The Creator--Original Science Fiction Film! Wish it was better than it is.

[ecarden]

The Creator is a Science Fiction Action-Adventure film about a war between an AI integrated society New Asian Republic and a genocidal western world, seeking vengeance after AIs destroyed LA. An ex-special forces soldier is sent on a raid to kill the Creator of AIs and discover the weapon that Creator made which will defeat the west.

It's...all right. The special effects are good, the settings are astounding, the adult acting is excellent, the child acting is okay, the action is okay, the science fiction elements are...there.

More detailed complaints below.

So, the clear Aesop they want is 'everyone is human, even robots/AI.' This isn't a bad aesop, it's just...boring to me? And I think their own story undercuts it, like LA is (we're told, this may be a lie, we don't ever see any evidence) was actually destroyed by a programming error, a human error, which is being covered up by launching a genocidal war against AI. This doesn't actually make a lot of sense as AI are clearly a massive part of Western society at this point, so destroying them all should do incredible damage to the economy, as opposed to dealing with whatever idiot made the programming error, but whatever. The issue is, that it leaves every AI on the right/moral side. So the Aesop isn't 'we're all human' it's 'AI are better than humans,' which is actually almost the opposite of the moral I think they're going for? But maybe I've misunderstood.

Uh...so why is Alphie afraid that he'll hurt 'Mother' if she straight up knows her mother is dead as she's the one who told him that her mother was in heaven?

Okay, so...uh, there's a lot of very silly bits in this. I think my favorite ones are:

1) Once the US military decides to just straight up invade to find the child/weapon, sending in massive tanks, artillery, ground forces and their floating death station, the enemy are dug in on the other side of a wooden bridge. Rather than pound the area with the artillery they send in running suicide robots to blow up. Like...what? Why would this be a thing that exists? It's not like it does anything else, it runs a set distance, then explodes. Why would this possibly be a good thing to have?

2) They've got Alphie and want to kill her. They have captured her and tied her to the bed, but she keeps disabling their weapons, so they want the man who rescued her to get her to let him kill her, or trick her or something. I mean...what? Even if all your guns are electronic and she can disable them, get yourself an axe, cut off her head and move on with your life. She's a tiny child, killing her is not hard.

3) Wow, it's really convenient that everyone evacuated the command center and all of NOMAD, rather than anyone of the massive crew just staying there and grabbing the small child when she tried to run into the room.

More broadly, the film really doesn't want to grapple at all with the consequences of AI Like, the New Asian Republic is capable of (and clearly is, we see it happening) printing batches of new citizens and soldiers. Their economy/military ought to be significantly larger than that of anyone else, but instead they're just basically the equivalent of the west? Maybe they just haven't had time? But AI has been integrated for a long time, then the West got rid of all of there's 15 years ago--like that should have been a massive economic effect, but instead it apparently didn't do anything? The West is still massively more powerful and only the superweapon can balance the scales? But then the plan is to use up their superweapon to get rid of NOMAD, which the west can just rebuild! I guess they might have been trying to make more Alphies? But the film really doesn't want you to think about the fact that we've just watched the birth of functionally, a god, with the mind and emotions of a child, and that's really, really dangerous.

[Errorname]

Gareth Edwards has shown he's great at working with his effects team in a way that a lot of modern studio directors really really aren't, but I've never been impressed by his movies in terms of narrative. His Godzilla is the best Monsterverse movie but it's entirely carried by it's setpieces, and I suspect the best character beats in Rogue One came from Gilroy and the performers.

[GloatingSwine]

Yeah, I think the title says it all really.

The movie has dozens of influences from other SF movies and anime but doesn't really synthesise any of the things it has taken from them into its own ideas.

The AIs are empathetic and the humans are not is pretty much straight out of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, but Deckard also shows empathy ground out of a man by a long period of being an executioner of replicants that look human, whereas the humans in The Creator are mostly just jerks.



