My Thoughts on "Transformers: The Last Knight"
Foreword:
This was originally written on Monday August 7, 2023. This is the fourth and final review that I've written for the Michael Bay Transformers movies that I took as an excerpt from a description of a re-edit that I did for explosion compilation videos 💥 that I downloaded off of YouTube. They compilation videos of all the explosions 💥 in Michael Bay movies, and they were mirrored on YouTube in order to avoid copyright. So, I downloaded them onto my laptop 💻, and I undid the mirror effect in iMovie so that they would be in the right position. I did one for Armageddon ☄️, I did one for Pearl Harbor, I did one for each of the Transformers films, and I did one for 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. I wrote descriptions for all those because iMovie allows you to add a description to the video when you save it that you can view when you add it to your Photos app. And for some of them, they were so long that they were kind of like reviews.
So, I saved them, edited them, reworked them a bit so that they would actually be reviews. That's what I did with the description for the Armageddon ☄️ explosion compilation video, and what I did with the descriptions of the Transformers sequels. Now, I'm on the last one, Transformers: The Last Knight, the one that may people consider to be the worst of the Michael Bay Transformers movies. Yes, even more than Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which had been considered the worst until The Last Knight came out. Even people generally liked the Michael Bay movies consider this one to be their least favorite out of the whole pentalogy.
There are various reasons for this, and I do go over most of them in the review you're about to read, I won't reiterate them here. But, until Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, The Last Knight was the lowest grossing live action Transformers movie. It only made $605.7 million 💵, which was a huge decrease from the previous movie, Transformers: Age of Extinction's worldwide box office gross of $1.104 billion 💵. The Transformers franchise was no longer in the billion dollar club 💵, and never return there ever again, as every Transformers movie since The Last Knight has made under $1 billion 💵, not even getting close to that coveted $1 billion 💵 mark.
We'll see what happens with this year's Transformers One, the first animated Transformers movie to get a major theatrical release since the original 1986 Transformers: The Movie. But, I doubt that movie will make a billion dollars 💵, especially since the first trailer was released received such mixed reactions from people. Chris Pratt as Orion Pax and Brian Tyree Henry as D-16, the precursors to both Optimus Prime and Megatron respectively, not exactly casting choices that instill a lot of confidence in people, especially not Chris Pratt. A lot of people do not like Chris Pratt, and don't like that he's seemingly in everything. But, we'll see. I'm willing to give them a chance.
But, going back to The Last Knight's box office gross, because it was such a huge disappointment and failed to meet the studio's expectations (they were expecting another billion dollar hit 💵), it forced them to course correct. They scrapped their plans for a Transformers cinematic universe because this movie was meant to launch a cinematic universe, and they went in a completely different direction. This movie laid the groundwork for Bumblebee 🐝 to reboot the franchise, and have a new set of Transformers movie not directed by Michael Bay.
Although, he stayed on attached to these films as a producer, but stepping aside to allow new directors to come in, and do what they pleased. Of course, the long-time producer of these movies Lorenzo di Bonaventura has insisted that Bumblebee 🐝 and Rise of the Beasts are not reboots, but are in fact prequels still apart of the Michael Bay series, still in continuity with those films. Something that has made him a really disliked figure within the Transformers fan community. Regardless of whether Bumblebee 🐝 and Rise of the Beasts are reboots or prequels, they still very clearly different from Michael Bay's vision (if you can even call it that), and they're very different from the style and sensibility that Michael Bay brought to these five prior films. They fundamentally different from the films directed by Michael Bay.
Before I actually let you get on with the review, I feel I should confess to something for the sack of full of transparency. I have not actually watched The Last Knight. I didn't watch it when it came out back in 2017, and I haven't made any real attempt at watching it since. Transformers: Age of Extinction was the last Michael Bay Transformers movie that I saw in theaters or saw period, and I kind of dropped off after that. I had no interest in watching The Last Knight because the trailers weren't all that good. They didn't convince me that it was a movie that was worth watching. I think that's part of the reason why The Last Knight underperformed. People had just lost interest in these movies by this point, and they didn't want to see them anymore. And the marketing was so terrible that it didn't convince those people that it was worth seeing.
The Last Knight by far had the worst marketing campaign of all the Michael Bay Transformers movie. It did the movie no favors, I'll say that much. It made it clear to a lot of people that this was a franchise that had lost its steam. There was no more gas left in the tank. But, despite me not seeing it in full, I still clearly had to say to even dedicate an entire post to it. A lot of what I say in this review was influenced by clips that I had seen and reviews that I had seen over the years. The one that influenced me the most was PointlessHub's review. He basically summarized the entire movie, which is funny because in his Planet of the Apes (2001) review, he complained about movie reviews that just summarize the entire plot of a movie, and are basically a shorter and more condensed version of the movie, when that's exactly what he did with his review of The Last Knight.
That being said, his review was probably the most comprehensive and detailed review of the movie that I had ever seen. And it came from the perspective of someone who is a fan, who actually did grow up with these movies, and had watched from them from the beginning with the first one back in 2007. A lot of the reviews of this movie, and other Michael Bay movies were from people who weren't Transformers fans, or from people who weren't kids when these movies were coming out. But, Cody brought that perspective that was so lacking in the online discourse about these movies before he started the PointlessHub channel. And now you'll get to read what I had to say after watching his review. Maybe if I do actually see the movie for myself, I'll add an update telling you what I personally thought of it.
I wanted to get this out before the end of July because I promised in another post that I would post this review sometime this month. Well, the month's almost over, and I still haven't done it. So, I'm doing it now. I'm also getting to 100 posts, this will be 98th post on this blog. I do plan on making my review of Deep Blue Sea the next 99th post, but I don't know if I'll even be able to do it in the month of July. I had wanted to do it this movie since July is the month associated with the movie, Jaws since that movie's set around and on the Fourth of July 🇺🇸, and some people consider Deep Blue Sea to be a bit of a successor to Jaws, although the two franchises are not connected obviously. Some people also consider it to be the "anti-Jaws" because in Deep Blue Sea, they show the sharks 🦈 from the very beginning whereas in Jaws, they don't the show the shark 🦈 until the third act when Brody, Hooper, and Quint are already out at sea hunting the shark 🦈. Even still, even after they show the shark 🦈, they don't show it that much.
There's also more than one shark 🦈 in Deep Blue Sea, there are four of them, three female mako sharks ♀︎ and a tiger shark who's sex I'm not sure of because they never say, but it's probably a female ♀︎ also. And of course, in Jaws, there's only one shark 🦈, and it's a large male ♂︎, 25 feet long, which would not only make it the largest great white shark ever recorded, but also the largest male great white shark ♂︎ ever recorded. Male great whites ♂︎ don't get anywhere close to being that big. They usually only grow to 11 feet, with 13 feet being the largest they're able to grow to. It's the females ♀︎ that grow to the large 17 foot, 18 foot, 19 foot, and 20 foot sizes, though the average for a female ♀︎ is 15 feet. The reason why of course is the great white sharks are a sexual dimorphic species where the females ♀︎ grow larger than the males ♂︎.
