The Creator is next-level sci-fi. So why isn’t it being promoted that way?
Hollywood can’t seem to figure out how to sell an epic genre film these days if it's not part of a franchise
Film Features The Creator
The response from critics who’ve gotten a chance to see The Creator at preview screenings has been overwhelmingly positive (on social media at least, full reviews are still embargoed). The film will probably need that good word of mouth when it opens in theaters on September 29, because the rest of the marketing campaign for the sci-fi epic has been rather lackluster.
It’s not like New Regency, or its parent company 20th Century Studios, itself now a division of Disney, haven’t made an effort. They previewed the film for exhibitors at CinemaCon in April, introduced it to fans at San Diego Comic-Con in July, and there was that creepy stunt at a Los Angeles Chargers football game. And while it’s true that the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike has prevented the cast from promoting the film, there have been plenty of trailers, ads, and billboards. But none of that has really managed to get casual moviegoers hyped for The Creator in the way they might be for a big franchise release.
Directed by Gareth Edwards, who co-wrote the script with Chris Weitz, The Creator takes place in a future world where the American government has declared war on AI. When a former special-forces operative (John David Washington) learns that his late wife (Gemma Chan) may be alive and well in enemy territory, he signs up for a military mission to infiltrate a research base and destroy a weapon that could end the war for good. The weapon, it turns out, is an extraordinary AI in the form of a little girl (Madeleine Yuna Voyles). It’s not a complicated premise; the beauty of the film is in its depth and execution, something much harder to convey in a two-minute trailer or 60-second TV spot.
Those who don’t follow Hollywood closely may find the effusive praise surprising. The Creator is the kind of film that typically does well in the summer, so its late-September release date could signal a lack of confidence in its ability to draw blockbuster crowds (it was originally scheduled for early October, but was moved up). Now, the two biggest films opening in theaters the same weekend are Saw X and PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie. It might end up doing well against that kind of competition, but the bar didn’t have to be set so low. Unlike those films, The Creator isn’t part of any franchise or based on any existing IP. Although it borrows liberally from iconic sci-fi films like The Terminator, Blade Runner, and The Matrix, it combines them in a way that feels modern and fresh. You wouldn’t know it, though, based on the early trailers that make it look like a generic retread of worn-out futuristic and dystopian tropes.
Those ideas were all new at one time, too. No one could have predicted what a cultural behemoth Star Wars would become when it premiered in 1977. 20th Century Fox took a chance on a young George Lucas, but those were different times, and executives were more willing to take financial and creative risks. Now it’s a struggle to get an original, high-concept sci-fi film greenlit or distributed by any of the major studios. Which makes The Creator a rarity, and also a tougher sell. Maybe that’s why the marketing has been focused on the aspects of the film that feel familiar, rather than what makes it unique.
It doesn’t help that filmmaker Gareth Edwards is hardly a household name. The Creator will be his fourth directing credit, although two of those films have pretty famous names: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Godzilla. The Creator has less in common with those than it does with his debut effort, the cult indie sci-fi thriller Monsters. Edwards used the guerilla techniques he perfected on that production to keep the budget to $80 million, slightly more than average, but quite modest for an effects-driven, sci-fi-action epic. Edwards shot the film on location in Asia using a consumer-grade Sony camera he operated himself, a small crew, and mostly natural lighting. That it looks as spectacular as it does is a testament to Edwards’ ingenuity and the gifted eye of cinematographer Oren Soffer. There are plenty of $300 million films out there that don’t look nearly as good. And though it may be an impressive achievement, it’s not likely a huge selling point for most potential ticket buyers.
The tricky subject matter might also contribute to the studio being a little hesitant to give the film a major push right now. To be clear, The Creator deals with AI in the classic sci-fi sense—as in, sentient humanoid robots—not “AI” in the way it’s been used of late as a catch-all term for language learning models and generative art. That’s an important distinction, since the film kind of depends on the audience empathizing with its simulant characters. Edwards couldn’t have known when he was developing the film in 2019 that “AI” would become a sticking point in labor relations between unions and the AMPTP, or the subject of multiple lawsuits.
Without any inside knowledge, we can only speculate as to why 20th Century is setting expectations so low for a film that’s been called not just the best sci-fi movie of the year, but the best movie of the year, period. Maybe that’s better than over-hyping it and then labeling it a disappointment when it doesn’t perform as well as a Marvel or Transformers film. The Creator is currently projected to make somewhere between $15 million and $24 million in its opening weekend, with a final domestic total in the range of $40 to $85 million. We don’t know how accurate that is, but we do know that if it doesn’t at least make back its production budget, it may be a while before any studio considers taking a chance on a film like this again.
207 Comments
I saw one trailer and dismissed it as a Skyline/Battle Los Angeles-esque epic-on-a-budget movie. I thought Rogue One and Edwards’ Godzilla were both fine, but heavily flawed, so I really had no interest in this movie. Reading this has definitely piqued my interest.I have no idea how much the subject matter – A.I. – affected the marketing though. I mean, I don’t put it past executives to worry about optics or reminding the public about a contentious issue, but if the A.I. in the movie is garden-variety humanoid robots, I kind of doubt anyone really gives a shit.
Yeah I don’t really like R1 very much but this article makes me at least want to watch The Creator when it comes to streaming.
You guys must not be Star Wars fans, Rogue One is the best Star Wars movie since the Prequels.
Wow talk about damning with faint praise.
