Transformers: The Last Knight trailer has mecha-dragons and Nazis
Plus, Anthony Hopkins sounds like he's reading a cut monologue from Westworld, so who knows what's going on here
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The Transformers series basically jumped the shark the very moment Paramount conceived the idea of basing an epic blockbuster franchise on a toy brand, but there's definitely the sense things have been increasingly spiralling out of control ever since.
There's no going back now though, thanks to the giant sackloads of cash these movies have been consistently making; meaning we've barely had the time to swallow Age of Extinction's introduction of the Dinobots before the series moved on to something even wilder, this time with seemingly no basis within the original toy brand.
Transformers: The Last Knight is hitting the history books, with its first trailer opening on a bizarre montage cutting from an Arthurian battleground - complete with mecha-dragons - to Nazi Germany. We know Once Upon a Time's Liam Garrigan has been cast as King Arthur, but there's no sense yet of how any of this will tie in with the film's primarily modern day setting.
That timeline seems to be in crisis, with widespread devastation, Optimus Prime seemingly dead and floating in space, and the impending intergalactic threat closing in on Earth.
Overlaying all this are the sombre tones of the esteemed Anthony Hopkins, who joins the franchise to play what kind of seems like a secondary version of his character in Westworld; delivering a grandiose monologue about "two species at war. One flesh, one metal".
Everything then ends on the trailer's big twist: Bumblebee and Optimus Prime are suddenly doing battle, with Optimus pinning his former ally to the ground and seemingly impaling him right in the face. Has something sinister taken hold of our heroic Autobot leader?
Who knows how any of this will tie together. Then again, cohesive storytelling isn't exactly the main attraction of the Transformers movies. Let the metal smashing metal begin.
Transformers: Last Knight hits UK cinemas 23 June 2017.
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