Transformers: The Last Knight, the fifth installment of Michael Bay’s movie series adapting the beloved Hasbro toy line turned animated series, had a new trailer drop Wednesday, and it’s chalk full of everything you’d expect from the polarizing director.
Bay has transformed the franchise into the film equivalent of an ATM with the four previous installments grossing a total of $3.7 billion worldwide. Despite the box-office success, each film has been derided by fans and critics as bloated CGI spectacles with very little engaging plot. Transformers: The Last Knight looks to continue that trend.
As you can see in the latest trailer, The Last Knight is essentially a greatest hits record for the series.
Combining the casts from both the first three Transformers films (sans Shia Labeouf and Megan Fox) and 2014’s soft reboot Transformers: Age of Extinction, Transformers: The Last Knight looks like a batshit, century-spanning story attempting to explain how the Transformers and humans came into conflict with one another.
Featuring King Arthur, Anthony Hopkins (as an astronomer, historian, and Transformers expert) and the hilariously named hero Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg), the latest installment features all the Michael Bay-isms you’d come to expect.
There are big ships floating in the skies with BWOOMM noises indicating pending doom.
There are objectified female cast members, a Bay staple.
Plus, there’s something that goes completely against the Transformers lore. In this case, it’s an evil Optimus Prime smashing the crap out of a helpless Bumblebee.
Michael Bay’s version of Transformers isn’t for the intellectual crowd. But if you want to see beautifully crafted CGI robots smashing the shit out of each other with medieval weapons juxtaposed against dark, muddied backgrounds, lens flares, and unnecessary spinning shots, Transformers: The Last Knight won’t disappoint.
The series is perfect when you need to turn off your brain and shove popcorn down your gullet for two and a half hours. There ain’t nothing wrong with that. And there are going to be many more movies in this series after The Last Night, but you probably knew (or feared) that already.
Paramount has put together a writer’s room (consisting of 12 writers, according to Bay, many of whom are familiar names) which has already created outlines for a sixth and seventh Transformers films, one of which will be a spinoff featuring Bumblebee to be directed by Travis Knight (Kubo and the Two Strings). So Bumblebee probably survives that tussle with Optimus Prime? Or will that be a prequel?
Transformers: The Last Knight hits theaters — and your senses — June 23.