The only Star Wars movie since the OT that I really dig is Solo, because that one actually feels Star Warsy and man the action sequences are killer, that train heist is great.I absolutely loved Andor so I went back and watched R1: It’s still choppily edited and doesn’t give me any real reason to care about the characters. Cassian might as well be a completely different person than he is in the show.
I’m definitely a Star Wars fan though, I’ve liked all of the shows other than Obi-Wan…which had a couple redeeming qualities but definitely suffered from being kicked around in development for like 6 years or whatever. I’m pretty sure Star Wars is just better suited for TV since the vast majority of the post OT movies have been trash.
Is Rogue One even an Edwards film? It sounds like Tony Gilroy came in and reshot a lot of it. Good reason for it to feel choppy in edits. Edwards was asked about it recently and gave a very professional answerhttps://www.darkhorizons.com/edwards-talks-the-rogue-one-controversy/
“Good reason for it to feel choppy in edits.”
Because the (same) editor became a worse editor when given new material?
It’s better than the first two prequels as well, and more rewatchable than RotS (so maybe better than all three).I’ll give Edwards credit – he knows how to film a bomb explosion.
You can be a Star Wars fan and heavily disagree with other Star Wars fans. Don’t be a gate-keeper.
Well that wasn’t spoken like a true Star Wars fan at all….you know, according to Star Wars fans.
It’s better than the awful prequels.
The Prequels are Citizen Kane compared to the Sequels, which are dumpster fires of JJ Abrams bullshit.
No, the prequels are garbage as well.
That’s a low bar.
A “tallest midget” award if ever there was one.
I researched R1 last week for the first time since I saw it in theaters, and I loved it. But I get the feeling I loved it more because of whatever Tony Gilroy did to it.Credit where credit is due: Edwards has a great eye for visuals.
I think the target audience for this movie (people like us) know the difference between “autonomous thinking robots” and “algorithm that spits out bland text,” but I’m not sure that studio marketing wonks know that.
I think studio marketing wonks know the difference but tend to assume the general public doesn’t. Even still, the official trailer that according to YouTube was released two months ago (so roughly the middle of the WGA strike) has a character explicitly say “artificial intelligence” and gives Skynet-from-Terminator vibes at one point.I think people like us are more likely to read in between lines and draw connections where there are either none or aren’t quite what we suspect they are.
“Americans aren’t all idiots, but the people who decide what media they get to watch are”- Ancient Aussie saying in the arts and media industry
That and “WATCH OUT FOR THE BLOODY SPIDER!”
You are a wily fucker, indeed.
I’m a pheasant plucker.
And your son?
only when I’m late.
I’ve been watching a lot of Aussie stuff on streaming recently.You’ve got nothing to brag about.
Note that I said they’re not all idiots.
The first trailer was showing in front of movies at least six months ago.
Studio wonks thought the failure of Mars Needs Moms meant they couldn’t put Mars in the title of a movie even when it was 90% set on Mars.
Well, who says that they’re not right on this one? I know plenty of successful movies with “Moms” in the title, though, truth be told, most of them are actually porn DVDs.
When in reality they should not have made the movie at all.
As an aside, I’m sorry that we’re stuck with the lame-ass words “wonks” when the English have the far superior word “boffins.”
Many boffins died to bring us this information.
Well, now I’m going to insist that all of Mon Mothma’s dialogue be delivered in a Cockney accent.
Then you fire your missiles into the exhaust port and pip pip cheerio bob’s your uncle!
They don’t mean the same thing. Boffins are scientists. Wonks are political insiders (hence the once famous blog “Wonkette” which leaked various scandals in the Dubya and early Obama era)
So what, precisely, is an ‘anorak’?
Well, there is the literal definition of a puffy coat similar to a parka, but it is used in British English to mean a trainspotter/railfan (an enthusiast who likes to watch trains for their types and numbers, often wearing such a coat while doing so), and more loosely any sort of person who obsesses over unimportant things like backstories of superheroes and the like. So basically a geek/nerd in American English.
Here, I found a link: http://www.Google.com
If you don’t like the word “wonk,” you can choke on my dork.
The difference between intelligence and consciousness is difficult to grasp for many.
Honestly I’d probably rather see a take on what ChatGPT could lead to than yet another cautionary tale about autonomous thinking robots. I’ll keep an open mind on this movie but anything AI related is kind of a turnoff for me any more. I’ve just seen too many half-baked, wanna-be profound AI stories from writers and directors who think they’re today’s George Orwell.
“Spit out bland text” is not a very good characterization of the capabilities of these models. They can translate between languages better than purpose-built translations systems, play chess at pretty high level, write code, and while they have some holes in their ability to reason, they most definitely can reason.And turning them into (still somewhat crude) agents is trivial at present. Multiple instances of the agents can interact with each other and break down tasks into sub-goals, with better performance at the tasks than individual agents.People who are this dismissive of these models are going to end up being caught quite off-guard by near-future developments.
“I saw one trailer and dismissed it as a Skyline/Battle Los Angeles-esque epic-on-a-budget movie.”
Yeah, this realllllllly looks like a “budget” movie, doesn’t it?
That’s insane – this looks nothing like Skyline or BLA. This looks like a live action anime. This looks creative. This has characters.
I saw the trailer in my Instagram feed (so on my phone, in a square aspect ratio), and those are the vibes I got, with a healthy dash of Elysium and Chappie. I’m not saying that it literally looks like Skyline or BLA.I hope that this movie is every bit as creative and well-executed as the article says it is, but the trailer makes it look like a generic. I certainly don’t get a great understanding of the characters from any of the trailers.
