The Creator – Darn that eternal optimist in me
If any of you follow my reviews you probably figured out that I try to be an optimist, realist and truth-seeker. Those things often seem to be irreconcilable these days. It helps to be an over-thinker. So when I saw the amazing previews for The Creator I leaned over to Mrs Average Dude and whispered ‘I’m IN’. I was excited about this movie that seemed to have a spark of originality and some amazing special effects. When, oh when, will I ever learn to temper my expectations. That’s rhetorical. The answer is never. I will never learn.
The Creator was directed by Gareth Edwards, a veteran of grand scale sci-fi movies (Rogue One, Godzilla, The Last Jedi). I loved Rogue One, but Godzilla could have been a lot better. And don’t even get me started on The Last Jedi. So much evidence to the contrary, I still had hope that Edwards was trending in the right direction.
Still waiting for Frisbee: the movie
I’ve long opined that there is really nothing new coming out of Hollywood. Receipts: when they make movies out of the childhood favorite games Battleship (c’mon, man!) and Rock Em Sock Em Robots (Real Steel, which I actually liked a lot) you can’t be faulted for coming to that conclusion. And even though The Creator kind of parallels the movie ‘A.I.’ (an under-rated Spielberg piece) it still felt like a story angle that had not been beaten to death. Maybe it’s more fair to say that it combined elements of A.I./Terminator/The Matrix and then added a dash of Platoon/Commando/Apocalypse Now. Point is, there were a lot of ingredients going into this sci-fi gumbo. And, as I’ve learned, sometimes a good gumbo can be a bit overwhelming.
I’m kind of at a loss to explain why The Creator didn’t quite work. My best analysis says that it had so much really awesome CGI and special effects that it had to sacrifice too much human character development. Or cyborg character development. But it’s more than that. It feels like the message of this movie is that AI Life Matters, which I’m not afraid to say might be the biggest WTF moment since…well, don’t get me started on that, either. Unsure if Edwards truly believes that or if he just found a new MacGuffin. If it was the latter, bravo. That’s some out of the box thinking. If it’s the former…seek help.
A parallel of downfalls
One of the parallels of The Creator and A.I. is that they both wanted to be kind of artsy-fartsy. I like a good artsy-fartsy movie, don’t get me wrong. But sci-fi and artsy-fartsy do not usually mix well (was Clockwork Orange artsy-fartsy? I think maybe).
Additionally, I am very much NOT a fan of the whole ‘chapters within a movie’ shtick. Having a black-screen pop up and tell me the movie is shifting focus/timestamp/character arc only reminds me that I’m sitting in a theater. And I’ve said it thousand times, I want to immerse myself in a the movie to the point where the rest of the world falls away for a couple of hours. For me, seeing a new chapter placard is jarring.
I was powerless not to get choked up
What I liked about The Creator: Madeleine Yuna Voyles. Wow, what a little actress. In a movie that struggled to evoke emotions that it so desperately tried to evoke, she was the only one to do it. MYV was so charming and vulnerable you could not help but get invested in her journey.
I also really liked the battle setting of ‘New Asia’. the Creator is reminiscent of all the powerful Vietnam-era war movies that we love and superbly updated with tech that’s fresh, sleek and cool. In the sci-fi/CGI world where tech of gargantuan size has become yawningly common, Edwards managed to put it in an uncommon setting and shoot it in a way that actually made it look impressive again.
After much thought, I’m giving The Creator a 3 out of 5. This could have easily been a 4.5/5 if not for the aforementioned misses. A near miss and a disappointment, no doubt. But certainly not without some really great redeeming qualities.
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