Roll off.

Directed by Michael Bay

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Laura Haddock, Anthony Hopkins, Josh Duhamel.

Stop Michael. It's time to stop this charade before it gets any worse. Now for the record I knew this wouldn't be a great movie. But I went to see it for two reasons. One, I've seen the rest, I may as well commit, and two, a decent 'slagging off' session could come of this review. I could go into the nuts and bolts straight away but what summarises what kind of a film 'The Last Knight' is, is a re-skinned, unoriginal, and visually burning loss of an opportunity. Now then, let's get to it.

*Sighs* Here we go again. So in the latest instalment of the Transformers series we rejoin Cade Yeager (Wahlberg) who is living with a group of Autobot's including Bumblebee, who are hiding out from the government who have banned Transformers on Earth. *Sighs again* However, Cade and the gang are called back into action when an ancient staff hidden on Earth is discovered to be the reason as to why the Transformers keep coming back to Earth - and a rogue Optimus Prime is on his way to find the staff too.

If there is anything remotely ok about this film, it's probably Anthony Hopkins - sometimes. He's a refreshing addition to the series but as the film goes on I cringed at some of the dialogue that came out of his mouth. As with the rest of the dialogue, it doesn't feel natural, and I know this is Transformers but it is incredibly badly written. The acting is mostly ok, but it's uninteresting when you don't have a film to hold that acting up, or to give it any flare. And that's just the start of the problems.

The film is a recycled mess. Just as every other Transformers film, it follows such a similar structure and plot. It's a shame, as we get to see different time periods where Transformers fight alongside humans, such as WW2 for example. Seeing something like this would at least be a little different, or even a film set on Cybertron which has no human characters whatsoever would be a delight. If that was the case though, Bay wouldn't be able to get his annoying characters and over sexualised ladies in. And that alone is painful to watch. You'd be amazed at the increasing amount of offensive stereotypes and racist personas filled by the Transformers - Bay seems to be doing more of this every film.

The CGI isn't awful but there's nothing new done with it. The action is just the same old slow motion, robots punching eachother, car chase malarky we're all used to. And with this film being pretty much two hours and thirty minutes you see so much of this rehashed action that it puts you to sleep. The Transformers designs are getting worse, with me personally finding it difficult to tell who is who as so many of the designs are lazy and all look the same. The film changes way to much that it should be it's own Transformer - it doesn't know if it wants to take itself seriously or not and that's troubling. The editing is appalling, it's clearly not been watched over properly as some scenes are disjointed between frames and shots and it looks silly. But what really put me down about this film and what distracted me from the word go was the ever changing aspect ratio which made me wonder how this film even got released. Nearly every shot changed from letterbox to god knows whatever, and the screen wouldn't stay still. For that reason, it's the worst looking film I've seen so far this year, and it made me want to walk out more than once.

But I'm glad I stuck through it as this review wouldn't be justified enough. Of course there's an end-credits scene but does anyone care about that at this point? We know there are going to be tons more sequels and that's fine as Bay knows how to make money with them - but I just want something special again. A new setting, a fresh narrative and a different director. Yeah - getting rid of Bay would be the best start to get this series back on track.

The Good

- Anthony Hopkins? Kind of?

The Bad 

- Aspect Ratio!

- Horrible editing

- Repetitive structure and story

- Ever changing tone

- Lazy and uninspired designs 

- Just boring.

2/10