More broadly, the film really doesn't want to grapple at all with the consequences of AI Like, the New Asian Republic is capable of (and clearly is, we see it happening) printing batches of new citizens and soldiers. Their economy/military ought to be significantly larger than that of anyone else, but instead they're just basically the equivalent of the west? Maybe they just haven't had time? But AI has been integrated for a long time, then the West got rid of all of there's 15 years ago--like that should have been a massive economic effect, but instead it apparently didn't do anything? The West is still massively more powerful and only the superweapon can balance the scales? But then the plan is to use up their superweapon to get rid of NOMAD, which the west can just rebuild! I guess they might have been trying to make more Alphies? But the film really doesn't want you to think about the fact that we've just watched the birth of functionally, a god, with the mind and emotions of a child, and that's really, really dangerous.

Oh yeah, the movie is very much not interested in examining any of the societal questions its premise asks. The US is the evil empire, clearly they have conquered the world and nobody else has any military or territorial integrity as they do absolutely nothing about the big stupid exceptionally fragile doom station that the US keeps floating over them shooting missiles* at whatever it pleases.

These nations still apparently exist, and their police forces get to shoot at US troops pretty much on sight, but they don't have any ICBMs any more? NOMAD did not appear to be appreciably protected against anything and it's in a very low orbit**. North Korea could knock it out of the sky. Today.

But the AI forces the AI is at war with are also presented as "insurgents", because the movie's also a Great War on Terror analogy with the US as the bad guys. Which is why the nations that are apparently full of AI, AI the US is at war with, are not acting as if they are at war with the US and shooting back with their armies and strategic missile forces and so on.

And how does the US populace respond to having infinite tax dollars spent on a big stupid doom station that carries rather less firepower than a single carrier battle group or nuclear missile submarine? The psychological impact of floating around all big and doomy does not, it seems, justify the expense.

* Crap ones, too. Those things are huge for the payload they're deploying, given that John Protagonist whose name I have already forgotten survives being exploded by them twice.

** Which, frankly, nothing of that size would be able to maintain without magical supertech the movie does not otherwise pretend exists. Seriously that thing is in such a low orbit it pretty much has earth normal gravity.

[Talakeal]

Saw this last night. Can't recommend.

The acting, visuals, and sounds are all really good.

Overall, the movie is just a collection of tropes from other, much better, sci-fi movies. The one that actually stuck out most for me, surprisingly, was the original Star Wars, but if they had Darth Vader as a sympathetic protagonist rather than the villain.

Its one of those movies that gets caught up in the heavy handed political allegory, to the point where the plot and world-building don't make any sense as anything but a metaphor. And I really mean it, almost nothing holds up to any scrutiny.


But, I don't regret seeing this movie, because of one of the oddest coincidences of my life. Just as the protagonist pulls the trigger on his EMP gun to set off what I presume was the movie's climax, the screen goes black. After sitting in the dark for a few minutes, the audience realizes that this isn't part of the movie, and we stumble out to find that we are in the middle of a giant city-wide blackout.

That was some powerful EMP!


(So no, I don't know how the movie ends, and I don't even care enough to look it up).

[GloatingSwine]

(So no, I don't know how the movie ends, and I don't even care enough to look it up).

If you've seen at least 2 other movies you know how this one ends.

[Talakeal]

If you've seen at least 2 other movies you know how this one ends.

Everything in this movie was a ripoff of something else. But, it was so disjointed, lacking internal logic, and obviously cut to hell in the editing, that I will say it was fairly unpredictable.

[Tyndmyr]

I think it's an excellent movie.

Yes, the themes of it are all ones you've seen before, but the execution is sound, the foreshdaowing is airtight, characters generally have sound motivations for their actions, and, barring a bit at the end, it generally plays fair with consistency and physics.

I found it quite enjoyable, and a refreshing change from all the rehashes that make up most of the cinema lineup.

Realism nitpickery:

The end crash would have absolutely killed everyone there, the sheer kinetic energy is immense, even before you consider the reactor going off and all the ordinance around. Don't even think about how the kid parachuted down more rapidly than the fragments fell.

Reality took a bit of a break so they could get the cinematic shots at the end.


Re: military silliness




1) Once the US military decides to just straight up invade to find the child/weapon, sending in massive tanks, artillery, ground forces and their floating death station, the enemy are dug in on the other side of a wooden bridge. Rather than pound the area with the artillery they send in running suicide robots to blow up. Like...what? Why would this be a thing that exists? It's not like it does anything else, it runs a set distance, then explodes. Why would this possibly be a good thing to have?

