You win, Michael Bay. I bow to your supreme, movie-making trolling. Today, I finally say, “Uncle.”
I tried to fight it but, after watching the new trailer for Transformers: The Last Knight, I honestly believe that Michael Bay knows exactly what he is doing. He is purposefully pissing me, and many movie-goers like me, off because that’s how he gets his rocks off. It’s also how he makes millions of dollars blowing tings up in incoherent ways, but that’s besides the point. He’s trolling me. He has to be. It’s the only way I can explain away this trailer.
So let’s try to dissect this thing.
We have Sir Anthony Hopkins providing a monologue and a featured role. I’m guessing Michael Bay dropped a space shuttle full of money on Sir Hopkins’ lawn to make this happen, complete with keys or whatever you need to put into the ignition of a space shuttle to start it up. Either that or blackmail. It doesn’t really matter.
We have Transformers providing backup to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table with swords, because what other weapons could giant, cybernetic organisms capable of space travel possibly have in their arsenal? Plasma launchers? Electromagnetic railguns? Nah, they got swords.
We have Optimus Prime raining havoc down on who we thought were his allies because some cybernetic space-woman told him to. There is no way that Bumblebee is making it to another movie. We also have Michael Bay’s trademark ridiculous explosions, what looks like a Celtic Cross bigger than Australia floating around, and possibly Cybertron falling out of the sky to assimilate the Earth. Pretty standard action fodder, so I won’t begrudge the film for that.
But there is one, brief clip in the trailer for Transformers: The Last Knight that stood out to me, and led me to believe that Michael Bay really is just trolling me with these films. The first time I saw a similar scene was in Transformers: Age of Extinction. In this film, Mark Wahlberg gets his hands on a space sword and fights off a Decepticon in hand-to-hand combat. A human versus a giant robot who could fit said human in the palm of his hand. Yeah, I know the technology of this sword is probably a millennia of years away, but the arm attached to this sword is just muscle and bone. I doubt even Mark Wahlberg could work out enough to have the strength to make a serious go at a Decepticon in fisticuffs or a sword fight. It was a scene, among most others from Age of Extinction, that is still jeered to this day.
So what does Transformers: The Last Knight have? Mark Wahlberg swinging a sword at a giant robot. Again. Michael Bay had to have heard us. Apparently, he doesn’t care. We make fun of Wahlberg fighting Decepticons with a sword? Bay’s gonna give us two scenes of Wahlberg fighting Decepticons with a sword, maybe even in the same movie. I bet we get a full 15 minutes of Wahlberg’s sword-fighting action, with the grand finale of cutting off Optimus Prime’s head. Because, why not? It’s obvious that Michael Bay’s sole movie-making purpose is to annoy me, even when we’re discussing movies about giant toys laying waste to cities.
Transformers: The Last Knight hits theaters June 23, 2017. Hold me.