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Transformers: The Last Knight
Movie

Transformers: The Last Knight

2017 • Action, Adventure, Comedy

Woke Score
3
out of 10

Plot

Optimus Prime finds his dead home planet, Cybertron, in which he comes to find he was responsible for its destruction. He finds a way to bring Cybertron back to life, but in order to do so, Optimus needs to find an artifact that is on Earth.

Overall Series Review

The film attempts to weave a complex, secret history of the Transformers into Western mythos, centering the conflict around an object of immense power on Earth. The main characters, a rugged inventor and a brilliant historian, must unite the remnants of the Autobots to fight both the villainous alien Quintessa and a human military force determined to eliminate all Transformers. The narrative's primary drive is a global, apocalyptic threat rather than any internal social commentary, resulting in a low score across most ideological categories.

Categorical Breakdown

Identity Politics3/10

Characters are generally defined by their skills and actions, such as Cade Yeager as an inventor/protector and Viviane Wembley as a brilliant historian. There is a minor element of intersectional commentary through the character Izabella, a young Latina mechanic survivor who is referred to by a mild ethnic nickname. The film's attempt at representation in the 'secret history' involves shoehorning figures like Harriet Tubman into a lineage protecting the Transformers secret, which feels forced and gratuitous rather than organically developed within the plot.

Oikophobia4/10

The film integrates the history of the Transformers deeply into Western history, linking them to figures like King Arthur, Merlin, and World War II. While this deconstructs the traditional, spiritual nature of these legends by attributing them to alien technology, it does not frame the home culture as fundamentally corrupt or racist. Optimus Prime's final declaration that Earth is his home reaffirms the planet and its people as worthy of defense, counteracting a complete civilizational self-hatred trope. The main antagonists are explicitly extraterrestrial, not domestic institutions.

Feminism3/10

The female lead, Vivian Wembley, is established as a brilliant, highly educated Oxford historian, qualifying her to wield the staff based on her Merlin bloodline and intellectual knowledge. Her character is also heavily sexualized by the male director's trademark visual style and is immediately set up for a romantic, adversarial pairing with the male lead, the rugged inventor Cade Yeager. The younger female character, Izabella, while framed as a tough survivor, is ultimately inessential to the main plot, preventing either character from becoming a pure 'Girl Boss' archetype.

LGBTQ+1/10

No LGBTQ+ characters, themes, or ideological commentary are present within the narrative. The human relationships are primarily focused on a traditional male-female pairing and a father-figure-daughter-figure dynamic, maintaining a normative structure without any attempt to deconstruct the nuclear family or lecture on gender theory.

Anti-Theism2/10

The plot's mythology is rooted in an ancient alien race and a quasi-magical, Arthurian legend that is then explained by extraterrestrial technology. The primary villain is a Cybertronian 'goddess' who is an alien sorceress, not a critique of traditional religion. There is no open hostility toward organized religion, and the moral law is objective: save the Earth from destruction.