Legs are very good at getting over rough terrain, and drones that kamikaze with explosives are in common and growing use today. This is actually a pretty reasonable mashup. Yeah, indirect fire would have been more realistic there, but the tank had been damaged, and they preferred to use disposable robots before sending in infantry. The dumbness is a direct consequence of the west not wanting to put AI in things. This is basically just a different form of a missile.


2) They've got Alphie and want to kill her. They have captured her and tied her to the bed, but she keeps disabling their weapons, so they want the man who rescued her to get her to let him kill her, or trick her or something. I mean...what? Even if all your guns are electronic and she can disable them, get yourself an axe, cut off her head and move on with your life. She's a tiny child, killing her is not hard.

This one's pretty fair. I thought it might be some kind of a loyalty test or the like, as that's really the only reason you'd need him to do this.


3) Wow, it's really convenient that everyone evacuated the command center and all of NOMAD, rather than anyone of the massive crew just staying there and grabbing the small child when she tried to run into the room.

Eh, they are evacuating a detonating ship. Remaining there is obvious death. I don't have a great problem with this.


More broadly, the film really doesn't want to grapple at all with the consequences of AI Like, the New Asian Republic is capable of (and clearly is, we see it happening) printing batches of new citizens and soldiers. Their economy/military ought to be significantly larger than that of anyone else, but instead they're just basically the equivalent of the west? Maybe they just haven't had time?

Well, they're also effectively at war. With NOMAD continually conducting strikes on areas that have become built up with the aid of AI, that puts a crimp on growth.

Without NOMAD, yes, they become unassailable given time, and this is the crux of the plot.


But AI has been integrated for a long time, then the West got rid of all of there's 15 years ago--like that should have been a massive economic effect, but instead it apparently didn't do anything?

Nah, it's 2065. They've been at war for years already, so it's future, but not insanely far future. The LA boom is what, 2050? Before then, the west benefited from economic effects as much as, if not more, than the rest of the world. You've only got fifteen years of delta, and much of that is accounted for via war. The difference largely matches up with reality and shown tech/wealth levels.


But then the plan is to use up their superweapon to get rid of NOMAD, which the west can just rebuild!

There's only one NOMAD, and it took quite a while to rebuild. If they have to start over, the AIs simply will have advanced too far for it to suffice...and that is leaving aside the fact that Alphie can wreck another NOMAD remotely by that point. Why bother making a superweapon that simply cannot work.


I guess they might have been trying to make more Alphies? But the film really doesn't want you to think about the fact that we've just watched the birth of functionally, a god, with the mind and emotions of a child, and that's really, really dangerous.

Yeah, that's true, I guess. Giving any one individual supreme power is a whole dilemma in itself, but this movie isn't exploring that. Perhaps if a sequel is made?


Oh yeah, the movie is very much not interested in examining any of the societal questions its premise asks. The US is the evil empire, clearly they have conquered the world and nobody else has any military or territorial integrity as they do absolutely nothing about the big stupid exceptionally fragile doom station that the US keeps floating over them shooting missiles* at whatever it pleases.

I took that as a metaphor for the war on terror and an aircraft carrier, respectively.

Lots of sci-fi takes inspiration from historical and contemporary conflicts. Predator absolutely is a product of this quite directly, arguably a lot of Aliens, etc took inspiration from Vietnam, and Star Wars probably a bit from WW2.

So, in this case, it makes sense for NOMAD to be mostly untouchable from the perspective of the analogy, though perhaps its odd that it lacks even anti-aircraft missiles.


And how does the US populace respond to having infinite tax dollars spent on a big stupid doom station that carries rather less firepower than a single carrier battle group or nuclear missile submarine?

Mostly, the movie isn't focused on that, but historically, many populations under attack have rallied for vengeance. If you think you got nuked, that's a pretty good reason to not quibble too much over spending, at least for a time.



But, I don't regret seeing this movie, because of one of the oddest coincidences of my life. Just as the protagonist pulls the trigger on his EMP gun to set off what I presume was the movie's climax, the screen goes black. After sitting in the dark for a few minutes, the audience realizes that this isn't part of the movie, and we stumble out to find that we are in the middle of a giant city-wide blackout.

That may actually be a more interesting/novel finale than the shown one.

