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lonelylikezoidberg posted:I hear what you are saying but am going to push back a little. In the movie an American official specifically says "we are at war with New Asia" Right, but not in the sense that you’re talking about (where it’s a full-blown occupation and they’re trying to overthrow the government or whatever). Exposition like that is there to supplement the visual storytelling, and the visual storytelling tells us - as you noted - that there isn’t any occupation shown, the major cities we see are largely untouched by the conflict, etc. That stuff may be going on in the background, since we’re actually told that there’s a ‘friendly’ zone for the Americans roughly a five-hour drive away from where the action takes place. But that means the narrative is set either very far behind enemy lines, or areas that the US had no intel about, or whatever. It’s also worth noting that, as in Star Wars, the US is explicitly losing the conflict - if not for the superweapon. GrandpaPants posted:I have a lot of questions about the plot but I want to know what the gently caress that tentacle robot was in the escape pod room. Like what purpose does that serve. It seemed pretty clear that it was for doing maintenance in antigravity, like a bunch of prehensile Canadarms strapped together.
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Oct 4, 2023 15:28
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Really torn on whether this is worth seeing in theaters. Is the consensus pretty much "looks good, but not your thinking man's sci-fi"?
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Oct 4, 2023 18:14
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Right, but not in the sense that you’re talking about (where it’s a full-blown occupation and they’re trying to overthrow the government or whatever). Exposition like that is there to supplement the visual storytelling, and the visual storytelling tells us - as you noted - that there isn’t any occupation shown, the major cities we see are largely untouched by the conflict, etc. Dude I appreciate your opinion but I think you are going to very great lengths to justify the disconnect between the verbal and visual storytelling. You should not have to be doing this kind of work. Ramrod Hotshot posted:Really torn on whether this is worth seeing in theaters. Is the consensus pretty much "looks good, but not your thinking man's sci-fi"? Yeah go see it lonelylikezoidberg fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Oct 4, 2023 |
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Oct 4, 2023 18:47
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Ramrod Hotshot posted:Really torn on whether this is worth seeing in theaters. Is the consensus pretty much "looks good, but not your thinking man's sci-fi"? More-so "wants to be for the thinking man but thinking actively works against it sci-fi." 1000/10 totally recommend.
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Oct 4, 2023 19:01
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Lobster Henry posted:How are people feeling about JDW? The protagonist in Tenet was purposefully underwritten, but here — I don’t know. He’s convincing without being particularly charismatic. I can’t fault him but I’m not sure he has what it takes to carry a movie. They don't explain the source of the video, but the implication is that the US lies all the time. The Colonels story about her son also seems made up, at least to me. There's a piece of dialogue in the movie where the protagonist says that he sees Maya all the time, because she donated her likeness and it's very popular, so odds are in any group of simulants there would be one that looks like her
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Oct 4, 2023 20:48
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lonelylikezoidberg posted:Dude I appreciate your opinion but I think you are going to very great lengths to justify the disconnect between the verbal and visual storytelling. You should not have to be doing this kind of work. Not really; in movies, imagery always takes precedence over dialogue. Approaching things the other way around leads to this thinking the motion picture’s moving pictures are ‘wrong’ somehow. But the pictures are clear, while a phrase like “this is a war” is ambiguous. There are many kinds of warfare.
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Oct 4, 2023 20:48
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Ramrod Hotshot posted:Really torn on whether this is worth seeing in theaters. Is the consensus pretty much "looks good, but not your thinking man's sci-fi"? I think it's worth seeing on the big screen. It's not at all subtle, but apparently having people in US military uniforms saying "we need to use our Death Star to kill all the 'robots', who are all Asian by the way, and behave exactly like humans, it's just that they're Asian and therefore different and deserving of our campaign of genocide now that we no longer need their surplus labor" was too subtle for most reviewers and the general audience. There's some interesting stuff at the margin about the nature of the Jedi kid and her mother and their role in the society they're fighting to preserve. Even if the plot and message don't grip you, the visuals are fantastic. It's one of the most "real" looking depictions of a future Earth because it was filmed on location instead of a blue screen sound stage and had the VFX overlaid on conventional shots. It's like watching Planet Earth, but with robots and explosions instead of the animals.
