Even if you are still a ‘Transformer’ fan (and honestly, if you still love this franchise by this point I am not sure anything is going to deter you), the next movie in the franchise sounds like it is going to be insanely weird, and one of the things that makes it sound crazy is the fact that it is now pissing off a lot of WWII veterans in Great Britain. You see, at some point in the film there are going to be Nazi’s, and for some reason Michael Bay and company decided to use an old home of Winston Churchill’s to stand in for a Nazi headquarters (we think). All we know for certain is that the former home of the man who led England through WWII and was instrumental in stopping the Nazi threat from taking over the world is now being decked out in Swastikas and other Nazi decorations, and many veterans and well, human beings, find it offensive.
Fortunately for Michael Bay, he does not. Bay’s response to the controversy was as follows:
“I just want to say, people were not fortunate enough to read the script, and they don’t know that Churchill in this movie is a big hero. And Churchill would be smiling about Last Knight. They haven’t seen the movie, they don’t know the ending, and they don’t know how Churchill is a hero in this movie. So, as the staff said, ‘He’d be smiling right now’…When you see the movie, you’ll understand. I for one, probably more than any director in the world, have shot more veterans and more active military men and women in my movies. I would do nothing to disrespect veterans.”
Nicholas Soames, the grandson of Churchill, seems to think that all this sensationalism is ridiculous. In an interview with The Guardian, he stated that the whole controversy is “a completely manufactured row” and “absolutely the most dismal, idiotic story I’ve ever read”. He further added:
“They do as all newspapers do. They go until they can find some wretched veteran who is prepared to say, ‘Winston would be turning into his grave.’ They’ve no idea what my grandfather would have thought!… It’s preposterous. Why can’t they make a film at Blenheim 75 years after [the war ended]? It’s absurd. That’s all I have to say; it’s pathetic.”
As stated earlier, this movie sounds nuts, and not in a very appealing way. We had already heard that it was going to include King Arthur, and mini-Dinobots, and Nazis’, but now apparently Winston Churchill himself is going to be a character? And according to Bay, he’s going to become a hero in the ‘Transformers’ universe? Does Bay not understand the impact Churchill has already had on the world, that the man is already a hero?
Whatever the case, I’m not wasting my money on this trash when it comes out in 2017, though I might read some reviews just to see what the hell Bay was trying to accomplish. Feel free to share your opinion on the insanity in the comments section below.
Source: Digitalspy, Collider, The Guardian
Nick is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, who belongs to the privileged few who enjoyed the ending to ‘Lost.’ For more of Nick’s thoughts and articles, follow him on Twitter.
