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Nov 27, 2023 15:25
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Mr. Grapes! posted:The movie had a lot of cool visuals and ideas. Alpha is able to easily board the plane because she hacked into the spaceport's automated security systems. The government is unprepared for this, fails to respond in time, and then doesn't shoot down the plane because it's full of hostages. The technicians aboard NOMAD do not evacuate because they're scared of Alpha; they are mostly unaware that she exists. They are scared because areas of the station are suddenly venting atmosphere and ejecting people into space. The system's compromised, they've lost most of their security forces, and evacuating turns out to be a very good idea when the entire station detonates shortly afterwards. We're shown that both sides of the conflict have various assets at their disposal, with NOMAD simply being what gives the US a very slight edge in the conflict. The balance shifts not only because NOMAD is destroyed, but because Alpha will soon be able to commandeer and/or disable most of the US's weaponry. This is a fairly direct reference to Star Wars: A New Hope - where the Empire is, likewise, actually on the verge of losing the war at the start of the film. The entire hastily-implemented scheme is put in motion by the Imperials because they're losing ground.
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Nov 27, 2023 17:14
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Alpha is able to easily board the plane because she hacked into the spaceport's automated security systems. The government is unprepared for this, fails to respond in time, and then doesn't shoot down the plane because it's full of hostages. I don't think the movie is being clever when it makes all the Bad Guys systems automated in the faction of people opposed to automation. I don't think Alphie's skills give her Flash-style speed that lets her reach a spaceport on foot, that is not under any sort of lockdown during the very public escape of Enemy Number 1. This is explicitly a war against AI, and I'm supposed to believe a spaceport in wartime (of a losing war, as you say) doesn't have visual inspection of passengers. Alphie is not in disguise in any way, she is explicitly a robo kid with a very obvious chromed up head, and everyone who sees it reacts to it. Again, I'm not opposed to the movie having its cake and letting Alphie get onto Nomad, but it does so in an egregiously dumb way when they could have just flown her up there on her initial capture, or had her hijack the very aircraft she was captured in. As for Nomad itself, if the movie wants to design its ultimate superweapon as ridiculously easy to conquer, then I think it is fair to question it when it never really required an Alphie to wreck it. In Star Wars only Luke is able to make this 1 in a million shot vs the Death Star because of space-magic, but even still it is only possible because he smuggled the plans in. It looks like in the Creator that it is basically simple to hijack any space-plane and drive it straight to Nomad, defeat the half dozen security guards, and force the other military personnel to totally evacuate the station in the face of 2 people, who are then able to gain full control of the place. They didn't need Alphie to do any of this, just some standard 1990s terrorists with bombs. If the US are hypocrites who rely on automation ANYWAY, as the movie wants to imply, then why no robo-security in space that doesn't need air? Oh yes, the giant octopus. I don't really accept that the US is losing this war, they seem to be able to operate in New Asia with impunity, and are able to deploy/supply these giant building sized tanks. To be honest the movie seems really confused about 'New Asia' and is just wanting to do Vietnam references , and chooses to decide randomly whether the US can just vaporize everybody from space with impunity, or suddenly need to feel overwhelmed by a few SUVs full of cops. I'm not trying to shoot down the whole movie, I liked it. But if I were to recommend it to people, it would be with caveats that it falls apart in the 3rd act. Plenty of movies I like do the same. Wish they didn't.
