Ever since the invention of cinema, filmmakers have striven to adapt Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur for the big screen. The famous collection of medieval French and English legends first published in 1485 centres around King Arthur’s knights of the round table and has had amazing staying power, with adaptations ranging from Joshua Logan’s Camelot (1967), to Guy Richie’s King Arthur: Legends of the Sword (2017). However all have failed due to their lack of Dinobots. With his new film Transformers: The Last Knight, director Michael Bay makes no such mistake.
The film follows outlaw inventor Cade Yeager who, after the events of 2014’s Transformers: Age of Extinction, is living in exile in South Dakota’s Badlands National Park. At his junkyard compound Cade cares for the Transformers, left to a life of hiding by their missing leader Optimus Prime. When Cade finds a mysterious amulet on the chest of an ancient Transformer, he embarks on a quest to stop the evil sorceress Quintessa from destroying Earth. With the faithful Bumblebee at his side, Mark Wahlberg’s Cade carries forth the same principles as those knights of old: honour, chivalry and equal rights for all robots.
On the run from an anti-Transformer military group, Cade is convinced to travel to England by a steampunk Transformer named Cogsman. There, he is brought to the home of Sir Edmund Burton, a historian who’s vast estate is filled with Arthurian artifacts. Burton is played by Sir Anthony Hopkins who – being a knight himself – lends the film great authority. Joining the pair is Oxford professor Vivian Wembley, played by Laura Haddock, an expert in Arthurian legend who doesn’t believe any of it. Despite her skepticism, Vivian is surprised to learn that she is the last remaining heir of Merlin and the only person able to wield his magical staff. Guarded by ten ancient Transformers, the staff holds the power to control the undersea spaceship which Quintessa and the Decepticons plan to use to suck the essence of Earth into her own planet of Cybertron. Just like the book.
What follows is an action adventure filled with all the car chases, explosions and space battles that you would expect from a seminal work of 15th century literature. In what can only be a tribute to Sir Thomas Malory’s own compilation of multiple sources, Bay’s action scenes feel like assorted pieces of other Transformers movies pasted together. In the same way Malory’s collections jumps between tales with little connective tissue, Bay’s plot meanders illogically. And, knowing that the Middle-English dialogue in the seminal work sounds strange and stilted to our modern ears, the film’s screenwriters have expertly matched it, with dialogue that sounds awful and makes no sense. Even the 149 minute length of the film recalls the epics of old!
Audiences will most certainly be familiar with names like Lancelot, Galahad and Tristan, but this film introduces us to new, no less important knights like Steelbane, Stormreign, and Dragonicus. And its inclusion of the adorable Baby Dinobots raises intriguing questions about whether Transformers have sex. Yes, whether you’re a literary scholar with a focus on the Middle Ages, or simply a casual admirer of the French Vulgate Cycle, Transformers: The Last Knight is the film for you.
Reviewed by Evan Arppe.
