The Creator (2023)

[JunkMonkey]

Released last year - nominated for 2 Oscars, from a director with a track record including a Star Wars film, and, from what I can gather from a quick skim though the 'What's the Last Movie You Watched?' thread, seen by a few of our members; I'm surprised this film hasn't appeared in its own thread here.

Or am I? Having watched the first 40 minutes and deciding I couldn't take any more, I'm wondering if people are just too embarrassed to talk about it. Rebel Moon was bad and people don't seem to have any trouble talking about how bad it is. So where's the discussion about this pile of poo? I think possibly the difference between the two is that Rebel Moon's source material was so easily, instantly identified. It was obvious from about five minutes in that it was a Seven Samurai story set in a wannabe Star Wars universe, and that its director has Sucker Punch in his history.

The Creator (or at least the first 40 minutes) is less easy to pigeonhole like that. It's not so easy to know where to begin. But I will have a go:

For one thing it took so long to get started and couldn't seem to settle on a style. (Or an aspect ratio.) The opening retro-fifties newsreel footage of 'Robot AI are our friends, integrating into every level of society' was followed by an atomic explosion then some American general types, in a different style of documentary footage, telling us atom bomb explosion was set off ten years ago in Los Angeles... then we're ten years later and our hero has his 'cover blown' by American troops and his pregnant wife gets blown up... and then it's five years later than that... and maybe his wife isn't as blown up as he thought she was - and (for reasons) only HE can lead the American commando raid to the AI developer's secret base (not that he actually DOES anything when they get there that involves any local knowledge). And there are flashbacks thrown in the mix along the way and it's such a godawful mishmash mess that by the time it got to the running around blowing sh*t up behind 'enemy lines' stage I didn't care.

After 40 minutes of the film not really getting round to starting (a lot of stuff happened but the story never really got started) I was more occupied in trying to work out why our hero, who has an artificial, servo-mechanical leg as well as an artificial servo-mechanical arm, has to take his arm off while swimming in the swimming pool but not his leg. And how was that VAST underground base serviced through that one, hard to find, piddling manhole sized hatch hidden under the shrine in the village? They got all their logistics and supplies provided down that?
When our fleeing hero's van breaks down in the middle of 'somewhere in Asia' - the first person who comes along addresses him in English despite - we have been told - the Asian federation hating everything that America stands for... And how did the (former colleague) Americans now hunting him down (oh the oh so ironic twist) get the Reading Dead People's Memory Device they just happened to need to keep them on the right path? Seriously. On the side of a road, in the middle of open countryside, in the 'enemy' police van they were held captive in a couple of scenes before, they just whip out a huge piece of hi-tech brain scanner and get the info they need from a dead soldier. And why did they just walk away and leave that very useful bit of kit at the side of the road?

That is when I gave up. It looked pretty at times but any kind of attempt at internal logic had obviously irreparably fallen to pieces before they had finished the rough draft.

 

[Swank]

I tried to have a chat here about an excellent SF film - Furiosa - and apparently no one on "SFF"chrons had seen it.

So you want to discuss a piece of crap fim because it is SF?

You'll probably be wildly successful.

 

[JunkMonkey]

I tried to have a chat here about an excellent SF film - Furiosa - and apparently no one on "SFF"chrons had seen it.

So you want to discuss a piece of crap film because it is SF?

You'll probably be wildly successful.

I was actually hoping someone would try and convince me I was wrong and to have another go. Just because I thought it was awful doesn't mean everyone did and I am more interested in finding out why things don't work than why they do.

Conversations about great works of art (films included) in which every participant agrees it is a great work of art do tend to get a bit:
"I liked that bit where..."
"Yeah that bit was great but what about that other bit when...?"
"Oh that was really great and neatly set up that even greater great bit later where everything was..."
"Yeah..."
"Great movie."
"Really great."

All a bit dull really.

Give me a good old ding dong where either someone is incensed that their Great movie is being trashed, or a discussion about a film in which all the ingredients were in place, and all the stars in alignment and all the pieces were in place... and it still somehow turned to sh*t is much more entertaining. And educative.

 

[BT Jones]

Hi @JunkMonkey.

No, you are not wrong (at least IMO). I quite like Gareth Edwards' work (Monsters is an underrated B-movie, and Rogue One is still my favourite Star Wars film). And I wanted to like this, but it was a bomb, I'm afraid. Far too many dumb plot holes, like the ones you mentioned, plus too many others to mention (A cyber future where a wanted criminal can't just be face-scanned by anything and everything he walks past?). Doesn't seem you stayed for the end, but that was a ridiculously far-fetched series of implausible events. John David Washington's entirely flat performance didn't help.
It looked great, and some of the ideas were good (I quite liked the device whereby you could resurrect someone for 30 seconds, although that was borrowed from Torchwood), but it was a number of interesting ideas stitched together into something resembling a movie.

I'm afraid I have a limited tolerance of modern movies where I can the seams (Terminator: Dark Fate was another, from memory); these are movies that have been stitched together by committee, numerous writers, or a just one cynical production team that is building a product that can get from the beginning to the end by pressing a series of preordained buttons that deliver forced events, rather than allowing a movie to organically evolve.
They are usually laden with expositional dialogue and huge implausibilities that the writers are happy to overlook provided the movie delivers on the big set pieces.

It's a modern trend, unfortunately, because studios now have the money to make the movie from the ticket sales before it's even written via the monthly subscription fees we all pay. This means there is no quality control as they don't need a movie to be well received or liked to get these sales. They just need people to keep their subscriptions for another few months or so to see the next new thing. Disney are rolling in it off the back of their subscription model, and the likelihood theirs is the last subscription most people will drop (especially families with kids under 15).

Out of interest, I gave The Creator a 4/10 on IMDB. My son thought I was harsh and gave it a 6. I think I rated Rebel Moon 5/10, for precisely the reasons you mentioned; that it knew exactly what it was supposed to be and didn't really care to be more than just brainless entertainment.

Compare these movies with genre classics like Alien, Aliens, Children of Men, Terminator 1... I think even turkeys or average movies in the 70's and 80's were at least well-made and properly written, because they HAD to be.

 

[Swank]

There are plenty of excellent movies being made, so the admonition that we are simply living in a time of junk film production doesn't really work.