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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Transformers: The Last Knight (Steve Jablonsky/Various)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you're sold on the more classically-inclined tone of
this film in the franchise, the British legacy element allowing Steve
Jablonsky and his team the ability to supplement their usual, faceless
action grinding with some more elegant touches.
Avoid it... if only a few resounding but rather predictable reprises of the franchise's main three themes aren't enough to salvage a very lengthy, redundant, and tiresome listening experience.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Transformers: The Last Knight: (Steve
Jablonsky/Various) As longs as these wretched live-action
Transformers films continue to draw meaningful profits, Hasbro
and Paramount will endeavor to confound critics with their persistence.
The human actors may change, the Chevrolet product placements may be
subsumed by Mercedes-Benz placements, and more of the original animated
show's concepts may be mangled, but director Michael Bay, who continues
to insist with each entry that this "Transformers" film is his last,
once again perpetuates a terribly mismanaged overarching storyline
involving the famed robots. In Filmtracks' review of 2014's
Transformers: Age of Extinction, it was postulated that the only
way to kill off this brainless franchise was if the planet-eating
Transformer named Unicron decided to make Earth his next lunch. Wouldn't
you know, actually, that 2017's Transformers: The Last Knight
reveals that Earth actually is Unicron, and that the battle
between our world and the robots' Cybertron is more complex than
originally thought. Somewhere, Orson Welles must be pleasantly
surprised. Of course, this movie has to throw in some knights of the
Arthurian age and merge the tale of Merlin and Excalibur with all of
this nonsense involving ugly, indistinguishable robots, an excuse to
allow Sir Anthony Hopkins to explain the whole franchise to us with
delicious distinction. Despite its incomprehensible conceptual ideas,
Transformers: Age of Extinction did, at the very least, offer
enthusiasts the opportunity to hear the two lead actors from the
original cartoon, Peter Cullen and Frank Welker, reunite once again, the
latter belatedly allowed to reprise his role as Megatron while the
former has always remained the indisputable Optimus Prime. Despite all
its ills, the music for the Tranformers film franchise has
remained relatively consistent in tone, and something must be said for
composer Steve Jablonsky's ability to offer the same general sound for
all five films thus far. His contribution was stunted in the fourth film
by Bay's insistence that other contributing artists lend themes to
certain scenes and ideas, and that technique is fortunately abandoned
for this fifth entry.
Jablonsky returns with his stable of Remote Control-related crew and inevitable ghostwriters to provide a significant amount of music for Transformers: The Last Knight, including the seemingly prerequisite half a dozen or so suites of generic thematic pontification to be edited (read: butchered) in the film itself. Perhaps the greatest and most senseless choice involving Transformers: Age of Extinction was the abandonment of the franchise's primary power anthems in the score, and Transformers: The Last Knight does rectify that issue to an extent. The ensemble for the fifth score is as expected, strings and brass joined by the usual organic and electronic percussion techniques and not a woodwind in sight. Choral effects are pretty generic throughout, lacking individuality. Solo strings are en vogue in the Remote Control universe, of course, and the historical British element to this score funnels the two major new themes to those violin and cello performers. There's nothing revolutionary about these attractive, classically inclined performances, as the composition is too simplistic for really stress the players to any great degree. Like the fuller group underneath them, the soloists typically perform the same lines over and over again in a slowly ascending crescendo format, the Hans Zimmer procedure that has apparently bitten Jablonsky quite thoroughly. Those new themes are assigned to the order of knights that carry the legacy of the robots history on Earth, and Hopkins' character, Sir Edmund Burton, is the beneficiary of the pleasantly elegant but rather passionless idea explored in "Sacrifice" and "Sir Edmund Burton" bookending the score, along with a few reprises in between. Related is an idea of similar instrumentation and muted classicism introduced in "Merlin's Staff" for that portion of the mysticism of the tale. A few other motifs pop up for the human characters, including the Trevor Rabin-like coolness of "Izzy" and a tame piano and cello-driven moment of contemplation for "Vivian" that builds appropriately out of the Merlin identity. These cues are all organic and easy on the ears, and, in the context of a "Transformers" score, that's saying something. But they also lack any significant gravity in any cue, Jablonsky's own piano performances containing no warmth in their deliberate plodding. Fortunately for listeners expecting to eject some semen in their britches while listening to this franchise's music, the power anthems do exist to save the day. While the main anthems were never the best of themes to begin with, hearing the identities for the Autobots, Optimus Prime, and the franchise as a whole in Transformers: The Last Knight is a surprising relief. Short reprises of these ideas litter the first two-thirds of the score before the return of Optimus Prime really forces the original themes back to the forefront in "Your Voice." That cue, "I Had My Moment," and "Calling All Autobots" offer the three themes (alternately known by their original track titles: "Autobots," "No Sacrifice, No Victory," and "Arrival to Earth") just enough presence to really satisfyingly bring this soundtrack home. Don't expect the anthems to really change shape too intelligently; the pronouncement in "Calling All Autobots" announcing the Autobot and Prime themes without much intellectual evolution. The lack of returning ideas for the Bumblebee and Megatron robots may remain an issue for some listeners, though. Unfortunately, the rest of the score is largely forgettable. The action sequences, while not completely intolerable in their synthetic grinding, have become completely interchangeable and anonymous by this point. Jablonsky really does become tiresome when each cue features some drawn-out crescendo format in the Zimmer mould; there really isn't any smart pinpoint synchronization happening in this score. That provides for a rather smooth listening experience if you separate out the several melodic suites into their own 30-minute presentation. One of the more muscular variants of these cues, the legacy theme in "Purity of Heart," is not contained in the movie. Otherwise, stripped of the suites, the excruciatingly long album presentation is offered in chronological order. As with the prior score, the score for Transformers: The Last Knight was offered first in the digital realm and then later provided on CD in a 3,000-copy pressing by La-La Land Records. Having over two hours of music from this work is truthfully unnecessary, especially as so much of the suspense and action material, not to mention some of the classical material, is similar to the point of total redundancy. Still, the product, once culled down, is far more thoughtful and appealing than its predecessor. For those still fondly recalling the original cartoon, it remains a shame that nothing from that generation of the concept has carried over to these scores. A little hint of Vince DiCola's cool, rhythmic theme for Unicron in the 1986 animated movie would have been a nice nod that goes missing here. In the end, Jablonsky and his team earn their pay with their incarnation of the "Transformers" musical representation, but they accomplish nothing more than that. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
All Albums:
Total Time: 129:54
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes a list of performers but no extra information about the score or film.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Transformers: The Last Knight are Copyright © 2017, Paramount Music, La-La Land Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 8/19/17 (and not updated significantly since). |
