Transformers: The Last Knight is easily the worst movie in the entire Transformers franchise, and maybe one of the worst action movies in general. This entire movie is plagued with flaws. The direction from Michael Bay is so inept, that it affects just about every single aspect of the movie.
The movie is directed with absolutely no focus and has way too many plot threads. The pacing in this movie is so fast paced that it becomes out of control, and every single scene comes off as rushed. The movie never stops moving, or gives the audience a chance to breath, and even the scenes that just focus on the characters feel rushed and fast paced as well, so it becomes exhausting very quickly. The movie has an overabundance of characters, and will even introduce characters and make it appear as if their role is going to be substantial, but will forget about them for large portions of the movie, or maybe just forget about them completely.
This movie seems to have virtually no idea what audience it wants to cater to, so it will just jump back and forth in tone in an attempt to check off each demographic. The tone will range from a grand epic, to a post-apocalyptic movie, to a shaky-cam action movie, to an action-adventure quest with rom-com elements. The entire movie was obviously filmed in multiple aspect ratios, and will shift aspect ratios from shot to shot throughout the movie, and it gets annoying very fast.
The visual effects are fine, but because the movie is so lifeless and is directed with no focus, they ultimately leave no impact on the viewer. The writing is godawful; it feels like a series of screenplays were merged into one. The dialogue is weak. The jokes fall completely flat. The characters have little to no identity. Mark Wahlberg gives a pretty bad performance. The editing is terrible. This is without a doubt the last Transformers movie I will see in the cinema.
★☆☆☆☆
Casual Person
Answer: The constantly shifting aspect ratios are due to the fact that Michael Bay shot the film with several different camera types. Most directors who use multiple types of camera find a way to hide the shifts a little better, but Bay appears to have been unconcerned with this issue. There are several scenes where the aspect ratio changes from shot to shot. The aspect ratio shifts were also present in the theatrical release, and were a major source of ridicule then, but they are arguably more noticeable on a smaller screen.
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