The Creator

My girlfriend and I went to see this at the Odeon yesterday and really enjoyed it. It had real lived in feel to the world, the two that came to mind when watching this were District 9 and Chappie.
The technology was logically advanced, they didn't go down the "everything is floating holograms" route although that tech does exist in some form.
Very well acted, especially the little girl playing Alfie.
Although we could have waited for this to hit Disney+ for free in a month's time, the cinema was only £5 each and well worth seeing this on a big screen.
Top marks to Gareth Edwards for creating a 2 hour slice of sci-fi that will hold up to repeat viewing.
 
Saw it twice so that I could enjoy the spectacle the first time then so I could really pay attention to the production and set design. I think in comparison to other similar scifi films its good overall considering. Writing definitely at times felt rushed while glossing over some of the contextual plot points, but still great movie.

Birdie said:
I was frustrated by the movie, beacause it could have been so much better. There are a lot of important plot points that are dismissed with a throw-away line, the visual world building is let down by the textual and it felt compromised by essentially being a family movie, and the huge over familiarity of the final act really kind of lost me.
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Yea, i get that. I feel like, and I say this with complete transparency that I am not trained or educated in filmmaking or script writing; part of that feeling of plot points being dismissed is due to writing but also scale. Writing wasn’t groundbreaking but was still good in my opinion. But I also feel that when you are building a world that exceeds a certain point in scale, it becomes hard to condense it into 2hrs. But maybe thats just me. ‍‍
 
To add to the party, my wife and I thought the visuals were amazing. Where we felt the film suffered:
  1. Too many interesting ideas crammed into a single movie (use of AI, Vietnam imagery, when is a machine a being?, right of a country to defend itself, what is love...)
  2. Lack of emotional depth. We're shown a single scene of a relationship and all character motivations seem to be driven from that one scene. There was not enough meat on the bone for me to become emotionally invested in the main character and to understand his motivations.
  3. Gaps (and/or plot holes) that were hard to look past -it felt like the story was either based on another work and they left pieces out, or there were a LOT of scenes left on the cutting room floor. Why did the flying missile platform have crops? What motivated the general go from empathetic to a mustache twirling bad guy? How was the US able/allowed to launch a full-size military attack on another country from what started as a stealth mission? Why were people willing to have their faces replicated on robots?, ....
Are we glad we went to see it? Sure, but I agree that there was probably a much better movie in there that we didn't get.
 
Snow Builder said:
To add to the party, my wife and I thought the visuals were amazing. Where we felt the film suffered:
  1. Too many interesting ideas crammed into a single movie (use of AI, Vietnam imagery, when is a machine a being?, right of a country to defend itself, what is love...)
  2. Lack of emotional depth. We're shown a single scene of a relationship and all character motivations seem to be driven from that one scene. There was not enough meat on the bone for me to become emotionally invested in the main character and to understand his motivations.
  3. Gaps (and/or plot holes) that were hard to look past -it felt like the story was either based on another work and they left pieces out, or there were a LOT of scenes left on the cutting room floor. Why did the flying missile platform have crops? What motivated the general go from empathetic to a mustache twirling bad guy? How was the US able/allowed to launch a full-size military attack on another country from what started as a stealth mission? Why were people willing to have their faces replicated on robots?, ....
Are we glad we went to see it? Sure, but I agree that there was probably a much better movie in there that we didn't get.
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The 'donate your likeness' thing seemed to be just an excuse to justify the completion of Washington's story arc. Or something. As you say, it was like a bunch of stuff was missing. Were the AI's unable to create random human likenesses for some reason? Programming? Did all the cops have the same face? Why did some have human likenesses and others were Chappie-like? I don't mind a bit of ambiguity in large scale sci-fi world building, but when something is set up purely for an unearned reveal at the end of the movie, it's bad writing.

I think the point of the initial guerilla tactics was that the US couldn't justify a full-on attack without an ensured decisive victory in the war. Hence the Vietnam-esque anti-war protests that were briefly seen. At the climax they knew that Nomad was likeley to be going down in a flames, so they were going to do as much damage as possible before they lost their mega-weapon.

Since the whole reasoning for the war deception didn't really make sense, it was difficult to really know why anyone was doing what they were doing! How much of the US military actually knew that it was all a lie?

