Not surprisingly I expected this, the fifth installment, of the Transformers franchise to be pretty much crap. Especially after the abysmal fourth installment. To my great surprise I found it to be much less crappy than I expected.
I honestly do not understand why so many people seems to think this is one of the worst movies ever. The critics sure, especially the ones at Rotten Tomatoes, but I do not really care about those self proclaimed "critics". Ordinary viewers is another matter.
I mean, this is a transformers movie and it is directed by Michael Bay. That pretty much defines the movie from the start so what the heck did all those people complaining actually expect? That Michael Bay should suddenly care about things like script and stuff or anything else except big robots, special effects and explosions?
Personally I quite enjoyed this movie. Well, enjoyed in the context of watching a Transformers movie that is. I enjoyed the special effects, the robots, even the lousy jokes.
I did enjoy the tie in to the Pendragon myth and I thought the somewhat bizarre Sir Edmund Burton and his even more bizarre robot butler was great fun.
I laughed outright when I saw the World War 1 tank transformer. I was expecting the submarine transformer to actually transform though.
Maybe all those detractors of this movie are missing the bimbo with two and a half brain cells (yes I am being generous now) that used to be the lead female character in the Transformers movies but personally I quite liked that the leads in this movie was much more mature and actually showed some evidence of intelligence.
The story? Well, for a Transformers movie it is quite good. In any other context it would be somewhat...lacking. It did screw quite a bit with the Transformers timeline established in the first movies though. Oh, and for some nitpicking, the maximum operating altitude of those airplanes they used is 21 000 feet, not 12 000 feet.
Bottom line, I had great fun when watching this movie. With my low, and I mean LOW, initial expectations I was very pleasantly surprised. It is definitely a huge improvement over the fourth instalment.