Transformers: The Last Knight

Soulless garbage. Must have been written in less then 15 minutes. How hard can it be to write an entertaining film about transforming alien robots? If you're Michael Bay, very hard indeed. And the jokes. Wow. The jokes. I cringed after each and everyone. So many attempts at humour falling flat on their faces and smashing all of their teeth on the floor. The makers of this movie should be forced into exile.

You know what? I didn't hate this one. Indeed I think it might actually be my favourite! Naturally alarm bells go off when you think your hear Sir Anthony Hopkins doing the narration. Surely not? As this latest outing for the unidentifiable mechanised battle-mongers takes shapes, though, there is actually a bit more of a story underpinning it. Of course there is a secret, all-powerful gizmo for them to discover and fight over and this time we drag in Arthurian legend, Stonehenge and a belted earl in the form of Sir Anthony. This film does have a sense of imminent conclusion to it too as "Optimus" sets off in search of his duplicitous creator "Quintessa" (Gemma Chan) with a view to a showdown that will secure the future of Earth for ever. Meantime, "Cade" (still Mark Wahlberg) and "Lennox" (a well past his best Josh Duhamel) are going through the combat motions as the legendary staff of "Merlin" has to stay out of the hands of the dastardly "Decepticons". This has more of it's tongue in it's cheek, it's less intense and takes itself less seriously than some of the others in the series. We still have to endure the rather supercilious monologues from the increasingly pompous "Prime" but this, for me at any rate, had more of a substantial sense of adventure to it. As usual, the casting - Laura Haddock is terrible - isn't up to much but keep an eye out for Stanley Tucci who clearly couldn't get enough after the last film and so comes back for a brief cameo here. It's rotten, forgettable and ought to be the last of these - but I still rather grudgingly engaged with it a bit more.

<em>'Transformers: The Last Knight'</em> is normal service resumed. I shockingly loved watching the prior <em>'Transformers: Age of Extinction'</em>, no idea how but I truly did. This sequel, however, is more akin to those other movies in the franchise, it's minutely better than - but still as bad as - series worst <em>'Transformers: Dark of the Moon'</em>. It's another entry that lasts for just short of 150 minutes, which is again too long. You do have to respect how much the filmmakers fit into such long run times though, like (bar last time) it's mostly all underwhelming but you can't exactly say there are any proper lull moments in there. The whole English knights construction of a plot here just went through one ear and out the other, admittedly these flicks are nonsensical as it is so I guess this overly entwined plot does feel right at home. On the cast, Mark Wahlberg isn't as fun, though I did mildly enjoy Anthony Hopkins. I still don't get truly annoyed by these movies, even though I properly should. I think it's because there is an essence of the flat-out action that I can find enjoyment in, so things never truly get mind-numbingly dull. With that said, they are most certainly disappointing films (usually).