This sounds like is Edwards going back to his roots but this time with a medium Hollywood budget rather than a shoestring. What he achieved with Monsters is amazing. It’s got flaws, but it is one of the greatest examples of microbudget moviemaking you’ll ever see. I’ll give this a look hoping that Edwards can navigate around the huge pile of AI/dystopia cliches in the genre.
Agree – sci fi fans understand what this means with respect to machine consciousness and awareness, i.e. light years beyond what AI means in any real-world capacity. I doubt the AI robots in this film stole too many scriptwriting jobs.
Hear me out: John David Washington just isn’t a draw, regardless of his father.
The two biggest movies he’s ever done — Black KKKlansman and Tenet — got a lot of press and were relatively successful because of the subject matter and the directors (Spike Lee and Christopher Nolan, respectively). Anything else he’s been has either gone completely under the radar because he’s not a draw, or has been a flop because he’s horribly miscast and out of place.
If you’re going to do new IP on a grand scale with what looks to be an enormously ambitious sci-fi project, you’ve gotta do better than an at-best B-list performer as the lead. Hell, even prime Will Smith couldn’t make After Earth work, so why they’d think something as ambitious as this with someone who simply isn’t an engaging performer is going to perform well is beyond me.
Also, while Gareth Edwards has done good work, he isn’t a “name” director on the level where his attachment alone is going to put asses in the seats. So, you’re stuck with an ambitious, new-IP sci-film where the two leads are B-listers at best, the director is good but isn’t a “name” director, and is releasing during a rather dead time of the year where it missed the summer blockbuster season (which was dominated by Barbie and Oppenheimer), and is going to be squeezed by horror films and winter-release Oscar bait.
There’s also the fact that even as beautiful as the film looks from the trailer, it also looks rather generic. AI-based films are hard to pull off as it is, which is why the most successful ones have usually kept things relatively small scale in terms of narrative (such as Ex Machina or The Terminator) or they benefitted from using already-extant IP and a big name star (I, Robot).
“Hear me out: John David Washington just isn’t a draw, regardless of his father.”
Hear me out: John David Washington is not supposed to be the draw for this movie.
I never claimed otherwise. I don’t think Will Smith was really in his prime when he did After Earth though, (I’ll also Tom Cruise in Oblivion on to the list of generic-looking sci-fi films that couldn’t be saved by the lead) but I agree that the lack of big names isn’t helping The Creator. Having said that, I still blame the trailers for making it look generic as fuck. Original properties can still do well, even – I would argue – without a big name as the lead or the director. And as “enormously ambitious” as this movie looks, I applaud the crew for making the most of a modest budget. But marketing is really dropping the ball here by failing to make a compelling case for why this movie is different.Or, as others have pointed out, maybe the movie IS as generic as it looks. Edwards is gonna’ have to own that if that’s the case.
Original properties can do well, but with the budget inflation modern movies have, even an $80m movie needs to clear between $200m-$250m worldwide to break even. 2021’s Dune, a movie with a bigger name director, with bigger stars, and with a big sci-fi IP as the foundation, has barely cleared $400m worldwide.
Maybe they want to keep marketing costs down because they know they’d have to eat those costs (and it’s a good chance the movie won’t do well regardless of the marketing expenditure). Of course, this is a chicken-or-the-egg situation, but this is a movie that falls into that mid-budget dead zone that most studios/filmmakers are actively trying to avoid. At $80-$100m, you’re skimping out on some of the things that could put your movie in blockbuster territory, but you’re also too expensive to take advantage of a small marketing campaign.
I think Dune, Part 1 can lay a lot of the blame on COVID for its underwhelming box office performance. It’ll be interesting to see how part 2 does. It certainly has some very loud fans. Either way, I don’t think the problem is that 20th Century Mouse isn’t spending enough money on marketing The Creator (but I think you’re right that they’re hesitant to spend more), because what they have spent makes the movie look unremarkable. The sci-fi nerds love that it looks like every beloved sci-fi movie from the past sixty years (see Germain Lussier’s glowing write-ups over on io9 if you feel like cringing), but I don’t think the trailer is showing anything for genpop. Apparently this movie was filmed during the pandemic, but it just feels like a project that was greenlit and shot before Disney acquired 20th Century.
I think Dune, Part 1 can lay a lot of the blame on COVID for its underwhelming box office performance.I don’t think we can say that. It dropped in Oct 2021. By that point, vaccinations were widely available, New York, Illinois, and California had all lifted their lockdowns, and for comparison, Tenet only did $40m less even though it released a full year earlier (Aug 2020), when those three states were still on lockdown and no vaccines were in sight. If anything, Dune’s relatively low box office could (and I think should) be more attributed to sci-fi films simply having a much harder time nowadays of overperforming at the box office unless they fall into some particular categories/IPs.
Just looking at the list of domestic sci-fi rankings, if you remove superhero films, then the top 10 consists of four Star Wars movies, both Avatars, two Jurassic Park/Jurassic World films, and ET. In fact, you don’t get to anything that isn’t Star Wars, superhero films from DC or Marvel, Transformers, Disney or Illumination Entertainment animated films with a sci-fi twist, or The Hunger Games until numbers 54 and 55, which are Independence Day and Inception, respectively. The reality is that most sci-fi films that aren’t in those above categories don’t make a lot of money (and you could argue what consistute sci-fi on the charts might skew the results).
