Has anyone else seen The creator?
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
Finally saw this. It definitely groped toward being a brilliant movie in the first half, before coming off like someone rushing to meet a deadline in the last 30 minutes.
The movie is beautiful, like a live action Tales from the Loop (I didn't see the Amazon show, which didn't look like my kind of thing) and it's stacked with great actors. But the film is let down by its script repeatedly, which feels like it was written well before ChatGPT and not shown to anyone who knows anything about AI.
First, given how important the difference between robots, AI and simulants is in the movie, the film does a really terrible job making the differences between them clear. And the idea that all of them aren't sentient is so wildly untrue, it's weird when characters claim that they're not -- it feels like a scene was cut from early on the movie that explains how anyone could possibly believe this.
Also, simulants apparently eat and have sex. Which raises a bunch of questions that aren't even remotely addressed.
It also strains credulity that enormous American warmachines can apparently sneak up on people across Southeast Asia without warning, despite -- in one key case -- said warmachine being the most important weapon in the world and the side that officially has AI (not really, though -- if your bombs say it was a pleasure serving with you, then the Americans have AI as well) doesn't have an AI tracking it full time?
Speaking of American warmachines, in the last 30 minutes, we get a ludicrous amount of new information about the setting, which is largely told by the screenwriters hopping from one point to another, and hoping we won't ask too many questions. The manned war satellite that was hanging in the sky over Vietnam earlier in the film suddenly turns out to actually be enormous and up at the outer fringes of the atmosphere, have an enormous staff on board, be doing hydroponic farming for some reason, have no serious protocols about airlock breaches. Oh, and we'll casually mention that there are lunar colonies and you can catch a flight to them from LAX. (Also it's apparently possible to go from parking to the gate at LAX at a speed that is the least plausible thing in the entire film.)
The geopolitics are messy, in a bad way. If you turn subtitles on, you'll see that there are multiple Asian languages being spoken, which is fine, but if you're going to have Ken Watanabe speaking Japanese, other characters speaking Thai and Vietnamese, why make up "New Asian?" And what the heck is that supposed to be? There are hundreds of languages spoken in Asia. Even in an alternative timeline that had robots around for decades, why would they all give up their languages and adopt a new common tongue? Wouldn't they just go with Cantonese or Hindi or something else already widely spoken?
And without seeming to have anything in particular to say about the Vietnam War, other than it was bad, man, the film really leans hard into every cliche of American bad behavior in the Vietnam War, 50 years after it ended. I think my dad would like this movie, but he's still not fully recovered from his time in the war and I feel like this would make him miserable, just because Gareth Edwards apparently really liked Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket.
Having said all that ... I guess I kind of liked this? Without officially being a Terminator film, this is the best Terminator film -- and the first one to try anything new -- since T2. When they inevitably reboot Terminator again (without Linda Hamilton, who's officially said she's finally out), I hope they look at this movie and try to tackle something similar, instead of just showing scaaaaary AI shooting up mankind again.
The movie is beautiful, like a live action Tales from the Loop (I didn't see the Amazon show, which didn't look like my kind of thing) and it's stacked with great actors. But the film is let down by its script repeatedly, which feels like it was written well before ChatGPT and not shown to anyone who knows anything about AI.
First, given how important the difference between robots, AI and simulants is in the movie, the film does a really terrible job making the differences between them clear. And the idea that all of them aren't sentient is so wildly untrue, it's weird when characters claim that they're not -- it feels like a scene was cut from early on the movie that explains how anyone could possibly believe this.
Also, simulants apparently eat and have sex. Which raises a bunch of questions that aren't even remotely addressed.
It also strains credulity that enormous American warmachines can apparently sneak up on people across Southeast Asia without warning, despite -- in one key case -- said warmachine being the most important weapon in the world and the side that officially has AI (not really, though -- if your bombs say it was a pleasure serving with you, then the Americans have AI as well) doesn't have an AI tracking it full time?
Speaking of American warmachines, in the last 30 minutes, we get a ludicrous amount of new information about the setting, which is largely told by the screenwriters hopping from one point to another, and hoping we won't ask too many questions. The manned war satellite that was hanging in the sky over Vietnam earlier in the film suddenly turns out to actually be enormous and up at the outer fringes of the atmosphere, have an enormous staff on board, be doing hydroponic farming for some reason, have no serious protocols about airlock breaches. Oh, and we'll casually mention that there are lunar colonies and you can catch a flight to them from LAX. (Also it's apparently possible to go from parking to the gate at LAX at a speed that is the least plausible thing in the entire film.)
The geopolitics are messy, in a bad way. If you turn subtitles on, you'll see that there are multiple Asian languages being spoken, which is fine, but if you're going to have Ken Watanabe speaking Japanese, other characters speaking Thai and Vietnamese, why make up "New Asian?" And what the heck is that supposed to be? There are hundreds of languages spoken in Asia. Even in an alternative timeline that had robots around for decades, why would they all give up their languages and adopt a new common tongue? Wouldn't they just go with Cantonese or Hindi or something else already widely spoken?
And without seeming to have anything in particular to say about the Vietnam War, other than it was bad, man, the film really leans hard into every cliche of American bad behavior in the Vietnam War, 50 years after it ended. I think my dad would like this movie, but he's still not fully recovered from his time in the war and I feel like this would make him miserable, just because Gareth Edwards apparently really liked Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket.
Having said all that ... I guess I kind of liked this? Without officially being a Terminator film, this is the best Terminator film -- and the first one to try anything new -- since T2. When they inevitably reboot Terminator again (without Linda Hamilton, who's officially said she's finally out), I hope they look at this movie and try to tackle something similar, instead of just showing scaaaaary AI shooting up mankind again.
Wofano Wotanto
Hero
And if you are going to have everyone inexplicably adopt a common artificial language, you lose significant snarkiness points by not making it Esperanto.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
I would not be surprised if there are more people who speak Klingon or Na'avi than Esperanto, although I do love the Google Translate Esperanto filter for coming up with fantasy words that don't sound like nonsense. (Seriously, it's great for that -- as long as the words don't sound too much like English, they almost always sound like a real language, because they are, and you're never going to end up offending the Esperantans by using it that way.)And if you are going to have everyone inexplicably adopt a common artificial language, you lose significant snarkiness points by not making it Esperanto.
Wofano Wotanto
Hero
Granted, and I wouldn't be surprised if Quenya edges it out as well. Probably not Tsolyanu, Tekumel is a bit too obscure. Which just makes the idea of all of Asia adopting Esperanto funnier, really.
Pretty sure William Shatner doesn't know Klingon but certainly does (or did, anyway) speak Esperanto, which seems weirdly fitting for a Star Fleet officer.
Argyle King
Legend
I like the idea of the film.
I think there's a lot of really cool world building that is part of the film.
But, somehow, despite the film containing a lot of component pieces that I think are really cool; I found the actual film as a whole to be a bit of a slog to get through. It's one of the few films during which I've fallen asleep in the theater.
Great ideas, but rather dry execution
I think there's a lot of really cool world building that is part of the film.
But, somehow, despite the film containing a lot of component pieces that I think are really cool; I found the actual film as a whole to be a bit of a slog to get through. It's one of the few films during which I've fallen asleep in the theater.
Great ideas, but rather dry execution
Paul Farquhar
Legend
I agree with the above. The execution was dull, and it was obvious early on where it was going, so I got bored, despite it's good intentions.
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