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My take on the movie is that it's like Rogue One, but dialed up to 11 - all that was good and bad about that film is here, but magnified to an even greater degree. Is it good? I don't know. The visuals are stunning, and I certainly enjoyed it because of that. But the characters and plot are badly lacking, and it's not a film I'd sit down to rewatch anytime soon. But I also feel like it could have been so much better had there been just a few extra scenes put into place - like maybe an extended introduction showing Joshua and Maya interacting together for more than twenty seconds, rather than constantly flashing back to what looks like a goddamn pregnancy photoshoot.
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Oct 11, 2023 19:31
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Also the degree to which this was trying to be a Vietnam movie was certainly impressive. Putting in Huey-esque whump whump whump roter noises for the American VTOL aircraft wasn't particularly subtle, but a nice touch. I also thought the LA nuke was supposed to be reminiscent of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in that the enemy didn't actually do anything but it gets used as an excuse to kick off the war anyway... Though that did also introduced one of the movie's many, many Fridge Logic moments, "Why the hell didn't Joshua already know this when he was embedded with this group for long enough to marry their leader and get her pregnant?" 
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Oct 11, 2023 19:39
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Blood Boils posted:Josh "knew", as in believed, that the toasting of LA that took his parents and limbs was a deliberate attack by AI. That's why he signed up in the first place, became a James Bond guy, infiltrating and seducing. Dude you don't have to defend every plot hole and bad writing choice in the movie.
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Oct 11, 2023 20:19
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Seldom Posts posted:The stuff he said is actually in the movie, the stuff about it being a Gulf of Tonkin incident is something you made up. That's not - no, buddy, listen. In the film, Joshua is embedded as a deep cover agent with the AI insurgency. He has been with the group long enough that he has not only won over the heart of their leader, but he has married and she at least 8 months pregnant. The second-in-command of this group, Harun, knows Joshua and trusts him enough to leave him alone with both the group's leader and an American prisoner. Later in the film, once he's taken prisoner, Joshua about to be executed by Harun, who as an aside reveals that the nuclear detonation in LA that started this war was a human programming error and had nothing to do with AI. Maybe, in the five years since these two last saw each other, that knowledge about the LA nuke made its way to Harun. But on the face of it, it's a ridiculous reveal - you trusted this man that much as a part of your insurgency, but somehow the fact that the single biggest motivation for this entire war is a lie just never came up???? I compared it to the Gulf of Tonkin Incident because this movie so desperately wants to be a Vietnam War analogy, and like Tonkin the inciting incident didn't actually involve the supposed enemy, and was instead faults in our own technology - radar ghosts and coding errors. But with that being said, this movie fails spectacularly at making this clear to the audience. I was watching the movie and I caught it. My partner was right next to me and missed it. Apparently, you didn't catch it either! And I don't know about you, but "oh yeah the whole basis for this war is a lie" being a throwaway line that is easily missed is some really goddamn bad screenwriting.
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Oct 11, 2023 21:37
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:This is one of those things that only happens, much less has consequences, in movies. It's true, the public reveal that the government has been lying about a war has never had major consequences PeterWeller posted:An explicit line of dialog being missed by an audience member is not the screenwriting's fault. Sure, to be fair, it's not just the screenwriting's fault. But let's look at a counter-example, one of the most famous reveals in all of film: "Luke, I am your Father." It comes at the climax of a major scene, and the protagonist is in significant danger - so the audience is paying the most attention. It's part of a back-and-forth conversation between Luke and Vader, so the line is built up to and it's not just exposition or a monologue that a distracted audience member might tune out. And Luke reacts to it, confirming how important this information is. Of course, the director also shares some of the credit. The music, backdrop, character acting, and dramatic camera angles all highten the delivery and importance of the line, absolutely driving it home that this is important information that majorly affects the protagonist, and completely reframes our understanding of the relationship between Luke and Vader. It is as shocking as it is iconic - a good reveal! Of course, I'm not going to say that John David Washington needed to start wailing to make this scene in The Creator work. But at the same time, the way this scene was done really showcases how badly this film fails its characters. This is the first time that Harun and Joshua have spoken to each other in years, two former friends and comrades-in-arms, both with a close relationship to Maya, who died because of Joshua's betrayal. Captured and potentially about to die, this is Joshua's lowest point in the film, while Harun is at a high point, having just secured the weapon that could win the war for the AI and having the opportunity to get revenge on the traitor that (effectively) killed his close friend and leader. So does he greet Joshua as a former comrade? A traitor? Do they reminisce? Emote in literally any way? Of course not! The conversation does nothing to establish any kind of relationship between these characters, Harun just delivers some exposition and then tries to kill Joshua before running off at the last minute, the only hesitation being "hmm should I kill him right now or wait until after I find out what's going on up top." The only thing the scene does for the film is deliver exposition, specifically that the LA nuke was the result of a coding error and AI does not in fact want to murder humanity, but does nothing to establish what our protagonist might actually think about this information (That, as I already mentioned, he reasonably should already know as a former member of this group!) And this is important information for Joshua - at his lowest point, with his last friend dead, he's being told one of the worst events of his life was the fault not of AI, but of his own government. He should at least have *some* reaction to it! But he takes it silently, and it does nothing to shift his ongoing character arc - he does change sides after this point, but that's explicitly due to his relationship with Alphie and trying to protect her rather than any expressed shift in motivation towards the government. For the characters and the audience, the line may as well not exist - which is a major screenwriting problem! This film has a lot going for it, and I liked aspects of it. But this scene highlights one of its biggest problems: the script mostly fails to develop the majority of the characters, and wastes what opportunities it has to do so. Acebuckeye13 fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Oct 12, 2023 |
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Oct 12, 2023 17:30
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:True, but this is one piece of a larger puzzle in which the public is politically engaged. More recent occurrences have demonstrated why such a revelation on its own is meaningless. To a degree, sure. The Bush administration lying about Iraq wasn't as damaging to the war effort because there was already pre-existing antipathy towards Iraq and many people struggled to distinguish between Al Qaeda and the insurgency groups that formed after the invasion (especially since while there might not have been much Al Qaeda in Iraq before the invasion, there certainly was some afterwards!) On the opposite end of the spectrum, if, say, Pearl Harbor had actually been a false flag or if the World Trade Center just collapsed on its own, that information becoming widespread probably would have affected the public's support for those wars. (Not that we really even know how much the public supports the war against AI, though - there's like one scene with an American civilian that has meaningful dialogue in the whole movie) All that said, I can absolutely buy that "The LA nuke was actually an oopsie" would not, by itself, end the war - the juggernaut of the war machine has gone on too long and has too much momentum for that to happen. But the reveal should have at least some effect in the film, certainly on Joshua's character, and that it doesn't makes it feel particularly pointless.
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Oct 12, 2023 17:50
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Blood Boils posted:The behaviour of the Yanks is the most realistic aspect of the whole thing! I mean the VTOL jets were literally making Huey whup whup whup noises, I don't know what to tell you. though I guess you could say the war on terror was itself a vietnam allegory
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Oct 21, 2023 06:37
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