Most of the Jaws movies have only one shark 🦈 each. Jaws 3D AKA Jaws 3 is the only one that had more than one shark 🦈. Unless you count that dead tiger shark in the first movie. Jaws 3D had two: a large 35-foot long female great white ♀︎ (larger than the sharks 🦈 in the previous two films and larger than any living shark today recorded by science in the real world) and a comparatively small juvenile male great white ♂︎ who's probably only like 4 or 5 feet long tops, and is the offspring of that large 35-foot long female ♀︎.
I also wanted it to coincide with Shark Week 🦈 since Shark Week 🦈 was held in July in this year. I don't know if it's always been held in the month of July. I was always under the impression that it was held in the month of August. But, not this year for sure, it was in July. But, Shark Week 🦈 is over now, so that's out. I don't know if Shark Fest 🦈 is still going on though. Shark Fest 🦈, for those that don't know, is basically National Geographic's attempt at competing with Discovery Channel's Shark Week 🦈. Only, it's a month long event whereas Shark Week 🦈 is only for, well, a week.
Another thing that I have to consider too is that Twisters 🌪️ is out now, I have plans on seeing that movie sometime this week or next week. And if I do see it in theaters, I will of course have to write a review of it, and post it on here. So, my review of Twisters 🌪️ might end up being the 99th post on this blog rather than my review of Deep Blue Sea. If anything else, I'll review Deep Blue Sea after I reach my 100th post milestone. I won't review it for my 100th post because I have a different plan for that. I don't want to give it away, but I'll give it a little hint. It involves this fruit 🍍.
Before I close out this foreword, and let you get on with the review, I wanted to give a bit of a political update about the 2024 US presidential election 🇺🇸, and my opinion on the most recent development. I do write about politics on this blog, not specifically domestic or electoral politics, but I do write about politics. I have a whole category this blog dedicated to just political posts. In fact, I partially started this blog so that I could get political, whereas I didn't feel as if I was as free to get political as I perhaps wanted to on DeviantART.
But, reading about politics really bothers that much, you can just skip this part. A lot things have happened in the past week and in the past few days. Donald Trump was nearly assassinated, someone nearly took a shot at him, and his ear 👂 was apparently grazed. There are some disagreements over whether his ear 👂 was injured by the bullet or by a piece of glass from his teleprompter. But regardless, his ear 👂 was injured during this assassination attempt, and he wore a bandage to cover it up when he went to the Republican National Convention (RNC), although he didn't wear any bandage when he golfed ⛳️ at Mar-A-Lago the next day.
But, when he went to the RNC, he had this big over-the-top bandage that covered his entire ear. People were making jokes about it looking like a pillow or a maxi pad or a Lipton tea bag. It was one of the silliest things imagine in an RNC that had a lot of silly things. What does it say about a political party when a good number of the top speakers and top attendees at their convention are all criminals and what does it say about a political party when their nominee for president is also a criminal? People were saying that Trump's assassination attempt was going to shake up the election in a big way, and it would possibly result in a landslide victory for him, but it really didn't change anything.
Maybe in normal times, maybe in a normal political climate it would have, but this is not a normal election. This is not a normal political climate. So, Trump almost being shot and killed changed nothing. Especially since Trump is such an unlikeable guy and such an unpopular candidate that no body would've actually feel that bad if he were killed. I certainly wouldn't. It also didn't help that the would-be assassin turned out to be a registered Republican, a 20 year old right-wing extremist who likely wasn't even motivated by politics when he decided to try to take a shot at Trump.
Trump's acceptance speech at the RNC showed how little the assassination attempt changed the election, and how little it changed him. Everyone in the media was saying that almost being killed would change Trump, that he would have a new tone, a new temperament, and he would become a unifier or whatever, but that didn't happen. He's still the same Trump that he was before the assassination attempt.
His speech at the RNC proved that because while he started out trying to give a unifying message, it quickly devolved into the typical Trump rally BS that we've come to expect from him. I mean, he started talking about Hannibal Lector again, calling him the "late, great Hannibal Lector," talking as if this fictional serial killer, this fictional cannibal was a real person. Who does that? Who listens to that, and thinks, "Yep, that man ♂︎ should be our next president?" It makes no sense. It's so stupid, and it shows that it's Trump with the cognitive decline, not Joe Biden.
I'm surprised he didn't start talking about sharks 🦈 and batteries like he did at that other rally he did back in June that went viral, and made people go, "What is this guy's talking about!?" And the only reason that Trump talked about sharks 🦈 in that one rally speech is that I guess he's afraid of sharks 🦈, he has Galeophobia. We know this from Stormy Daniels, the pornstar he had sex with, and tried to cover up because he thought it would hurt his chances in the 2016 election. That was the case that he was convicted on, 34 counts of election fraud or campaign finance violations or whatever it was.
The point is that's what made him a convicted felon. We learned about Trump's fear of sharks 🦈 from the pornstar that ultimately got him convicted. So, that's another big reason not to vote him, at least for me. If you're a shark lover 🦈 or a shark scientist 🦈, vote for Harris because Trump is no friend of sharks 🦈. He'd probably try to kill all the sharks 🦈 if he got back into office. Never underestimate what dictator will do once they're in power, and they feel they no longer have to run again in an election.
And make no mistake, if Trump wins, this will be the last election we ever have in America 🇺🇸, or at least, the last free and fair election we ever have. Trump may still hold elections, but they'll be sham elections where he's the only candidate on the ballot, all political opposition has been eliminated. Just like in Russia 🇷🇺, they still have elections in Russia 🇷🇺, but they're fake rigged elections where there is no political opposition, the opposition has been squashed, and Vladimir Putin is really the only candidate on the ballot every election, and he wins every single time. His approval ratings are completely fake, and not at all representative of how Russians 🇷🇺 truly feel about their president-for-life.
It'd be the same with Trump if he got back into office. He'd be the only candidate in every single election going forward, and he'd win every single time, even if the majority of the country hates him and doesn't truly support him. The approval ratings would be cooked, and show him at approval ratings that would only be positive, never be negative, and be comically unrealistic and out of touch with reality. It wouldn't at all surprise me if Trump did this because he's that much of a narcissist, and he's that obsessed with winning that he'd just hold these sham elections just so that he could say that he won them all. He will never leave office, at least not peacefully, if he gets back in. That is why he must stop him while we still have the chance. I hope that if Harris does debate Trump, if there is a second debate, that she wears a shark pin 🦈 on her shirt or her suit as a good luck charm to spite him.
Speaking of which, the thing that actually changed the election in a big way was that Biden announced that he was dropping out of the race and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as the presumptive Democratic nominee for president in the 2024 election. This came after weeks pressure and calls for him to drop out of the race following his lackluster performance in the first presidential debate against Trump.