In the first half of they movie, the plot wanted us to believe that the AI were the bad guys, so the General guy is portrayed as a standup guy. Once the cat is out of the bag, he became Dick Dastardly. Again, bad writing.

For all it's flaws, it was a pretty fun time. The bit with the suicide bombs was my favourite movie scene in a good while, so there's that :)
 
Snow Builder said:
To add to the party, my wife and I thought the visuals were amazing. Where we felt the film suffered:
  1. Too many interesting ideas crammed into a single movie (use of AI, Vietnam imagery, when is a machine a being?, right of a country to defend itself, what is love...)
  2. Lack of emotional depth. We're shown a single scene of a relationship and all character motivations seem to be driven from that one scene. There was not enough meat on the bone for me to become emotionally invested in the main character and to understand his motivations.
  3. Gaps (and/or plot holes) that were hard to look past -it felt like the story was either based on another work and they left pieces out, or there were a LOT of scenes left on the cutting room floor. Why did the flying missile platform have crops? What motivated the general go from empathetic to a mustache twirling bad guy? How was the US able/allowed to launch a full-size military attack on another country from what started as a stealth mission? Why were people willing to have their faces replicated on robots?, ....
Are we glad we went to see it? Sure, but I agree that there was probably a much better movie in there that we didn't get.
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1. I do agree. There were lots of avenues to explore here, and we only get 133 minutes. Still.. it was ambitious, and I loved it.

2. I guess we're all different? I absolutely was invested, wanted Joshua, Maia and Alphie to all 3 survive together, and felt sorrow that the parents didn't make it.

3. I assume nomad had crops aboard because they have people living and working up there, and they can't just trek food up all the time when it's in orbit and always moving. I did think (as you did) that the Colonel's motivations seemed to immediately pivot once she'd decided that Joshua was a "traitor", though that single-minded thinking seemed to common to most of the Western military personnel we were shown. I don't believe it STARTED as a stealth mission. Joshua's undercover mission was occuring alongside the operation of the NOMAD platform (at least it seemed so) and I got the impression that the West had been using NOMAD for several years prior to the mission that Joshua was sent on. His was sort of the "ace in the hole" mission that the West cooked up to counter the threat of "The Weapon", and take out "The Creator" all at once. I expect they were willing to have their faces replicated onto robots for the same reason we have our pictures taken or shoot home video: a form of immortality. And after all, the simulants need faces, and yours will be gone when you die, so why not donate it and be immortal? That was my take, anyway.
 
fantastic visually, and agree some things seemed rushed or not flushed out.

BUT -
Gareth Edwards’ first movie since Rogue One may not be another Star Wars movie, but The Creator has some of a galaxy far, far away in its DNA. Not only is it the Rogue One director’s first movie in seven years, it also includes some fun nods to the 2016 movie… that is, if you look hard enough.

The Creator VFX Supervisor Jay Cooper has a deep history with the Star Wars universe given he’s been with Industrial Light & Magic since 1998 and had a hand in past films all the way back to 2002’s Attack of the Clones. When recently speaking to The Direct about his work on The Creator, he shared that there is a direct connection between the new sci-fi movie and Rogue One. As he shared:

We have an Easter egg of K-2SO [from Star Wars: Rogue One] in the movie as well. But you know, you're gonna have to find that one on your own… It’s in there. I can circle it if I’m given the chance.
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Thick visuals. Thin plot. Giant plot holes and questionable decisions. I walked out feeling I ate a high calorie dessert but I was still hungry. Beautiful to look at for sure.
 
I loved it, really blown away by the visuals, haven't really had time to think of anything negative, just too much impressed

Can't wait to get The Art of book & it will be a film for my BluRay collection

J
 
baron von blondle said:
Seen it 4 times now, watched the making of, bought the Art Of..book. I'm totally in love with this movie! Gonna have to make me some props from it to further my obsession.
Bravo Gareth Edwards and all involved.
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The making of on Disney+ was amazing. Gareth Edwards REALLY knows how to make a film. The way they shot it all guerilla style on location with prosumer cameras with professional lenses and then used the main chunk of the budget to then go in and do the VFX was smart.
Hearing how they would use 2D mattes tracked in rather for certain background shots rather than expensive, labour intensive 3D models again shows this is a man who plans his films very well and I really hope he gets a shot at a Marvel film in th future.
 

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