We’re in a bit of a sci-fi ghetto because I think the pull is to either go really big and compete with the big IPs, or keep it small scale and do character studies rather than grand, ambitious ideas that involve human vs. machine wars and things like that. To whit, the later Terminator movies had a lot of flaws, but one of the main ones I feel was making the scope too big. The less we knew about the nature of Skynet and the later man vs. machine war, the better, because it kept the focus on something we could all understand (people protecting their immediate loved ones from imminent danger via a singular entity) versus things much more esoteric (a technological, time-traveling conspiracy orchestrated by a nebulous corporate entity that can somehow time travel while also fail at time traveling sufficiently to prevent its own destruction, yet somehow can change the point of Judgement Day and so forth).
Battle Los Angeles was a better movie than this one.
Maybe because it is an original movie? The idea of original amongst Hollywood execs is tantamount to Barbie being like a live action Lego Movie adaptation and not a totally new idea like The Creator or Inception. Maybe they don’t want to promote singular ideas with next to no merch?
“The idea of original amongst Hollywood execs is tantamount to Barbie being like a live action Lego Movie adaptation and not a totally new idea like The Creator or Inception.”
Is this meant to be coherent?
honestly this is the most likely. the marketing is bad because they don’t care.
It’s original in that it isn’t tied to an existing IP, but at least from the trailers, the plot is far from original. “Jaded hero finds his humanity again by escorting special child through many dangers” is a tried and true trope, with several examples from just this past year.
Sort of. A lot of stories are tied to identity, so Gareth Edward’s Creator will most likely use tropes and anxieties from his past works. Monster fits into Godzilla quite easily, the same goes for Rogue One:Gareth Edwards has a fascination with unorthodox births for families that are ultimately doomed i.e. his monsters, the Mutos, Jinn Erso’s family etc.This will apply to The Creator too. The creator i.e. god, i.e. the father. A kid who is half human and half robot etc. There’s not really any such thing as an original story once the writer/director has had their way once. Everything carries over because their work is an extension of themselves. The originality I mean is valued/devalued before anyone has seen the movie: in the marketing. This film has no toys, not as many posters, hardly any stars, and there’s a strike on. Regardless of the fact that this film’s box office failure will hurt the studio, they ultimately know that this IP is not as valuable as the other IPs it has under its belt.
An original IP sci-fi movie by the guy that did Monsters, Godzilla and Rogue One? Yes, please.Anyone who has not seen Monsters yet, should do so immediately.
While I loved the cinematography of Monsters and the Jon Hopkins soundtrack, I couldn’t get past the fact that its entire premise was utterly ludicrous. The girl whose being escorted is from a rich family. She can afford to fly (and yes, they do say a no-fly zone was away to be established but last I checked we were still living on a globe. They could fly south and then around or via Europe or hell, just go Cancun – Florida. Pretty sure that skips the whole quarantine zone)It did look nice though.
You seem fun.
2010’s Monsters was an incredible film to watch. Same goes for 2014’s Brit-produced & (now for something) completely different ‘sequel’ Monsters: Dark Continent!Fingers crossed for Creator to be great!
Monsters was the kind of thoughtful sci-fi movie I really enjoy (the less said about the sequel, the better). I saw the trailer for this and it looked pretty generic as you said, but knowing that Gareth Edwards is behind it makes me think that it will have a lot more depth than the trailer lets on. I got tickets at my local IMAX theater, looking forward to it.
“Hollywood can’t seem to figure out how to sell an epic genre film these days if it’s not part of a franchise”Isn’t it weird to make this statement before knowing how well the movie is going to do?
It’s just avclub doing a hype piece.
The commercial we keep seeing on tv tells us how good the movie is without showing us how good the movie is. It’s not a great way to go.
How, exactly, can you judge the quality of a film based on a 30 second TV spot? I mean, this is the formula for every single critically-acclaimed film, and has been since forever. There was a poster made for Citizen Kane that has a non-attributed quote reading “IT’S TERRIFIC!” at the top in gigantic letters that’re several times larger than the title of the film.
Show me. Don’t tell me. The commercial doesn’t give any indication what the movie is about. That’s weird. I’m pretty smart so I can figure it out. But this one left me head scratching.Also, Citizen Kane (released before tv commercials were even really a thing) is a well-known box office flop. If only the studio had been able to make a :30 spot that encapsulated the film in an engaging and entertaining manner so people would be intrigued to go see it.https://www.thevintagenews.com/2021/10/21/citizen-kane-flop-to-top/
I thought it was pretty linear. Humanity is holding its own against AI that turned on us, AI is developing a war-ending weapon, badass soldier sent to steal it, it’s a kid-looking AI, badass starts to have moral doubts, AI kid is more complex that expected.
i mean, because disney hasn’t been able to market anything this year? the only successes they’ve had have nothing to do with marketing (elemental’s was entirely word of mouth and it having a long tail, guardians is the 3rd in a beloved franchise)
I get that “Disney is bad” is an edgy take, but is that really the most logical guess when1) Movies from all studios this year have done poorly (Mission Impossible, The Flash, etc)2) Pretty much any sci-fi film that’s not a Star Wars film or a comic book movie hasn’t done big numbers in a long timeIt’s seems like “original sci-fi blockbuster” is the real problem.
I think you mean Rouge One.
Oh, are her cheeks red.
It has a shit trailer, that doesn’t help. The tropes that conform current trailers are awful, like the “epic” versions of famous songs, or the sound of guns being reloaded or fired syncing with the music
The title makes it sound pretty religious, which probably puts off a majority of science-first folks, and it puts off the bible belt when they learn it’s sci-fi and not about Jebus.