[ecarden]

Re: military silliness
Legs are very good at getting over rough terrain, and drones that kamikaze with explosives are in common and growing use today. This is actually a pretty reasonable mashup. Yeah, indirect fire would have been more realistic there, but the tank had been damaged, and they preferred to use disposable robots before sending in infantry. The dumbness is a direct consequence of the west not wanting to put AI in things. This is basically just a different form of a missile.

Except, again, they have both missiles and artillery on site.



This one's pretty fair. I thought it might be some kind of a loyalty test or the like, as that's really the only reason you'd need him to do this.

But that's dumb. They don't care about his loyalty anymore. They have what they want from him. Literally, the only thing they want from him. He got them Alphie, they do not need or want him going forward. There is nothing to test his loyalty for!




Eh, they are evacuating a detonating ship. Remaining there is obvious death. I don't have a great problem with this.

It isn't exploding yet, unless I'm misremembering. She has to get to the command station to make it do anything, including stop the missile launch, which is what lets him blow everything up. If they leave two guards at the main entrance and just don't let her in, he gets launched into space with the missile and dies and their base is fine.


Nah, it's 2065. They've been at war for years already, so it's future, but not insanely far future. The LA boom is what, 2050? Before then, the west benefited from economic effects as much as, if not more, than the rest of the world. You've only got fifteen years of delta, and much of that is accounted for via war. The difference largely matches up with reality and shown tech/wealth levels.

Except, you don't only have fifteen years of delta, because the West removed all their AI, which were transparently a massive part of their economic structure given what we're shown! You have 15 years of delta, plus the insane cost of rebuilding the entire economy of the West!

[GloatingSwine]

I took that as a metaphor for the war on terror and an aircraft carrier, respectively.

Lots of sci-fi takes inspiration from historical and contemporary conflicts. Predator absolutely is a product of this quite directly, arguably a lot of Aliens, etc took inspiration from Vietnam, and Star Wars probably a bit from WW2.

So, in this case, it makes sense for NOMAD to be mostly untouchable from the perspective of the analogy, though perhaps its odd that it lacks even anti-aircraft missiles.



Mostly, the movie isn't focused on that, but historically, many populations under attack have rallied for vengeance. If you think you got nuked, that's a pretty good reason to not quibble too much over spending, at least for a time.



Yes, I agree that it's supposed to read like the War on Terror but that just conflicts with the worldbuilding.

The War on Terror was action against non-state actors in non-peer countries. The countries it was happening in couldn't do anything about it even if they'd wanted to.

But The Creator presents this as happening to citizens of a peer-state power, but those peer-state powers mount no actual response to it. The war on terror analogy breaks down because the circumstances are too different, and the movie does not logically approach what the actual circumstances of its worldbuilding are. The events of The Creator happen in a putative New Asia superbloc with all of the resources and economies of those regions.

NOMAD would have been knocked out of the sky by an ICBM the moment it violated New Asia airspace, and the fact that it is destroyed by a single one of its missiles being triggered by a demolition charge demonstrates how trivially easy that would be.

It is the dumbest superweapon in a movie in living memory.

[awa]

It is the dumbest superweapon in a movie in living memory.

lets be fair here their have been way dumber movie super weapons in living memory heck its a foundational building block of an entire genre. Any time the military plans to use uncontrollable zombies or werewolves or what to fight terrorists you have a military weapon that is way dumber, at least this thing only shoots at what they tell it to (I assume never saw the movie).

[Tyndmyr]

Except, again, they have both missiles and artillery on site.

Nothing wrong with using the cheap weapons first. They had no reason to believe that there was any downside to unleashing the explosion bot.


But that's dumb. They don't care about his loyalty anymore. They have what they want from him. Literally, the only thing they want from him. He got them Alphie, they do not need or want him going forward. There is nothing to test his loyalty for!

They still might want him to get to the designer. So, as a motive, that *could* work, but the given reason is indeed incredibly weak. If they wanted to make it a loyalty test, they should have made that more explicit.



It isn't exploding yet, unless I'm misremembering. [spoiler]She has to get to the command station to make it do anything, including stop the missile launch, which is what lets him blow everything up. If they leave two guards at the main entrance and just don't let her in, he gets launched into space with the missile and dies and their base is fine.

