Heres Looking at You Robot Kid

The Creator delivers big budget looks and scale infused with philosophical ideas, making it the kind of blockbuster film making people who decry the modern glut of franchise fodder will constantly tell you is missing from the big screen. Naturally it ended up playing to mostly empty theatres.

The central plot revolves around AI. Not the take your job, destroy creative industries and push propaganda kind that is depressing everyone in the news right now but good old sci fi robotic humanoids. Banned in the West after a nuclear incident they have taken refuge in "NewAsia" prompting the US to wage war across the Pacific, causing terror with a massive orbital battle station called the NOMAD. When word emerges the AI may have a new super weapon of their own John David Washington's bitter ex Army Sergeant Joshua Taylor is recruited to help a crack team go and eliminate the problem. When he discovers the "weapon" is a synthetic child he takes it on the run in the hope it can lead him to his previously thought deceased wife.

While the themes and religious undertones aren't exactly anything new it's refreshing to see them put so boldly to the fore and the script firmly get behind an ideal. There's none of that "can a machine have a soul?" stuff by the time credits roll here, sentience is life and taking it away is bad. Those who have seen director Gareth Edwards previous work, such as his debut gem Monsters and the parts of Rouge One that Disney actually let him direct, will know he has no qualms sticking it to the American notion of "keeping the peace" and the people running The Land Of the Free™ are very much the complete villains of the piece in The Creator. It may look stunning but that isn't the only reason Vietnam and its neighbours provide the backdrop here.

Speaking of looking stunning it really can't be overstated how great the visuals of this world are. Beautiful rural backdrops mixed with some of the crispest CGI you'll see this side of Pandora create truly unique vision of the future. The fact this all cost $80 million should have studios pumping out $200 mil plus comic book movies with scenes that look like JPEGs hanging their heads in shame. It puts to bed the argument that last years The Way of Water only looked so good because of Cameron's bottomless budget. Turns out that if you have a director with a singular vision involved in the effects process from the beginning then you can create something wonderful. Maybe handing overworked VFX artists the whole film to fix in post on an insane deadline isn't the way to make films look good? Who'd have thought.

So the Creator has looks and personality in spades as well as another great leading man turn from John David Washington. The story does sag a little as it goes on and the conclusion is visible a mile off but its always entertaining and a film of this type on this scale is something to be treasured.

8 rules of robotics followed out of 10.

Comments

Uncomfortably (Ve)Numb

Despite his somehow enduring popularity, Venom is a conceptually rubbish character. He is born of a period in comics when publishers wanted to make their child friendly characters edgy and Spiderman media, be it comics, films, games or whatever else, tends to get worse whenever he shows up. "Kind of like the good guy but bad" is one of the most boring villain types to begin with and no writer has ever come up with anything interesting enough to make him deserve his top billing amongst the wall crawlers stacked rogues gallery. The previous two films managed to (somewhat) sidestep the blandness of the IP by hiring a great actor in Tom Hardy and letting him do Jim Carrey style physical comedy mixed with a heart felt love story between a man and his super powered alien parasite. Given it is the last in last in the trilogy, Venom : The Last Dance really wants to have epic stakes and emotional resonance, leaving little room for the things that made the first two movies watchable. ...

The Pope Was Dead to Begin With

Conclave opens with Cardinal-Dean Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) arriving at The Vatican following the death of the incumbent Pope. It then falls to him to arrange and administer a papal conclave, summoning the world's cardinals to convene in seclusion and vote on who should become the next Holy Father. The principle runners are Stanley Tucci's Aldo Bellini, who wants to continue the previous Pope's liberal approach to modernising the church, Firebrand traditionalist Goffredo Tedesco (Sergio Castlellitto), conservative contender to be the first African Pope Joshua Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati) and John Lithgow as popular but potentially dodgy Canadian Joseph Tremblay. There is also some intrigue surrounding the arrival of the Archbishop of Kabul, who claims to have been raised to the position in secret by the previous Pope. Shifting alliances and schemes play out as the contenders politic for the top job. Everything on display in Conclave is as tights and pristine as it gets...

Wicked, Wicked..Jungle is Massive

The Wicked musical has grossed a piddly $6 billion since its opening in 2003 so Universal Studios have decided to raise some extra cash with this film adaptation. Well, this and next years next years adaptation since despite no "part 1" in the title we only get half the story here. Duplicitous marketing aside, splitting proceedings in half seems to have been the savvy move. For the uninitiated, Wicked is the story of The Wicked Witch of the West, giving her a backstory and retelling The Wizard of Oz from her point of view. Here, she is called Elphaba and this first film tells the story of her time at Shiz University, her frosty then friendly relationship with future good witch Glinda and encounter with The Wizard that leads to her being branded a villain. Despite only covering half the material this film is longer than the entire musical but it seems like that couldn't be helped. Movie audiences aren't accustomed to songs driving the plot so connective tissue has to ...

Sex, Dancing and Rubles

Anora sees writer/director Sean Baker continue his quest to shine a light on the marginalised and in particular, sex workers. It also might be the biggest triumph of his unique blend of realism, playfulness and insight so far. Mikey Madison plays Anora, or as she prefers to be called Ani, an exotic dancer and escort who is asked to look after 21 year old oligarch's son Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn) on account of her being able to understand his native Russian. After charming him, she is hired to be his girlfriend for a week which leads to the pair marrying. A win win situation that allows Ivan to obtain a green card, and give the middle finger to his controlling parents, and gives Ani access to a lifestyle she could only have dreamt of weeks before. There is no honeymoon period however, as Ivan's antics make the Russian news and his parents send his godfather and a couple of goons round to "convince" the pair the marriage should be annulled. When a film opens with toples...

Hugh You Gonna Call

Heretic opens with two young Mormon missionaries talking about penises on a park bench. The light hearted opening is in stark contrast to the tension to come and serves as a fun introduction to two endearing characters. Sister Paxton (Chloe East) has been born and raised in the church, eager and enthusiastic she is desperate to land her first conversion. Sophie Thatcher's Sister Barnes is more experienced and more comfortable in the world at large. We spend some time getting to know them as they make their rounds, hearing about their hopes for a handsome husband and sadness at the way they shunned and considered "weird" by their peers. We are thoroughly on board with them by the time they encounter Hugh Grant's seemingly gregarious Mr Reed. He appears interested in their beliefs and impresses the girls with his religious knowledge but the conversation becomes more testy and they realise they can't leave Reed's house without playing his game. To say Hugh Gran...

Dan Says its Alright

Search This Blog