John Rogers, Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman It is the 14th-highest-grossing film series, with a total of $5.02 billion the series' films have generally been successful at the box office, with Dark of the Moon and Age of Extinction grossing over $1 billion each. The live action Transformers film series has received negative to mixed reception, except for Bumblebee, which received positive reviews. The series has been distributed by Paramount Pictures, and DreamWorks Pictures worked on the first two films. A sixth film Bumblebee, directed by Travis Knight, was released in December 2018, while a seventh film, Rise of the Beasts, directed by Steven Caple Jr. Michael Bay directed the first five films: Transformers (2007), Revenge of the Fallen (2009), Dark of the Moon (2011), Age of Extinction (2014), and The Last Knight (2017), and has served as a producer for subsequent films. I think I actually gasped.Transformers is a series of science fiction action films based on the Transformers franchise of the 1980s. Early in the film, Bumblebee, an Autobot “character” I will never have any interest or investment in (he’s the yellow one who used to be Megan Fox’s car), appears in the middle of the fight scene by launching himself in pieces into the middle of a melee, then proceeds to reassemble himself, limb by limb, while knocking out baddies and dodging gunfire as the camera does a 360 around him. The third act involves the Transformers’ disintegrating home planet of Cybertron (yup) colliding with Earth honeycomb-like pieces of it drag across the surface of the planet from sinewy tethers, like a fleet of giant jellyfish giving us a headbutt. For bloated summer tentpoles, the Transformers films continue to have more visual and sonic imagination than most superhero films, even if the result isn’t anything I’d call beautiful. I can barely summon a feeling about The Last Knight if anything, I feel slightly worried about how little I hated it. This would at least be ludicrously ballsy delivered straight, but the script keeps throwing in gags and bits to reassure you that it’s in on the joke, which is not very convincing given that anyone in on the joke would not have made this film in the first place.īut if you’re looking for an excoriation of the latest whirring colossus Bay has thrust upon us, I don’t have one. If you thought giant robot dinosaurs was a little much, you haven’t seen secret Nazi-killing World War II Autobots, or the spit-take inducing revelation that Transformers might have had a hand helping Harriet Tubman with the Underground Railroad. And then there’s the plot, which involves no less than five principal human characters and an ancient order, led by Anthony Hopkins, which is in charge of keeping the secret history of the Transformers a … secret. Unfortunately, Bay’s weird predilection for bad racial stereotypes and his general disdain for women keeps harshing the mellow (mellow? Sure, mellow). Related StoriesĬhildren Disconcertingly Pull Focus in New Transformers: The Last Knight Trailer (I want to know everything about Tucci’s relationship with Bay, which must be strong enough that the director would bring the actor back to play two different characters in the same franchise.) It would be possible to appreciate the Transformers films as the most expensive and successful head films ever made, if it wasn’t for the business in between their impossibly elaborate effects sequences. In the middle, an ancient amulet grows spider legs and latches itself onto Wahlberg’s arm, and Stanley Tucci plays a wizard. Knight opens with a Dark Ages battle - flaming catapult bombs flying at you in 3-D over the peaks of the Paramount logo - and ends with a woman in the desert whose face turns purple as robes billow around her. But it’s more fun than Age of Extinction, though both movies are so drunk on money and effects they accidentally go weird. The Transformers movies are a favorite object of critical scorn, and narratively, The Last Knight remains barely coherent. But after seeing the fifth installment, The Last Knight, I came to a conclusion that started percolating while watching 2014’s Age of Extinction (the one that introduced Mark Wahlberg and dinosaurs to the mix): I think they should be a controlled substance comparable to alcohol, available to consume and ruin your life, ideally after your brain has finished developing. The Transformers movies are rated PG-13, and I think Michael Bay still thinks he’s making them for teenage boys - probably even younger. Mark Wahlberg in Transformers: The Last Knight.
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