Transformers: The Last Knight — all you need to know
As the robots in disguise make their fifth outing on the big screen, Ben Walsh brings us up to date
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Your support makes all the difference.So, in the blue-eyed, good guy corner are the Autobots, led by heroic Optimus Prime alongside his second-in-command Ironhide, who has a nifty water gun, medic Ratchet and Bumblebee — more on him later. In the red-eyed, bad guy corner are the Decepticons, led by the malevolent Megatron, along with his devilish companions air commander Starscream, ruthless mad scientist Shockwave and sweep commander Scourge.
Where do they come from?
The ravaged planet Cybertron, where the Autobots and Decepticons fought a ruinous civil war, which still continues to this day. Why and how long have they been on Earth? They arrived on our planet four million year ago in search of The Cube – or the “AllSpark” — which, as Optimus Prime points out, “holds the power to create worlds and fill them with life” and has been “lost to the far reaches of space”. The heroic Autobots live among us in plain sight, watching over our humans “in secret, waiting… protecting”. Which is decent of them.
How do they manage to protect us in plain sight?
They convert, silly. The Transformers are a species of sentient, living robotic beings who can change their bodies at will, rearranging their component parts into an alternate form — generally vehicles, weapons, animals or machinery. So, for instance, the loveable Bumblebee — who becomes the protective guardian to human hero Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) in the first three Transformers films — “hides” as a busted-up, yellow Chevrolet Camaro (interestingly, Bumblebee was originally a Volkswagen Beetle, but director Michael Bay feared a comparison with Herbie the Lovebug). Hence, the Transformers are known as robots in disguise and they’ve integrated themselves into humanity.
However, some humans, such as vile government official Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer) in Transformers: Age Of Extinction, are less keen on their existence on Earth and are hell-bent on the Transformers’ destruction. Be them Autobot or Decepticon — he’s not bothered — they all must die. Which is a tad ungrateful given that the Autobots prevented the human race from being enslaved and shot into outer space by the Decepticons in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the third slice of the franchise, which also depicted the decimation of Chicago.
Is it all about robots?
What has also undeniably helped to make the Transformers franchise so successful is not just the ingenuity of the Transformers, their combat skills and their disguises, but the human element. The franchise’s executive producer Steven Spielberg suggested to Bay that the films’ focus should be “about a boy and his car”, and it is this central “love story” — between awkward teen Sam and Bumblebee — that drives (sorry) the narrative for the first three movies. In the fourth film the central relationship and driving narrative force is between Mark Wahlberg’s Texan inventor and single father Cade Yeager and Optimus Prime, who has been forced to hide from evil government forces under Cade’s barn.
Other key humans in the Transformers films, apart from Sam’s girlfriend Mikaela Barnes (Megan Fox) and Cade’s daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz), are the US soldiers, led by Josh Duhamel’s rugged Lt Col William Lennox. Talking of the soldiers, did you know that some of those fighting were real military men and that the US Ministry of Defence provided authentic uniforms for the actors? Not only that but those are real military jets being flown by real military jet pilots in the first Transformers film.
Another fun fact: in the United States Army Ohio National Guard there is an actual Optimus Prime. The guardsman had his name officially changed on his 30th birthday. Well, it’s better than changing it to Mudflap (another Autobot) I suppose.
What can we expect from this film?
So, what’s in store in the latest thrilling instalment of the franchise, The Last Knight, which again stars Wahlberg and has the tantalising sight of Optimus Prime’s eyes going from blue to a potentially villainous purple? What can it possibly mean? Has the valiant warrior gone bad? And whereabouts is he hiding?
Cade, charged once again with saving the human race, teams up with Bumblebee as well as an English Lord, Sir Edmund Burton (Sir Anthony Hopkins), and Oxford professor Vivian Wembley (Laura Haddock). Expect a return for Megatron who lines up with Decepticon cronies Hooligan, Mohawk and Onslaught. Sounds ominous… and suitably exhilarating.