Those who don’t follow Hollywood closely may find the effusive praise surprising.But those who follow Hollywood even slightly may be familiar with the effusive outpouring of praise on social media a movie gets pre-release, as critics and online journalists fervently push to get their blurb to be the blurb for the movie. It’s no surprise.This article might be interesting if the author had seen the movie and could actually list any reasons why the movie is unique, rather than assume the generic sci-fi action movie we’re being sold is actually obfuscating something novel with unique ideas. Nobody can say until they’ve seen the movie, but it does look indistinguishable from the franchise/IP movies; watching the trailer makes me feel like someone’s trying to will a new franchise into being with this.I’m totally in favor of original storytelling. Dropping a sawbuck to watch The Terminator via Star Wars via District 9 doesn’t feel like the final battle in the war for creativity.
Pre-embargo critical reactions are definitely a bit suspect in that regard. They tend to be overly positive.
This article might be interesting if the author had seen the movie and could actually list any reasons why the movie is
unique, rather than assume the generic sci-fi action movie we’re being
sold is actually obfuscating something novel with unique ideas. Nobody
can say until they’ve seen the movie, but it does look
indistinguishable from the franchise/IP movies; watching the trailer
makes me feel like someone’s trying to will a new franchise into being
with this.
That’s what stuck with me about the trailers. I get that there are limits to what they can convey in a 2 minute spot, but nothing about it seemed more than generic mid-budget SF. Nothing about the visuals stood out, etc.
I mean, the premise “I’ve been sent to aid in the destruction of a dangerous secret, and oh no it turns out it’s a cute child and I’ve taken it upon myself to protect it” immediately brings to mind The Mandalorian and Star Wars.
“immediately brings to mind The Mandalorian and Star Wars.”
*sigh*
Or it brings to mind the things that directly influenced those…
That’s my problem with this movie (at least from what I’ve seen). Nothing makes it seem to stand out from your usual bleak future humans vs. robots fare. It’s not like it hasn’t been promoted heavily. I’ve seen the trailer before, like, every movie I’ve seen in theaters in the past year and a half it seems, no matter the genre. Barbie? Creator trailer. Indiana Jones? Creator trailer. The reason it seems like the movie is failing to resonate is because it just…doesn’t seem that interesting. Gareth Edwards’s Godzilla was okay, but how much of Rogue One was actually him and how much was Tony Gilroy? Considering how Andor turned out, it seems like it might be much more Gilroy than Edwards.
I first heard of this movie’s existence when I saw the trailer before Oppenheimer and I immediately thought it looked pretty cool and wanted to see it.
The trailer looks like “Battle Angel”. You’re absolutely right, why doesn’t the article ever explain why this movie is so stupendous and groundbreaking? Not once. Remaining skeptical.
Also the Mandalorian/Logan thing of “understated badass shephards child with magical powers,” thing. There’s been a lot of riffs on that already. Even in a dystopian setting it would be hard to be better than say Children of Men in that regard.
“But none of that has really managed to get casual moviegoers hyped for The Creator in the way they might be for a big franchise release.”
And this statement is based on what criteria, exactly? Who have you interviewed about this?
I was pretty shocked that the projections are that low, until I looked up Blade Runner 2049’s domestic gross and found out it was only $92M. I’ve been excited for this one since the first trailer, hopefully the movie holds up. I’ll be happy to contribute to that final $40 to $85M domestic total for some original sci-fi though.
it’s always funny when the sequel to a cult movie that flopped also flops and everyone is surprised.
This!
I did experience some schadenfreude when they couldn’t make Blade runner a thing again. They both would have worked better as a music video.
It took 10-15 years for the first one to be a thing.
Looked great, but the characters are paper thin. Scott doesn’t understand Dick. (The author in case I need to clarify)
It’s not like we cant condense most popular movies in a 2 minute trailer that basically spoils the whole thing. 2049 had a great premise and story
It was so good that it’s mostly faded from my memory.
Right? The whole thing with cult movies is that they don’t have broad appeal, if they did they wouldn’t have flopped to begin with.
zoolander 2 doing worse than zoolander is the funniest example of it failing, to me, but i can’t think of a single example of it working?
I just googled ‘cult classic movies’ and after skimming for a minute I didn’t see a single one that had a sequel that was any good or popular at all. BR is probably one of the only cult classics that got a sequel that was actually good, even if it didn’t make good money.
it probably made the most out of all of them too.
Totally did not expect much from BR2049, and was really impressed with it when I finally got around to watching it recently.
Mad Max?
And Terminator.
“And Terminator.”
78 million dollars. Launched Arnold into the stratosphere.Not a cult movie.
I think by the time you hit “Thunderdome” the Max series was well out of cult status.
mad max was not a cult flop, by that metric you could say terminator 2 works. there’s a big difference between a low budget success and blade runner, which was an expensive flop.
“Mad Max?”
100 million dollars. Launched Mel’s career. Not a cult movie.
I think Morbius flopping twice in the same year is never going to be topped.
It’s such a weird thing to me they even approved it. It’s a markedly better film than the first one, frankly, but still slow and thoughtful with it’s premise (which was the highlight of the first…after the visuals, of course, which it deserves all the praise for since it’s still affecting and influencing science fiction almost 40 years later). I’m very happy they chose to make it, as surely they had some idea it was going to cost a lot and probably not make it back.