When I heard this news the first time, I was a bit mad and upset because I felt that all of the mainstream media (or the corporate media if you prefer), celebrities like George Clooney and Michael Moore, and these Democrats who were calling on Biden to drop out of the race and who I referred to as "turncoat Democrats" after comedian, Christopher Titus used the same term to refer to these people were attacking him over something incredibly minor. They were so willing to throw him under the bus over one bad debate performance. While the Republicans were willing to embrace a criminal as their nominee for president, and never wavered in their support of him.
It just rubbed the wrong way to see all of these people, all of these elitists in the media and in Washington dog pile on the President like this, when he has such an amazing record, a record that most other presidents could only dream of, and when he given us so much in so little time. He saved us from a fascist takeover of this country, he fixed the economy, helped bring down inflation, lowered prescription drug and insulin costs, got a historic infrastructure bill past, he got us back on the Paris Agreement his first day in office practically, he pulled us out of Afghanistan 🇦🇫 after the previous three guys ♂︎ before him fucked it up, and he stood by Ukraine 🇺🇦 when all know that Trump would never stand by Ukraine 🇺🇦 and would let Russia 🇷🇺 roll all over them.
He also wouldn't stand by Taiwan 🇹🇼 and wouldn't protect Taiwan 🇹🇼, and would just let China 🇨🇳 take it since Trump loves Xi Jinping now apparently. Trump likes the Taliban too, like he allowed the Taliban to take over Afghanistan 🇦🇫. He and his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo laid the groundwork for the secular Afghan government 🇦🇫 to fall, and for the Taliban to reestablish their old regime from the 90s and early 2000s (the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan), and oppress the women ♀︎ of that country.
They did this by negotiating peace talks and negotiating a withdrawal timeline with just the Taliban and not the actual Afghan government 🇦🇫 that the US 🇺🇸 and NATO had been fighting for two decades for. Which had the effect of legitimizing the Taliban, and giving them enough time to regroup and launch a major offensive to ultimately overthrow the government, but also delegitimzed the post-invasion Afghan government 🇦🇫 (the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan 🇦🇫) and demoralizing them and the Afghan military 🇦🇫 including the Afghan National Police 🇦🇫 to the point where a lot of them didn't want to fight the Taliban, even as the Taliban were launching a major ground offensive, taking town after town until the finally reached the capital, Kabul. The Afghan security forces 🇦🇫 either just folded or were killed or they switched sides.
The war ended the way it did because of Trump and because of Pompeo's negotiations as well as the negotiations of Zalmay Khalilzad, who also worked in the Trump administration. He worked as a special envoy to Afghanistan 🇦🇫 under the title or position of United States Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (SRAP) 🇺🇸🇦🇫🇵🇰, and he is just as responsible for screwing over the people of Afghanistan 🇦🇫 as Trump and Pompeo are. The dick 😠🖕.
He also screwed over Iraq 🇮🇶 during the Bush administration when he helped elevate Nouri al-Maliki within the post-invasion Iraqi political system 🇮🇶 enough to become the next prime minister of Iraq 🇮🇶, the man ♂︎ perhaps the most responsible for stoking sectarian violence inside Iraq 🇮🇶 and causing ISIS's rise. So yeah, Zalmay Khalilzad is a pretty terrible guy ♂︎, and no one should hire him as envoy or emissary or attaché to any country in the Middle East and no one should be asking for his advice on any foreign affair related to the Middle East.
So, all of the people who blame Biden for the outcome of the War in Afghanistan 🇦🇫 are stupid and don't know what they're talking about. Biden is not to blame for how the war ultimately turned out, Bush is because you know, he failed to capture or kill Osama bin Laden the first time and also the Iraq War 🇮🇶, and to an arguably greater extent, Trump is since his administration set up the negotiations that resulted in the US and NATO withdrawal 🇺🇸 and the Taliban takeover.
Biden was just handed a shit sandwich, and kind of just had to carry it out to its conclusion, no matter how unfavorable that conclusion would be. I'm sure Biden didn't want the war to end this way, he probably wanted to keep troops there longer and continue supporting the Afghan government 🇦🇫, but he pretty much had no other choice. There was no real way that he could've kept troops there, not in the conditions that Trump had set up by negotiating with the Taliban and giving them everything they wanted, and also because the vast majority of Americans 🇺🇸 were pretty sick of Afghanistan 🇦🇫 by this point. They wanted to pull out.
And yet, when Biden ultimately did it, everyone complained about it and said that he fucked it up and didn't do it right. As if there was somehow a correct way of withdrawing from Afghanistan 🇦🇫 when the Taliban have taken every significant town and village including Kabul, successfully overthrown the government and reestablished their old theocratic regime, and released dozens or thousands of terrorists from prison, including the ISIS-K member responsible for the airport bombing in Kabul. The one that killed 13 US soldiers 🇺🇸 and over 170 Afghan civilians 🇦🇫, all of whom were trying to flee the country from the Taliban's rule.
The reality is that no matter who did it, the withdrawal was always going to be a chaotic clusterfuck. It was never going to be smooth, and it was always going to be be a failure. By the time Biden took office, the War in Afghanistan 🇦🇫 was unwinnable, and continuing to stay there indefinitely was never going to solve anything. It was always going to end as depressingly and as humiliating as it did. And it's all because of the collective failures of Bush, Obama, and Trump.
Speaking of Trump, back to what I was saying about him loving the Taliban. Trump says that he likes the Taliban because they called him "your excellency," and treated him like a king. He loves that because he likes being treated as the most important guy not just in the room, but in the world. He likes being the center of attention, and he likes being treated as the most important guy ♂︎ in the universe. It might also have something to do with him wanting to be a dictator. But, isn't just Trump that loves the Taliban now, it's the American far-right 🇺🇸 in general. They love the Taliban because they're basically doing to women ♀︎ in their country what the American far-right 🇺🇸 wants to do to women ♀︎ in this country.
Biden also reunited NATO at a time when it as if the alliance was wavering and fracturing, and the governments of the member states were starting to question its usefulness in the 21st century. Because of Russia 🇷🇺's invasion of Ukraine 🇺🇦, but also because of the efforts of Biden, Finland 🇫🇮 and Sweden 🇸🇪 both ended their neutrality and joined NATO, something no one thought was even possible 20 years ago. Speaking of neutrality, Net Neutrality got restored under Biden. Remember when that was a hot button issue that everyone on the Internet cared about? Well, it got restored earlier this year, a few months ago, and no body cared, no body talked about it. But, I did. And these people were willing to throw that all away over one lackluster debate performance, and risk losing the election when we're four months away and fascism is at our doorstep, scraping at the door.
I believed that this would be a terrible move for the Democrats to make this late into the election as they would lose the incumbency advantage. The last time this happened was back in 1968, when President Lyndon Johnson chose to drop out of the race after disappointing results in that year's Democratic primaries. And by Johnson stepping down, the Democrats lost the incumbency advantage, and Richard Nixon won. A lot of people in the pro-democracy movement feared that something similar could happen if Biden were to drop out.
