The Creator (2023) - new original SF movie

[surreal]

Saw this on Friday, couldn't see a thread for it.  The trailer came out of nowhere a few months ago and immediately got my attention as I love Rogue One, Godzilla and Monsters.

On an incredible $80m budget Gareth Edwards has produced an original bit of sci-fi, not something that happens often, and it looks absolutely gorgeous.  Apparently by filming on location and inserting CGI afterwards, he gets an incredible sense of realism in the effects - I was really reminded at times of District 9 and also the art of Simon Stalenhag in the designs and shots.  Influences are clear, Apocalypse Now, Blade Runner, Akira, et al.

The movie itself wasn't quite what I expected, a lot lower-key than the all out shoot-em-up Aliens clone the trailer seemed to suggest.  John David Washington is great again, as is the actress playing the child.  A good solid story, it doesn't always work and some things had me scratching my head, but overall I really enjoyed it and it is great to have something that isn't Marvel or a sequel to something else for a change.

Also it is almost hilariously anti-US-military - in most future SF you have some made up miltary organisation running the show but in this all the gigantic tanks have "US ARMY" painted on them.  It's going to do very well in China and Asia as it is very anti-imperialist West, specifically stating that all the "New Asia" wants is to live in peace with their AI friends.

Anyway, if you like good SF it's worth checking out, not perfect but hopefully this may open a door to more affordable movie making and some fresh blood.

8.75/10

[JamesTC]

This had the same budget as the Adam Sandler movie Jack and Jill.

I saw it on Thursday in an advance screening. I did enjoy it. The scenes early on with the army did feel like it was very Aliens, but it ended up covering lots of ground. As you mention, Blade Runner felt like the big influence.

[Sarnie Rudeboy]

Edwards and their team are the best in the business in terms of VFX in my opinion. Great sound design as well so it's well worth seeing it in the cinema.

The dialogue is complete nonsense and the overall message seems to be unplug stuff at the wall.

I still enjoyed it though.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I saw it on Friday and it's an impressive achievement that it even exists, much less on such a relatively low budget. Kudos to the effects team, but I felt the script could have done with another pass. Washington and the kid carry the film well enough, but the supporting characters are pretty one-dimensional. I also thought of District 9 and the characters in that were far more vividly drawn.

Regardless of its own quality, I hope it does well enough that more original, mid budget stuff gets made (although I doubt it will).

[greenman]

The script was trying to do quite a lot plot wise and didnt really leave that much room for personality of characters but I think it held together pretty well with Washington selling the drama very well.

Beyond being non franchise/remake honestly I was surprised that such an obvious anti nuke Nam allegory with Americans as the bad guys could get made in the current climate.

[surreal]

Also a side note that made me laugh, I was wondering if Gareth Edwards was a Bill Hicks fan as in the "running dustbin" robots bit they were referred to as G-12 and G-13.  Made me think of Hicks "experimental weapons" bit about the Iraq war

[beanheadmcginty]

Watching this really made me want to watch The Golden Child again.

[M-CORP]

Saw this last night and would heartily recommend. The effects and world building are really well done, but what really impresses is you go in expecting some parable about the AI issues of our age, but at its heart 'The Creator' is a simple timeless anti-war film, where most have forgotten why they're fighting, the 'good guys' aren't who you think they are, 'survival at all costs' has become the only aim, people will interpret the fight through the biased lens of their home country, and very few seem interested in actually stopping the war. Reminded me of 'Avatar', but not as wishy-washy. It did go on a bit and could have ended effectively with

Spoiler alert

the child being shot on the bridge

[close]

, but I loved it overall.

[Head Gardener]

I saw this on Thursday with 2 teenagers who seemed to spend most of the time complaining about the editing, they even walked out at one point to see Saw X in another screening but came back complaining about that too. But I really enjoyed this for what it was with no expectations and the effects were great, an easy on the brain 8/10

[PlanktonSideburns]

Hilarious image, teenage editing snobs wandering from screen to screen

can anyone in Hollywood cut a bloody film these days? Come on Ioan, there's a new ken loach on in Home in half an hour

[Mister Six]

@Head Gardener, can you remember what they said? I'm intrigued.

