Paramount Pictures unveiled an extended look at Transformers: The Last Knight during the Super Bowl with an explosion-filled TV spot. Michael Bay returns to direct this fifth entry in the Transformers franchise, which finds Mark Wahlberg reprising his role from the semi-reboot Age of Extinction. This new film introduces some serious mythology involving King Arthur, as Optimus Prime and his cohorts are in a very precarious position.

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Image via Hasbro/Paramount Pictures

So, now, Optimus Prime is evil? Or corrupted? It's just a bit confusing to me. Then again, reason, logic, and consistency are not what one goes to a Transformers movie to witness. No, no. Transformers is meant to impress with sheer technical wizardry, kibble for people who think James Cameron takes too long to make movies. Bay, as interesting a modern auteur as there is out there, is obsessed with technological progress in film, always looking to use the very best equipment on the shoot and the most awe-inspiring effects on this blue planet. That's what you come to see and The Last Knight looks like it has the requisites from what is on display here.

I do, of course, question just why Anthony Hopkins is here and what deeply unconvincing doozies will have to be dropped in the movie proper to explain its time-jumping storyline. As is the tradition with the cinema of Bay, the script will no doubt load the film's excessive runtime with enough backstory to sustain a study of Norse Mythology, an element which I believe this franchise has already touched on. My preference would be for Bay to just use his talents to make a big explosive celebration of nonsense, with less of the family values moralizing and the inevitable romances that add unneeded narrative fat to what is, in portions, a dazzling expression of how effects and visual fireworks have advanced in the age of the computer.

Watch the Transformers: The Last Knight Super Bowl commercial below. The film also stars Laura Haddock, Stanley Tucci, Anthony Hopkins, Jerrod Carmichael, John Goodman, John Turturro, Josh Duhamel, Isabela Moner, Gil Birmingham, and Jean Dujardin. Transformers: The Last Knight opens in theaters on June 23rd.