Here’s something they don’t tell you in church, film school, or on line at the DMV: Once you get to movie no. 5 in a blockbuster franchise, you can do whatever you want. How do I know that? Because I also know this: If you stare long enough at the pyramid on a dollar bill, you will see this:
Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space. Michael Bay, the bard of Benghazi, is back changing robots into trucks and back into fucking robots, and this time he brought along Hannibal Lecter and King Arthur, and the results look frankly psychedelic, and if the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, I must be losing it because once again, I think a Transformers movie looks awesome. This time it’s Transformers: The Last Knight. I’m sure this will end well.
What’s different this time around? Oh, I don’t know. How about Celtic crosses drenched in blood; Josh Duhamel being like, “MARINES, WE ARE LEAVING,” but about the human race; some kind of Gladiator-battle-on-the-northern-frontier-type situation …
Some kind of Valkyrie-type situation …
And some kind of The Dark Knight–stadium-type situation …
You want to know what Michael Bay’s aesthetic is? He looks at other movies and other directors and treats them the way Scott Caan treats Casey Affleck on the racetrack in Ocean’s Eleven.
He’s such a dick. 13 Hours is the work of someone who thought Black Hawk Down and the first 40 minutes of Saving Private Ryan didn’t take it far enough. His truck is always bigger and always faster and always brighter and always louder. And in small doses, he is the Greek god of war of cinema, and his stuff is pretty amazing to watch.
I’ve been reading a little about The Last Knight, because I am super curious about how, in the names of Chrétien de Troyes and Megatron, they are going to unite Arthurian legend with FUCKING ROBOTS THAT ARE ALSO CARS, and I came across this quote from a crew member about the making of the film:
“It’s the Super Bowl every day.”
French New Wave forever, my dude. But in this quote lies a truth: understanding Bay is about appreciating spectacle over story. It’s about muscle, not marrow. So if you are assaulted with images of A ROBOT FLOATING IN SPACE WHILE AUTO-TUNE FAKE WAYNE COYNE SINGS ABOUT FLOATING IN SPACE, my advice is to ride the wave.
You know who is riding the wave? Anthony “Bodhi” Hopkins. Can someone DM me the picture of the horse that Hopkins lost all his money on? Because I need to know what we’re dealing with here.
This is a movie that producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura has described as an exploration into “how Transformers were actually created, where did it start, where did they go from being a sort of a slave-race to a sentient race.”
We are so far out past the breakers with this franchise. These movies have made more than $3 billion, worldwide, and they have delved into such batshit story lines as: the moon landing being a cover-up for Transformers crashing into the moon, the terraforming of Earth 65 million years ago, and Mark Wahlberg playing AN INVENTOR NAMED CADE YEAGER. Clearly, nobody is going to these movies for story or logic, so why play by the rules of either? It all makes sense, and nothing makes sense. Unleash the Hopkins. This movie is going to be pop art ayahuasca. See you at the multiplex in June.
