The Transformers films are a series of American science fiction action films based on the toys created by Hasbro and Tomy. The transformers are transforming alien robots (mainly the ‘Autobots’ and the ‘Decepticons’), who are locked in endless struggle with humans – and each other. Blockbusting director Michael Bay has helmed all films to date – the original Transformers in 2007 and its sequels Revenge of the Fallen (2009), Dark of the Moon (2011) and Age of Extinction (2014).
Although the series overall has had mixed reactions from critics – the movies’ elaborately over-the-top plots, thinly-sketched characters and banal humour their main targets – the films have come in for some high praise due to their mind-blowing visual effects and action sequences. Fans have ignored the middling reviews over the years, however, flocking to the films in their millions, the franchise transforming their budgets into a not-to-be-laughed at €4 billion to date at the international box office.
Bay is back for the fifth film in the series. The Last Knight shatters the core myths of the franchise, and redefines what it means to be a hero.
Humans and Transformers are at war, and Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots, is gone. The key to saving the future lies buried in the secrets of the past, in the hidden history of the Transformers on Earth.
Saving the world falls upon the shoulders of an unlikely alliance: Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg); Bumblebee; an English Lord (Sir Anthony Hopkins); and an Oxford Professor (Laura Haddock).
The films have come in for some high praise due to their mind-blowing visual effects and action sequences
This is a moment when people are called upon to make a difference. In Transformers: The Last Knight, the hunted will become heroes. Heroes will become villains. Only one world will survive: theirs, or ours.
As in the previous film, the extensive ensemble includes both humans and ‘bots’. Wahlberg returns as Cade Yeager, a single father and struggling inventor. Josh Duhamel co-stars as William Lennox, a former N.E.S.T commander and US Army Ranger captain now a colonel of the US military.
Stanley Tucci is Joshua Joyce, the former head of Kinetic Solutions Integrated, who created a series of human-made Transformers during the events of the franchise’s previous instalment.
Anthony Hopkins joins the ensemble as Sir Edmund Burton, an astronomer and historian with a vast knowledge of the Transformers’ history on Earth, with Laura Haddock as Viviane Wembly, a professor of English literature at the University of Oxford; Isabela Moner as Izabella, a street-wise tomboy; Tyrese Gibson as Robert Epps, a former N.E.S.T. airman and retired US Air Force Sergeant who partnered with the Autobots prior to the events of Age of Extinction, and John Turturro as Seymour Simmons, a former government agent turned successful writer, who allied with the Autobots.
The considerable army of Autobots consists of Optimus Prime, who transforms into a blue and red 2014 Western Star 5700 Custom with flame decals, voiced by Peter Cullen. Bumblebee is a young Autobot scout who transforms into a custom-built yellow and black 2016 Chevrolet Camaro.
John Goodman voices Hound, an Autobot commando and field medic who transforms into an olive green Mercedes-Benz Unimog military tactical ambulance. Ken Watanabe is Drift, a Samurai-motif Autobot tactician and former Decepticon who transforms into a black and red 2017 Mercedes-AMG GT R.
Omar Sy voices Hot Rod, an Autobot who transforms into a Citroën DS, before upgrading into a 2017 Lamborghini Centenario LP770-4. Jim Carter voices Cogman, a polite but sociopathic, human-sized Headmaster with a larger robot body that transforms into a silver 2017 Aston Martin DB11, and is the faithful butler to Sir Edmund Burton.
Sqweeks, is a small-sized Autobot and Izabella’s closest friend, who transforms into a turquoise Vespa and only says “Chihuahua” due to some prior damage.
On the Decepticons side we have Megatron, voiced by Frank Welker, the revived leader of the Decepticons, who possessed a human-made K.S.I. drone in Age of Extinction and transforms into a silver Cybertronian jet; and Barricade, a Decepticon scout who survived the Chicago War in Dark of the Moon that transforms into a 2016 Ford Mustang police car featuring a new robot mode.