The title of the fifth movie is actually “Transformers: The Last Knight.” Are people still anticipating a fifth outing of Michael Bay’s Transformers? Apparently so, since “Transformers: Age of Extinction” still made a ton of money. Everyone is crossing their fingers that Michael Bay will finally do right by his own franchise. Less focus on humans, more focus on the robots and make their fights viewable instead of the audience seeing huge piles of junk straight out of Katamari Damacy. Seriously, I have more love for the Transformers animated movie than all of Michael Bay’s Transformers movies put together. Age of Extinction wasn’t so bad though. Mark Wahlberg’s story was better than Shia Lebouf’s. Bay did make a great nod to fans with Prime’s Evasion Mode. Li Bingbing was sexy. Casting Brent Spiner instead of Stanley Tucci for Joshua Joyce would have been a great idea. But at the end of Transformers: Age of Extinction, Optimus made a promise to find the creators behind the madness of Transformers 4. However, it seems like Michael Bay changed his mind and gave Prime a couple of side quests first.
Just a quick point of note: Everyone keeps calling this franchise Michael Bay’s, but we must remember to think the ever loquacious Don Murphy for having the passion and smart to bring this series to life. Bay was brought in later and Murphy deserves the credit, but I’m sure all the money he’s made has been fine for him too.
Earlier rumors point that we would finally see the Transformers creators called the Quintessons, mysterious cybernetic beings with five faces who were first introduced in the animated Transformers: The Movie. There were also hints that we would finally see a live-action (sort of) version of Unicron, the planet-sized Transformer, again first seen in Transformers: The Movie who was played by the late great Orson Welles. The end of Transformers 4 hinted that Prime would confront them for sending Lockdown to Earth. But instead, website JoBlo allegedly uncovered the plot of the upcoming fifth Transformers movie and it’s not what we expect. Surprise, surprise.
Near the end of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, we were led to believe that Cybertron was destroyed. Frankly, I thought that Optimus Prime having to choose the destruction of his planet over Earth (killing all its inhabitants) was silly. It could have been written instead that the planet would be lost in space forever. In this fifth installment, Transformers: The Last Knight, instead of finding the creators, Optimus finds Cybertron and that it’s still intact but dead just the same. Awash with guilt since he is responsible for the planet’s inhabitants’ deaths, Prime is instructed to find another artifact to restore life to the planet. Again, surprise, surprise, the artifact can be found in the center of the universe— Earth.
Could the artifact possibly be the key to Vector Sigma? It’s a Transformers G1 reference to an artifact that controls or activates Cybertron’s central computer, which apart from the AllSpark, can breathe life into Transformers. According to the rumor, that key would instead refer to the ancient sword Excalibur. This implies that the Arthurian legends were real. Some Transformer decided to mess with human history and gave Merlin something ‘magical’. This turn of events thus gives the film’s title a lot more sense.
Then again, in the last film, we thought that the word ‘knight’ meant something different since the Dinobots were supposed to be a bunch of knights of Cybertronian lore that Lockdown captured. In this upcoming movie, the word knight seems more literal. Anyway, other parts of the plot states that he speechless Bumblebee is due for an upgrade and that he’ll be taking a leadership role in Prime’s absence. The other Transformers that will be present will include Crosshairs, Hound, Drift and the Dinobots plus some mini-dinobots. Yeah, dinosaur movies shouldn’t be without raptors. New autobots would also be in the movie. Where the heck were they in the fourth? An Aston Martin named Cogman and a Vespa named Squeaks.
Prime does encounter one of the ‘creators’ simply called The Creator. He’s probably the one who gives Prime the instructions to bring Cybertron back to life using Excalibur. Speaking of knights, Sir Anthony Hopkins is rumored to be cast as The Creator. And lastly, instead of having Unicron as the villain, we’re getting Megatron back. Because Galvatron doesn’t sound as menacing or familiar with audiences. For some reason, Galvatron reverts back to Megatron, hopefully shedding away his cheap Transformium transformations.
Well, that’s it for now. A couple of facts before we go,
— The solar extractor in the film Revenge of the Fallen is actually based on Megatron’s Solar Needle device in the G1 cartoon. Extract energy, blow up the sun.
— The Space Bridge and bringing Cybertron to Earth’s orbit in Dark of the Moon was based on a G1 episode titled the Ultimate Doom.
Even though Michael Bay’s takes on the Transformers is a bit unsavory, we sort of owe the guy for reinvigorating the franchise which had gone stale back then. We geeks could bash and burn him and his films but the general public needs some form of entertainment aside from superheroes. Transforming robots, human one-liners and hundreds of ‘splosions. We’re still going to watch, hoping we’ll get ‘more’, not more of the same.