Here's the deal: I came of age in the Golden Era of the Summer Blockbuster. As early as I can remember going to the movies, I remember looking forward to the summer, when my friends and I could ride our bikes to the Des Peres 4 Ciné and watch the year's big action flick. Raiders of the Lost Ark? Poltergeist? Back to the Future?
These movies shaped me.
Into the '90s, I still showed up for summer movies. They were dumber and noisier— and many were made by Michael Bay, actually—but they were still time well spent. But then the summer got overstuffed with blockbusters, the summer movie season began to start earlier and end later, and now it's just 12 solid months of CGI and that WHOMP sound from Inception. There is constant flash and dazzle, to the point that I'm exhausted, and I see a title like Beatriz at Dinner, and I'm like: oh, fuck yes.
But now I work at Esquire, and my editors like me when I'm angry, so here I am, long after the Golden Era of the Summer Blockbuster, going into the fifth Transformers film. I'm coming in at a disadvantage, because I have never seen any of the previous four. (From memory, I think they're called: Transformers; Transformers: Here Come Some New Ones; Transformers: You Think That's a Chair, But It Isn't; and Transformers, Transformers, Ted & Alice.) I have the option to see Transformers: The Last Knight in something called "IMAX Laser 3D," which I decline because not only is it expensive, but just seeing the words "IMAX," "Laser," and "3D" in a row is already too extreme and immersive an experience for me.
Actually, it's not entirely true that I've never seen a Transformers movie. The first one, from back in the time of Soulja Boy and Gossip Girl, was the first movie I rented on my Apple TV, because I figured it would be a good way to try out the top-notch picture and sound. I lasted 20 minutes. Here's what broke me: There's a point at which some shadowy government agency decides they have to work with a super-hacker played by Anthony Anderson, so they show up in helicopters and tear up his house. (I mean, I think they were regular helicopters and not Transformers, but who even knows.) He lives with his grandmother, and as her home is destroyed, she—reasonably, when you think about it—asks, "What's going on?" And Anthony Anderson says "Grandma, drink yo prune juice!" And a deep sadness descended upon me. I closed my eyes, and I saw Michael Bay watch this take, remove his headphones—which he for sure calls "cans"—throw his head back in laughter, and say: "Fucking gorgeous ad lib, Anthony. Moving on!" For in that moment he had hit upon a crowd-pleasing, universal truth: Old people—be they rich, poor, or having their homes torn apart by black-ops helicopters—love the great taste of prune juice.
Anyway, it's 2017. Anthony Anderson has redeemed himself with Black-ish, Shia LaBoeuf puts lunch bags on his head in art galleries, and Michael Bay and I are right back where we were 10 years ago: face-to-face in a darkened room. Give me your worst, you magnificent bastard.
So here's the story, as best I can tell: Transformers are cars from space who turn into robots who punch each other. Optimus Prime is the best Transformer, and he has decided at the end of the last movie to blast off and slowly twist around outer space and say he's Optimus Prime over and over, which honestly doesn't sound like such a bad idea. There are Transformers both good and bad living among us, and more keep coming. Nobody seems to know why, and life just kind of goes on even though meteors that turn into minivans that turn into robots with character voices just kind of keep crashing down on us. That's life in Michael Bay's 2017, which isn't much stranger than ours.
Four multiracial boys go to look for the body of a dead robot, which reminds you of Stand by Me, and that pleasant memory lasts for four seconds and then you remember where you are. The boys come upon a junkyard, where a young girl lives and takes care of a few frail Transformers, and then some kind of military unit comes in and shoots it up, and her favorite Transformer barfs robot blood and dies. We never see the Transform by Me gang again.
So then I guess the girl (with her Transformer friend Squeaks, who is a Vespa and this movie's BB-8) goes to a whole different junkyard and finds Mark Wahlberg, whose character is named Cade Yeager, and I really wish I was joking about that. He is in hiding for some reason I don't feel like researching, and his college-aged daughter can only talk when she calls him, because if he talks back, the government will track his voice and find him, which they could probably already do much more easily with a cell signal, but whatever. He's there with a bunch of good Transformers, who have all sorts of different accents and attitudes—one of which is "John Goodman buying another home."
Optimus Prime lands on the planet from which all the Transformers originate, which is called Cybertron, and when I find that out, I actually go up and punch the movie screen in the face. Cybertron is in ruins, says its one inhabitant, but it really just looks deserted. It looks like the Transformers pulled up stakes and followed everyone to the new hip neighborhood to gentrify. Cybertron's one inhabitant is Quintessa, who describes herself as the Prime of Life, which I guess is supposed to mean something. She can hypnotise space trucks that turn into punching robots, so she puts a spell on him and makes him an Evil Transformer, and his new name is Nemesis Prime, which on the list of Alter-Ego Nicknames ranks considerably lower than Stefan Urquelle.
Also, Anthony Hopkins wants to buy an island, so he's here as some kind of babbling Earl, who keeps the history of the Transformers and speaks in monologues. He has a robot butler who is voiced by Mr. Hughes from Downton Abbey, because Michael Bay is hoping if he keeps reminding you of better pieces of art, some of the good feeing will rub off on this movie.