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Oct 4, 2023 23:58
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Joementum posted:
Big agree. If there's a spectrum of ambitious-and-gorgeous-but-ultimately-flawed-scifi, The Creator sits above Oblivion & Elysium but below say Moon & Chappie. It's totally worth seeing in theater though, the moment to moment experience is great even if it isnt' as resilient to scrutiny when you're walking out of the theater. I also think there's a big difference between "dumb" and "not as smart as I really wanted or hoped it to be". I don't agree that The Creator is a dumb movie. ephori fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Oct 5, 2023 |
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Oct 5, 2023 01:14
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ephori posted:I also think there's a big difference between "dumb" and "not as smart as I really wanted or hoped it to be". I don't agree that The Creator is a dumb movie. Take the earlier discussion over whether its message is 'relevant' now that the US has pulled out of Afghanistan. That's not a question that anyone asks about Antman 3: Quantumania, Spiderman 7(?), or the latest Official Disney Star Wars TV show. That might come across as damning with faint praise, but I legit believe you can (and should) use this movie to deprogram kids who've been fed too much Iron Man.
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Oct 5, 2023 01:46
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Had this scene breakdown video come up on YouTube. Apparently that monkey was a real one, and they had an unusual reward system for a good take from her... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMovnB6OAP4
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Oct 5, 2023 01:47
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Afghanistan: A Iraq: I The enemy is AI... COINCIDENCE?!? 
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Oct 5, 2023 05:39
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Lobster Henry posted:1) So, if Maya had been in a coma since the attack, where did the video come from that they showed Joshua at the start? Was it old, a fake, or were they just lying when they said she was verified human? it's an aside much like "nuke 9/11 was inside job"
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Oct 5, 2023 11:44
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ephori posted:Big agree. If there's a spectrum of ambitious-and-gorgeous-but-ultimately-flawed-scifi, The Creator sits above Oblivion & Elysium but below say Moon & Chappie. It's totally worth seeing in theater though, the moment to moment experience is great even if it isnt' as resilient to scrutiny when you're walking out of the theater. All those movies are flawless, though two of them are only pretty good as opposed to great Hopefully seeing this bad boy tomorrow 
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Oct 6, 2023 01:13
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I liked it, but our groups biggest complaint was with the NOMAD and its missiles. Like it's shooting out ICBMs that then cruise around like a regular rocket, there doesn't seem to be any benefit to the big station (other then the cool looking scanning laser) compared to just shooting off a regular ICBM. I thought this was a missed opportunity, they should have had a line at the beginning how the ai nations have better hacking or something, so any regular ICBM just gets turned around or deactivated. So the NOMAD should be using massive kinetic strikes. Those would be as big as nukes but not radioactive. The design and visuals already support this. The other thing they could have done, which would have been cool would be to have had NOMAD as an all analog controlled station, like super retro-futuristic, the reason it needs to be big and have a big crew that grows their own food. So they could say it's remote hack proof, that's why the kid needed to get on board. They could even of had a scene with AA missiles getting turned around by the kid when they were approaching.
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Oct 6, 2023 04:56
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This one particularly annoyed me for exactly the same reason AI annoyed me - let’s give the dead mother a short period of life at the end of the movie as a reward for the protag, before they die again. This time they even made it clear that bringing people back briefly is horrible and traumatising but hey let’s do it and make it look happy. Just wanted Maya to get a chance to talk - she’d secretly been building a robot sibling for her unborn child! Holy poo poo! Tell us more about that and how you thought that was going to go! Lovely visuals but I had Spaceballs pop into my head during the escape pod scene and the Dirk Gently books during the kid-in-front-of-tv scene. Kind of funny that the kid was growing up on anime about the Nomad being blown up.
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Oct 6, 2023 12:19
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Yeah I did think at the end that JDW should have said something like "our half robot, half child is alive and has brought peace to Earth", especially seeing as her last memory was being blown up on a beach.
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Oct 6, 2023 13:19
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Also while having just been betrayed by ol Josh too. But the movie forgets about her point of view completely.
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Oct 6, 2023 13:32
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Actually, the movie's disinterest in characters having conversations to explain their motivations or the world at large is a good thing
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Oct 6, 2023 14:46
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I really wanted to like this. Gareth Edwards has a great eye but a terrible sense of pacing and storytelling. This could have been half an hour shorter and the script did nothing to earn any of the emotional payoffs. Same exact issues I had with his Star Wars movie and Godzilla. Also, despite the general aesthetics and designs looking really eye catching and pleasing, every firearm looked dumb as all gently caress.