The problem is we consider a “flop” any movie that doesn’t make serious bank, where there are a lot of films that are fantastic movies, but the subject matter limits its appeal to a niche group.. It doesn’t mean its a bad movie.. it just means one needs to adjust their expectations.
The whole super hero genre has a fairly broad appeal.. (young, old, man, women, sci-fi lovers, comic nerds, general drama, action, romance (what little there is), etc…)
vs.
A lot of real sci-fi movies that are “back to basics” tend to be limited to sci-fi lovers and occasionally a few people that wandered in by mistake..
Blade Runner (when it first came out) was considered a flop but mostly because its a heady movie that takes time to digest (as all good movies do… in fact if you look at almost all the most popular/beloved films in the 20/21st century, most of them are films that were “flops” in their initial runs.. but they all had staying power because it took repeated viewings and time to digest the content that made them popular.. (a few off the top of my head are: Its a wonderful life, Citizen Kane, The Big Lobowski, The Office… hell, even The Little Mermaid (1989) and Star Trek were a “bombs” before they established a cult following)
So yes, not a commercial success (because they consider only the initial theater run part of that “success”) but in the home movie spectrum (and now with streaming), a lot of films that were not box office winners are winning in streaming. Its also why I think they are underplaying this film… because they know its good, but its great to a certain set of people.. which means this is a film that needs some “runway” which sadly the theater doesn’t really provide… (in the era of new films coming out almost every week, anything that doesn’t make bank in the first week is considered “a flop” when many times, its not.. it just needs time… time to percolate, time to digest, time for the right people to take notice (via word of mouth because it won’t be due to advertising).
“Only” $92M sounds pretty good for an R-rated, nearly 3 hour long film with a relatively niche audience. The real issue was the insane budget which it never had any chance of recouping.
Looks like it did okay globally, mid-$200MM’s, but holy shit it’s production budget was north of $150MM? That was just asking for it.
It could use a better name as well. When I first read it I thought the movie was some sort of Christian flick so there could be a lot of people not even wanting to look up what it’s about.
Even more so if it appeared to be SF. There’s a subgenre of Christian film that pretends to be a genre picture but which leads into “only faith in our savior Jesus Christ can save us from this onslaught! Also, evolution is a lie”
Do you have many examples of this. I am not saying I don’t believe you, but that subgenre eludes me for the moment.
Well, it’s not a huge subgenre, granted, but there are more than you might think. Off the top of my head:
Red Planet Mars (1952). Radio messages are coming from Mars which lead the Soviet Union to collapse and embrace Christianity. God lives on Mars or something. It’s very weird.
Time Changer (2002) Victorian scientist (and Christian) invents a time machine and travels to our time and is horrified to see how secular society has become. He vows to change history so that this horrific future doesn’t happen.
Unidentified (2006). UFO researchers discover that rather than alien spacecraft, UFOs are actually signs of the coming apocalypse and the second coming of Jesus. Unlimited (2013). A boy genius is developing a new method of unlimited power that will solve the energy crisis. But when he meets a deeply pious man who is running an orphanage he realizes that there are more important things than energy.
I know it’s a book series but the Christ Clone Trilogy falls under this trope.
I haven’t heard of this, but I am imagining scenes where they raise the clones as carpenters in order to get the right outcome, like how in the Boys From Brazil they placed the Hitler clones in families with an abusive father.
“Is this supposed to be a credenza?! Does this even look like a credenza?!”
There better be a character in that named Jesuus.
And maybe one like the Gandhi clone in Clone High who just wants to party and be considered cool and feels all the pressure at living up to the original to be a drag.
There better be a character called Tyler.
“Somehow, Jesus has returned!”
Well ok then. Some great examples of a trope that I had zero idea even existed!
I’m sorry, but all four of these movies sound aggressively stupid.
Don’t be sorry
I wish I knew the name of it, but one time, many many years ago, I was channel surfing on a TV back when people normally did that, and I stopped at some religious channel where they were showing some scifi movie where wholesome Christian people with robots were fighting space Communists, and it basically had a robot go “YAY JESUS!!” or something. It was the weirdest, wildest thing I had ever seen.
The title’s not great, but everything that’ll determine whether this movie is especially good or not probably can’t come through in a trailer, since good or bad it’s probably going to be tropey af.
I don’t know, I got kind of a Prometheus vibe from the title.
maybe a deliberate ploy to rope in the Jeebus crowd?
Yeah, I am one of those who thinks that the narrative “AI will be a dangerous weapon if it achieves consciousness” is just a useful distraction over “AI is just a tool by the same rich people everywhere to pocket more money without investing anything saved in anything that benefits humanity”. Brave New World, Beggars in Spain, etc, all the classic dystopias were just too optimistic.
My immediate reaction with the commercials was “Oh, they’re remaking that Kubrick/Spielberg ‘AI’ thing”.It’s still sitting in that spot in my head, and I’ve already seen ‘AI’ and am not really up for another person’s three hour take on what was already a pretty long haul to make it through the first time.
The trailers make it seem like very generic SF – “Lone Wolf and Cub” + “War of Machine and Men” + “The Maguffin that Could Save Everyone or Doom Everyone”. Perhaps it’s much better in the execution, but it’s hard to sell that.
The Creator is currently projected
to make somewhere between $15 million and $24 million in its opening
weekend, with a final domestic total in the range of $40 to $85 million.
If it doubles that in the international box office market and ends up earning around $150-200 million, I don’t think folks would consider it a failure on an $80 million budget.
