1 out of 5

Directed by: Michael Bay

The oft-maligned Paul W.S. Anderson, alongside a consistent group of editors, started employing and evolving on an editing technique in his post-Resident Evil films that led to criticisms of shaky cam, or excess cutting. I wouldn’t disagree with these critiques, but whether or not I enjoyed whichever entry in the director’s oeuvre, I feel like I was able to at least understand the intentions of this editing style: to find more and more concise ways to communicate quick, often tense moments of action or spectacle without it feeling too staged, and leaving slow motion for key shots. The “peak” of this was in Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, where some cuts were often so fast and frequent as to practically remove the actual relevant shot, and trust our brains to fill some things in. Some of this is a ramping technique, for sure, but some of it is – or at least I believe it is – what I’ve stated above: a kind of optimization.

The oft-maligned Michale Bay, though also using a semi-continuous pool of editors, perhaps notably tends to surround that pool with a non-continuous one – there are generally several editors on any given projects. Bay’s action is often criticized for what became synonymous with the director’s overall style of swirly cam, excessive slo-mo, and a lack of logical geography in any given shot. I also wouldn’t disagree with these critiques, and the intention is, I think, clear as well – to look cool. While we could debate (in my interpretations) Anderson’s goal of being more visually effective versus Bay’s goal to be the visual embodiment of ultimate bro-ness in terms of which is “better,” both directors are clearly successful* in attracting audiences, especially to their respective Resident Evil / Transformers franchises.

Okay. You can likely tell I’ve got a slant here – you’ve seen the review is one star – but, I mean, I acknowledge that the above is a skill of some sort, especially when you’re wrangling millions of dollars. And these are also handy comparisons in the script department, as both tend to pile on conflicting lore, be essentially about the same thing in each entry, and have cringey dialogue and forced one-liners, but as long as the movie is entertaining… you can get away with a lot.

I started by mentioning editing because Bay has another tic that’s popped up in his most offensive Transformers entries – which includes this one: his films suffer greatly when he stops giving a fig. I mean, “stops giving a fig” is dismissive, but with both Dark of the Moon and The Last Knight, Bay was attached by paycheck – not because he was desperate to return. And for a director who arguably excels at superficiality, that slight remove seems to encourage his desire to visually fuck around a bit in some places, and a bit less in some cases, resulting in some truly vile film-going experiences.

Vile seems a very heavy word, I realize, especially when – again – enough audience members felt otherwise. But in comparison to the more spirited preceding film, and especially the pretty okay original, The Last Knight is just… strangely dismissive of its viewers. Like no one much cared how this turned out. And so it is sensory overload not only in a typical Bay way, but also because of how it flagrantly avoids any type of consistency in storytelling, scripts or visuals. I’ve already prattled on too long about nothing, but we’re talking about: characters dropping in and out of scenes without being established as coming or going; consistent 180 degree violations; an odd lack of impact to the effects, underselling the massiveness of the various robots and ships; bizarre cuts in single scenes that truly just feel like stitches of two takes; hyper-editing experiments – one robot does a kind of dance, and Bay / Bay’s editors smash cut the moves together like a punchline, but for the… ; untimed jokes, where scenes are cut out of step with the punchline; and dialogue that consistently just reads out a bland description like “that is a big alien ship” as opposed to actually adding anything.

The movie is just a stream of this stuff, only amazing in that it never stops chattering at us the entire time, apparently keying in to the distracted attention levels of its 2017 audience, which might be the “right” move except that the fucking flick is three hours long, and I have no idea how anyone was able to sit still for that, even if you were having a good time.

Now for some positive words:

The Last Knight was a good, if tired, idea. Bay gets to apply his blockbuster glam to Medieval times in an opening scene which establishes ancient Transformers as having helped out Arthur’s knights, and a drunk Merlin (confusingly played by Stanley Tucci – who was in the last movie) wielding a “magic” staff – ‘formers tech – that is now being sought after by modern day Decepticons, once again led by Megatron. The opening bit dedicated to this stuff is stupid as sin, but whatever, it’s dumbly enjoyable.

Elsewhere in the present, Transformers are, as always, outlawed, and the destruction from the previous film is blocked off as a type of militarized zone, policed by the “TRF” (Transformers Reaction Force) which includes new antaonist-y Santiago Cabrera, and a still kinda side protagonist-y Josh Duhamel. When some kids get in to the zone and discover an Autobot, Mark Whalberg’s Cade Yeager shows up with one-liners and a gun to protect the ‘bot from the TRF, and gets zapped by some non-staff magic from Arthur times, which is part two of our movie MacGuffins that apparently every Transformer knows about but also forgot about until this film.

This setup is relatively patiently shot compared to the rest of the movie, and Bumblebee’s appearance is a kickass use of slomo, faux-single shot stuff.

That said, even here we see evidence of the inconsistent editing, and then it drops like a hammer from thereon out. Anthony Hopkins is our celebrity du jour; as has been the case with the celebs – he seems like he’s having fun.

And I suppose Bay was having fun as well, trying out whatever he pleased, confident that as long as thing blew up every few minutes, people would be okay with the movie and, again, I guess he wasn’t wrong. But: in my attempts to give these movies some grace, this one bundled up all the bad habits of the preceding films, amplified them, and added a DGAF attitude on top that. To those already on the fence with The Transformers franchise, this was a recipe for a very painful viewing experience.

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*Yes, this entry apparently was a “commerical failure,” but damn, still, if you make 600+ million bucks, even if you spent 700+ million, that’s still a lot of eyeballs you’ve convinced to see your commercial failure.