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Nov 28, 2023 01:11
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Mr. Grapes! posted:I don't really accept that the US is losing this war Well, you're right about one thing: this is definitely some Cinema Sins poo poo. What's shown onscreen is that it takes very little time to get from the road to the airport. That makes sense because the protagonist's entire plan was, of course, to deliberately crash the van and escape to the airport at around that point. It's also established that this takes the villains entirely by surprise, because they thought Alpha was dead and Joshua had been, however reluctantly, repatriated. So, we have a rough timeframe for how fast the baddies are supposed to figure out the situation, issue descriptions of the fugitives to local authorities, and put the airport and surrounding area on 'lockdown': maybe 10-15 minutes? Against this, you are just ignoring the information on the screen: "They should not have been able to reach the airport!" Why not? "The airport should not have automated security systems!" But they did, so why not? Or stating what's happening on screen but... sarcastically?: "Why no robo-security in space that doesn't need air? Oh yes, the giant octopus." Like, straight-up rejecting the information of your eyes and ears because you believe that the movie isn't 'clever enough' to exist in front of you: "I don't think the movie is being clever when it makes all the Bad Guys systems automated." So, therefore, the systems are not automated? The way out of this nonsense is to make some pretty basic inferences. Like, 'they can vaporize people from space, yet their forces get overwhelmed by the local police?' Instead of dismissing that as "randomness", the obvious conclusion to draw is that the US forces are easily hamstrung, and it's only the special technologies aboard NOMAD giving them an edge in the conflict. This is supported by other textual evidence, such as the fact that the conflict has been going on for a very long time with little progress for the US. Or the characters just directly stating that NOMAD is key to the US's strategies and they'll lose the war without it. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Nov 29, 2023 |
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Nov 28, 2023 22:14
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Well, you're right about one thing: this is definitely some Cinema Sins poo poo. I don't reject its existence, I think a lot of it weakens what would otherwise be a better movie. I know as an AI you are obligated to fight for Alphie here, but I can see the movie and it exists. I can also see choices made by the filmmakers as ineffective and jarring in the context of what they presented before. Regardless of how far the airport is from the overpass, it is plenty enough time to say "No one flies out of LA today" in that this Alphie Operation is the only way to win this losing war - there would be a lot of attention. Lunar travel is so ubiquitous that even Most Wanted criminals can just walk to the airport, buy a ticket, board, wait through safety briefings, launch, and hijack the plane before anyone would make a phone call. Again, I accepted from the moment I saw Nomad that Alphie would need to be up there for the movie's climax, I get it. There are just plenty of less stupid ways to get up there, and the makers of this film chose a convoluted and stupid way for her to get there. (Why not just have the bad guys bring her directly to space, and she uses her powers to escape/subvert this somehow). Instead we have a series of incredibly dumb events where they bring her to LA, have the rebellious soldier privately 'kill' her with no witnesses, and then have to drive her to a whole separate disposal facility so he can hijack the truck and hijack the plane. The reason the Nomad evacuates isn't because of any logical reason, it is because the movie needs Alphie to destroy Nomad but also doesn't want Alphie to kill a lot of people. Do you think the final sequences of the movie are very effective compared to what came before? I think it is pretty common for interesting sci-fi to poo poo the bed in the third act, and Creator's got some dirty sheets. Okay, they guard the spaceport with automated defenses in a war vs robots who can hack them because they're Dumb Bad Guys, but then they also show us a clerk just accepting Alphie at the airport even though everyone in the world is shocked that a robo baby exists. The clerk wasn't a robot. It is absolutely the job of airport security people to scrutinize this poo poo. It is doubly their job to scrutinize suspicious robots during the war against all robots. This happens in Total Recall and it is on the surface equally stupid that Arnie can buy a ticket on a rocket to Mars, but then the movie works with that by revealing later on that the bad guys wanted Arnold on Mars all along, so they allowed him to get through. Like, what is this war even about? We're told the US is in it to wipe out AI. Yes, I get the subversion that they have suicide bots and a robot octopus and an entire space ship (where cargo space must be at a premium) just packed full of robots. Okay, so the bad guys are hypocrites and the war is just to kill some but not all robots? They want to kill Alphie, but also have no idea on a conceptual level of what Alphie looks like or is capable of - they just want to kill a Vague Noun. It feels a little lazy in an otherwise detailed and dense movie. Like in Equilibrium the bad guys are hypocrites who suppress everyone's emotions because emotionless people are easier to predict and control, but