirely what I was looking for.

TLK is clunky as heck and has some bad decisions. All the "secret history" stuff feels like a poor attempt to set up a cinematic universe. I'd like to see a version of this movie less concerned with setting up spinoffs and more concerned with just providing the fun adventure that the first act promised. But even with what we got, I still think it's generally a fun film. It almost feels like one of the dumb G1 Season 2 episodes that just goes crazy with the world of Transformers. Want to have Transformers fighting AT-STs in a post-apocalyptic Chicago? Heck, let's do it. Want to canonize Merlin as a faker who uses Transformer science as magic? Heck, let's do it. Want to have a silly butler Transformer? Heck, let's do it. I like stories that aren't afraid to get silly and wacky. I'll take something like TLK any day over something like DOTM or Siege, which just seem concerned with making their audience take Transformers seriously. Which just bores me, because I don't want to take it seriously.

 

If I watched this movie on a plane I would’ve walked out.

 

TLK is my least favorite Transformers movie. At least with RoTF there was a lot of good action to at least keep you entertained despite how stupid that movie was. TLK was mainly people talking, there wasn't a lot of action in this one and even the action scenes in this movie weren't that memorable. At least RoTF had the forest battle. The action had the potential for example the town battle. Classic Autobots vs Decepticons action but it doesn't have a beginning middle or end. It starts and then a minute later half the Decepticons are dead. They should have cut the drone scenes and reallocated the budget and time to make the town battle better.

I hated how in this movie the Transformers were here all this time, now hear me out on this, the novelty of the first movie was the Transformers coming to Earth for the first time pretty cool, in RoTF it was established that Transformers have been to Earth before and left, no problems with that. In DoTM it was established that the Decepticons were working with humans since the 60s this doesn't bother me. What does bother me is the secret society that has known about Transformers since medieval times and kept it a secret up until now. That was really dumb.

The characters are ok. I wish the AoE cast went to London with Bee and Cade because wasn't the point of their whole junkyard to keep them hidden and now that they've been discovered mean that they should abandon it? Cogman is a great addition he doesn't overstay his welcome, Hot Rod is also cool too wish we saw more of him. Sir Edmund Burton was ok although I think he had too much screentime. The Knights were meh. If you ask me don't make Optimus a Knight he's already a prime. Make the Knights the servants or bodyguards of the Primes and go from there. Unicron being Earth in this continuity makes no sense and is better in Prime where there's more context. If you ask me Cybertron should have been Unicron instead or you could have Quintessa be a servant of Unicron and she comes to Earth on Unicron instead of Cybertron.

Let's talk about the humor in this movie. All the jokes overstay their welcome. The scene where Vivian's family thinks she's having sex is a dumb joke and should be cut. The joke where they're discussing Cade's chastity is funny but it lasts wayyyy too long.

In my opinion, AoE was a good setup for a second trilogy but to make TLK better it needs a rewrite from the ground up.

 

There's more than one way to look at any movie, and let me use The Last Knight as an example.

On the negative side, I would say The Last Knight is pretty terrible as a sequel to the other four movies. 1) Many important things in the previous film are either ignored or minimized, like Galvatron and the Creators. 2) It rehashes many scenarios, like Cybertron coming to Earth...which we just saw two movies earlier. Yes, the Transformers movies are obviously going to have some formula to them, but we don't need the EXACT same scenario. 3) After AoE made it seem like the movies took place in a larger universe, with the Creators having ruined thousands of worlds in the past and Lockdown having traveled to many galaxies and with many different alien species on his ship, TLK makes it seem like it's back to Cybertron and Earth being the only worlds that matter. 4) After two movies in a row with very solid main antagonists by Transformers standards, Quintessa is a major step down as a character.

On the other hand, one can view TLK in a positive light if one views it as a live action "Madman's Paradise." I mean both have a shape-shifting Quintesson (? in TLK) sorcerer/ess with vague motivations who have as enemies individuals who transform into powerful, winged dragons! And both Quintessa and Mara Al-Utha manipulate protagonists to fight for their side! And both take place, in part, at a castle! It's like several episodes of the cartoon strung together.

And you can also view TLK as a tribute to the other movies and the brand as a whole.