But, after he did drop out and immediately endorsed Harris, the entire Democratic Party unified and rallied behind her, and my nerves were calmed. My anger faded away. There's now this sense of renewed optimism in the air after the weeks of pessimism following the debate, the assassination attempt on Trump, Trump picking JD Vance as his running mate (JP Mandel as I like to call him ever since Trump got his name wrong back in 2022), the bonkers RNC, and Biden getting COVID 🦠, among other things.
Now, people believe that we can defeat Trump now that we have a much younger and vigorous candidate in Kamala Harris, and now that Trump is now the only old white guy ♂︎ in the race. Harris has managed to galvanize and excite the party and huge swaths of the American population 🇺🇸 (especially women ♀︎) in a way that no other candidate has in the past 16 years, not since Barack Obama. I mean, it does help her that she's a former prosecutor going up against a convicted felon. The contrast couldn't be more clear. The only left to do now is for Harris to find a VP running mate.
There is already short list of people who have been considered to be her VP pick such as Pete Buttigieg, Gretchen Whitmer, Mark Kelly, Andy Beshear, Josh Shapiro, Gavin Newsom, Tim Walz, and Roy Cooper. There are some out there choices, like some people have suggested Jasmine Crockett or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and even Mitt Romney for some reason. Yes, some body suggested in the mainstream media actually suggested that Vice President Harris pick Mitt Romney as her running mate, I forget what publication it was.
I think it might've been Slate, those hacks 🙄 or even The Hill, those even worse hacks 🙄. I don't know who actually said that. A political YouTuber that I watch and am subscribed to called Texas Paul (full name Paul Schroder) suggested a guy ♂︎ named Eric M. Smith, a US Marine general 🇺🇸. Pretty awesome choice, for all the reasons Texas Paul said. If not the VP, then maybe Harris could make Eric Smith the Secretary of Defense in her administration if she wins. But of the more realistic and more likely picks, my top 3 would be Pete Buttigieg, Mark Kelly, and Andy Beshear, I think any one of those would be an awesome pick. But we won't know who her running mate will be for a few weeks, probably not until the Democratic National Convention (DNC). I think they're going to keep a tight lid of her VP choice until the DNC starts.
I will say that some of the social media discourse and memes that have come out in support of Harris have been a bit weird and cringe. Obviously, you have the whole "brat" thing where this singer named Charli XCX put a tweet (or an X I guess you can call it now) saying that "Kamala IS brat." She capitalized the word "is" in that tweet/X whatever it's called now. And I guess she's Gen Z, or at least the media is saying that she's Gen Z, and the media is saying that "brat" is a Gen Z term, a bit of Gen Z slang, even though Charli XCX coined that term herself. It's the name of her latest album, and one of the lyrics in one of her songs has that word in it. I've never heard of Charli XCX BTW until now. This is the first time I'm ever hearing about her.
It was just so cringe to see all these Gen Xers and Boomers in the mainstream media and even independent media (so-called "independent media") being all confused and trying to figure what "brat" means, and trying to use it, like "What the heck does 'brat' mean?" or "I'm feeling brat," or "Me and the girls ♀︎ are brat," it was just a bit cringe. I mean, I'm Gen Z, I was born within the age bracket of Gen Z (I was born in 1998), and I've never heard this term used this way, I've never heard of brat. I am so out of the loop of the slang and terminology my own generation uses it's not even funny. Maybe it's because I don't hang out with people my own age, but every time I try to catch up with what the current lingo is, it's already outdated. So, I don't even try anymore.
From what I understand, "brat" basically means "a strong, forceful woman ♀︎" or like "a woman ♀︎ who is strong and is trailblazer and a go-getter." I don't know, that's based on what I've heard from videos explaining what brat means in the current Gen Z slang. To me, it just sounds like another way of saying a woman ♀︎ is a "girlboss," which, I thought people hated girlbosses. People have made entire videos on YouTube talking about how bad and cringe girlbosses and girlboss culture are. So, calling the Vice President a term that means sort of the same thing would kind of be an insult, right? I mean, Harris did embrace the term, she did embrace the meme, as her campaign's X page uses the same aesthetic that's associated with the term "brat" and with Charli XCX's album.
BTW, I saw this one video by a local news station where one of the anchors claimed that the word "aesthetic" is a Gen Z term. No it isn't. Aesthetic is a word that's been around a long time, and has been used by past generations. It's just that Gen Z latched onto that term and overused it, to where they describe anything and everything, including their entire fashion sense, like their fashion sense is an aesthetic that they base their entire personality on. Or the way they decorate their house is an aesthetic that they base their personality on. This is what happens when you spend all your time on TikTok, and base your entire world view and your personality based on what you see on TikTok, and what's trending on TikTok. It'll rot your brain.
There's also the weird coconut meme 🥥, which I also didn't understand at first. At first, I was a bit worried that it was something a bit racist, like maybe people were saying by associating her with coconuts 🥥 that she may be black on the outside, but she's white on the inside that sort of thing 😬. Kind of how some Asian-Americans are sometimes derogatorily referred to as "Twinkies" for being "yellow on the outside, but white on the inside" by those within their community.
Which isn't even true. Harris is half-Indian as well as being half-black, there's no white DNA 🧬 within her as far as I know. But no, that's not what the coconut meme 🥥 was about, "Thank god," no it's based on something she said in a speech talking about something her mother said about how people are not born in vacuum, they're born with in the context of history and those that came before them. Like, her mother I guess was railing against young people who talk about current day issues, or real world problem without actually learning the history about how things got this way, or something like that. And the thing that Harris's mom told her was "You think feel out of a coconut tree 🌴?" And people just latched onto that.
Harris supporters started putting coconuts 🥥 and coconut trees 🌴 in their bios or in their usernames on X, YouTube, and probably TikTok too. There are probably TikTok videos centered Harris that have coconuts 🥥 and coconut trees 🌴 all over them. I wouldn't be surprised if people started listening the Henry Nilsson song, "Coconut 🥥," you know the one where he says "she put the lime 🍋🟩 in the coconut 🥥 and she drank them both up."
The Lincoln Project recently changed their profile pic on YouTube to one of Abraham Lincoln sitting on a lounge chair under a coconut tree 🌴, sipping an umbrella drink inside a coconut 🥥. I don't know if Harris campaign has embraced the whole coconut thing 🥥 like they embraced the whole brat thing, but it would be interesting if they did. If Harris does win, it wouldn't surprise me at all if there were memes of Trump getting hit in the head with a coconut 🥥. The joke is too obvious, and it's too easy, no one's going to be able to pass it up. And if they do, I'd very disappointed.
At least no one's calling her "Mamala" like Drew Barrymore did, goddamn, what the heck was up with Drew Barrymore in that interview from a couple of months back 😧? This was before Biden dropped out and was still the presumptive nominee, Drew Barrymore was just kind of being weird in that interview, she was being weird towards Harris. She was leaning towards her on the couch, right up in her face, and she told her that she needed "to be the 'Mamala' for the entire nation." No wonder Harris looked so repulsed and weirded out when Drew Barrymore said that to her. It's just as weird as that time when Greg Gutfeld on Fox News called Trump a "sex god" during his New York campaign finance/"hush money 💵" criminal trial, the one that landed him a 34 count conviction.