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Oct 6, 2023 16:50
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xiw posted:This one particularly annoyed me for exactly the same reason AI annoyed me - let’s give the dead mother a short period of life at the end of the movie as a reward for the protag, before they die again. This time they even made it clear that bringing people back briefly is horrible and traumatising but hey let’s do it and make it look happy. The movie’s ok with having problematic implications that give everything an interesting frisson. The Maya who appears at the end is not the actual Maya but a new being, like a twin sister to her. The family dynamics are a bit weirder than that, of course, since Maya 2 was quasi-accidentally created by her ‘neice’, Alpha - Maya 1’s daughter.* This Maya 2 is pre-programmed with the same memories as Maya 1 - of effectively sacrificing herself to protect her robot daughter, and implicitly some awareness of what was happening around her in the coma (wanting to ‘move on’, etc.). What Maya 2 actually experiences is just waking up in a green field aboard the NOMAD and watching it disintegrate for a few minutes, which tells her that Alpha was successful and that Joshua helped. It’s a little ‘poetic’ and unnerving that Maya 2 is effectively pre-programmed to accept death. In any case, the point is that the other guy’s clone had a bad time because his original died badly. Maya 1 had a ‘good’ death by comparison, so her clone wasn’t distressed. *Joshua seemingly had no intention to ‘resurrect’ Maya with the brain scan, given his opposition to the concept. He was treating it as a memento, like a photograph.
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Oct 6, 2023 17:05
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The whole brain scan thing was completely laff and felt so overstuffed in this film. Like so humans can live on in AI bodies even though the AI consciousness that inhabited the body before is now dead and blah blah ugh forget it do more Death Star targeting beam!!!!
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Oct 7, 2023 05:55
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I honestly can't tell if this is satire https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/movies-tv/the-creator-review-18390228 the bit about 'an American-led alliance of Western nations' when as far as i can tell there was absolutely no mention of any other countries seems like an indicator, but ... maybe not?
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Oct 7, 2023 06:15
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lonelylikezoidberg posted:I hear what you are saying but am going to push back a little. In the movie an American official specifically says "we are at war with New Asia" i don’t think he did, i think he said “we are not at war with new asia, just the elements that support the AI menace”. paraphrasing of course.
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Oct 7, 2023 08:03
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Just got back from seeing it finally, still sorting my thoughts; it's a lot of good clean fun. I sorta agree with the complaints about the pacing - it never lets up! Which is great since the 3 hours fly by, but that means we don't spend much time with the minor characters or locations, all of which are cool and I wanted more of. Not a huge problem to fill in the blanks; essentially Drew & Kami are Deckard & Rachel, Nomad Squad the Sulaco marines, etc. well why not posted:i don’t think he did, i think he said “we are not at war with new asia, just the elements that support the AI menace”. paraphrasing of course. Yeah, and it's also a public speech to Congress or the UN assembly, it has no relation to operations or tactics, it's just typical PR bullshit. Blood Boils fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Oct 11, 2023 |
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Oct 7, 2023 09:13
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Pretty good, I have a few complaints (the climax overall is one of those that drags out so long it gets ridiculous) but nothing fatal. I can’t help but feel it would be more entertaining told from the AI folks’ perspective, I mean I know why they didn’t do that but all of them just seemed more interesting.
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Oct 8, 2023 02:29
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I had no idea this movie existed until my theater listed it for viewing. took my dad to it, had a decent time. beautiful, beautiful movie. really gorgeous, brutal visuals, really interesting designs, the robots do fit great and the special effects are basically perfect, and it has decent acting. plot is pure plain oatmeal I do like more stuff doing the whole "nah guys we just wanna live our own lives too, we're not skynet you dumb loving assholes". not sure what it meant by "los angeles was a routing error" though, did they mean like, the nuke was supposed to go somewhere else, or what? what was a nuke doing in the middle of LA to begin with? seemed weirdly underdeveloped for the instigating event
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Oct 8, 2023 03:22
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He said coding error, I think. The implication being that the US misconfigured whatever AI/software that was in charge of its nukes and nuked itself.
