Just when you thought the Transformers series had hit its lowest point with 2014’s Age of Extinction, where we were introduced, most memorably, to a band of rampaging dino-bots, turns out Michael Bay—that Grand Maester of noisy spectacle—had plans for the franchise to sink even lower. The newest installment, Transformers: The Last Knight, is the worst in a long line of very bad films in the series by Bay—five to be exact—the sort of relentless, senseless action blockbuster you walk out of physically disoriented, your eyes and ears thoroughly bludgeoned. It’s the sensory equivalent of having a bunch of kids take up some pots and pans and run around you for two-and-a-half hours, clanging them non-stop. To be honest, even that sounds like it would be less of an ordeal than watching Bay’s latest. 

Last Knight opens in the Dark Ages, where King Arthur is about to head into battle. He’s a bit annoyed: pal Merlin (Stanley Tucci) had promised to bring along a secret “magical” weapon that would all but secure their victory, but the wizard has a soft spot for hard liquor and is late as usual. But eventually, he does show, and the weapon turns out to be none other than a Transformer—who, if you don’t already know, are members of an alien race of giant robots. What this prologue is basically designed to do, then, is remind us that our metallic friends did not just drop out of the sky yesterday—we’re treated to a somewhat cringeworthy sampling of their other appearances in key historical moments a little later. 

We then switch over to present-day USA where Transformers have been outlawed, and the military is working on dismantling those that remain (was this not what was happening in the previous installment, too?). But not everyone feels that way; there are a few like ol’ Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg), a mechanic who has befriended a number of ‘formers, and believes we should be more open to letting the good ones in. A man of his word, he’s been harboring a bunch of bots over at his junkyard—although missing from the group is the Autobot leader Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen), presently off on a visit to his home planet to get his fellow alien-robots to just leave Earth alone, whydontthey. 

But when Megatron (Frank Welker), the leader of the Decepticons—the arch nemeses of the more benign Autobots—begins gathering his strength and followers, to execute some nefarious plan or the other, Cade and his friends must gear up, even if Optimus isn’t around, to fight back—all while keeping government forces at bay. Oh, I neglected to mention that along the way, our hero has managed to collect two female sidekicks: a spunky young girl who shares his fondness for robots (Isabela Moner) and a statuesque English history professor with something of an illustrious family tree (Laura Haddock). And there’s some sort of spidery talisman and a precious staff everyone wants. And Anthony Hopkins shows up at one point to say some serious stuff. And there’s a passive aggressive robot butler. And a floaty CGI enchantress.

If that sounded disjointed and more than a little nonsensical, that’s because it is. You’re likely to find 10 different subplots running the course at any given point in Last Knight—none of them exciting in the least—and the switches occur so frequently and haphazardly, you get whiplash. Honestly, there were far more times where I had no idea what in the world was going on than I would care to admit. And the intensity is maintained at the same overheated pitch from start to finish, which is exhausting, especially when you have little interest in the outcome: you yearn for a quiet moment, just a few seconds rest, please, from the constant yelling and moving. 

The incoherent script by Art Marcum, Matt Holloway and Ken Nolan is just one of the film’s problems: there’s also the overzealous use of CGI to the point where it all fuses into a digitally-rendered, incomprehensible blur—so much metal-against-metal, concrete-shattering, noisy mayhem that your brain has no choice but to check out for purposes of self-preservation. Then we have our stereotypes: everyone, from the tough-talking orphaned street kid to the eccentric old scholar, feel like appropriations of characters we’ve seen thousands of times before in other popular films, not really specific to the context of the story. And because this is Bay, the women get even shorter shrift: not only is there an uncomfortable moment in which the film appears to somewhat sexualise a minor for no apparent reason, but it’s even more thankless in the case of Haddock, who tries her best to seem intelligent and empowered, all while the camera and her co-stars undermine those efforts by ogling her curves.

The human actors, if you can even spot them amid the overwhelming CGI, comprise a veritable Who’s Who of What in God’s Name Were They Thinking? There’s Tucci, hamming it up in a brief appearance; John Turturro returning, but utterly wasted in a role that basically shows him screaming on the phone for all of three minutes; and, of course, atop the list sits Mr.Hopkins, whose character serves little purpose than that of a walking-talking narration box. There’s not much I can say about Wahlberg, whose action movie avatars are starting to feel increasingly interchangeable. 

We have a touch of consolation in that this is purportedly Bay’s last time directing a Transformers film—but as is the way of franchises, someone else will take up the reins and the series will continue, as the closing credits already indicate. We can only hope his successor brings back some of the playfulness of the previous films and does away with this self-serious myth-building that the last few entries have been indulging in. Until that happens, do yourself a favour and avoid Last Knight.