Transformers: The Last Knight

Transformers: The Last Knight is poised to redefine the paradigm of Transformers movies — that is, if anyone’s still following it at this point. The Transformers have been coming to Earth for centuries, even millennia, but what does it MEAN? Sir Anthony Hopkins has some ideas, which hopefully he will finally share in the actual movie, because all of this very mysterious marketing has been just that: very mysterious.

With the recent announcement that Transformers: The Last Knight would be hitting theaters two days earlier  —  moving from Friday, June 23 to Wednesday, June 21  —  fans are closer than ever to seeing their favorite Autobots (and humans) throw down against a reluctantly evil Optimus Prime. This is the summer of heel turns by beloved franchise characters; first we saw Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto betray his family in The Fate of the Furious, and now we’re counting down the days until Optimus Prime stabs Bumblebee in the face. Rough summer for heroes, it would seem.

Paramount has been doing some release date reshuffling, and, oddly enough, they’ve moved another one of this year”s movies up a couple days. Now, Transformers: The Last Knight will open in theaters Wednesday, June 21, instead of that Friday, June 23. Interesting.

It may ultimately amount to little more than promotional material, but there’s still a sense of artistry to designing a movie poster. Such poster titans as Saul Bellow and Drew Struzan approached their work as no less legitimate than painting, establishing a distinctive, recognizable style and leaving a permanent imprint on the field. Their legacies — of stylization, of spectacle, of conjuring drama and feeling through purely aesthetic means — have trickled down to influence designers today as they contrive clever, original ways to represent a film. And then, also, there’s the poster for Transformers: The Last Knight.

The sound of metal grinding against metal. The proud yelp of Mark Wahlberg’s serious-actor concerned voice. (“We’re not givin’ up on Prime, okay?!“) The rippling waves of incoherent computer-generated imagery glinting in the post-apocalyptic sun. It can all only mean one thing: there‘s a new trailer for the latest chapter in Michael Bay’s ongoing giant-fighting-alien-robot opera Transformers. Allow me to quickly assuage any concerns by confirming that yes, a whole bunch of crap blows up real big, yes, a huge CGI thing crashes into another CGI thing, and yes, Megan Fox is no longer with us. But let’s dig in anyway, shall we?

The Transformers have always been sneaky little miscreants. Their whole thing is that they’re “robots in disguise,” masquerading as cars or trucks or dinosaurs to better blend in with their surroundings. We know that they’ve been coming to Earth for a while now, and the new Transformers: The Last Knight promises to tell us why. The new tease for a trailer coming on Wednesday shows us that Anthony Hopkins may know the answer.

Who is the best Transformer? Correct, it’s Bumblebee. The trusty little Camaro who communicates half in speech and half with the assistance of sound bites from his radio is getting his own spinoff, and Paramount is looking at a release date sometime in 2018. Michael Bay, who is now in the process of choosing which Transformers story to do next, recently revealed that Bumblebee is going to be a prequel.

Michael Bay just can’t quit the Transformers franchise. After repeatedly swearing Dark of the Moon would be his last, the director returned for more Bayhem with Age of Extinction, claiming that would be his final Transformers movie. It wasn’t long before Bay promptly marched right back into the cold, steely arms of what might be the only things he’s every truly identified with: Shiny muscle cars that transform into massive, CGI robot aliens. Will The Last Knight actually be Bay’s last Transformers film? To the surprise of no one, he’d like to do at least one more.

Somehow, Transformers: The Last Knight is going to show us how our favorite robots in disguise have been around Earth since the Middle Ages, and even how they led King Arthur’s armies into battle. (Has anyone told Michael Bay yet that King Arthur wasn’t real? No? Okay, just checking.) It’s sure to be quite the experience, and as Bay’s last go-round with the Transformers universe, he’s making sure to fit just about everything into this movie.

If you’re a Transformers fan and you go see Beauty and the Beast this weekend, you’re in for a treat. If you don‘t go see Beauty and the Beast this weekend, you’re still in for a treat, because we have the new Transformers: The Last Knight trailer right here! Isabella Moner, who plays the new character Izabella in the movie, takes center stage in the new trailer, which is certainly a much less apocalyptic look at the movie than we’ve seen so far.