Transformers: The Last Knight Is A Confusing Car Wreck

Warning: vague spoilers ahead.

Transformers: The Last Knight was one of the most confusing movies I've ever seen. And I’ve seen some pretty confusing movies. I also like to think I’m of average intelligence and can follow a movie pretty well, so long as I’m conscious. But I could not keep up with this movie at all. I have no idea what I watched. And I was conscious through the whole thing.

The only reason I was able to stay awake was because I was desperately prying my eyes open, trying to keep up with everything and understand what was happening for the sake of writing a review.

Credit: Paramount Pictures / "Transformers: The Last Knight"

It felt like a fever dream. Stuff was happening. Mark Wahlberg was running around. The Transformers were fighting things. But everything was cut together like a giant movie trailer. And there wasn’t a shot that lasted more than three seconds. I don’t think the camera stopped moving once. And the way it was edited was even more confusing than the actual story itself.

Nothing that I perceived with my eyes made sense. And the movie never slowed down long enough for me to regain sanity. I almost want to go back and rewatch the movie to see if it was really as bad as I remember. But then again, I don’t want to relive the nightmare. It already feels like every memory of the movie is starting to fade away. And hopefully I’ll eventually be able to put it behind me altogether and never have to think about it again.

Believe it or not, I enjoyed all the Transformers up until this one. Everyone else was already sick of them. But I was one of the few people who could switch off my brain and enjoy the movies on a surface level for the action, if nothing else. I still couldn’t tell you how many movies there are all together without looking it up. Or explain any of their plots. They’re all the same. And they seem to blend together and overlap each other. But they’ve always been good, dumb, fun. I always knew I would get plenty of action, explosions, and transformers fighting each other. And that was enough for me.

Not this time. After The Last Knight, I don’t know if I can watch another Transformers movie again. This was definitely the worst out of all the Transformers movies. And it was one of the worst and most confusing movies I’ve seen all year, in general.

I thought the movie opened pretty strong with a Game of Thrones-like, gritty and intense, action scene that had medieval knights fighting against each other on a bloody battlefield full of carnage and dead bodies. But that only lasted for about two minutes. Then a character opened his mouth and I was utterly flabbergasted by some of the worst dialogue I’ve ever heard.

Credit: Paramount Pictures / "Transformers: The Last Knight"

From the first five minutes of the movie, the characters and the dialogue were, not only terrible, but they conflicted with the more serious tone that the movie established. And they never ceased to be a monumental problem throughout the rest of the movie or amaze me with just how awful they were. Having these dumb, outlandish characters and dialogue wouldn’t be a problem if this movie had a more lighthearted tone. But the movie takes itself so seriously. This has been a major problem in all of the Transformers movies, and it’s an even bigger problem here. As soon as the first bit of dialogue entered my ears, I immediately checked out and the fever dream that was Transformers ensued.

Credit: Paramount Pictures / "Transformers: The Last Knight"

The Transformers movies are known for being over-the-top and random, with a ton of sci-fi stuff thrown all over the screen that you’re expected to accept and believe. I mean they're movies about fighting robots that transform into cars. But The Last Knight is different. The random sci-fi elements and robots weren’t the biggest problem for me. Like I said earlier, the biggest problem was the story itself and the way it was directed. Normally, it feels like Michael Bay chucks sci-fi all over the screen with visual insanity, and I’m okay with it. But this time, Michael Bay went deeper. This time he upchucked sci-fi elements all over the story itself, making it completely incomprehensible. And he couldn't hold the camera steady for a single shot.

The story is incredibly fast paced. In fact, it's so fast paced, that it should be able to entertain someone with even the lowest attention span. But on top of it being fast paced, its outrageously random and confusing. I can't stress that enough.

Credit: Paramount Pictures / "Transformers: The Last Knight"

The movie plays out like a two and a half hour trailer from hell. At the beginning of the movie, there's this little girl who saves a group of kids from a robot ripped straight out of Robocop. Then Mark Wahlberg shows up and saves them. Optimus Prime is abducted by the hula-hooping witch from Suicide Squad. The guy from the other Transformers movie is trying to kill Mark Wahlberg? And he’s working with the Decepticons? I don't know.

Credit: Paramount Pictures / "Transformers: The Last Knight"

But we're going to skip ahead to when Wahlberg and the new fill-in super model woman, that replaced the one's from previous movies, are in a submarine. Because this scene was by far the most confusing and random thing in the entire movie.

This scene was what finally pushed me over the edge of sanity and had me watching the last quarter of the movie from some dark abyss of my inner self, miles away from the tv screen, my mind complete mush and unresponsive. After this point, I simply gave up trying to understand anything through my eyes and ears. And it's where my memory fails me the most.

Credit: Paramount Pictures / "Transformers: The Last Knight"

In this particular scene, Wahlberg and the supermodel are in a submarine they stole for some reason. They say a bunch of things to each other that make no sense while Wahlberg shows off his lower abdomen and a CGI thing crawls all over his body like a leech. Then the CP30 rip-off comes in and serves them dinner while they continue to say confusing things to each other. And it ends. All the while, the camera is shaking and cutting all over the place.

Credit: Paramount Pictures / "Transformers: The Last Knight"

The next thing I remember is a big fight in Ireland. And then Wahlberg and the supermodel kiss. This shocked me very briefly out of my nightmarish fever dream because I don’t recall them ever growing romantically close to each other, let alone saying much of anything to each other or having any sort of chemistry the entire movie. I guess it’s the moment of heightened action and intensity when the guy and the girl are supposed to kiss in a conventional action movie, so they made them kiss. I don’t know. It made no sense like the rest of this movie.

The only thing I remember after that was a shot of the machine planet retreating, I blinked, and the movie ends. Then the credits started to play over a bizarre montage of a remote desert. I swear, if you blink once or say anything to the person next to you during this movie, you’ll miss everything that just happened and you’ll be completely lost. And once your lost, that’s it. Good luck trying to make it through the rest of the movie. Because on top of it being a total mess, it feels like the longest out of all the Transformers. I was shocked when I found out that it was apparently the shortest one. It never seemed to end.

I’m starting to drag on like this movie so I’ll to wrap this up quick. I guess I should probably tell you what I liked about this movie first. Although for the most part, it seemed like Michael Bay shot this movie with one hand, while riding a merry go round and trying to beat the world record for the most angles used in ten seconds of run-time, ill give him credit where credit is due and say that some of his shots were cool and the special effects were top-notch as always. Thats it.

Credit: Paramount Pictures / "Transformers: The Last Knight"

If you haven’t already seen it, avoid this one at all costs. It’s not worth the mental trauma, no matter how cool it might look on the surface. Michael Bay has directed good movies before. But at this point, its obvious he’s as tired with the Transformers as we are. And if you’re wondering why I’m just now reviewing this movie, its because I knew better than to pay to see it in theaters. And I finally found the courage to watch it.