[Head Gardener]

@Head Gardener, can you remember what they said? I'm intrigued.

My lads main beef was the sharp editing done like it was a trailer, he reckons the beach scene was the worst with the woman running out towards the sea and then next shot she's in a boat 200 yards out. He also compared the beauty of the slow, lingering shots of cityscapes in Bladerunner to the shots of the futuristic scenery in this cut away too harshly. He does make his own shorts and is a bit of a stickler for the way things (he thinks) should be done and his mate of course agrees with him as he's in a lot of them. Incidentally the trailer for his next one has been out a few weeks and he's finished it but currently waiting for the extra animated sequences to be done (by the main actor who's studying animation at Dundee Uni) this is how he reckons a trailer should be edited:

[PlanktonSideburns]

Tbf thats very nicely cut. Can't wait till I can trounce films with my children - your ones seem great

[Mister Six]

My lads main beef was the sharp editing done like it was a trailer, he reckons the beach scene was the worst with the woman running out towards the sea and then next shot she's in a boat 200 yards out. He also compared the beauty of the slow, lingering shots of cityscapes in Bladerunner to the shots of the futuristic scenery in this cut away too harshly. He does make his own shorts and is a bit of a stickler for the way things (he thinks) should be done and his mate of course agrees with him as he's in a lot of them. Incidentally the trailer for his next one has been out a few weeks and he's finished it but currently waiting for the extra animated sequences to be done (by the main actor who's studying animation at Dundee Uni) this is how he reckons a trailer should be edited:

Wow, I thought it was a couple of random teens, not kids you knew - and certainly not your own son!

Trailer looks great. How old are they? 18-ish? Very impressive.

[Head Gardener]

Wow, I thought it was a couple of random teens, not kids you knew - and certainly not your own son!

Trailer looks great. How old are they? 18-ish? Very impressive.

aww ta, yes they are both 18, subscribe to his channel he'll appreciate that!

[13 schoolyards]

I'm not canny enough to pass judgment on The Creator's in-scene editing, but it was very much a film where if you were distracted for a minute or two you'd come back to find everyone was somewhere completely different (or dead). The bit towards the end where

Spoiler alert

they go from escaping a crashed convoy on a road in the middle of some industrial dead zone / nuke memorial site to suddenly at LAX boarding a space shuttle

[close]

was especially "hang on a second" for me

[surreal]

I'm not canny enough to pass judgment on The Creator's in-scene editing, but it was very much a film where if you were distracted for a minute or two you'd come back to find everyone was somewhere completely different (or dead). The bit towards the end where

Spoiler alert

they go from escaping a crashed convoy on a road in the middle of some industrial dead zone / nuke memorial site to suddenly at LAX boarding a space shuttle

[close]

was especially "hang on a second" for me

Didn't help that it was the first movie in YEARS that I had to get up and have a piss in the middle, god knows what I missed...

[dr beat]

I found this a mixed bag but ultimately rewarding.  The first hour was a bit turgid and quite brutal in places for a 12A (although that could just be me) but the story developed nicely and the ending was satisfying enough.  I agree that the world-building was well done.

[Blue Jam]

Better than Blade Runner. Both of 'em but yes, even the first one. FIGHT ME.

^{*DISCLAIMER: I don't really want to fight your son, @Head Gardener}

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Better than the second one, no question.

[Blue Jam]

Big fan of Philip K Dick. Never liked Blade Runner.

Didn't recognise Ralph Ineson as General Andrews in this even though I knew he was in it and had been looking out for him. I wonder if he had plans for an AI superweapon capable of throwing a kettle over a pub.

[Cuntbeaks]

The relentless fortune of the main characters was something to behold.

The obvious Akira influences didn't save it either.

The best bit was i had the whole cinema to myself.

[Noodle Lizard]

It was nice for a midday afternoon nap in a relatively empty cinema, but I wasn't at all engaged by the first hour or so I saw. Maybe it got better, but I woke up in time for the final couple of scenes and it seemed to have ended up more or less where I thought it would.