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Oct 8, 2023 14:07
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The nuke in Creator is literally the same one from Terminator 2. The film takes place in an alternate Terminator timeline, in the same way that it’s also literally a Star Wars prequel. Edwards is a well-read guy, and knows that Skynet was programmed to “remove human decisions from [America’s] strategic defense.” The coders hadn’t thought about what, specifically, Skynet would be defending if not humanity. So, taking its orders to a logical conclusion - doing exactly what it was programmed to do - Skynet concluded that human freedom is the greatest threat to the capitalist system. (This is the point in all the Terminator films, but most explicit in Terminator Salvation.) As with Star Wars’ droid slavery issue, Edwards skips past the subtext of Terminator and gets direct to the point: Skynet was a product of systemic injustice, not its cause.
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Oct 8, 2023 14:44
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Had a great time in the movie and definitely think similar productions should be tried in the future. I think the world-building just got a bit too dense for the story to truly shine. Like the fact we can now transfer human memories and have lunar colonies seem to just be introduced and not examined at all. Like I was hoping there would be 1 robot solider who used to be human that's defected now that he's technically an AI and was thrown away by the government or something. I feel that they could do a lot with this world, which would be cool. Also a question: Wasn't it mentioned during the movie that Alfie would die if she shut off the NOMAD? It seemed pretty simple for her. Or was that just because they focused on the routing system inside the base as opposed the whole station from hundreds of miles away? Last thought: While the last shot of the NOMAD being destroyed was cool, I kept worrying for the people running toward the high speed crashing wreckage of a space station.
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Oct 8, 2023 15:50
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That last shot of the falling debris and people cheering was so reminiscent of ID4.
dpkg chopra fucked around with this message at 16:04 on Oct 8, 2023 |
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Oct 8, 2023 15:59
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CeeJee posted:Still trying to process this and decide what the weirdest thing is. I mean most of these aren't important enough to need explanation or necessary for the story to function, but if it helps: 1) Why would that need to be established beforehand? It's just a stolen vehicle, like the yellow farm truck. 2) They developed it the same way they developed all their weapons. They drove them down from their base of operations. 3) Mines, grenades and Molotov cocktails can disable normal tanks irl. Think of it like all the other tech we see - it's a mega mine, designed to take out super tanks! 4) Those guys are funny for us, the audience, but for the robots in the story they are terrifying, which is precisely why Nomad makes use of them. They're a psychological weapon, as well as practical. 5) Some are just tiny blinking lights, but whatever: the purpose of the displays is to let everyone know what's coming and how long we have 6) How is that weird lol that's just smart use of your enemy's infrastructure, as bin Laden proved 7) Probably Northrop&Grunman (or whoever the Yanks contracted to build them Nomad) didn't consider those kind of defences, which Alfie can disable anyways. Marines do try to stop them, but Josh and Alfie are a superior team! 8) We get both american and AI's explanations for it: the robots did it on purpose for no good raisin versus it was human coding error. Why would Howell plant it? That doesn't make sense, there's no indication her motivation is anything other than what she tells Josh. 9) I guess it depends on where you fall on the star trek transporter question but imo a clone with your memories is just that, you dead af 10) I don't even know what this one is trying to convey - yes, New Asia employs droids and Simulants? 11) That's what Drew believes after a very brief diagnostic, he could be wrong. And the movie is full of impossible technology regardless! None of this is strange unless you feel the movie needs to explicitly state how it's various technologies function, but from it's opening scenes it's clearly not that kind of story. It doesn't matter how the supergun works, the film is about personhood and oppression.
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Oct 8, 2023 17:12
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With how completely incompetent most of the humans were written in this film, I think they were definitely right to think that they were going to go extinct. The icing on the cake was the SUPER IMPORTANT MILITARY FACILITY getting boarded by a civilian shuttle and then the military squad sent to clean out the ship not even having any protection against being spaced... while on a space station. Not to mention the constant... uh, why didn't they just kill the weapon or shoot down said shuttle or... ugh nevermind. The writing on this film was absolutely terrible and the film was barely held up by the excellent visuals.
