* *
Fifth go around for the oft-disguised robots, this time with something about Arthurian legend mixed into the usual MacGuffin hunt.
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Josh Duhamel, Laura Haddock, Stanley Tucci, John Turturro, Anthony Hopkins
Written by Art Marcum, Matt Holloway, Ken Nolan
Produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Tom DeSanto, Don Murphy, Ian Bryce
Duration 153 minutes
INT. BAY RESIDENCE, LOS ANGELES, CA. - DAY (CIRCA 2013)
A beautiful beachside Malibu property.
In the centre of the vast OPEN-PLAN LIVING ROOM sits 51-year-old MICHAEL BAY. He is surrounded by PILES OF TOYS: cars, robots, robots that can turn into cars.
Michael, wearing official TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION PYJAMAS, is engrossed in his play: BASHING TWO TOYS TOGETHER repeatedly.
MICHAEL
Pow! Smash! Take that!
As Michael carries
on with his bashing, a FEMALE VOICE CALLS OUT to him from another room.
MRS. BAY (O/S)
Michael?
Michael DOESN'T LOOK UP from his game.
MRS. BAY (O/S)
Michael!
MICHEAL
Yeah?
He still doesn’t let himself be interrupted. We hear FOOTSTEPS APPROACHING.
MRS. BAY, Michael’s mother, enters the room. She is A VERY ELDERLY LADY, wearing an APRON.
MRS. BAY
Michael, guess who I just got off the phone with?
Michael just SHRUGS and continues BASHING AWAY.
MRS. BAY
Your friend Mark’s mother.
Michael BRIGHTENS UP, although he still DOESN'T STOP PLAYING.
MICHAEL
Marky Mark!
MRS. BAY
Yes, and can you guess what Mrs. Wahlberg told me?
Michael HESITATES, then resumes BASHING WITH ADDED VENOM.
MRS. BAY
Can you, Michael?
MICHAEL
No...
MRS. BAY
Mrs. Wahlberg told me that you’ve signed up for yet another TRANSFORMERS movie.
Michael ignores her, but his game INCREASES IN INTENSITY.
MRS. BAY (CONT'D)
And I told Mrs. Wahlberg that she must be mistaken, because my son, my Michael, he promised me that he was done with those awful films. That after I allowed him to make a fourth, he would never go back on his word and make a fifth!
SMASH! Michael's BROKEN A PIECE off of one of his toys.
MICHAEL
Aw, Mom! That was Starscream! Limited edition!
MRS. BAY
Micheal! Look at me when I'm talking to you.
Reluctantly, Michael puts down his toys and TURNS AROUND.
MRS. BAY (CONT'D)
I know you like to play with your toys. I know you like to play with Marky. But this has gone on far too long.
MICHAEL
But Mom ...
MRS. BAY
But what?
MICHAEL
But Mom!
MRS. BAY
Just give me one good reason I shouldn’t call up Paramount Pictures right now and tell them that you’re not doing the movie.
Michael SCOWLS at his mother. Then a SLY SMILE spreads across his face.
MICHAEL
One point one zero four billion dollars.
MRS. BAY
Excuse me?
MICHAEL
One point one zero four billion. Transformers: Age of Extinction's worldwide gross.
Mrs. Bay THINKS for a beat.
MRS. BAY
Fine. But this is the last time.
She storms out the room and Michael returns to his toys, SMILING ONCE AGAIN.
Alright, look. I’m
not going to bother being all snidey and supercilious here. These are movies
about giant robot aliens that turn into vehicles clobbering the shit (oil?) out
of each other. If that's what you want to watch, then fine – that’s what you
get.
And when I saw the first TRANSFORMERS movie in the cinema during the summer of 2007, I enjoyed it! It was fast, it was entertaining, it was fine. I didn’t walk out eager to see more, but it had done its job. I haven’t been compelled to watch another one since, until now.
But whilst complaining about these stupid movies being stupid seems churlish, I do have a bone to pick with their excess. No, not the amount of CGI spectacle, or the noise, or the childish humour. And not the argument that Michael Bay should have quit long before he got as far as helming a quintology.
No, it’s a different kind of excess that I must bemoan here: not of content or quantity, but of length.