That interview felt very off, it was very off-putting, and was all due to Drew Barrymore's behavior and conduct during that interview. I understand that she does this a lot in her interviews, when she's interviewing guests like she'll sit with her legs criss-cross apple sauce and she'll lean towards them, and she does that in order to be more intimate and informal like she's their friend, but the way she did in her interview with Kamala was really weird. She went too far with it. When you make the Vice President uncomfortable, you know you're doing something wrong.
I also think that another thing that works out in Harris's favor is that this isn't a normal election. The incumbent president dropping out of race would've been a death sentence for the party in power in a normal election, but not this time. This is an abnormal election, and the old rules that don't really apply anymore. We're in uncharted territory. So, replacing your candidate four months into the election may not be the death sentence that it would've been in decades prior, but it may in fact be the thing that guarantees your victory, at least for this specific election against this specific opponent. 2024 will go down as one of the weirdest and most unpredictable presidential elections in American history 🇺🇸.
I will be supporting Harris for the remainder of this election, and on Election Day on November 5, and I am confident now more than ever that we will win this, and that Trump will lose big. I will not allow that man ♂︎ into a fascist kleptocracy like Russia 🇷🇺. I will do whatever is in my power to stop him as a citizen of this country and as a voter. But, I also don't want us to get too overconfident, and act as if things will be smooth sailing from here. Like I said before, this election is abnormal and has been pretty unpredictable so far. Things can go wrong and take a turn for the worst at any time.
So, while yes, I am more optimistic now than I was before, I don't want those in the pro-democracy movement to get complacent and act as if we got this in the bag. We don't. We need to always be prepared for anything, including the worst. But, if things really do end up being smooth sailing and nothing bad happens from now until the big day, I think we'll be okay and Harris will win this. I also want to thank President Biden for his service, since no matter who wins this November, this will his last term in office and will probably mark his retirement from politics altogether. He will be a one term president.
I may not have voted for him in 2020, but had he stayed in the race, I would've voted for him in this election. He proved how great of a president he is over these past three and a half years, and he has done more for this country in one term than the last three presidents did in two terms. I will be forever grateful for what he did, and history will be kind to him. His presidency will be looked back on fondly. I believed in him, and now I believe in Harris.
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(This is a wallpaper image showing Optimus Prime’s face, but with purple eyes, and the red mark on his face indicating that he’s being controlled by Quintessa, the main villain of the movie. This is what I mean when I said in my Transformers: Age of Extinction image description that the entire marketing of Transformers: The Last Knight was based around Optimus being turned evil, when that only makes up a small percentage of the movie’s runtime according to all of the reviews.)
These are my thoughts on the 2017 sci-fi action film, Transformers: The Last Knight, directed by Michael Bay, written by Art Marcum, Matt Holloway, Ken Nolan, and Akiva Goldsman, and starring Mark Wahlberg, Laura Haddock, Anthony Hopkins, Josh Duhamel, John Turturro, Isabela Moner, Jerrod Carmichael, Santiago Cabrera, and Glen Morshower. This is the fifth and last film in the Michael Bay Transformers series (collectively known as “Bayformers” or the “Bayverse”), and it is widely considered to be the worst. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was once considered to be the worst one, but then this movie came along, and made that one look like a masterpiece.
Now, full transparency, I haven’t actually seen this movie. So, you might say that it’s weird that I’m even doing a review of a movie that I haven’t seen. But, these are just kind of my impressions of it based on seeing clips of it online, and watching other people’s reviews of it. Hearing people describe the plot, and some of the more infamous scenes. If I ever do watch it for myself, I’ll do another update on this review to tell what I think of it personally. Full transparency again, I did initially kind of like Transformers: Age of Extinction when it first came out.
I mean, I was more lukewarm on it after I saw it in theaters, but after I watched it again on iTunes (before it split into three different apps), I did like it a bit more. And I was interested where it would go from there. Optimus Prime shoots off into space to find the Creators, while Galvatron survived the Battle of Hong Kong 🇭🇰, waiting to fight another day. There were so many places they could have gone with that set up. Maybe, Optimus is off on a cosmic space adventure, finding out who the Creators are, and perhaps trying to prevent them from attacking Earth 🌎, while the Autobots left on Earth 🌎 are trying to fight off Galvatron, and stop whatever scheme he has going on.
That’s kind of what we got, but not really. Not only did Optimus freeze 🥶 and perhaps even die before making it to his destination, not even making it past Jupiter, but Galvatron is somehow Megatron again. It’s never explained how or why he referred to back to his old self from what I’ve seen and from what I’ve heard. Transformers are outlawed across the entire world, not just in the United States 🇺🇸, and they make no more distinction between Autobots and Decepticons, they’re both illegal.
And it’s all because of what happened in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, with how the Decepticons launched a full-scale invasion of the Earth 🌎, and occupied Chicago. Humanity collectively just blamed all Transformers for it, not being able to tell the difference between the Autobots and the Decepticons, or perhaps, being so filled with xenophobic hatred, not wanting to make that distinction. Except that Autobots are exterminated on the spot the moment they’re spotted, while Decepticons are arrested and put in jail, what 😕?
So, Cade Yeager and the Autobots remaining on Earth 🌎 (the ones from Age of Extinction and a few new ones introduced in this movie) are still fugitives on the run, and are currently hiding out in a junkyard in South Dakota. However, despite all Transformers being illegal on Earth 🌎, there are still plenty of new Transformers coming to Earth 🌎 at an exponential rate. Why? If Transformers are illegal now, and are either killed or arrested, why do more keep coming? Why would you go to a planet where you know you aren’t welcome, and you’ll probably die? Was this Michael Bay and the writers’ attempt at doing political commentary about illegal immigration? Doubt it 😑.
There’s a Transformer butler named Cogman who’s a Headmaster, a Transformer that can possess the bodies of other Transformers by decapitating them, and piloting their bodies like mechs. We never actually see him use that ability in the movie though, so he just comes across as a really strong and aggressive but short robot butler, who looks suspiciously a lot like C-3PO from Star Wars. But, more on that later. There’s a secret society that was responsible for covering up the Transformers’ existence throughout human history. There are Transformer knights that were friends with King Arthur, Merlin, and the Knights of the Round Table. They gave Merlin a magic staff that does stuff; I’m not really sure what the Staff does, and I don’t think I would even I watched the movie.
