A New ‘Transformers: The Last Knight’ Clip Shows Humanity’s Dark Future
With Michael Bay hanging up his transforming robot spurs after this summer’s Transformers: The Last Knight, a lot seems to be hinging on the success of his final outing. Paramount already has plans to create a Transformers cinematic universe with films based on individual characters from the series; should Bay’s final movie trip coming out of the gate, it could throw a wrench into a pretty expensive set of gears. And while no one would confuse me with the world’s biggest Transformers fan, the hint of time travel and goofy historical retconning at least makes this one seem kind of fun.
In this latest clip from the film, a group of kids on the run from a killer robot — a killer robot that doesn’t look at all like the ED-209 enforcement droid from Robocop, by the way — take shelter underneath a pile of rubble. Except that’s no pile of rubble; it’s a space station Bumblebee, the battle-worn Transformer ally to humanity! The clip originally aired during the Kid’s Choice Awards on Saturday night, which explains why it emphasizes a ragtag group of kids surviving the apocalypse over, I don’t know, giant robots and the marines that fight them. Transformers seems to know its audience.
Based on this clip, it would also seem that Bay has lifted a little bit from fellow blow-it-up-good filmmaker James Cameron. Does a post-apocalyptic future where humans hide from robotic killing machines sound like any other notable blockbuster movies from the past couple of decades? If Bay’s final Transformers film is just his own ridiculous riff on the Terminator franchise — humans traveling back in time to prevent robots from taking over the world — then maybe there might be an element of fun in the middle of all this expensive mayhem. I can’t help it; I’m a sucker for a good time travel story.
Here’s the full plot synopsis for Transformers: The Last Knight:
The Last Knight shatters the core myths of the Transformers franchise, and redefines what it means to be a hero. Humans and Transformers are at war, Optimus Prime is gone. The key to saving our future lies buried in the secrets of the past, in the hidden history of Transformers on Earth. Saving our world falls upon the shoulders of an unlikely alliance: Cade Yeager; Bumblebee; an English Lord; and an Oxford Professor.
The film will star Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Hopkins, Gemma Chan, John Turturro, Stanley Tucci, and Josh Duhamel, as well as the voices of Ken Watanabe and John Goodman. Transformers: The Last Knight will hit theaters on June 23, 2017.