Why do these films always have to be so damned long? Do fixed release dates mean that there’s not enough time to whittle down the assembly cut? Is so much money spent on effects that there is a contractual obligation to show it all on screen? Or is it just ego on our director’s part, connecting length with quality, a variant on ‘bigger is better’?
It certainly seems counter-intuitive when cinema chains go on about wanting films shorter so they can cram in more screenings.
And nearly as long as the TRANSFORMERS movies' running times is the list of supporting roles they've given to respectable actors, slumming it for a paycheque. By this fifth film, we've had: John Turturro, Jon Voight, Kevin Dunn, Rainn Wilson, Patrick Dempsey, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Alan Tudyk, Kelsey Grammer, Jack Reynor, Stanley Tucci, Sophia Myles, and Anthony Hopkins.
And that's only the ones who appear in person – there are plenty more who have just lent their voices to the big hulking machines.
So, putting a lens on this fifth instalment, can stretching all this onscreen talent out to a bladder-testing duration help deliver anything worth all that time, money and gravitas?
Two hours and 34 minutes later, let me report back on the highlights:
– Tony Hopkins plays a tweed-wearing aristocrat, introduced in some fuck-off stately home with the informative title card "England, UK". I like how they couldn’t be bothered to glance at a map and come up with a location any more specific than that. Meanwhile, when John Turturro is shown in Havana, having a conversation about goat scrotums (don't ask), we're informed that it is Havana – not "Cuba, South America".
– Upon meeting
Mark Wahlberg, Oscar-winner Hopkins addresses him with a drawn out "duuuuude",
as if trying to emulate a DAZED AND CONFUSED-era Matthew McConaughey. Of this I
heartily approve.
– Jim Carter, most famous as one
of the ‘downstairs’ people in Downton Abbey, here plays a C-3PO-type robot who attacks Wahlberg with
kung-fu moves in a glass lift after taking offence at being compared to a leprechaun.
– In the midst of an action scene, someone breathlessly says the
line "This shouldn’t happen to a tax-paying American!" and then follows it up
immediately with "… Well, not that I pay any taxes." This film has four credited writers.
– Composer Steve
Jablonsky joins the ranks of musicians to have emerged from Hans Zimmer’s Remote
Control Productions with the intention of sounding exactly like der Master. In doing so, Jablonsky contributes to the illusion that Zimmer has scored every major motion picture from the
past 30 years – when in reality, it’s only been about half of them.
(See also: Harry Gregson-Williams [DOMINO, THE MARTIAN], Nick Glennie-Smith [THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, WE WERE SOLDIERS], Brian Tyler [THE EXPENDABLES, FAST FIVE], Trevor Rabin [ARMAGEDDON, BAD BOYS II], John Powell [FACE/OFF, PAYCHECK], etc.)
– Out of the blue, there’s a flashback to some of the transformers kicking Nazi ass in 1940's Germany, which is kind of like INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS meets … um, TRANSFORMERS.
– During a car chase where our heroes are hurtling through London’s square mile, they manage to make the streets look at least somewhat populated, which is more than I can say for some movies from this era.
– When Wahlberg is called upon to do some serious acting during the film’s melodramatic climax, I couldn’t help recalling the more intense moments of BOOGIE NIGHTS, when his Eddie Adams/Dirk Diggler is ranting away in a strung-out, coked-up state after getting involved in some fucked up scrapes during the comedown ’80s. The crossover possibilities don’t really bear thinking about …
So then, was it all worth it? Only to the tune of two stars. That means, in theory, that if the
movie had been three fifths shorter, it would have been an acceptable drain on my
time.
Unfortunately, I don't think a 61-minute truncated director’s cut of TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT will be coming anytime soon ...
Two stars out of five.
Valid use of the
word ‘last’? Try asking ex-cricketer Sir Alastair Cook,
Formula 1 driver Sir Lewis Hamilton and director Sir Sam Mendes – all of whom
have been knighted since this film came out.
What would a movie called TRANSFORMERS: THE FIRST KNIGHT be about? Maybe it would be a movie
where all the actors who only supplied their voices to instalments of this saga instead
had parts in front of the camera. Hugo
Weaving, Tony Todd, Leonard Nimoy, James Remar, John Goodman, Gemma Chan, Ken
Watanabe, Steve Buscemi ... I could go on. But I won't.
Previously: THE LAST EXORCISM
Next time: LAST TANGO IN PARIS
Check out my books: Jonathanlastauthor.com
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