TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT; OR, SEE A CRITIC LOSE HIS MIND IN REAL TIME

Popular belief posits that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. This isn’t actually true, mind you – kinda like the whole “left brain vs. right brain” thing – as the true definition of insanity can be found throughout Donald Trump’s twitter feed.

In a weird way, Transformers: The Last Knight proves that this long-held definition of insanity is a fallacy:

1. Director Michael Bay makes the same Transformers movie over and over again. 
2. The audience willingly pays to see the same Transformers movie over and over again.
3. Michael Bay expects to get much richer from making gigantic robots with celebrity voices glint and spark and look cool. (He does). 
4. The audience walks into the theater wanting to see gigantic robots with celebrity voices glint and spark and look cool. (They do). 
5. Everyone gets what they want while doing and expecting, respectively, nothing at all different, and this on top of the most important part: that this series has never been within cannon-fire distance of “good.”

That’s insanity.

The Transformers series:

Sometimes Shia Lebeouf is there. Sometimes Mark Wahlberg is there. John Turturro is there all the time. They are all there, looking up at the robots and talking to them, and being their friend. The robots are cars sometimes, but sometimes they are robots. If the robots are dancing, they are in robot form. If they are going very fast, they are probably cars.

Robots are aliens. From space. The planets. Transformers.

I think I’m losing my grip on reality.

Focus, me. Focus.

The Transformers movies are bad. All of them. If you want to be that person who defends the first one, have at it. You’d be the person defending the one good Hot Pocket you’ve eaten in your life.

By now the Transformers series has become a punchline on Internet whenever someone wants to put down someone else. “You didn’t adore Inherent Vice? I bet you like Transformers.” Even the people who bravely defend their enjoyment of Transformers don’t have that much kindness to share toward it. “What’s wrong with turning your brain off once in a while?” asks the guy whose brain has been left on the charger since birth.

In Transformers: The Last Knight, John Goodman plays a fat robot because he is fat, and Stanley Tucci plays Merlin because he is magical. Mark Wahlberg’s character name is Cade Yeager. There are puppy dinosaur robots that shoot fire from their mouths and also take naps, even though they are nonliving mechanics that shouldn’t suffer from fatigue. Sir Anthony Hopkins is there, for some reason, putting the words “Optimus Prime” and “Cybertron” in his mouth.

Robots. America. Transformers. American flag. Bumblebee. Car. America! Cars go very fast in Transformers when they are the robots, the transformers. 

Stop. 

No. 

Pull back. 

Cybertron! The moon! The knights and transformers!

The robots look and sound really cool. The humans look and sound really cool. The music stirs, we hear it, it sounds good and cool. The things explode, the buildings fall, the humans look stoic, the robots look cool. (America.) It all looks really good and cool here in Cool Shots, U.S.A. The men and the women of America who like the transformers will be very happy with how the transformers look and sound.

Okay, I’m losing it. Time to bail.

After Transformers 3, Michael Bay said he was done making Transformers movies.

Then he made Transformers 4.

After Transformers 4, Michael Bay said he was done making Transformers movies.

Then he made Transformers 5.

After Transformers 5 made a buttload of money, Michael Bay said he was done making Transformers movies and Paramount said they were going to make a bunch of Transformers spinoffs to continue this money-printing franchise of theirs long into the future.

If you think Michael Bay is done making Transformers movies, you’re insane.

Listen, you’ll have to excuse me. I have a lunch meeting with Cliff Huxtable at the Four Seasons in twenty minutes.

WATCH: THE MACHINE

 
It’s inevitable that the idea of what defines humanity appears in every film about robots. The most famous robot movie of all time, The Terminator, would not even explore this idea until its superior sequel. And Blade Runner, perhaps one of the most divisive films of all time, had already beaten it to the punch.

The Machine is more like Blade Runner than any other film that also explores this idea of organic versus synthetic life, while bringing with it a hypo-technical style recently modernized by director Joseph Kosinksi in his films TRON: Legacy and Oblivion, but only after the look had already been established in Kubrick’s 2001.

Vincent (Toby Stephens, "Black Sails"), a scientist experimenting in synthetic life, is in a tough spot. Though he’s willingly working for and accepting money from the defense department of a very future government to work toward recycling fallen human soldiers and turning them into warfare robots, he’s actually doing so to try to find a way to help his young daughter, trapped inside herself by a severe cerebral palsy-like condition. Ava (The Pact’s Caity Lotz) is Vincent’s new hire and someone whose own previous experimentation in synthetic life has made Vincent sure she’s going to be the one who helps to realize his theories and brings them to fruition. Well, that she does – after she’s killed and resurrected as a sentient robot.

It’s here we ask that question again. What is humanity? Is it flesh and blood, the brain, the heart, or the soul? All of that? None of it?

Wait a minute! Robots?? Run!