There’s a space witch called Quintessa who claims to be the Creator of the Transformers, but probably isn’t. It’s strongly implied that she’s likely a fraud, a false goddess if you will. She’s flying Cybertron towards Earth 🌎, she brainwashes Optimus and turns him evil, and Megatron is working directly for her because he was brainwashed too somehow. Megatron was on Earth 🌎 the entire time, while Quintessa was off in space. How could she have brainwashed him? Oh, and the Earth 🌎 is actually Unicron. 😵💫
What is even happening anymore? They couldn’t simply make a sequel to Age of Extinction, and pay off everything that was set up in that movie, no, they had to do a Transformers story that involves King Arthur and Excalibur. Even though it’s completely out of place, and contradicts everything that came before. They also had to try to make a cinematic universe. Once, I saw the trailers for The Last Knight, and saw what it was actually about, I lost any and all interest, and I didn’t see it. Who thought it was a good idea to mix Transformers with Arthurian legend 🤦♂️? I understand that Merlin appeared in an episode of the original G1 animated series, but that doesn’t mean that it was a good idea for the live action movies. It just comes across as stupid.
And seems like I didn’t miss out on anything because every video I’ve seen talk about this movie says that it is pure hot garbage with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Everything I know about this movie is from seeing reviews of it, and from seeing clips from it. And from what I’ve seen, yeah, it doesn’t look at all good. Not only is the movie badly written, but it was sloppily made. So many technical errors and mistakes that are pretty much inexcusable for a movie that’s reported to have costed $217 million-$260 million 💵. This is the most expensive Transformers movie ever made, and it sure doesn’t look like it.
This is one of the trashiest looking big budget blockbusters I’ve ever seen, and I haven’t even watched the full movie. You can tell that Michael Bay was completely out of shits to give on this one, as everything feels so lifeless and hollow. It is as low energy and low effort as you can get. You can tell that something’s wrong when this movie has the second least amount of explosions 💥 of any of Michael Bay Transformers movies, even though the movie is the same exact length as the second movie, Revenge of the Fallen.
Most of the explosions 💥 in The Last Knight are in the first third of the movie and in the last third of the movie. There’s only scene in the middle section that actually has explosions 💥, and that’s the car chase through London. Every other part in the movie has no explosions 💥 or any action whatsoever. The first act of the movie has Transformers action, the second act is just an exposition dump by Anthony Hopkins, and the third act of the movie has Transformers action again. Only the first and third acts have action and explosions 💥, and Transformers as the second act is mostly devoid of action and Transformers. The only Transformer we see a lot of in the second act is Cogman. Cogman has more screen time than every other Transformer character in the film according to most reviews.
One thing I strikes out to me about this movie is that the Transformer designs all over the place. Obviously, in Age of Extinction, they changed the designs of many of the Transformers, making them look more humanoid than they did in the previous trilogy. Even Megatron got a redesign in this movie that looks more humanoid than his design in the trilogy, and looks more knight-like; he kind of looks like Ultron from Avengers: Age of Ultron to be honest.
He was also supposed to turn into a dragon (like a big robot dragon), but that idea was scrapped, and they just had him turn into a Cybertronian jet instead. But, then they tried to reincorporate the old-style of designs with the new-style. So now, you have this situation where art style is inconsistent and all over the place. A lot of the Transformer designs don’t even look like they’re apart of the same universe, which is a problem for cohesiveness, which is important if you want to have a cinematic universe.
(This is a wallpaper image for Transformers: The Last Knight showing all of the important Transformer characters, the ones people actually remember and know the name of: Optimus Prime, Bumblebee 🐝, and Megatron. I chose this image because it does show Megatron’s face without the mask on. See what I mean when I said that he kind of looked like Ultron?)
The idea of trying to launch a cinematic universe five movies into the series seems kind of silly to me. If you really wanted a cinematic universe, then you should’ve started with the first movie. You might’ve actually been ahead of the curve with that one. But, cinematic universes were really popular during this time, and Paramount and Hasbro just really wanted to cash-in on that then current hot trend 🤑, regardless of whether or not it worked for this particular series, for this particular continuity. The Bayformers movies contradict themselves constantly, and the lore was often just made up as they went along, regardless of what was established in the previous films. How was that supposed to work as a cinematic universe where consistency and continuity are everything?
Even the ideas they were coming up with for this cinematic universe weren’t all that good like Transformers in World War II? Transformers in the Victorian era? Who thought any of these were great ideas for Transformers movies? The only good thing to come out of this was the Bumblebee 🐝 prequel, which ended up being a reboot instead, and not a prequel because The Last Knight underperformed so badly, and received such terrible reviews; and also because Travis Knight didn’t want to be weighed down by having to be beholden to the Bay movies.
Just like Age of Extinction, this movie had a bad case of false advertising. The movie was marketed around the idea of Optimus Prime turning evil. “Rethink your heroes” was one of the taglines for this movie. They made it seem like was going to be a big deal, and was going to be a plot point throughout the entire movie. But, as it turns out, no, it wasn’t. It only comprises about 5 minutes of screen time throughout the entire movie, and it’s resolved fairly quickly. Bumblebee 🐝 regains his voice, and hearing his voice is apparently enough to turn Optimus back to the side of good. It’s clearly the only did that to capitalize on the then current hot trend of good guys turning evil.
That was an actual thing in 2010s pop culture. Superman turned evil (on multiple occasions), Liu Kang turned evil, John Connor turned evil, Dominic Toretto turned evil, even Chris Redfield turned evil. Even Star Wars wasn’t immune from this as in one of the trailers for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, they teased the idea of Rey becoming a Sith (or some sort of Dark Side user), even going as far as showing a shot of her in a black cloak, and holding a bendy double-sided red lightsaber. But, that was all a lie. Nothing like that ever happens once in The Rise of Skywalker. It’s just a Force vision or Force illusion as was the case with Luke seeing himself as Darth Vader in Star Wars, Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back.
But, that’s all part of the problem of how derivative this movie is. There are so many instances where the movie copies Star Wars in some way, whether that be having a scavenger girl ♀︎ who’s friends with a cute little robot that beeps just like Rey and BB-8 in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (even though Sqweeks looks more like Echo from Earth to Echo to me), drones that look like Tie Fighters, and a Transformer butler that looks like C-3PO. If they kept the whole Headmaster thing in the movie, then maybe Cogman wouldn’t have seemed like such a blatant C-3PO knock-off, but they didn’t, and he does.
There’s even a scene in the movie that copies Suicide Squad (2016). You see, after the events of Age of Extinction, Cemetery Wind was disbanded, and replaced with another anti-Transformer unit called the Transformers Reaction Force (TRF). Only this time, it would be under the control of the military rather than the CIA like Cemetery Wind was. And after Cade Yeager gets that talisman from the Transformer knight that crash landed in the Alien Contamination Zone in the bombed out ruins of Chicago, the TRF decide to team up with Megatron to find it. And the one condition that Megatron has for working with the TRF is to have a crew of Decepticons to work with.
