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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. 





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