They do bail a little before actual explosions, but that isn't wholly unreasonable. The base is clearly under significant risk of getting popped, making sure to get your people to escape pods isn't unreasonable. It is a little odd that they apparently had killbots, but didn't bother to use them until later, though. Yeah, it wouldn't have worked, but it's a reasonable thing to try in the circumstances. The existence of the killbot is kind of a weird choice anyways. I guess without it the ship would have felt even more underdefended, but it doesn't really fit...anything.


Except, you don't only have fifteen years of delta, because the West removed all their AI, which were transparently a massive part of their economic structure given what we're shown! You have 15 years of delta, plus the insane cost of rebuilding the entire economy of the West!

The west only removed all their AI after the LA incident. That's fifteen years before the main events of the movie. Obviously a lot happened during this time, but that period is the only advantage the East had, and conflict further reduced their advantage. Even so, it is clear that the West is one really bad event away from losing forever, and they know this.


Yes, I agree that it's supposed to read like the War on Terror but that just conflicts with the worldbuilding.

The War on Terror was action against non-state actors in non-peer countries. The countries it was happening in couldn't do anything about it even if they'd wanted to.

But The Creator presents this as happening to citizens of a peer-state power, but those peer-state powers mount no actual response to it. The war on terror analogy breaks down because the circumstances are too different, and the movie does not logically approach what the actual circumstances of its worldbuilding are. The events of The Creator happen in a putative New Asia superbloc with all of the resources and economies of those regions.

NOMAD would have been knocked out of the sky by an ICBM the moment it violated New Asia airspace, and the fact that it is destroyed by a single one of its missiles being triggered by a demolition charge demonstrates how trivially easy that would be.

It is the dumbest superweapon in a movie in living memory.


Non state actors are citizens. That's...not even a problem.


NOMAD would have been knocked out of the sky by an ICBM the moment it violated New Asia airspace

Eh, ICBMs are not generally effective anti-aircraft platforms, and NOMAD is portrayed as flying above conventional air defenses. Also, of the powers in that geographical area, only two have ICBMs, and neither have many. It is likely that NOMAD flattened those early on, as it clearly pastes any significant military target. NOMAD is also capable of firing laterally across a continent if it already knows the target, so that's actually a pretty easy win for it.

[GloatingSwine]

Non state actors are citizens. That's...not even a problem.



Eh, ICBMs are not generally effective anti-aircraft platforms, and NOMAD is portrayed as flying above conventional air defenses. Also, of the powers in that geographical area, only two have ICBMs, and neither have many. It is likely that NOMAD flattened those early on, as it clearly pastes any significant military target. NOMAD is also capable of firing laterally across a continent if it already knows the target, so that's actually a pretty easy win for it.

ICBMs are not used as anti-aircraft systems, but if you needed to carry a large warhead to the edge of the atmosphere they'd be your choice. And of the powers in that geographical area China has the largest ICBM stockpile on the planet now (and other ASAT systems and space program).

NOMAD looked like it carried about 20 missiles on its ready racks, the idea that it could fully suppress the Chinese nuclear arsenal (which is the level of action that would be an absolute prerequisite for the movie to play out as it does with New Asia being absolutely powerless to act against US aggression on its soil) is silly. It would be targeted and swatted out of the sky as soon as it committed any act of aggression against New Asia. It's not very high compared to satellites*, low enough to have imperceptibly different from surface normal gravity and the scene of its destruction in the movie shows that it is exceptionally fragile, the detonation of a single one of its missiles destroys it.

The setup in The Creator does not work with a hypothetical New Asian conglomerate, because acting militarily in their territory to indiscriminately kill their civilian population would necessitate a full scale probably nuclear war.

They wanted to use "America Bad" GWOT aesthetics (or to repeat Rogue One empire and rebels) and near future Asian aesthetics at the same time but they don't go together like that. Especially not in a sci-fi movie that otherwise wants you to sit and think about the implications of what it is showing you, because that naturally invites scrutiny which it can't withstand.

*In some scenes it's not very high compared to clouds, so that it can loom better.

[Tyndmyr]

ICBMs are not used as anti-aircraft systems, but if you needed to carry a large warhead to the edge of the atmosphere they'd be your choice. And of the powers in that geographical area China has the largest ICBM stockpile on the planet now (and other ASAT systems and space program).

"of the powers in that area", yes. "on the planet" not even close.

