Growing up, Transformers were my thing. I was a huge, huge fan and I still am. So when I heard that Michael Bay was bringing them to the big screen and in live-action form, I was excited. That first Transformers movie did not let me down. It was awesome and a ton of fun. Today though we are looking at the fifth of the Michael Bay Transformer movies, The Last Knight (2017). Now available for stream or for download.
How to Stream or Download Transformers: The Last Knight
You can stream it or you can download Transformers: The Last Knight from iTunes. The movie is available in several languages and can be viewed in 4K and HD. And if you like Transformers series check out also the newer installment called Bumblebee.
The Film Review
The story of the live-action Transformers movies actually started off pretty simply, by the time The Last Night came around things got pretty complicated. The movie starts off in the days of King Arthur and Merlin has to use an alien staff in order to get a Transformer called Dragonstorm to save the day…… that sounds nuts, but it is actually what happens.
We have known for a while in this live-action Transformers universe that the Transformers have been part of Earth’s history for a very long time. Fast forward to modern time and we find out where Optimus Prime went at the end of the last movie, Age of Extinction. He went back to Cybertron to meet which his creator, Quintessa. She puts Prime under her control and reveals that Earth is actually Unicron!
As a long time, Transformers fan the thought of a live-action Unicron is something that got me very excited. However, this is not what I thought would happen when Unicron would become part of the Transformers movie universe. I will say the idea of Optimus Prime being controlled to fight his fellow Autobots is really cool and it is probably my favorite part of the movie.
Of course, you cannot have a live-action Transformers movie without a bunch of human drama in it. Mark Wahlberg returns as Cade who is helping the Transformers hide from the authorities. He is joined by a tough girl called, Izabella who lost her family due to the attack in the third Transformers movie, Dark of the Moon. She is actually pretty cool and the best human character in the movie.
The cast is solid and includes Anthony Hopkins, Stanley Tucci, Josh Duhamel, and John Turturro to name a few. The problem is that by this point the lore of these movies has become so convoluted and there are so many human characters that it makes it hard to keep track and also it is kind of hard to care about any of them.
While I was not crazy about how the movie handled Unicron it did something even worse with Hot Rod. I hated the way they portrayed Hot Rod in The Last Knight. Why was he, French? Why did he have an anti-gravity gun? Why was he not orange and red? I get they have to change characters a bit, but it was like they had this character and just slapped the name Hot Rod on him and thought Transformers fans would eat it up.
The overall plot is very hard to keep track of, however, The Last Knight has some amazing action scenes. The standout scene of the movie has to be when Optimus Prime and Bumblebee go head to head. It is kind of crazy to see Prime like this, but they do make it work and this for me is the highlight of the movie.
A major problem with Transformers: The Last Knight and a few of the other live-action movies as well, is the running time. This movie lasts the better part of three hours and there is no need for it at all. A huge chunk of that is spent with the human characters who you really do not care about.
I have to be honest and say that out of the six live-action Transformers movies. This one here is my least favorite. It has some great action set pieces and those are cool, but the overly long runtime, the human characters and the portrayal of Unicron and Hot Rod all added up to make this a bit of a chore to sit through.
Thankfully, Bumblebee which was released in 2018 showed that there was plenty of life in the Transformers movie universe. Hopefully, they can build on that instead of what The Last Knight offered.
