Same here

 

It had tons of potential. It should have been two movies. One exploring more about the Transformers past and Earth, and then Optimus in space leading to saving Earth and Cybertron. I honestly thought for a bit that there was going to be a sequel, what with the Unicron cliffhanger and all.

 

I don't hate the movie as much as other people do, but yeah, it is very mediocre. Honestly, one of the things that annoyed me the most was Megatron coming back without explanation.

I mean, seriously, we already had Galvatron at the end of AOE, and I honestly wanted him to be the villain here and be used better than Megatron. But once that art of Megatron was shown, I was completely gutted. Plus, I couldn't care less about a backstory for Optimus and Megatron... that just would have made it even more boring for me.

However, some things did kind of make me excited about it. For example, Anthony Hopkins having a role, and honestly, he didn't disappoint me. He was just as good as I expected him to be. And the fact that Josh Duhamel was back as Lennox was another source of excitement for me, 'cause he was one of my favorite humans of the first three.

The one thing that disappointed me was Hot Rod. I mean, when I heard he was gonna be in it, I was pretty excited. I didn't mind the French accent and I really thought it might be a fresh take on the character, but after seeing the movie, I was pretty upset by the fact that he didn't do a lot (most of the stuff he did was pretty minor).

So yeah, there was part of me that didn't have that much hope, and another one that was overtly excited over some of the new characters. But once I came out of the movie theater... I think the movie met the mixed expectations I had with it. It had good stuff, but it really was pretty convoluted and needed much more work. In fact, most of the flaws in the film feel like they were due to laziness rather than bad writing.

 

It definitely suffered from story overload. After ROTF, I didn’t think I’d find a film in the series that would make ROTF seem decent...and then TLK happened.

It also doesn’t help that it seems every other character is angry, ticked off, or an outright jerk. I can’t help but feel it’s a reflection of Bay himself: has gotten sick and tired of doing these things, but got the promise of a big payday, so what the heck.

I do feel if they could have, Cogman would have been a more murderous automaton, easily mowing down pedestrians and laughing as their blood washed over the car’s windshield.

Like several others, the fact that we never know how Galvatron becomes Megatron is my biggest gripe. It seems he somehow came under Quintessa’s command given that red mark on his face...but how did he get off Earth as Galvatron. I had so many questions on that...oh, and how Cybertron went from what we saw in DOTM to what we see in TLK, when it seemed that the closed spacebridge just tore apart a massive chunk of it.

Also that “we were brothers once” line to Optimus, felt so pointless.

The film feels marginally better than the conclusion to the Resident Evil films, which much like these, kept re-writing continuity with each film.

 

All the Bayformer films had potential, and each one were wasted

 

Indeed

 

I know what you mean.

On one hand, I absolutely loved TLK Megatron's design from the moment I first saw the reveal...but I also wanted to see Galvatron given we finally got him.

I would do a compromise of sorts, so we could get both on screen. I'd keep Galvatron as Galvatron...but I'd keep the Megatron design for a mindless, Quintesson-controlled "Nemesis Megatron" based on Megatron's original Cybertronian form and designed to infiltrate any remaining groups of Decepticons and destroy them from within. That way you can even get a Galvatron vs. "Megatron" fight in live action! It would also parallel Optimus being used as Nemesis Prime.