I've not been a fan of any of Gareth Edwards' stuff, though. Him and Denis Villeneuve, they're just not for me.

[DrumsAndWires]

i was disappointed with this film

had high hopes - the premise looked interesting, it should be hard to make an AI film that's boring
but it just fell into a bunch of cliches and didn't do anything new. felt pretty mediocre

the soundtrack and effects were quite good tho

[holyzombiejesus]

I enjoyed it but agree it was pretty generic, bit of a kids film under all the other stuff. Felt weird watching it whilst bombs were being dropped on Gaza. Also, great to hear a "We've got company."

[greenman]

The trailers I think made it pretty clear it was going to be an action blockbuster with broad drama to it and honestly Edwards has never really done anything but that in his career, even Monsters you can see he's trying to make that kind of film on a small budget and even this looks like it cost twice as much as it did.

Having that kind of films with such a message to it though I think stands out quite a lot these days, things like the MCU can be somewhat anti establishment but really the standard tone for US blockbusters has been jingoism for 30 years now so having something that draws more on Nam films makes a nice change and has ended up being pretty relevant to the current situation.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

It's an interesting failure to me. It's frustrating but more fruitful than most standardized blockbusters. I still wouldn't call it good.

It looks great, with some fine world building, much better than productions that cost twice as much.
It's ballsy to criticize so much directly American imperialism, with a lot of obvious references to Vietnam.

But the plot has a ton of issues, that start with the first sequence in Asia.

Spoiler alert

Joshua yells in the walkie-talkie that he's undercover, something like 20 seconds after his wife has gone to the second floor. It makes the trauma central to the character completely contrived and phony.
Actually, the whole romance between Joshua and Maya is a huge train wreck that no quantity of Malickian flash backs could ever fix, especially with the reveals.
They found true love together despite the fact that she had zero idea that he's an undercover agent sent to kill her father and destroy all A.I. for the sake of the USA and because he hates A.I., while he doesn't know that she's the actual Nirmata he's supposed to suppress and that in her spare time she has scanned her own embryo to create a baby simulant.
A few steady couples may disagree about politics, and not know about each other's favorite colour or desert, but this is next level...

And regarding characters acting stupidly, we have twice a situation in which a character gets shot, but isn't hurt, fails to see that it's a sticky bomb, then dies with other soldiers twenty seconds later.

Now, we have the big, ambitious ideas that are not always well executed. Alphie's properties are mostly abstract. She's supposed to unite mankind and A.I. but apart from a couple of times, she simply acts as a remote that can shut things down.
Then Edwards is terrible when it comes to sketching side characters. Allison Janney has a blast chewing the script, Ken Watanabe is his usual vindicative but righteous self, but otherwise we get a list of characters that get introduced then killed twenty minutes later (a little like Children of Men, but Children of Men was precisely built on this long chain of sacrifices that epitomizes humanity at its best). When Earth is finally "saved", there's a series of shots on children and crowds smiling, but I never had the feeling that there was someone I could relate to.

[close]

Anyway, in this universe, I'm pretty sure Q-tip makers would make a fortune.

[dissolute ocelot]

Just watched this. (It's on Disney Plus now, but I rented the BluRay via Cinema Paradiso).

It's definitely a mash-up of a lot of stuff: Blade Runner, Children of Men, stuff about every American war and 9/11. It looks gorgeous, both in terms of the CG and the SE Asian locations, and the design is mostly great (the robots look cool), and things like the blue laser targeting light sweeping over the landscape are cool.

It's just a shame that the human side is so shit. The writing and characterisation stuff is terrible. Imagine a version of Blade Runner where nobody said anything cool or did anything interesting or unexpected. Maybe in part it's because I don't see the point of John David Washington, in Tenet or this or anything, he's just a bloke with a beard who can act a bit but has no charisma. You can't have an action hero with a beard (Chuck Norris and John Krasinski both tried it).