their leaders still want to enjoy Beethoven or whatever. But in the Creator the bad guys are hypocrites because we want to do a Vietnam without doing our homework. The movie establishes the Bad Guys as hypocrites who employ robots, but only for really dumb reasons that would altogether be better if they didn't have robots. Like, - Hordes of powered down robots that can easily be hijacked into Rebel-Bots by placing a USB in their head, right on their most vulnerable spaceship (that only has room for a few actual security guys) - Suicide Bomber guys that exist to do the lame movie thing where the entire battle shuts down so we can watch a single awkward robot run at a crowd on a flimsy wooden bridge that could easily be wiped by the giant-mega-tanks sitting right there, all of whom stop shooting so we can watch Alphie Have A Moment. I even liked the suicide bot's design and hesitant mannerisms, but it was also jammed into the film awkwardly in one of those sequences where the entire battle pauses around our main characters, despite their destruction being the primary reason for the battle in the first place. - Airport Defenses that are easily subverted and have no human backup, whatsoever These don't really offer us any illumination, they just serve as plot shortcuts to put Alphie and her mom on Nomad, etc. Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Nov 29, 2023 |
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Nov 29, 2023 01:31
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Mr. Grapes! posted:some Cinema Sins poo poo
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Nov 29, 2023 03:53
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One thing I think the movie actually does do a pretty good job of is showing how hypocritical the Americans are in the way they approach AI and automation and technology. It culminates in the reveal that a giant chunk of NOMAD is literally filled with dormant simulants in an area explicitly called AI Research, and multiple times during the movie they’ve downloaded somebody’s brain on to a chip expressly designed for slotting into the simulant bodies. “My AI is the only moral AI.” I don’t think it was at all unreasonable that the movie made their hypocracy their weakness. ephori fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Nov 29, 2023 |
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Nov 29, 2023 04:11
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The actual real US was able to vaporize lots of people with no warning in Afghanistan and Iraq (for example) and yet lost those wars. They do not actually want to exterminate AI/brown people but to subjugate them. The problem you are having is that you think technology and money should make you smart and invincible but they do not
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Nov 29, 2023 05:24
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I can't remember, are we ever told what NOMAD is an acronym for?
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Nov 29, 2023 06:46
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Tree Bucket posted:I can't remember, are we ever told what NOMAD is an acronym for? North american Orbital Mobile Aerospace Defense
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Nov 29, 2023 07:26
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Plus it's a nod to the star trek episode The Changeling and the military sci-fi comic book Alien Legion
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Nov 29, 2023 08:23
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It's now pretty clear that your issue isn't actually with the plot, but with a curious belief that the movie "wants" things and is trying to fool you. For example: "The reason the Nomad evacuates isn't because of any logical reason, it is because the movie needs Alphie to destroy Nomad but also doesn't want Alphie to kill a lot of people." It might look like there is a logical reason for the technicians to evacuate (i.e. threat of death by suffocation), but clever cynicism has revealed the truth: it's all an illusion! You're watching a movie, and none of it is reality! (Whoa!) The evacuation is just a contrivance by the movie to get rid of the staff.... But you seemingly haven't asked yourself some basic questions, like why the space station is manned in the first place. Because, you know, the fact that the filmmakers designed the station to have comfortable-looking living spaces for the technicians, constructed the evacuation sequence VFX, and paid many actors to portray the technicians... this all contradicts your belief about the movie's intentions. As usual, cynics are the biggest dupes. You're expressing a belief that, if we were to brush away the movie-ness of the movie, there would remain a pure reality where things behave 'naturally' - as you expect them to. A guy (who?) should, naturally, make a phone call (to who?) and 'lock down' the entire city of Alternate Universe Future Los Angeles within minutes, right? So the fact that he doesn't must be an unnatural imposition from outside, disrupting your immersion. These are fantasies. No such reality exists, and no-one has stolen it from you. This is purely interpretive failure.
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Nov 29, 2023 08:48
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What are we to make of the idea that there were no robot children before Alpha? It's not that the robots don't have parenting impulses — they clearly do. Why do some robots purposely model themselves after elderly humans, but never children or teenagers? Is there some kind of robot taboo against it?
