There’s a bit of a Tomb Raider or Indiana Jones vibe to this movie, which kicks in shortly after the first hour is done. The whole movie goes on for 2 and a half hours.
It’s good to see the return of Mark Wahlberg in the lead role, as Cade Yeager. This movie also features Anthony Hopkins as a supporting cast member called Sir Edmond Burton – he’s neither in a very major nor very minor role, but somewhere in between, and is listed second in the cast list in the closing credits, probably in part due to his level of fame. It’s good to see Josh Duhamel back as Colonel William Lennox. And the lead female this time called Viviane Wembley is played by Laura Haddock – she’s probably the best lead female in a Transformers movie thus far.
The best part of the movie is probably when Mark’s character cunjures a sword for himself long with the power to stop the swinging sword of one of the Earth-guardian transformers, thus saving Optmus Prime’s life when they’re about to execute him for betrayal even though he’s already realised his mistake. At that point, the guardians see Mark’s character has the amulet of King Arthur and they immediately recognise him as their leader. This only lasts a few seconds, but it’s probably the best part of the movie. The next best parts don’t last long either, which makes this movie quite thin considering it’s 2-and-a-half hours long. For this reason, even though this is one of the better Transformers movies – possibly even the best one to date – at least about as good as the first two – I’d still rate it pretty much Bang Average – on a par with most of the others, because the difference isn’t significant enough to justify distinct ratings, and the density of this one isn’t enough to justify a score of Above Average.
All Transformers movies ranked (up to this point)
If I had to rank all transformers movies thus far, I think I’d go 5, 4, 1, 2, 3. I’m confident in saying that movie 1 is slightly better than movie 2, and also that 5 is slightly better than 4, and that 3 is comfortably the worst of them all. But when it comes to 5 vs 1, that’s more of a style preference – do you prefer the originality of the movies 1 & 2, where the core concepts were first coined, or do you prefer the more powerful cast, magnificent script and less childish acting from movies 4 & 5? I’m tempted to go with the latter but it’s not a clear-cut decision by any means.