The casting otherwise isn't bad but does feel cheap, Allison Janney is a poor person's Melissa Leo or Angela Bassett; though Watanabe and the little girl are both good. The plot randomly jerks about despite being in large obvious and inevitable. Yet as it progresses, it makes very little sense if you try and piece it together - ah but she was really secretly ... huh? They let him - what? Oh they just met up? Is he that stupid? Etc. Also, the score is credited to Hans Zimmer, but what score? While it's an interesting decision to largely have silence and just a few songs, it definitely weakens the atmosphere. Again, think of Blade Runner without Vangelis. I won't specifically comment on the editing, but I'm guessing it was heavily influenced by exactly what special effects shots they could get. Though the way the flashbacks were just cut in without any transition was a bit jarring as well for an action movie (although fine in an art movie about memory).

Indiewire reviewed this saying it could be a game changer for making films with sub $100m budget that look amazing, but as a film it kind of sucks, and it's hard to argue.

[dead-ced-dead]

Indiewire reviewed this saying it could be a game changer for making films with sub $100m budget that look amazing, but as a film it kind of sucks, and it's hard to argue.

I agree largely with this. It would be nice to go back to a time where there were a handful of not-quite-blockbusters-but-bigger-than-midbudget films out there, like Blade or Hellboy or even Underworld. But at their best, all of those franchises had a spunky, offbeat charm to match their thrift.

You can't have an action hero with a beard (Chuck Norris and John Krasinski both tried it).

John Wick?

[greenman]

Just watched this. (It's on Disney Plus now, but I rented the BluRay via Cinema Paradiso).

It's definitely a mash-up of a lot of stuff: Blade Runner, Children of Men, stuff about every American war and 9/11. It looks gorgeous, both in terms of the CG and the SE Asian locations, and the design is mostly great (the robots look cool), and things like the blue laser targeting light sweeping over the landscape are cool.

It's just a shame that the human side is so shit. The writing and characterisation stuff is terrible. Imagine a version of Blade Runner where nobody said anything cool or did anything interesting or unexpected. Maybe in part it's because I don't see the point of John David Washington, in Tenet or this or anything, he's just a bloke with a beard who can act a bit but has no charisma. You can't have an action hero with a beard (Chuck Norris and John Krasinski both tried it).

The casting otherwise isn't bad but does feel cheap, Allison Janney is a poor person's Melissa Leo or Angela Bassett; though Watanabe and the little girl are both good. The plot randomly jerks about despite being in large obvious and inevitable. Yet as it progresses, it makes very little sense if you try and piece it together - ah but she was really secretly ... huh? They let him - what? Oh they just met up? Is he that stupid? Etc. Also, the score is credited to Hans Zimmer, but what score? While it's an interesting decision to largely have silence and just a few songs, it definitely weakens the atmosphere. Again, think of Blade Runner without Vangelis. I won't specifically comment on the editing, but I'm guessing it was heavily influenced by exactly what special effects shots they could get. Though the way the flashbacks were just cut in without any transition was a bit jarring as well for an action movie (although fine in an art movie about memory).

Indiewire reviewed this saying it could be a game changer for making films with sub $100m budget that look amazing, but as a film it kind of sucks, and it's hard to argue.

Character wise really it struck me as more just rather bland than especially "bad", the performances are all decent enough(even if Washington Jn isnt the most charismatic) but your dealing with pretty generic blockbuster roles. Unlike Rogue One which I felt had some quite interesting characters to it this is more Avatar level characterisation and character stories, hero finds out he's fighting for the wrong side quite early on and then stands up for the oppressed locals.

You could argue the setting has a bit more nuance than Avatar I spose with the US being less obviously evil and driven more by misplaced hatred/fear than just greed. Again I think though the main thing in its favour is simply being an anti western imperialism film in an era were they have becomign vanishingly rare compared to say the late 80's and early 90's, Hollywood fell in love with jingoism sometime in the mid 90's and we've had god knows how many alien invasion/disaster films with the homeland under threat ever since.

It does ultimately seem like a bit of an advert for Edwards and his style of working as much as a film in its own right though. The ironic thing seems to me that whilst he was fucked around with by Starwars he's actually a very good fit working in a franchise like it, something which brings a bit more of its own character and individuality to mix with his style.