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Nov 29, 2023 18:04
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Good movie. It was beautiful and gently caress US imperialism. As for the "problems" with it- I think the sci fi gunships making Huey sounds is emblematic of all the issues, but also so blatant that (for me) it effectively lampshades and forgives everything. It had the trappings of a hard sci-fi world, but so does Star Wars. This was an evocative fantasy world with a beautiful coat of sci-fi paint. Accept that and the movie is incredibly enjoyable. Simplex posted:Something I keep coming back to is that the robots are wholly designed, created and manufactured by humans, but it's not terribly clear why. Why would you give feelings to your toaster? I do think there is a bunch of a running theme that the world is overly cynical, and arguably that is the purpose of the AI, to provide compassion.It's kind of interesting that the US views the AI as effectively Screamers and that those emotions are simulated at best and just another weapon in the robots arsenal at worst. For instance that machine panicking about losing a child when they wake it up in the ruins of LA- No one programed them to panic. They just put in human-like programming to do human-like tasks without thinking about it too hard. Our protagonist callously says, "it's just programming," and he's right. But it's the same programming that humans run on. He was talking about a person programmed exactly the same as he was, but had an excuse to dehumanize it. Does that make perfect sense? Maybe, maybe not. But it makes enough sense for me to accept in this evocative fantasy world.
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Nov 29, 2023 20:54
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This came to Netflix not long ago and I made time for it. While I haven't finished digesting my thoughts on it, my initial impression was: drat, what a movie-rear end movie! Really enjoyed it. It made Avatar and Blade Runner 2049 both look like poo poo in comparison. Frankly, it felt like the better than/actually good version of a dozen different recent and semi-recent scifi films. God drat!
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Dec 18, 2023 01:22
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I hated the sound effects in this. Bloops and blorps. Space station go blorp? Guns go bloop? Eh? Least it looked pretty.
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Dec 21, 2023 11:58
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Garland (and Tony Gilroy) both have the eye for ‘realising’ the fantastical by grounding it and not shying away from destruction at a human level. The tanks rolling in to the camp in this are dangerous and weighty in a way that so much other sci-fi could learn from
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Dec 21, 2023 13:41
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Splint Chesthair posted:What are we to make of the idea that there were no robot children before Alpha? It's not that the robots don't have parenting impulses — they clearly do. Why do some robots purposely model themselves after elderly humans, but never children or teenagers? Is there some kind of robot taboo against it? Seems likely .They were waiting for the creator to figure out how to make 'real' children; offspring that truly grow and so on.
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Dec 21, 2023 19:51
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Total Meatlove posted:Garland (and Tony Gilroy) both have the eye for ‘realising’ the fantastical by grounding it and not shying away from destruction at a human level. The tanks rolling in to the camp in this are dangerous and weighty in a way that so much other sci-fi could learn from I don't think alex garland was involved in this movie
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Dec 22, 2023 20:07
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Neanderthals trying to kill what they think is baby Homo sapiens Hitler is a great idea for a movie.
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Dec 22, 2023 20:38
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DeimosRising posted:I don't think alex garland was involved in this movie lol I knew it was Gareth Edwards as well.
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Dec 23, 2023 23:49
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live with fruit posted:Neanderthals trying to kill what they think is baby Homo sapiens Hitler is a great idea for a movie. Yeah this movie ruled and the detractors sound like the same people who praise aliens for its “Vietnam allegory.” A lot of my favorite moments have already been commented on but one of my favorite shots is the look of fright on the robot’s face as it’s being built in the shop. Really captured that feeling of a newborn being born in an adult body. Also, it’s more than likely just “soldiers being into everything soldier” but I like the implication that maybe American theology has shifted to odinism.
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Jan 4, 2024 18:29
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Only heard about this movie a short time ago, sounds like it's visually pretty amazing. There appears to be one more screening happening in a cinema in the UK, which is about 40 minutes drive from me. I do like a scifi film that has cool visuals. And I can overlook quite a lot for that. But sounds like given the issues with the writing, I should just watch this on streaming instead? I do like supporting actual original creative content as well lol so maybe I should just go make my decisions for me, internet
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Jan 11, 2024 14:35
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It's worth seeing on the big screen.
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Jan 11, 2024 15:36
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El Grillo posted:But sounds like given the issues with the writing, I should just watch this on streaming instead? The film has great writing. People's brains just melt when you tell them that US military is bad.
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Jan 11, 2024 18:02
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The Creator's big problem is that it's corny and cliche but it looks great and has some interesting ideas. It should've been better and that probably affects the way people see it but it's still good.
