The Creator

Looks like an interesting film. That being said, I couldn't help but think of Ultraviolet due to this having a similar "protect the child you were supposed to kill" plot.

The CGI looks really good. Hope it has something interesting to say.

New trailer. CGI continues to look great.

I'm really willing to bet the inciting incident was False Flag Operation.

Do we have any theories on how this will do at the box office? It only cost $80 million so it doesn’t need to be HUGE, but the Box Office Reddit is not optimistic.

So the Rotten Tomato score here is a solid 84% at 44 reviews, further cementing my desire to see it in IMAX.

Edited by BigBadShadow25 on Sep 26th 2023 at 1:20:06 PM

Looks like an interesting film. That being said, I couldn't help but think of Ultraviolet due to this having a similar "protect the child you were supposed to kill" plot.

I'm sure there are more specifics that tie the two together, but I find it kinda funny to leave it that vague since we basically have whole trope about that^note Yes, I know that the trope encompasses a lot more, but "hitman decides not to kill the child target and then adopts them" is one of the most common versions of the trope.

Edited by Larkmarn on Sep 26th 2023 at 1:24:54 PM

Been hearing some people say the script and certain other aspects of the film were written by an AI. Anybody know if that’s true or simply a myth?

Really?

That sounds like the kind of baseless rumor that doesn't need to be given any more oxygen.

It's now at 67 and dropping. Seems we have a wonder woman 84 on our hands of it actually hekbt a hugely positive score you know before it comes out and it turns out critics don't actually like it

Specifically, the "Top" Critics on RT seem to think it's just mindless spectacle, generally.

Yeah uh this is probably not good since it's going to need good word of mouth.

Ngl this is funny with it's comepetior saw x which everyone thought would suck is in positive range and being praised for being strangely poigent.

Edited by miraculous on Sep 30th 2023 at 8:31:12 AM

Just saw it and that would basically be my conclusion. Not bad, but not great either. More detailed thoughts spoilered: So, the film clearly doesn't want to actually explore anything about AI, it wants to use AI as a way to say 'everyone's human' which isn't a terrible aesop or anything, but is pretty boring as far as Sci-Fi goes. And, in my view, it somewhat undercuts its point with the 'LA was the fault of humans who just blame A.I.s' as in that view, A.I.s aren't just human, they're fairly obviously morally superior. I'd have gone with 'LA was a mistake by a group of radicals, which Nirmata punished them for, but you would never believe that, never accept that they could act independent of us.' Also, 'we're all human' sits a bit awkwardly with 'we'd like to let Nirmata go in peace, but our programming literally won't allow us to let her die, even though we recognize that as the morally correct thing to do.'

And then there was a lot of awkwardness to manufacture tension, in fairly silly ways. I think my favorite of those was the suicide robot running bombs. Like...why? You have giant tanks and artillery and an orbital station, what are we doing here? A close second would be Alphie can turn off weapons—okay, I can buy that everything is electronic in the future, so she can turn off the guns (I mean, we directly see they have to sleep/recharge, so just wait for that to happen and kill her, but whatever) but, like, she's small, physically weak and can fairly easily just be blown up with a purely chemical reaction, or chopped to pieces with an axe, especially as you clearly know this as you've tied her to a bed! This is really dumb, guys. Or, of course the giant, trillion dollar floating death star doesn't have any weapons capable of targeting the unarmed civilian shuttle speeding towards it? Also, it's a really good thing they evacuated everyone rather than just stationing two large soldiers in front of the command room and grabbing her when she tries to run in.

But the visuals are spectacular, the acting is generally pretty good and they're usually good about pushing their 'everyone is human' message consistently, even with the bad guys. I will also say acting as if a trillion dollar station is irreplaceable is just...silly? Like the US military budget is three quarters of that for one fiscal year, now. Building another one of these is not a major problem and destroying it really can't win them the war.

Edited by ECD on Sep 30th 2023 at 2:14:20 AM

Reason I was asking if the film had been written by an AI such as Chat GPT along with an AI Art Generator, was because it certainly felt like it.

The script, scene transitions and overall writing seemed random, the music at points seemed like the sort of semi-coherent-yet-gibberish mixes AI usually tend to create, and even the art design on various aspects of the characters, such as the uniforms, felt like an AI prompt for "near future cyberpunk soldiers."

By the end of the film, both me and by friend walked out genuinely believing this was some sort of weird experimental piece with a budget, but still impressed with the supposed end product. Not because of the quality, but due to believing the AI did a great job at hashing out a decent mix of cyberpunk/robot tropes into a film, and also for being visually striking. At least that would explain all of the oddities... but nope, apparently it was a 100% human project all along.

Another thing... why is the US Nomad station so clearly visible from orbit?! Even assuming it was orbiting at an extremely low altitude, there's no way it would be THAT easy to spot, and the thing's at best the size of a large airport, not a freaking moon. Heck, in the beginning I thought it was just some floating aircraft carrier.

Eh, I'd say the story was as coherent as I expect from movies and the editting/score didn't jump out to me as problematic.

The only real story problems were standard villain idiocy and a few places where trying to preserve a twist and one too precious line introduces some fridge logic.

Now, if you'd told me it was based on some 50 year old, not terribly good Sci Fi novel and trying too hard to be faithful to the 1970s vibe, I'd believe you.

I assume that's not actually aimed at me?

Edited by ECD on Oct 1st 2023 at 10:02:33 AM

So less a conspiracy theory, and more a way for you to be bashy.

Is that gonna be the new "written by a 12 year old" thoughtless insult nowadays? "Feels like it was written by AI" as a compeltely vague insult without any sort of actual specificity?

Edited by ArthurEld on Oct 1st 2023 at 11:31:19 AM

I assume that's not actually aimed at me.

But to defend that comment, it is raised in a couple of the reviews I saw (e.g. https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/the-creator-review-ai-john-david-washington-sci-fi-movies-gareth-edwards-1234829559/ and https://www.npr.org/2023/09/28/1202299557/the-creator-film-review-ai) but only in a fairly sarcastic 'it supports AI, so it must have been written by AI' way.

I do think a lot of the reviewers are letting their personal concerns about Chat GPT et al and their potential effects on their jobs effect their views of this film, which is pretty transparently using AI as an allegory for other forms of bigotry, not as a literal plea for AI equality. But then again I'm the guy who goes 'nah, the X-Men definitely should be registered, its a better analogy to gun control than to genocidal bigotry' so I can't really blame them for that.

The problem is that "oh it sucks it must've been written by AI" isn't just a tasteles, already stale joke with no weight.

It's an accusation of something quite serious. It goes beyond "haha, writing bad" into "i believe the people behind this are using a parastic tool to cut out actual hard-working creatives"

I had trouble sympathising with Joshua considering he slept with Maya under a false identity combined with the history of police getting women pregnant while lying about their identity then disapearing with no consequence

I agree with the critique that this really could've used some more moral ambiguity, especially since a lot of the war scene visuals are clearly inspired by Vietnam, the Evil Versus Evil conflict of real-world living memory. Instead, the American humans are cackling barbarians, and the AI and their allied humans are saints, with the one moment of gray they get, Not Saw Gererra considering martyring Alphie in a suicide attack on the Not Death Star, being dropped as soon as it comes up. I saw the twist that the Americans' entire Pretext for War was a false-flag to cover up their own cock-up coming from a mile away, and rolled my eyes at it when it did.

With that said, everything else was solid, especially the visuals, the acting, and the plot twists that weren't the aforementioned one. Plus, Robo-Buddhism. That's got to be in the top ten fictional religions, right?