The 5 Best Moments In the Transformers: The Last Knight Trailer

OKAY, SO THERE'S A DRAGON

Okay.

So we're sitting here, watching this trailer...

-- and it's weird, because it's supposed to be a Transformers movie but so far it's all full of medieval imagery and such --

...and suddenly, there's a f---ing three-headed robot dragon just kind of looping lazily around a seaside cliff face.

Like...yep. That's a thing that just happened. There's a great f---ing robot dragon in the beginning of this trailer.

Excellent. Excellent. Moving on.

UNDERSEA EXPLORATION

Alright, so now that we've settled into things a little bit, we can kind of focus on what's, at least marginally, more normal stuff. Like...

...whatever this thing is.

There's an undersea expedition going on, and arguably the most interesting thing about it is that it's clearly exploring something that's very deep and therefore presumably very old.

And it kind of looks like something out of Unicron from Transformers: The Movie.

There's been rumors that he might show up in this movie -- just like every other movie since the third one -- but the imagery here is hard to ignore and it's such a tantalizing prospect that even if this turns out not to be Unicron, we want to know: what the hell is it?

OPTIMUS PRIME HAS LEFT US

Alright, so we're recovered now from the madness of the knights and the Nazis and all that, and we're settled into what's a little bit more familiar territory for these movies. There's some military equipment, some crazy alien tech.

Oh, look. We're in space now, and...

...oh, for God's sake, really?

Okay, so Optimus Prime is dead.

...we'll admit this is kind of a heartbreaking visual, especially since they did manage to nail the dented-up, gray/discolored look that Optimus took on when he died in Transformers: The Movie (and a handful of other times, too; he dies more than you'd think).

Anyway, all joking about the craziness of this trailer aside, that's a badass place to start with your franchise character, and a hell of a tease to hand to audiences. Of course, that's not the last time we'll see Prime. Or the last time he'll leave us wondering what the writers are smoking and what the hell is going on...!

TWO WORLDS COLLIDE

...Ah, stability!

If this isn't a pretty great moment for fans of the Transformers film franchise, we don't know what is.

In a short bit near the end of the trailer, Josh Duhamel's Lt. Col. Lennox shows back up -- he was missing in action last movie, if you'll remember, as it was ostensibly a soft restart of the franchise after the main human leads changed over -- and literally joins hands with Marky Mark Wahlberg's Cade Yaeger.

That's it. Status quo! Feeling all warm and fuzzy now. This is the franchise we know and --

EVIL OPTIMUS

--Oh, for Pete [Cullen]'s sake. Of course he's f---ing evil.

Of course, we don't know exactly what's up with Optimus yet -- which is what makes this a great, shocking moment on which to end the trailer. It's easy enough to assume that the blade doesn't take out Cade, but that it does some serious damage to Bumblebee, perhaps leading to his messed-up look early in the trailer. But jeez, guys. What a way to go out.

It's certainly worth noting that Optimus has blue eyes in the shots leading up to his anti-Bumblebee rampage, and that in the moment, while he's beating on his old ally and asking for forgiveness, his eyes are purple -- likely blue mixed with Decepticon red?

In any event, for every kinda-neat, kinda-cool, kinda-normal moment in this trailer, there were two that made you go "what in the name of Orson Welles is going on here?"

...which pretty much is what makes it such a great trailer.