There are only two powers in that area with launch sites. China and North Korea. The latter is largely irrelevant for this exercise, as their capacity is just not there. The former still lacks capacity relative to Russia or China, each of which have approximately twenty times as many.


NOMAD looked like it carried about 20 missiles on its ready racks, the idea that it could fully suppress the Chinese nuclear arsenal (which is the level of action that would be an absolute prerequisite for the movie to play out as it does with New Asia being absolutely powerless to act against US aggression on its soil) is silly.

Why? China has only three missile fields, and those made pretty big booms. Even ignoring every other western force, NOMAD is absolutely capable of outgunning them.


It would be targeted and swatted out of the sky as soon as it committed any act of aggression against New Asia. It's not very high compared to satellites*, low enough to have imperceptibly different from surface normal gravity and the scene of its destruction in the movie shows that it is exceptionally fragile, the detonation of a single one of its missiles destroys it.

It is high enough that a space shuttle is required to reach it.

Gravity decreases rather slowly with altitude. A 500km altitude only results in 3% less gravity. The ISS experiences zero G because of their orbit, not because of their distance from earth. NOMAD is clearly not in orbit. Therefore, the depicted gravity is correct, even at quite high altitudes. The shape strongly indicates that it is not intended to be an atmospheric vehicle.


The setup in The Creator does not work with a hypothetical New Asian conglomerate, because acting militarily in their territory to indiscriminately kill their civilian population would necessitate a full scale probably nuclear war.

Nah. Asia, or at least the parts of Asia depicted, cannot project power. There are possible explanations for lack of nuclear, such as a first strike, or both sides not wanting to escalate QUITE to unlimited nuclear war, because that would be worse than even the situation shown there.

I will quibble that the finale scene did apparently make a nuclear power meltdown seem like a warhead, and the two are...not comparable. The former is much less cinematic.

[GloatingSwine]

"of the powers in that area", yes. "on the planet" not even close.

There are only two powers in that area with launch sites. China and North Korea. The latter is largely irrelevant for this exercise, as their capacity is just not there. The former still lacks capacity relative to Russia or China, each of which have approximately twenty times as many.

Why? China has only three missile fields, and those made pretty big booms. Even ignoring every other western force, NOMAD is absolutely capable of outgunning them.

ICBMs don't launch from "missile fields", they launch from silos, submarines, or trucks. They can be anywhere. Everyone builds for second strike capability, and the current US STRATCOM assessment is that China has more launchers than the USA. That's now. Today. China of today would swat NOMAD with contemptuous ease, a nuke tipped DF-41 or a DN-2 ASAT and that's all she wrote.


It is high enough that a space shuttle is required to reach it.

Gravity decreases rather slowly with altitude. A 500km altitude only results in 3% less gravity. The ISS experiences zero G because of their orbit, not because of their distance from earth. NOMAD is clearly not in orbit. Therefore, the depicted gravity is correct, even at quite high altitudes. The shape strongly indicates that it is not intended to be an atmospheric vehicle.

That still puts it in ASAT or ICBM range. It's not high enough to be immune to the sort of weapons that even modern China could use on it.


Nah. Asia, or at least the parts of Asia depicted, cannot project power. There are possible explanations for lack of nuclear, such as a first strike, or both sides not wanting to escalate QUITE to unlimited nuclear war, because that would be worse than even the situation shown there.

I will quibble that the finale scene did apparently make a nuclear power meltdown seem like a warhead, and the two are...not comparable. The former is much less cinematic.

There are no reasons which survive scrutiny if you assume that New Asia is a real successor state to the modern countries it is supposed to be made of. It's all just "they do nothing because handwave". The movie seriously expects us to believe that a combined asian superpower simply chooses to do nothing whilst a hostile US slaughters its population indiscriminately.

NOMAD is not buyable as a superweapon, and the lack of response to it is not buyable from a successor state to modern Asia. The intended imagery of "GWOT/Empire vs Rebels" does not work with the Asia setting. And again, the movie is inviting us to think but contains things in it that fall apart when you think even slightly about them.

Remember that the reactor meltdown was caused by a single demolition charge on one of NOMAD's missiles (which probably could only cook off the fuel) quite far from the reactor. A comparative tap on the shoulder compared to an intentional strike with a real weapon system. It's fragile as heck.