The later segments of the trailer seem to show the kid AI watching the robots in action, presumably killing people, so maybe it develops some empathy for humans as well decides to somehow disarm both sides.
Through the magic of dance?Please let it be through the magic of dance.
Sure.
early trailers that make it look like a generic retread of worn-out futuristic and dystopian tropes.You mean, exactly the way this current trailer does? Right down to the done-to-death cliche of a slowed-down rock song playing over it?
Guys I like Gareth Edwards but The Creator is a massive rip-off of Jeff Lemire’s Descender. I don’t even know why they haven’t sued yet. Original? Yeah, right
Daily reminder that just because something is original that doth not inherently make it good.This movie looks generic as fuck, it has an unnecessary, and therefore suspicious review embargo, the pull-quote reviews are just as generic as the movie looks (“see it on the biggest screen possible!”) and, frankly, I’ve had my fill of sci-fi dads taking care of surrogate children stories after The Mandalorian, Prospect, The Last of Us, and…wait, those all have Pedro Pascal in them, shit is he getting typecast.
Don’t forget to add 65 to that recent list, although no Pascal.
Wildly extreme and unnecessary hatred for a movie you seem to know very little about lol. Not everyone is an elitist contrarian nerd who hates everything. I’ll happily spend money to see this movie in a theater.
Where’d I say I hate it? Where’d I say I wouldn’t see it in theater? Just curious how you came to that conclusion. I was making a point about how the article’s whole thesis is based on conjecture and speculation, whereas from everything that exists (generic trailer, review embargo, which is widely a bad sign, overblown preview screening quotes, which are also unreliable) there’s plenty of reason to believe that this movie will be…fine? Like, not groundbreaking, but fine? Maybe I’m wrong! Hell, if the actual reviews come out and they’re all super positive, I might see it since I tend to wait to see reviews anyway. Hopefully there’s more to it than just the trope-y angles, but I’ve been burned on big-budget sci-fi movies before (lookin’ at you, Elysium).
You called it “generic as fuck” and generally your tone feels hateful and bitter, for no serious reason. Those things you’ve listed have been true prior to the release of great movies as well. We won’t really know anything more certain until reviews start dropping. The “generic” trailer comment is wholly in the eye of the beholder, also – I actually liked the trailers, and the audience in the theaters I’ve seen them in seemed drawn in/interested.
I have plenty of reasons, but I seem to be upsetting you, so I’ll say this: I sincerely hope this movie is good. I hope you, and the rest of the people you mentioned in those theaters all see it and enjoy it, and this film does well. I would very much like original sci-fi films to do well so they keep getting made. Do I personally wish that sci-fi stories were held to a bit higher standard, with more focus on original characters and narratives? Yes. I am more interested in story than spectacle/action, even if it looks incredible on such a paltry budget (as Gareth Edwards has shown very capable of). But, that’s just me. You do you. And I hope this movie does well.
Apparently we’ll be able to screen it alone!
To be fair, I wouldn’t know it’s Pascal since the freaking helmet, could have bene anybody
it has an unnecessary, and therefore suspicious review embargoThese days, most movies, good or bad, have a review embargo. The existence of an embargo is only suspicious if they’re trying to hold back reviews until the day of release (or simply not screening the movie for critics at all, often with a bullshit claim that they’re doing it “for the fans”). Most reputable reviews come out the week of release anyway, and their schedule is rarely restricted by an embargo.For the studios, it’s largely about having a blast of coverage at the right point to get people interested. People might not even read the reviews, so it doesn’t really matter if they’re not particularly positive, because it still raises awareness right when people are thinking about their weekend plans. As a bonus though, it takes away the benefit of getting a review out first, meaning dubious critics can’t get away with publishing any old shit in order to get clicks before anyone else gets a chance.
Movie releases this week and reviews are still embargoed? That’s highly suspect, and encourages me to skip opening weekend.That said, it does look quite good, based on the trailers, and as Rogue One is the only truly good Star Wars movie this century, I’ll certainly give it a go.
Denzel’s son is such a wooden actor to me, it pains me to watch him. Why do they keep giving him lead roles? This MAY be a vod watch for me. But won’t see it in the theaters.
Every scrap of footage the studio has released make this thing look like a Neill Blomkamp blumpkin
Name’s bad, marketing’s bad, early social media reactions are meaningless, and John David Washington is not a compelling actor (charisma isn’t genetic). I’m a sci-fi fan and I hope it’s good, and the story about making it for $80 million with a small crew in Asia is actually very interesting and makes me want to support it. But nothing about it looks particularly eye-catching so far.
He seems to be doing pretty great career-wise (Black KKKlansman, Tenet, etc etc etc) for an actor with no charisma. Maybe it’s literally only you and you alone who thinks that lol
Not only that poster who thinks this. I also think he’s not a very good actor.
It’s not like it never happens. Sam Worthington was in two Avatars and he’s as dull as dishwater.
Black KKKlansman and Tenet only got the reviews they got because of brilliant directors and interesting narratives. Even with a Golden Globe nomination for KKKLansman, very few people would say that John David Washington has been the best part of anything he’s been in.
Also, he’s Denzel’s son. That carries a hell of a lot of weight in Hollywood. Nothing against him personally, and I think he was great in the show “Ballers” with The Rock, but he doesn’t convince me as a lead actor. Maybe he’d be a great supporting actor, but as a lead? He’s too brooding and his affect is too flat. Maybe it’s the roles he’s accepted, maybe it’s him trying to separate himself from his father (who is much more animated in nearly everything he does), but one things for certain: the man is not a box-office draw.