Some other negatives...

-Nemesis Prime is way underused.

-We didn't really need a scene introducing new Decepticons if they were going to get killed shortly after.

-The editing in this movie is definitely off.

-Unicron is nowhere near as interesting a thread as the Creators.

-Unlike AoE, it feels like there's no main robot protagonist.

Finally, some other positives, despite its many flaws...

-Megatron, when he appears on screen, is actually pretty awesome. He's world weary, and he just wants Cybertron to live again. He's intelligent and not just a brute. Welker's voice acting is fantastic as it is for Galvatron in AoE, and he's a delight when on screen. His design is wicked; it's too bad his knight-like design wasn't connected to the title of the film. Megatron and his Decepticons get surrounded by tanks, and yet don't get seriously injured at all. His "Decepticons, Retreat!" is very Sunbow-like. He takes on all of the Autobots in the ignition chamber on Cybertron by himself practically.

-Daytrader is awesome for the one scene he appears in.

-Izzy is a cool human character, albeit underused.

-The knights are characterized nicely as a group of ancient Transformers, even if they're not distinctive as individuals.

-The music is unique for the Bay movies, and that's cool.

 

I actually really like The Last Knight. Yes, it has flaws, but I really enjoy it, it's my third favorite live action Transformers film.

 

It had a lot of good ideas, and the individual parts were neat, but they did not hold together well. As a whole, it was a Frankenstein of a movie that gasped for life for a few pitiful moments before dying. I will say one thing, though: it ditched the teenagers/college-age kids completely, and they were not missed.

 

I consider it not substantially worse than the others. The story of course is nonsense and gibberish, but when has this not been the case in the Bayverse? It baffles me that certain fans will put some of the others on a pedestal, and then toss TLK under a bus. Perhaps its status as a financial failure allows them to see it for what it is. Or perhaps they just hate it for being a loser.

It was not a financial failure for its unique mediocrity. It was a financial failure because years of mediocrity in the series finally caught up with it.

 

Why must you remind me of this monstrosity?

 

I more or less agree. It's a bit weird to me that so many fans hate on TLK so much, because I had been saying the same things about the other movies for years. The stuff people say about TLK sounds eerily similar to stuff I was saying about AOE and the previous films back in 2014. Poor continuity, too much emphasis on artifacts and macguffins, too much focus on human characters, confusing and disorienting editing, too many storylines crammed into the same movie, contradicting the lore by putting Transformers in other eras of human history, abandoing plot-points from past movies, etc. Although at the time a lot of people told me these weren't real flaws and that I was nitpicking because I wasn't supposed to expect great craft from a Transformers film. And then TLK comes along and everyone else starts saying the same stuff about it. It was really surreal hearing the initial reaction to TLK, because at that point a lot of those complaints had stopped bugging me and I was able to appreciate the Transformers films a lot more than I had before. It was like everyone (including myself) did a 180 for TLK.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I feel like part of the reason for the disappointment might have been that fan expectations were higher for TLK. I feel like a lot of fans just went into the other films expecting okay blockbusters with cool action, and that's exactly what they got. But I noticed a different sort of hype for TLK. I think the whole writers room thing and the announcement of the "Transformers Cinematic Universe" caused people to expect some sort of epic Avengers-level movie that would jump through all sorts of crazy hoops to make the entire series make sense. Like, there was talk of time-travel and alternate dimensions and whatnot because of Winston Churchill's house being covered in Nazi flags. There were a lot of weird theories like that.

It didn't help that reliable leaks and press statements were reporting stuff about time-travel and exploring the origins of Optimus and Megatron and the Dinobots and stuff like that. Back in 2016 and 2017, I saw a lot of people saying stuff like "this will be the one that wins over the haters" And then the movie came out and none of that crazy stuff actually happened...it was just another Transformers movie. I absolutely don't blame people for being disappointed (especially since some of the stuff they promised never happened, like Prime and Meg's origins), but I'm curious what the reaction would have been without the promise of a grand Cinematic Universe and all that.

 

I mean... Nitro Zeus was cool... tlk was a shitshow

 

I like it

 

First act was good.

 

I liked it
Rewatched it again few years later with zero expectations and enjoyed it again (=