Somewhere in a bar, as the hands on the clock struggle toward closing time, there’s a half-drunken, almost Talmudic argument raging about which “Transformers” movie is the worst. “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”? “Transformers: Age of Extinction”? “Transformers: Dark of the Moon”? Some wise guy might even claim it’s the original live-action “Transformers,” without which the others wouldn’t exist.
Each side, armed with enough facts to make the health care debate look simple, has a solid case.
Now, director Michael Bay has solved this conundrum of almost quantum-theory proportions that has bedeviled moviegoers since the first “Transformers” sequel in 2009. Like Moses coming down from the mountain, he has bestowed upon us the answer: “Transformers: The Last Knight,” a movie that is at once loud yet incoherent, complex yet idiotic, and expensive yet worthless.
Of course, complaining about a “Transformers” movie is like griping about gravity. What’s the point? But even by the standards of other “Transformers” movies (a couple of them certainly had their pleasures), “The Last Knight” falls far short, disrespecting the canon of the original story so much that even die-hard fans should rebel.