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Jan 11, 2024 20:29
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It further cements Edwards as the poor man's Blomkamp
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Jan 11, 2024 23:10
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The visual were nice but yeah you got to really squint your brain at the story/dialog/characters/anything else.
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Jan 11, 2024 23:12
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live with fruit posted:The Creator's big problem is that it's corny and cliche but it looks great and has some interesting ideas. It should've been better and that probably affects the way people see it but it's still good. I don’t know how cliché the movie is; I believe the issue is that people are having trouble following a lot of the really outré stuff in The Creator, and so hold tightly to anything remotely familiar. “Good against evil? Yawn; I’ve seen that one before.” Really bizarre stuff goes uncommented-upon - like the reveal near the end that, despite his ‘inner growth’ as a person, nothing that the protagonist did actually went against America’s interests at all. Or the interesting plot point that he remembers nothing about his wife except literally the scattered images in the prologue. You can list all kinds of stuff in the movie that’s just fuckin’ bonkers.
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Jan 12, 2024 01:23
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Why did they go through the trouble of resurrecting the wife only to kill her again minutes later? Why didn't the kid get them both back to earth safely and just find another copy of her?
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Jan 12, 2024 01:26
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Cacator posted:Why did they go through the trouble of resurrecting the wife only to kill her again minutes later? Why didn't the kid get them both back to earth safely and just find another copy of her? Alpha was trying to bring her clone-mom back to Earth with her, but gave up when the brain-backup tech appeared to have failed. It turns out that it was just taking an abnormally long time to load, but Alpha was off the station by that point.
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Jan 12, 2024 01:34
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Alpha was trying to bring her clone-mom back to Earth with her, but gave up when the brain-backup tech appeared to have failed. What did it achieve from a narrative perspective?
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Jan 12, 2024 01:41
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Cacator posted:What did it achieve from a narrative perspective? I'm not sure what you mean by that. Any scene is automatically a part of a narrative, simply by being included in it. If you're referring to what the characters achieved, then Alpha got to lay her mother to rest in a space-garden. Then, unknown to her, this leads to the weird, interesting moment where this unique being comes to life exactly long enough to have a single moment of happiness. For Joshua, who witnesses this, it ties into his musings on Heaven from earlier in the film.
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Jan 12, 2024 02:10
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Cacator posted:What did it achieve from a narrative perspective? Want to say cheap emotional punch to add an extra feeling to a forgetable ending of a forgetable and story-wise bland movie.
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Jan 12, 2024 02:13
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It's forgettable it's forgettable I tell you I don't remember it at all my mind is blank please help
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Jan 12, 2024 03:07
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I think the film's issue is that it's just a little slow and a bit dull in its execution. There's not a lot of energy in it even as we hit the third act. It's surprising since keeping the pressure on was something Edwards did really well in Rogue One. As a result, one ends up thinking about terms like 'cliche' or 'plot hole' or whatever because the film isn't fun, excitin or viscerally engaging Something I hope Edwards remembers is that a good action scene is at least partially about anticipation. The suicide droids were great, but they just pop up. Take your time, show them. Let us see everything that's about to be used, let us think about how it might be used. It's something that Cameron understands extremely well and Edwards has done very well in the past.
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Jan 12, 2024 03:49
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Archer666 posted:Want to say cheap emotional punch to add an extra feeling to a forgetable ending of a forgetable and story-wise bland movie. It was a shocking moment to an ending that stuck with people, as proven by the fact that we're having this discussion at all.
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Jan 12, 2024 03:51
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Cacator posted:What did it achieve from a narrative perspective? It's poignant. The narrative logic of this movie is very dreamlike and emotional. If you need a logical grounded plot you are going to find this movie lacking.
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Jan 12, 2024 04:02
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Schwarzwald posted:It was a shocking moment to an ending that stuck with people, as proven by the fact that we're having this discussion at all. Cheap emotional punches are effective on some people. But considering the person I quoted seems to be questioning the narrative purpose of the scene, as do I and everyone I saw the movie with, I don't think its the intended reason why it stuck with people.
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Jan 12, 2024 04:05
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This movie really does separate some people from other people doesn't it
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Jan 12, 2024 04:21
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