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Oct 8, 2023 17:30
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jeeves posted:With how completely incompetent most of the humans were written in this film, I think they were definitely right to think that they were going to go extinct. Same reason they didn't shoot down the 9/11 planes irl, they were unprepared and caught off guard. The space marines don't have time to get suited up, and underestimate their enemies resolve in any case. Americans are portrayed very accurately: they don't conceive of themselves as evil, or even as an empire! At worst they feel a little distaste at what the unpersons have forced them to do but still totally justified in the end. So General Andrews has no problem with granting Josh these in the moment inconsequential requests (delivering the coup de grace to Alphie, taking her to be buried), he's a hero soldier who has gone above and beyond for yankee interests, he's more than earned them.
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Oct 8, 2023 18:35
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That's doing a lot of work for the writing of the film and the characterization of the US baddies. I don't feel like the film had any of that without being subtext that I don't think really was there in the first place. Much like how Rogue One felt overstuffed with characters, this film felt completely over stuffed with half-ideas. If they had picked a few to hone in on more it would have matched the visuals. As for the main premise of humans being afraid of AI, I think Ex Machina kind of ate this film's lunch half a decade ago. There were a lot of really dark implications with the story of this film that the film makers seemed to pull their punches on, especially with a "child" being considered a weapon-- but then again it was created specifically to be a child so...? I feel like the film was basically made to be a 'squint your brain and don't think about it' type action film and yet it was trying hard to also be DEEP. Eh. I just don't think it works. Edit - ha I forgot about the 'automated defenses / tentacle machine' out of no where final 'boss,' not to mention the robot bombs that seem like they were going gain sentience as a plot point and then oops I guess not. Jeez, so wait does the US military trust robots machines or not...? And when is a machine a robot versus AI controlled robot versus an AI shell without AI running it but now has a human consciousness embedded in it... jeez. Pick a lane already. jeeves fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Oct 8, 2023 |
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Oct 8, 2023 18:53
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Just saw this, and I'll echo that this is very much a "vibes" kind of movie. Everything from Nanda Parbat onward is really silly imo and really grated on me personally. Also I found The Protagonist to be insufferably selfish and egoistic, which is probably the point, but man, been a while since I've seen such an unlikable main character. Everything else was great though!
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Oct 8, 2023 21:12
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:As with Star Wars’ droid slavery issue, Edwards skips past the subtext of Terminator and gets direct to the point: Skynet was a product of systemic injustice, not its cause. I think what I like is that it goes way beyond just a droid slavery/droid sentience theme, it's that the AIs, replicants, robots and so on are shown to be both "useless" (i.e. they do things other than labor) AND out-reproducing humans.
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Oct 8, 2023 21:59
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Blood Boils posted:10) I don't even know what this one is trying to convey - yes, New Asia employs droids and Simulants?
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Oct 8, 2023 23:21
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The nuke in Creator is literally the same one from Terminator 2. The film takes place in an alternate Terminator timeline, in the same way that it’s also literally a Star Wars prequel. Does it have podracing?
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Oct 8, 2023 23:44
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Captain Invictus posted:pretty sure they're talking about how unbelievably bad everyone, robot or not, is just the absolute worst cross-eyed shot in the world Oh I see. Well Josh at least is a good shot? Still seems like a bizarre complaint to me, every action movie would be over immediately if the shooting was realistic. If only the stormtroopers had just sniped everyone as they ran to the millennium falcon! Blood Boils fucked around with this message at 00:28 on Oct 9, 2023 |
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Oct 9, 2023 00:26
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Bogus Adventure posted:Does it have podracing? Flying a ship up to a space station and blowing it up from inside is a form of podracing, as Anakin notes at the end of Phantom Menace. HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:I think what I like is that it goes way beyond just a droid slavery/droid sentience theme, it's that the AIs, replicants, robots and so on are shown to be both "useless" (i.e. they do things other than labor) AND out-reproducing humans. Oh for sure. That's the stuff you're freed to get into once the usual poo poo is cleared out of the way. What's interesting to me is the big idea of 'donating your likeness'. It means literally every human-looking robot you see has a human 'sponsor'. But why? It could be that the guys in this universe haven't figured out how to generate unique faces, only able only copy, but I think it's better read as a choice: a curious pursuit of authenticity, where images of actual humans are considered more real. It also possibly ties into Alpha's apparent belief that Maya 2 is Maya 1. It's also funny to read that part of the film in context with CG Tarkin in Rogue One, as a contrast. Having your face purchased by Disney, versus lending it for use as agitprop.
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Oct 9, 2023 01:45
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