10 Great Performances That ALMOST Saved Disappointing Movies

Classically trained and always game for a bit part, Anthony Hopkins apparently didn’t get the memo that Michael Bay’s Transformers series required no proper acting of any kind.

Transformers: The Last Knight is the fifth film in the franchise (and, woefully, not the last), bringing together series regulars Mark Wahlberg, Josh Duhamel and John Turturro for another round of shouted exposition and CGI nonsense, alongside new recruits Jerrod Carmichael, Santiago Cabrera and, of course, Hopkins.

The gambit was undoubtedly that any film about knights - robotic or otherwise - needed an old British air of authority to sell to American audiences. And boy does Hopkins sell it. Playing the astronomer and knighted earl Edmund Burton, he provides the backbone of the film's attempts to connect Transformers to Arthurian legend. He is charismatic, charming and does more acting than the rest of the cast combined.

While his part alone would almost have been worth the price of admission, the film itself was so disappointingly bad he couldn't quite take that honour.