The fifth live-action movie in the Transformers franchise and it feels like it is time that it needs a reboot. Once again, the writers shoehorned heaps of retcons and how the Transformers were involved in shaping another part of human history, to the point where there are heavy continuity issues. Granted, they have given a plausible reason for why everything seems to happen to Earth but it doesn't make it any easier to accept when they supposedly had a hand in human wars, and effectively helped in every significant thing in human history. The humor is less cheap and low, although it still feels forced at times. Unfortunately, some of the characters once again changed forms with no explanation whatsoever, especially Megatron returning when he was Galvatron in the previous movie. One of the best things about the movie is that the characters from Age of Extinction returns, and that there were various nods to the events of previous films. It doesn't save it though because the plot is terrible, the pacing and editing is horrendous and the movie overall just does not make sense. It jumps from point to point too fast without anything to show the viewers how or why it jumped to that point.
Decisions made by characters are not explained so viewers are left scratching their head at why they had to do that. It's a shame that a lot of the characters are pointless and if you removed them, then the movie would not have suffered anything. This just makes a big chunk of the movie bloated. Most of the Transformers look like generic aliens and not like they transform at all as there are limited to no vehicular parts on their robot modes. It doesn't help that they transform much less now. They gain additional abilities yet lose several shown in previous movies, so it feels like the newest gimmick which will be promptly replaced with another. Perhaps the worst part is the battle scenes, where it felt like the film focused so heavily on humans that even the limited robot scenes are boring. It's terrible when a character comments that they don't have enough ammo to defeat a Decepticon, yet a few seconds later, Optimus jumps in and defeats it with a sword strike, what? There are explosions galore and the human characters surviving explosions multiple times suspends belief. Overall, Transformers: The Last Knight is filled with cliched and eye-rolling dialogue, concepts and actions. While it is marginally better than Age of Extinction (at least the product placement isn't as in your face), the quality of the film series has decreased yet again with the high fantasy focus which seems a far cry from the grounded first movie.