So, they agree to release at least four Decepticons from federal prison to work with Megatron on the mission to retrieve the talisman, and kill Cade and the Autobots hiding out in his junkyard. And all of the freed Decepticons are introduced in a character montage just like the one in Suicide Squad (2016). Like, their name just flashes on the screen. And what makes it bizarre is that after introducing these characters in a Suicide Squad-style character montage, three out of four of the newly freed Decepticons are killed off during the mission in South Dakota in the first half of the movie. The only one left standing by the end for the final battle at Stonehenge is Nitro Zeus, who pretty much has the same character model as Shockwave; Barricade also survives, but I’m just referring to the convict Decepticons that the TRF freed from prison at Megatron’s request.
Nearly all of the Decepticons in this movie have recycled character models ♻️, except for Megatron, Barricade, and Mohawk; and no I don’t count Infernocus as a Decepticon, since he works directly for Quintessa, was never a member of the Decepticons prior to the events of the movie; and even during the events of the movie, he still isn’t a true Decepticon; he just happens to be fighting alongside them since they’re all working for Quintessa because Megatron is being mind-controlled by her, and he’s the leader of the Decepticons; so anyone he works for, they work for as well; but Infernocus is separate from the Decepticons, essentially being Quintessa’s bodyguard or her right hand man.
All of this was done of course because Star Wars and Suicide Squad were the new, current hot things at the time when this movie was made. The sequel trilogy was still coming out, in fact, Star Wars: The Last Jedi released the same year as The Last Knight; maybe that was the reason why the movie was called The Last Knight. And the hype for Suicide Squad was still going strong, even though it did die down a bit after the movie received poor reviews from critics. But, it still made lots of money 💵 though. It grossed over $746 million 💵 at the worldwide box office against a $175 million budget 💵. And they were still playing songs from the movie’s soundtrack on the radio even a year after the movie was released, mainly “Heathens” by twenty one pilots.
The same can’t really be said about The Last Knight as it drastically underperformed. It only made $605.4 million 💵, which is a pretty steep drop from the previous movie, which made $1.104 billion 💵. Paramount and Hasbro were hoping that this one would also break a billion 💵, especially with the help of China 🇨🇳, but it didn’t even get close. Not even China 🇨🇳 could save this movie’s box office.
Normally, $605.4 million 💵 would be a good box office take for any other movie, but not for one that had a $217 million-$260 million budget 💵 like this one, especially when you also factor in marketing and exhibition costs, this is a complete disaster. This made Paramount and Hasbro cancel their plans for a Transformers cinematic universe, and course correct, starting completely fresh. That’s how we got Bumblebee 🐝 and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, which are reboots no matter what Lorenzo di Bonaventura says. If it wasn’t for the failure of The Last Knight, this franchise would not have been steered in a better direction.
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Note (Monday August 7, 2023):
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It was instead written by four new people, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway, Ken Nolan, and Akiva Goldsman. Art Marcum, Matt Holloway, and Ken Nolan write the screenplay, while Akiva Goldsman wrote the story along with those three. The fact that this movie had four new writers might explain all the continuity errors and inconsistencies with the previous movies, and why all the returning characters from the trilogy feel off. And the fact that there were four of them might explain why the movie has that “too many cooks in the kitchen” kind of feel to it. I should also note that Ken Nolan has no relation to Christopher Nolan or his brother, Jonathan Nolan. The only reason I’m talking about the writers of this movie is that their names are on this poster, and I didn’t mention the writers in the actual description itself or any of the notes thereafter.)
Something I didn’t really mention in this description that was the movie brought back a lot of the older characters from the first three movies. The main ones being Lennox (Josh Duhamel), General Morshower (Glen Morshower), and Simmons (John Turturro). General Morshower is the leader of the TRF, and Lennox is a soldier fighting in their ranks. These two guys previously worked for NEST in both Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon, but now they’re working for the TRF, eliminating the faction they once fought alongside with: the Autobots. And Simmons is a fugitive on the run, hiding out in Cuba 🇨🇺 because of his prior relationships with the Autobots and Sam Witwicky, who died sometime after the events of Dark of the Moon.
Cuba 🇨🇺 BTW is the only safe place in the world for Transformers. It’s the only country in the world that hasn’t outlawed Transformers entirely, and where the TRF does not operate, and isn’t allowed to operate because the Cuban government 🇨🇺 doesn’t want them there; mostly because it’s full of Americans 🇺🇸, and other military leaders and troops from Western countries like the UK 🇬🇧 and Canada 🇨🇦; and also probably France 🇫🇷 and Germany 🇩🇪, but we hear or see nothing about France 🇫🇷 or Germany 🇩🇪 in the film. Given that Cuba 🇨🇺 is a safe haven for Transformers, that’s probably the reason why Simmons chose to flee there and hide there for the rest of his life; at least until the whole global Transformer hatred thing blows over.
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He’s also friends with Sir Anthony Hopkins’s character, Sir Edmond Burton, like Burton asks him over the phone about the giant metal horns that have been popping out of the ground all over the world. But, Simmons isn’t a member of the Order of the Witwiccans (man, that’s such a dumb name and concept). He wants to be, but isn’t because Burton doesn’t want to let him in, but he is an ally of the Order. I mean, Simmons is the first guy that Burton confides in about the giant horns popping out of the ground all over the world. He didn’t care to mention that when he met Sam in the first movie, or in the second movie, or even the third movie. This is what I mean I said that the Bayformers movies contradict themselves, and the lore was made up as it went along.
But, they didn’t just bring back familiar characters from the trilogy, but they also brought back the original Autobot theme, and even brought back familiar locations like the Ark ship on the far side of the Moon 🌒, and the Pyramids of Giza. They even brought back Bumblebee 🐝’s old design from the first three movies, since his new look in Age of Extinction was so controversial; kinda wish they did the same for Optimus Prime. I hate to keep bringing up Cody from PointlessHub, but he put it so eloquently: this movie really tried to harken back to the first movie. But, a lot of fans felt that by bringing back these familiar characters they undermined them, and them hollow shells of their former selves. It was clear to everyone that was just the filmmakers’ attempt at banking on Transformers fans’ nostalgia for those first three movies. Something that fell completely flat.
Oh, and one more thing: the title refers to Cade Yeager. Despite putting Optimus on all of the posters for the movie, and emphasizing that he’s a knight, he’s not actually the titular Last Knight, Cade Yeager is. I guess, the reason why is that when the Transformers knight were about to kill Optimus for attacking them and killing a couple of their own, Cade stopped them by grabbing the talisman, and it turning into Excalibur, and he uses it to stop a Transformer knights from striking down Optimus with his sword.
Then, they stop attacking Optimus, and become allies with the gang, willing to help them stop Quintessa. The implication I guess from all of this is that because the talisman transformed into Excalibur when he touched it in a moment of danger, and because he was able to wield Excalibur to defend Optimus, Cade is the last living descendant of the Knights of the Round Table (or of King Arthur specifically), making him “the last knight.” So yeah, the subtitle of this Transformers sequel wasn’t even referring to a Transformer character, but a human character 😒.