So anyway, Anthony Hopkins has to get Jayden Spears (Mark Wahlberg) to help him save the world, with the help of a beautiful professor, who when we meet her is doing a museum tour for children, as professors are known to do. She also has horny comic-relief aunts I'd rather not get into, and she isn't Megan Fox, but she looks just enough like her to make you wonder what the deal is with Michael Bay and Megan Fox. A car that you are correct in guessing is more than just a car picks her up and locks her in and drives her out to Anthony Hopkins's place in a great big hurry. Of course the car can't just lock her in and drive her out sensibly and give us a moment to figure out what's going on. Everything has to be a car chase.
Cable Tier (Mark Wahlberg) and Not Megan Fox arrive at Anthony Hopkins' place. He reveals that the Transformers were a part of every major historical event since the Middle Ages. World War II? They were there. Underground Railroad? They were there. Cancellation of My So-Called Life? They were there. (The whole movie actually starts with a 20-minute Knights of the Round Table sequence where Merlin, played broadly by Stanley Tucci, enlists the help of the Transformers of Yore to help King Arthur, so I guess in this universe, all that shit is real. Transformers: The Last Knight wears you out from minute one.) It's a long, meandering story, and it ends with Anthony Hopkins telling Brighton Beach (Mark Wahlberg) and Not Megan Fox that they are the only people who can save the world, and they have to do it right this second there's no time to explain! This movie is in a huge rush until it decides it isn't.
Oh, and I guess there's some kind of talisman that has attached itself to Clapton Solo (Mark Wahlberg) and it kind of crawls around his body and turns into swords or guns or whatever he needs, and you feel like it'll be the key to the good guys winning, but nope, we forget all about it about two-thirds of the way through. Also, Not Megan Fox is the last descendent of Merlin, so only she can harness the power of the Space Sword which is buried at the bottom of the ocean, which we spend a big long clanking-ass time trying to get to, with all kinds of Transformers fighting each other throughout. You know those trampoline parks where you can do flips into big pits full of foam blocks? All of the Transformer fights sound like you're doing that, but instead of foam blocks it's dishes and silverware.
All of the characters talk in one of two ways: They're either cracking wise exactly the same, or they're holding forth in what a sixth-grader thinks a Shakespeare monologue sounds like. Also, everyone went to the VO booth and recorded the lines "I didn't come all the way out here to give up" and "the whole world is at stake," and everyone's versions are just kind of sprinkled throughout the movie wherever there's a spare moment.
So they get the Space Sword, but then Nemesis Urquelle steals it and brings it back to the Barefoot Quintessa, and it provides the power for Cybertron to come toward Earth and destroy it, because Earth is another Transformer planet, called Unicron. Act two of this film has begun, a mere two hours in.
I'm going to blaze through the rest, because it's all a big blur. Cybertron makes contact with Earth, and its planet arms (planets have arms in this universe) scrape across our surface and kill a bunch of human beings in Hong Kong who I guess we don't care about, and this is a movie where we're supposed to have an emotional investment to a Camaro. The military, led by the big sexy Doonesbury character that is Josh Duhamel, help Taylor Dayne (Mark Wahlberg) and Not Megan Fox get to Cybertron, so they can get the Space Sword back, which they kind of do, but it doesn't really matter, because some government agency led by Tony Hale just nukes Cybertron anyway. We're never sure whose side the military is on, but Josh Duhamel is always just a little bit angry, probably because we have yet to reach a national consensus on how to pronounce "Duhamel."
Earth—or the Transformer Planet called Unicron—begins to come to life, and one of its Transformer Planet Arms is at Stonehenge. So now we know the ancient, mysterious purpose of Stonehenge: to help Michael Bay help Hasbro get you to Toys'R'Us and buy your kid a bunch of shitty toys.
This movie batters you so hard that you start to think that anything in the frame at any given time could be a Transformer. A wristwatch, a bust of Winston Churchill, a tumbleweed—you are always on guard for something to start spinning and whirring and speaking with the voice of Kevin Spacey. But this is not the magical feeling of Hollywood anticipation you're feeling. You don't want it to happen. You spend the whole movie saying, "Oh, please God, don't let that prop dazzle me." Transformers: The Last Knight instills the viewer with the opposite of a sense of wonder.
Anyway, the good guys win, and the little girl and the Vespa, who have tagged along, end up fine, and maybe Sean Cody (Mark Wahlberg) gets to see his daughter again, but you've forgotten about that whole storyline, just as Michael Bay bet you would.
Nothing makes sense, the potential destruction of Earth has no real stakes, and all of this unfolds in just over two and a half hours. A six-year-old could probably describe the plot more succinctly, and have a better chance at telling the good robots from the bad, but it's rated PG-13 and the average child would have to take a minimum of three naps in its running time. We have lost our way, summer blockbuster-wise, just in time for next weekend's Spider-Man reboot, in which Aunt May is played by Leighton Meester. I'm going back to not seeing these things, unless there is a reasonable chance Josh Duhamel takes his shirt off.
Salma Hayek and John Lithgow, take me away. I promise to buy your action figures.
