On June 21, the Transformers franchise will try once again to breath new life into a (domestically) flagging IP. If audiences didn’t turn out for robot dinosaurs, maybe they’ll show up for robot dragons, robot knights, and evil Optimus Prime. But even if audiences are interested in the history of the Transformers on Earth, only the hardiest fan would want to sit through three plus hours of Michael Bay’s explosive take on an ’80s childhood staple.
Yet for a hot second, that appeared to be what we were getting. As of this writing, a Google search for the runtime of Transformers: The Last Knight states the film runs for a little over three hours. That’s climbing into Lord of the Rings: Return of the King territory, only The Last Knight isn’t trying to tie up a thousand story lines to end the franchise. So why? Why would it be that long!?
The short answer? It isn’t. After Twitter got wind of the bloated length of The Last Knight, Michael Bay was trotted out to do damage control. Just by the by, if you have to assure your fans that you won’t subject them to too much of you movie, that probably says something about the health of the franchise.
Reports of #transformers The Last Knight being over 3hrs is wrong. It's shorter than the last 3 movies by a lot.
— Michael Bay (@michaelbay) June 1, 2017
Transformers: Dark of the Moon clocked in at 154 minutes while Transformers: Age of Extinction had a running time of 165 minutes. If The Last Knight is shorter than either of those installments, it can’t run longer than two and a half hours. Phew. Dodged a bullet there. But now we know. Even the all-seeing eye of Google can get it wrong once in a while. Where is your techno-god now!?