Superhero Media: Transformers - The Last Knight

But why? Why the hell does this film exist and why does anything that happens in it happen? None of The Last Knight makes any sense, even less so than the previous films in this series, and I really struggled to get through it. After traveling into space at the end of the last film, Optimus Prime returns to Cybertron and is immediately captured and brainwashed into being 'Nemesis Prime' and sent to conquer Earth. That's about the last element of the plot that makes sense in this film, every other major turn feels like it was taken from a post-it note on the writers' room wall. Josh Dhumal comes back, at the same rank, doing the same job. Marky Mark is a Knight of the Round Table suddenly. Bumblebee fought in World War Two. Cybertron is Beast Planet from War Planets and Earth is Unicron, but this never gets resolved. What the fuck? Add the usual "Bayhem" and the fact that no one seems to be able to stay standing during an action scene, and none of this makes sense. 

Did I mention that everyone keeps falling over? Like, all of the time? It's really distracting, like there should be a laugh track over the top, or at least some kazoo music like an old Picture Hall Funny. Essentially none of the characters are interesting, even Antony Hopkins fails to deliver any gravitas, and that's kind of his thing. The Last Knight is almost Bay Transformers Bonox, taking everything dumb, over-the-top and/or nonsensical and filtering out almost everything worth watching. Any clever ideas, like Cybertron and Earth being twin planets, or Nemesis Prime are shunted to the background and barely heard of for the rest of the film. Seriously, Nemesis Prime is in, perhaps, three scenes before Bumblebee turns him good again and we have to fight the Decepticons again. Hell, the US army having to team-up with the Decepticons and releasing several from prison Suicide-Squad style is cool, but doesn't last more than one firefight.

I'm glad this is the last one of these, I don't think I could sit through another. No, Bumblebee doesn't count, it's barely in continuity with these filmic abortions, and thank Primus for that. I'd say that there doesn't really need to be any Transformers films for a few years, but that's not how the industry works anymore, and the franchise does have a lot to work with, Transformers Prime is evidence enough of that. I'm honestly not sure how this proposed "Hasbro Cinematic Universe" is meant to go, do we retroactively count Battleship? I will be disappointed if Marvel Studios can't get the rights back to Rom the Spaceknight though, even though the IDW crossover event around the Dire Wraiths does look pretty cool. I just hope any new films with these characters keep Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime and Frank Welker as Megatron for as long as they can.