Transformers: The Last Knight | 2017
- Locations |
- Detroit, Michigan;
- Arizona;
- London;
- Hampshire;
- Hertfordshire;
- North Yorkshire;
- Northumberland;
- Oxfordshire;
- Tyne & Wear;
- Surrey;
- Wiltshire;
- Scotland;
- Wales;
- Northern Ireland;
- Republic of Ireland;
- Cuba;
- Namibia
- DIRECTOR |
- Michael Bay
Discover the many, many locations for Transformers: The Last Knight – Detroit and Phoenix in the USA, Namibia in West Africa, Cuba in the Caribbean, the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and all over England…
OK, let's go... (and, by the way, the geography is as crazily random as the film’s screen ratios).
"England: the Dark Ages" and the legendary King Arthur is fighting against Saxons with catapults hurling fireballs. Being England and a battle scene it's bound to be, and is, Bourne Wood in Surrey.
Ever since Ridley Scott chose this spot for the opening battle of Gladiator, it's become a screen favourite, not least for Scott who returned here for both Robin Hood (2010) and Napoleon (2023).
The forest clearing supplied the muddy battlefield of WWI in War Horse; Tim Burton built 'Collinwood Manor here for Dark Shadows; Thor fought inhuman hordes in Thor: The Dark World. Apart from battles, it became the gypsy encampment in 2005's The Wolfman with Benicio Del Toro, and the woods of 'Gantua' in Jack The Giant Slayer.
The wood, open to the public, is on Dene Lane, off Tilford Road, southeast of Farnham (rail; Farnham, from London Waterloo).
Arthur's army is in big trouble and waiting for magic help from Merlin (a scene-stealing cameo from Stanley Tucci), who's a long way off, galloping through the Uber-photogenic avenue of beech trees made famous in Game of Thrones.
It's the Dark Hedges, on Bregagh Road between the villages of Armoy and Stranocum, in County Antrim, almost 50 miles northwest of Belfast, Northern Ireland.
The 150 trees were planted toward the end of the 18th century by James Stuart as an impressive approach to his new house, Gracehill (which lives on as a golf club). Due to damage caused since its fame, the stretch of road has been closed to traffic.
Merlin is clearly taking the scenic route, turning up at the Autobot crash site which is on the Isle of Skye, with those sheer cliffs and the instantly recognisable rock formation called the Old Man of Storr. Aliens seem to like this spot – there was another discovery here in Ridley Scott's Prometheus.
It's here that Merlin is handed the Staff – the MacGuffin that everyone will be chasing for the rest of the movie (this may be the most elaborate MacGuffin setup in movie history).
“1600 years later” Optimus Prime is gone and Transformers have been outlawed in most places – except Cuba. And, yes, the few brief glimpses really are Havana. The Last Knight is one of two films (the other being The Fate of the Furious, aka Fast & Furious 8) taking advantage of US President Obama's brief lifting of travel sanctions to the island.
On to the restricted 'Alien Contamination Zone' of 'Chicago’, where a bunch of kids discover Izabella (Isabela Merced) looking out for her Transformer chums. The Transformers franchise has a long association with Detroit and this war-torn landscape is Detroit's defunct Packard Car Plant, East Grand Boulevard on the city's East Side. It closed in 1958 and since the 1990s has been largely abandoned and decaying.
It's proved a useful backdrop, appearing in both Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Age of Extinction, but this may be its final appearance. Demolition began in 2022, though as of 2024 this has temporarily halted and it's possible parts of the site may be preserved for their historical significance.
As the authorities close in, the kids are rescued by Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg), though not before dying Autobot Canopy gives him the Talisman, a kind of sub-MacGuffin that will lead to the real MacGuffin.
Cade takes Izabella back to his scrapyard in "the Badlands of South Dakota" where a menagerie of Autobots are lying low. This is Desert Valley Auto Parts, 22213 N 21st Avenue at West Adobe Drive, just northwest of Deer Valley Airport in Phoenix, Arizona.
Travel sick yet? Hang on, because we're off to the UK and 'Castle Colgan' which, in a flyover shot, is revealed to be Bamburgh Castle, a hugely imposing fortification sitting on a volcanic outcrop on the coast of Northumberland, about 40 miles north of Newcastle-on-Tyne.
Bamburgh was previously seen in Ken Russell's 1971 classic The Devils, and the same year in Roman Polanski's 1971 version of Macbeth as well as in historical epic Mary Queen of Scots.
'Castle Colgan' just might be another transformer – doing its own bit of shapeshifting later on.
The castle’s owner, Sir Edmund Burton (Anthony Hopkins), informs his autobot butler Cogman (if the voice sounds familiar, that's because it's Jim Carter, Downton Abbey’s Carson) that the thing they've been waiting for has happened and the Knight has arrived.
Meanwhile, and I'll be using that word a lot, Vivian Wembly (Laura Haddock) is playing polo on a field at the rear of Blenheim Palace, in the village of Woodstock, Oxfordshire, eight miles northwest of Oxford itself.
The 18th century palace, one of the largest houses in England, is the ancestral seat of the Dukes of Marlborough and famous as the birthplace of wartime Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill.
That's why there was a bit of an outcry at Blenheim's major appearance later in the film as the Nazi HQ attacked by Transformers during WWII. Churchill's birthplace being festooned with swastikas didn't go down too well with some people.
Blenheim has a long history on film. In fact at the last count, it boasts no fewer than 71 screen appearances. You can see it in in films as far back as Ealing Studios’ 1948 costume drama Saraband for Dead Lovers as well as Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, 2015 Bond movie Spectre, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, The Young Victoria, Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 film of Hamlet, Cinderella, King Ralph, the 1998 big-screen version of 60s TV series The Avengers, horror film The Legend Of Hell House, Shekhar Kapur’s The Four Feathers, with Heath Ledger, and many others.
Back to Vivian, who has to rush off to Oxford – only a few miles away – where she parks, none too well, in front of Oxford's famous circular 18th century Radcliffe Camera (nothing to do with photography – ‘camera’ is simply Latin for room) on Radcliffe Square. You might recognise it from recent productions such as Wonka and Saltburn.
It turns out she’s one more in the line of cinema’s unfeasibly glamorous young professors, lecturing school kids on Arthurian legend in the elaborately fan-vaulted Divinity School of Oxford University, part of the Bodleian Library. This was the lobby of the ‘House of Commons’ in 1994's The Madness of King George but is of course much more famous as 'Hogwarts’ hospital in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
She continues wandering, for no good reason other than no movie can have too many dinosaurs, through Oxford's Museum of Natural History on Parks Road.
Not used up enough air miles yet? We're hardly starting...
