Movies about fast cars...awesome. Movies about fighting robots...awesome. Movies about fighting robots that turn into fast cars?...I'm all in. And I was with Transformers: The Last Knight. But I was disappointed, confused, and tired by the end. Yes, I said tired. It took a lot of mental stamina to try to follow the elusive plot. A very convoluted plot, with long monologues attempting to explain Transformer origin mythology. This really stretched-out the film. The movie was at least an 90 minutes too long.
However, to be fair, the film was very funny. Mark Wahlberg seems to have given up his action hero options for comedy in his most recent films, including this one. Like the Transformers, Anthony Hopkins settled for easy laughs at times by speaking urban slang, but in his British accent. Wahlberg tries to find Bubble Bee's true voice (for some reason) by replacing certain of his car parts. Parentless, homeless kids factor into the plot as the defenders of a few critically damaged Transformers. Similar to an X-Men film, the U.S. government wants all Transformers destroyed to eliminate any possible threat to humankind.
Anthony Hopkins is investigating the connection between Merlin the Magician, King Arthur's rise to power, and ancient DNA from Witwicky ancestry that can control Transformer technology. That's where I got lost. Shia Labeouf (Sam Witwicky) wasn't even in the film! Even weirder, a Megan Fox look-alike, who was suppose to be a Witwicky, had such DNA. How could the production close the book on the Transformers without having most of the original actors in it. He did out grow the roll of Sam Witwicky, but was Shia Labeouf that bad to work with? Not even a Stan Lee type cameo? The comedy in the film was not enough to overcome the lack of action and adventure that I expected.