The Machine is a great little film, aided by beautiful cinematography, great performances, genuine emotions, an awesome retro synth score by composer Tom Raybould, and a refreshingly serious non-Will Smith take on the sub-genre. If you’re looking for balls-to-the-wall action, then you’re going to be waiting until the last ten minutes. If you’re looking for some kind of horror/thriller hybrid, then you’re not going to get that really whatsoever. But if you’re looking for a philosophical discussion on what humanity is, wrapped around a familiar but not overdone story, you haven’t been able to do better than The Machine since Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

YOUR FRIEND TILL THE END

REVIEW: BATTLE OF THE DAMNED

Something you may not know about me: Though my main love will always be the horror genre, my second love is old-school action. To me, guys like Arnold, Sly, and Chuck Norris will always be gods. It was through Stallone's recent creation of The Expendables franchise that I grew to rediscover my love for the second string guys, and this more than includes Dolph Lundgren. Between the aforementioned Expendables films (dripping with "male-pattern badness") and the newer Universal Soldier entries (Regeneration and Day of Reckoning), well...I just love Dolph. He always seems to be having more fun than any of his action hero counterparts. Though no one will ever refer to him as a strong thespian, there's no denying his larger-than-life on screen presence. So when I one day read of this film coming soon that involved the words "robots," "zombies," and "Dolph Lundgren," well...my proverbial ticket was already bought. (It was "robots" that clinched it.) A film in which Dolph and a bunch of broken down robots take on a horde of zombies? Who the hell doesn't want to see that immediately?

Dolph plays Major Max Gatling, and besides having a ridiculous/bad ass name, he is also the leader of a team of mercenaries charged with traversing a zombie-infested landscape on a rescue mission for a girl named Jude (Melanie Zanetti, the tiniest version of Mary Louise Parker you'll ever see). While doing so, nearly all of his men become ghoul poop. Realizing this was a mission they weren't meant to survive, Dolph puts his sole remaining survivor on the rescue chopper but opts to remain behind to complete the mission. Completely stupid decision, I know (and so does he: "Gatling, you're a stupid son-of-a-bitch), but...if he got on the chopper, there'd be no movie – no zombies, and no robots – so, eat it you filthy cynic.

What we have here in Battle of the Damned is essentially Escape from New York: Replace Snake Plissken with Max Gatling, replace the prisoners with zombies, and replace Adrienne Barbeau and Ernest Borgnine with robots. Oh, and there is a rag tag group of survivors holed out in this zombie landscape, led by a man named Duke.

Lundgren portrays Gatling as a dry-humored nonconformist who would rather crack wise than play nice (that is if he's not treated with all due respect), but this is all simple set dressing because you know he's bound to step up and be the hero that gains him the giant head shot on the poster.

Battle of the Damned dabbles joyfully in familiar territory – and not just Carpenter's Escape template, but also in Romero's post-apocalyptic "let's-live-opulently-and-ignore-the-problem" environment that he perfected in Dawn of the Dead. And in those films, there is an attempt to eventually strip away war zone New York and Monroeville Mall and spend time with our characters, observing them in their environment and getting to know them. And Battle does that, too. It is pleasing to see this kind of attempt at development in what is essentially a DTV movie with robots, zombies, and that guy from Rocky IV who said, "I must break you." One might argue that it was because the filmmakers were forced to halt the zombie carnage due to budget constraints that they filled all the in-between stuff with human conflict. Byproduct of a low budget or not, it's there, it works, and that's all that matters.

The tone is played mostly straight; though it every so often takes a time-out to make a joke, or nod to Dolph's career ("Where did you even find that guy? A super-soldier factory?"), this admittedly stupid concept for a film is taken pretty seriously. That's not to say the film isn't at times unintentionally funny. When our characters see a swath of robots marching down the street and one of them, nearly nonplussed, asks, "Robots? Where'd they come from?", you have to laugh. But it more than adds to the experience that I, at least, am looking for from a film of this type. Plus I'll admit, I have kind of a stupid sense of humor, and I found myself chuckling every time someone in the film even just said the word "robots." ("You brought back robots?" "Killer robots?" "The robots!" )

Melanie Zanetti as Jude does as she is directed, and though she does it mostly fine, the whole angst-ridden, bitter teen who answers every question with some kind of angry, sarcastic response starts to wear thin after a while. Pretty bad considering she's the one you're supposed to care second-most about – plus she's preggers! Her performance can sometimes be irritating in that Ellen-Page-from-Juno kind of way, but if that threatens to happen, just keep telling yourself, " 'It's only a movie...about robots...It's only a movie...about robots...' "

The make-up effects are pretty well done; the visual effects (re: robots in motion) are less so, though I would describe them as inconsistent rather than across-the-board poor. Normally I am quick to call out a film for implanting story elements dependent on CGI even though their low budgets simply do not allow for it, but, once again, Dolph 'N' Bots vs. Ghouls gets a pass from me.

To appreciate Battle of the Damned is to appreciate B-movie productions, aging action heroes whose hey-day you might argue is behind them, and films with gonzo log lines. I doubt anyone who opts to watch the film based solely on its plot will be disappointed; though the zombie element isn't constant, and the robots don't make their appearance until the last act, there is still plenty of skull-crushing action and violence to please those looking for a bloody 90 minutes. 

I have seen a lot of Dolph's post-Universal Soldier DTV filmography and I can say this with confidence: Battle of the Damned is certainly one of the better ones – if not the best. Obviously once you've suffered through something like The Minion or Bridge of Dragons, that's certainly not saying much, but hell, give it a watch. I have a feeling the majority that do will be pleasantly surprised and ultimately entertained.

Besides, there's literally a scene where Dolph asks his robot army, "What do we do with zombies?" and the robots respond, "We fuck them up."

I mean, come on...on what planet is that not the greatest of all times?