Another thing too is that Cade’s daughter, Tessa is no where to be seen in this movie. Like, she was a main character, and a huge deal in Age of Extinction. She was the main motivating factor for most of what Cade did in that movie. And yet, she’s not in this movie at all. I don’t know if Cade mentions her at all or not because I haven’t actually seen this movie. I guess Tessa was such an unpopular character in Age of Extinction that they decided to completely write her out of The Last Knight. I mean, that street urchin girl ♀︎ played by Isabela Moner, Izabella (they really swung for the fences with that one 🙄) pretty much serves the same purpose that Tessa did in Age of Extinction: give Cade a young girl ♀︎ that he has to take care of. But then, he just leaves her behind in South Dakota when Cogman takes him to England, UK 🏴🇬🇧 to meet Sir Edmond Burton, so he’s not even that good at taking care of Izabella.
I also forgot to mention another big issue this movie has: the aspect ratio. You see, Michael Bay shot a good portion of this movie with IMAX 3D digital cameras. He did the same thing on Age of Extinction, and he did it all the way back on Revenge of the Fallen, but those were IMAX 2D film cameras 🎞️, the same kind that Christopher Nolan has used on all of his films ever since The Dark Knight. Completely different technology from the IMAX 3D digital cameras that Michael Bay used on Age of Extinction and this movie. He went even further with the IMAX 3D photography on it on this movie, to the point where about 98% of the movie was shot on IMAX 3D. The problem lies in the fact that in addition to shooting the movie with IMAX 3D digital cameras, he also shot the movie with regular 3D digital cameras and used both for the same scene.
So, the aspect ratio kept changing throughout the entire movie, where it would go from 1.43:1 (the IMAX aspect ratio) to 2.39:1 (the standard widescreen aspect ratio). Not even like for an entire scene, where it be IMAX for an entire scene, and then go back to widescreen (or scope as some refer to it as), no, it would change in that same scene. Not even in a matter of minutes, but a matter of seconds.
So, there would just be these black bars on the screen would just constantly change in size and thickness throughout the entire movie. As you can imagine, this was very distracting for a lot of people. Combined with the awful editing, ugly cinematography, and shaky camera work toward action scenes, and it made an already trashy-looking movie look even trashier. Like, no care was put it at all, and they just decided to the release the movie in this broken state, and thought no body would notice or care that the aspect ratio always changes.
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Update (Tuesday August 8, 2023):
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Remember how I said in the description that the movie copied both Star Wars and Suicide Squad because they were current popular things at the time? Well, it could argued that the whole King Arthur and Excalibur storyline was an attempt to cash-in on Game of Thrones as well 🤑. I’m not the first person to bring that up, Cody from PointlessHub was the first one I know of to suggest that the King Arthur storyline was this movie’s attempt at copying Game of Thrones, or at least, ride the wave of its success.
But I just thought about, and write it here in a separate note since didn’t fit anywhere else. Game of Thrones was one of the most popular TV shows at the time, in fact, it was arguably the most popular TV show of the 2010s; the only other show matched it’s massive popularity, and even surpassed in some instances, was Breaking Bad. It was everywhere, you couldn’t escape it. Even people who don’t normally watch fantasy shows or movies were into Game of Thrones.
I remember the Red Wedding scene being a huge deal, like everyone was talking about the Red Wedding, even in conversations that weren’t necessarily about Game of Thrones. Everyone kept repeating the phrase “Winter is coming ❄️,” which came directly from this show, again, even in conversation that didn’t concern Game of Thrones. And the theme song came one of the most iconic in history; all thanks to composer, Ramin Djawadi, the same music composer as Pacific Rim.
I didn’t watch Game of Thrones, you know, I didn’t get swept up in the hype like a lot of other people did, so I didn’t care at all about things like the Red Wedding or about “Winter is coming ❄️” or anything like that. Oh course, nowadays, people view Game of Thrones in a much less favorable light than they once did. The show’s legacy was completely tarnished by its final season, Season 8. There were a lot of unpopular story decisions that were made on that final season that made a lot of people shake their heads in disappointment, and even made them angry 🤬.
They just felt that it ruined the story and the characters. So, this final season, this finale really ruined the show for a lot of people, to where they can’t even enjoy the earlier seasons anymore, it was that bad to them. It also completely tarnished the reputation of the two showrunners and creators of Game of Thrones that people once respected and praised, David Benioff and DB Weiss. These two were supposed to direct a Star Wars movie together (to bring it back around to Star Wars) before this final season premiered, and now that project has been completely scrapped and this guys haven’t been hired to work on anything of note.
So now, Game of Thrones is just lumped in with shows like Lost or Heroes, as good shows that were ruined by their final season or their final episode. Not even the prequel series, House of Dragons, despite being praised and seen as an improvement over the final season of Game of Thrones, hasn’t managed to penetrate and permeate the pop culture the same way Game of Thrones did during its prime.
But, when Transformers: The Last Knight was being made, Game of Thrones was still very popular, and was still well liked. There were still a few years away from the disastrous final season. So, I could imagine the writers of The Last Knight, or one of the writers must’ve thought that having a story that involves knights, and medieval and fantasy imagery would go over pretty well. Like, they must’ve thought, “Well, Game of Thrones is really popular, and everyone is doing fantasy based shows and movies. Even Guy Ritchie’s doing a King Arthur movie. So, let’s make the fifth Transformers movie about King Arthur and Merlin. It’s going to be great. We’ll mix sci-fi with fantasy, giant robots with knights and wizards, and we’ll have a big three-headed robot dragon, people will love it!”
But, people didn’t love it. In fact, the majority of fans, critics, and moviegoers thought that the King Arthur storyline was stupid and out of place, and didn’t fit at all in a Transformers movie. Despite whatever past history the Transformers franchise had with Arthurian legend. Despite, that one time travel episode of the original G1 animated series from the 1980s where the Transformers travel back in time to the medieval era, and encounter Merlin. It just didn’t work for these live action movies that sort of banked on being more realistic and less campy and goofy than the original G1 series. I mean, they weren’t really all that realistic (these movies defied the laws of physics all the time), but that’s the way they presented themselves as.
For a lot of people, the heavy emphasis on King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, Merlin, and Excalibur was a jumping the shark moment for the franchise 🦈, a franchise that had already lost a lot of people by this point. That, and whole Witwiccan mythology, which completely undid and rewrote everything we thought we knew about the lore of these movies; that was another big shark jumping moment 🦈. So, yeah, copying Game of Thrones really didn’t work out for this movie at all, neither did copying Star Wars or Suicide Squad. The fact that they copied Suicide Squad, and managed to make an even worse movie that got even worse reviews than Suicide Squad is an accomplishment in and of itself.
But, they scrapped that idea, and just had him turn into a Cybertronian jet instead. The second image is one of an earlier design of Megatron’s robot mode. I actually kind of like this design. It’s much closer to his design in the first three movies, he kind of had like a rhombus-shaped head, and it doesn’t make him look all Ultron-ish like in the final design. Though, I probably could’ve done without the weird mustache tusks. I just wanted to show these, and I couldn’t find another place to put them, so I put them here.)
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