It is a very strange time to be alive Ladies and Gentlemen. Global politics is at a constant boiling point, with our countries being run by unqualified, unprepared and unconscionable idiots. Crazed zealots careen through our streets as sailing the innocent with vehicles, knives and the content of your average hardware store. The Internet loses its collective shit over Kim Kardashian's frankly misshapen ass, a dead Gorilla and most recently the gender of the new Doctor Who; none of which affects my life in the least. To quote one of my favourite Doctors: Cats and dogs, living together, mass hysteria. Aside from this, or perhaps because of it, it is a terrible time to be a Transformers fan.
I pride myself on my loyalty (stubbornness) and patience (stubbornness) with the brands and franchises that have given me so much entertainment over the last nearly 40 years. Transformers is the absolute pinnacle of that mindset. I have resolutely refused to give up on the stone cold, gaseous and bloated corpse that is Prime's legacy. I have dutifully invested in merchandise, toys, cinema viewings and DVDs like I was the only one keeping the flame alive. There was always the faintest flicker of hope; a whisper of an idea that next time out it won't be so bad. Maybe they would listen to the fans. Maybe they would revisit the original animation and take heed of it's core message, feel, tone and principles. Maybe I wouldn't want to jab surgical instruments into key parts of my anatomy to make it all go away. That's a lot of maybes, but today is a sad day. Monumentous; portentous even.
Today I have given up on Transformers.
OK, with the hyperbole police rushing to my door as we speak, perhaps I should qualify that a little. I still love Transformers. I love the toys from my childhood, I love the Gen 1 animation, I love the animated movie (despite it being not much more than an hour long toy commercial). What I have given up on is the hope that there will ever be a decent live action Transformers movie.
The Last Knight is a horrible, sloppy, shambolic mess. If you clustered all the worst bits of all four movies together, dipped them in egg wash, panko breadcrumbs, deep fried them in their own effluent then chucked them under the wheels of a moving bus you'd still have a more coherent event than Transformers instalment number 5.
You will have seen this plot before even if you hadn't seen any previous movies in the franchise. You will have seen it 3 times at least if you have; if I had to be polite about it I'd call it lazy film making. Everything, as it always does, centres round a MacGuffin everybody is looking for before the bad guys get it. All Spark, Space Bridge, Matrix of Leadership, or in this case Merlin's staff (I shit you not) which is of course an all powerful alien weapon which Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table mistake for magic. A random and seemingly non-canon cameo by the previous instalment's redemption-tale bad guy Stanley Tucci as Merlin is the first in a long line of perplexing moments that stretch out over the next two and a half hours. Let the overblown shenanigans commence.
Up until now I've been able to find some sort of redeeming feature with each of the Transformers movies. Beyond the clunky dialogue and hastily stapled together plot, there was something just interesting enough to keep me occupied. Sadly, that isn't the case here: for all Michael Bay's promises and posturing, despite a trailer that at least looked half decent and foreshadowed at least some tension and drama, despite the best will in the world there is a huge dearth of creativity, empathy or even understanding of the source material. Allow me to through some examples your way, it's probably easier. Obvious spoilers for those of you dumb enough to go and watch it after reading this.
The super-empowering Superbowl commercial
You may not have seen it, but Paramount forked out what was probably an obscene amount of money to get a Transformers sting at half-time at the Superbowl. It focussed on Izzy, the 14 year old girl protagonist breaking the fourth wall to describe how awesome it is to be a girl, and indeed that we should all fight like girls turning an old addage on it's head and conveniently forgetting that so far all the other girls in the franchise have either been greasy love interests, nought but leverage or largely redundant. Surprise, surprise Izzy spends her first two minutes fighting admirably like a girl and then disappears into the miasma of characters and becomes largely redundant. She does frolic with some baby dinobots though, so I guess that's OK. Wait, what?
Yes. There are baby Dinobots.
I don't even know where to start with this. Did Grimlock and Sludge have some sort of affair, leading to the production of these miniature robot lizards? D0 Transformers procreate? How have we been told throughout the franchise that Cybertron is dead and only the most recent Macguffin can bring it back to life? Where in blue hell have these little abominations come from? Direct from the mind of a marketing executive is the most likely answer. Apart form anything they serve no purpose what-so-ever in terms of plot.
There is a massive rift in terms of world outlook.
We're told right off the bat that the Earth is at War with Transformers of any allegiance. There are Restricted Areas set up with sentinels designed like lanky ED-209s to root out trespassers. At least in the USA there are. Over here in Blighty we're still sipping tea, playing Polo and making damn sure our upper lips are as stiff as possible. Quite aside from the Oxford Professor with three degrees apparently doing tours of the Library. It doesn't even feel like the same story at points. Also apparently Cuba is like a Transformer beach resort where the illegal robots hang out with Agent Simmons playing pick up Basketball.
The actual Transformers themselves.
I wonder whether it's because previously it's been very difficult to work out one from another, but Transformers 5 may as well have been called the Last Racial Stereotype. Barricade has gone from incomprehensible growling to a weird affected street accent (no doubt written by someone from a leafy suburb in California rather than an actual ghetto). I think he was even wearing a chain. Oddly, Megatron is back looking all shiny and new (i.e. unrecognisable AGAIN) and negotiates the release of his imprisoned "crew" (their words not mine) in a scene almost directly lifted from another horrible shit-show of a movie, Suicide Squad. Mohawk the lizard-faced motorbike, Dreadbot, Bezerker, Nitro Zeus, all obviously fan-favourites. Who names these things? We've heard of Onslaught, but he's in it for about five minutes. In fact they all disappear for a good third of the movie only to re-appear just when they're needed to advance the plot.
The Autobots fare only a little better, but at least none of them get torn in half. I don't know why Hot Rod is French; or rather why he acknowledges he's not French but just does the accent. I don't know why the robot butler can't transform into anything useful but I do know that as comic relief you should probably be at least a little bit funny. He is not. Grimlock and the Dinobots disappear after about half an hour too which considering there's a dragon knocking around, that's a missed opportunity.
There is way too much going on.
Autobots hiding in a junkyard. Human TRF forces hunting down all Transformers with drones that look like TIE fighters. Decepticons sneaking around badly and also hiding out. Prime finding his maker. Anthony Hopkins being a daft old coot. There are just way too many things going on and frankly, Michael Bay isn't a good enough director to handle it. He made very good car commercials though, so maybe we should lay off a bit. I think the best demonstration of this is that there are ostensibly four bad guys.
There are four bad guys.
Count 'em: Megatron, Quintessa (creator of Cybertron), Nemesis Prime and wait for it... Unicron. Yes folks, Prime goes bad for a bit and is revived by hearing Bumblebee's voice (obviously) Megatron is trucking around the place but I don't even remember seeing what happened to him. Quintessa is all floaty and evil, then somehow turns into a Chinese lady in the desert and Unicron is the Earth apparently. Or in the Earth. Or something. All we get is a massive build up to seeing Unicron and all we get are some horns and a set up for the inevitable crap-fest that Transformers 6 will be. They even use the "planet heading towards Earth" set up form the animated movie and then you don't see Unicron. And that folks is where I ran out of fucks to give.
Apparently we are being treated to both a sequel to this crap and a Bumblebee spin off. Chances are I'll have forgotten all about this by then and will march to the cinema with a fistful or freshly printed fivers, because I'm an idiot.
No comments:
Post a Comment