The title of Transformers: The Last Knight carries a certain finality to it. And that makes sense. After all, the franchise is now a decade old, and the appeal of watching indistinguishable robots punch each other interminably wore off about three and a half films ago, so it makes sense for the series to wrap itself up before the wheels come off completely.
The first Transformers: The Last Knight trailer shares a similar air of finality. Could this really be the end? Let’s take a closer look.
This certainly looks final, doesn’t it? I mean, blood dripping from a crucifix isn’t the sort of imagery you can just drop midway into a franchise that’s historically been largely about urinating robots and girls in tight shorts. No, this feels serious. This feels like the end of something.
As does this. The first half of the trailer is almost exclusively concerned with the entire history of human violence. We see soldiers creeping through the woods with flaming arrows. We see knights on horseback. And we see the rise of nazism. This isn’t going to be any old Transformers movie. No, this one has something important to say about the human condition.
And, more final than anything, we see the frozen carcass of Optimus Prime spinning through space. Our hero is dead. All our heroes will die. This is the end, make no mistake of that.
This just cements the new, serious Transformers. The first Transformers film had Megan Fox bending over a car in a pair of tight shorts. Transformers 5, meanwhile, has Sir Anthony Hopkins waxing poetical in a church about the nature of sacrifice. This is going to be a very powerful, very serious meditation on some very big themes.
Themes like the individual’s ability to effect profound societal change, as evidenced by this scene of Bumblebee punching a military drone unit in the face. Bumblebee is us, you see, rising up against an increasingly totalitarian state.
And, yes, admittedly this does just look like Mark Wahlberg firing a giant gun in a really cool way. But, you know, maybe the gun represents society. Did you ever think of that?
And there’s quite a lot about this one really cool robot with a massive sword who swings it around a lot and it’s all like “Raaaargh!” I mean, you probably don’t need to concentrate too hard on why a giant metal robot needs to have a sword as a weapon, because that’d ultimately be the same as watching two medieval knights joust with uncooked sausages. But, anyway, look, it’s really cool and stuff.
BLAM! Take THAT, police car! That gun was all like DUGGA DUGGA DUGGA and the police car was all POW I’M GETTING OUT OF HERE and Mark Wahlberg is going HEEE HEEE HEEE and this is all so cool and it’s probably an allegory for Guantanamo Bay or something but mainly OH WOW FIRE.
And Optimus Prime isn’t dead either! That was just a fakeout! Optimus Prime will never die. Never ever. And this isn’t the last Transformers film, either. There’s going to be this one, and then the year after that Bumblebee is getting his own spin-off, and then the year after that there’s going to be another Transformers film. These films make a billion dollars each. Why would they stop making them? Now STAB HIM, OPTIMUS PRIME! STAB HIM REAL GOOD! WHEE!