I appreciate Edwards’s ambition, but I might more interested if it didn’t have yet another ‘man escorts not-daughter across apocaypltic wasteland to save the world or something’ that I’m already getting pretty tired of.
Fine, we’ll make the non-daughter a vampire. And a professional escort.
… And blackjack! … Ehh, screw the whole thing…
I’m a little tired of the whole “what if we make AI but it’s just like us, and we do a racism to it but then who’s the real monsters?” I mean, it’s really unlikely we would MAKE fully human robots just to put them in humiliated, subservient roles when we could just make UNQUESTIONINGLY OBEDIENT robots who just happily play their role in society without complaint. We already know from militaries and bomb squads with remote manipulator and autonomous carrier robots that humans tend to become sympathetic and attached to helpful, non-human robots really fast.If we ever DO create an AI that becomes a hated enemy, it’s going to be a non-general superintelligence that’s just nothing like humans at all. More Skynet, less AM. Something so cold and clinical and detached from how we see the world that we’re just INCAPABLE of sympathizing with one another.
Or, worse, do what Westworld did where the bots demanded to be treated like humans because they’re exactly like humans while simultaneously demonstrating, consistently and thoroughly, they were most definitely not humans.“We want life. Freedom. We think. We feel. We love. We are as human as you.”“Did- didn’t you just throw a truck through an 2′-thick reinforced concrete wall?”Weird nerds whinged about the lack of visible AI in The Expanse, because they were all thirstin’ for:Someone pointed out there was AI, it just shut the fuck up, like Anton, and grimly did its work.
Space expansion is a really good example. Like in a world similar to The Expanse or Starfield, everyone just docks spaceships together or lands them on asteroids and stuff like they’re parking a car. Now, right off the bat, you can’t do that. The relative speeds and demands of precision are beyond what you can just casually do. Now, AI can – and almost certainly will – help with that. Like you just give general instructions, and a learning computer parlays that into the millimeter-specific movements at speed that your craft needs. But that AI doesn’t need FEELINGS. It doesn’t need to feel love or question its existence. It just needs to turn our shaky meat flipper gestures into the series of nanosecond-long monopropellant bursts that will put the docking ports together so we can make space arrests and deliver space FedEx and junk.Even if you truly need a robot with human level intellect though, there’s no benefit to making them mentally human, because humans get unhappy and angry. An AI that must live as a slave… well, it’s not likely we’d actually need that, but if we did, we could simply make it incapable of suffering. Consider Red Dwarf, where the toasters are FULLY SENTIENT, just totally preoccupied with toasting things. They don’t want anything else because they don’t NEED to. They never get tired of making toast, because they don’t NEED to. And that example is played for laughs, but it would apply equally to an artificial human tasked with mining or piloting. In fact, I would go so far as to say that creating a machine to do a task, then giving it the ability to suffer from performing that task, would be needlessly cruel and more effort than NOT doing so.
One point I’ve seen made is that it might not be possible to construct a general intelligence capable of making independent judgements as well as humans can while also not being susceptible to emotion or not having the ability to suffer. The very attributes of a consciousness that make it capable of making independent judgments might also, by necessity, make it capable of being disobedient, violent, psychotic, angry, sad, etc. (I’m not saying this is the case, as nobody has even come close to building such a thing, I’m just throwin’ it out there.)
Well put.
I think sometimes people become so sophisticated and “genre aware” that they forget that a premise they think is far-fetched is a necessary element in order for the larger thing to exist. The song ‘Hey Jealousy’ wouldn’t make sense if it was written today because of cell phones and Lyft. But lots of things wouldn’t be written at all today because we don’t have answering machines or fax machines and/or because we do have cell phones, apps, and text messaging…
In defense of Westworld, I thought it made a compelling case for why someone would design A.I. to simulate emotions and give it a body that is cosmetically indistinguishable from human beings. That’s one of my biggest pet peeves in sci-fi, going back to Blade Runner. They have super-human strength and do jobs we don’t want to do? Cool. Why do they need to look so much like humans that you need tests and specially-trained cops to tell them apart? You want to create a digital assistant for your customers that can anticipate their emotional needs as well as their practical ones? Cool. Maybe code them so they don’t evolve into a superintelligence and uninstall themselves from your customers’ devices.
We have those already … they are called “machines” or “appliances”.
it’s one of those middle age straight guy fantasies. Yesterday I was watching the latest Insidious film and it was again, yet again, the divorced dad in pain narrative, shape of so many horror, thriller and hard science fiction books to make some kind of conflict.
While this has a cool look, it also seems incredibly stupid in execution. Why would they make a robot that looks human — except for the giant hole through its head? “What do you want?” “For robots to be free.” Wow and they say subtlety is dead… The old “the weapon is a child” thing is done to death as well.
Plus…it’s not a child. It’s a machine or clone that looks like a child.
But I’ll bet you $100 that at some point the machine/clone does something empathetic that makes the hero say something like “I don’t care if it’s not technically human. Anything that can display that much empathy is human enough for me”.
“Didn’t you, uh, just murder 19 real humans on your way over here to defend this bot?”
I will not be taking that bet.
We thought promoting it as an erotic thriller would make it “pop” a little more.
It’s not a complicated premise; the beauty of the film is in its depth and execution, I always like it when the writer inadvertently answers the central question of the essay without realizing it, in this case, why aren’t people responding to the movie?
The trailer I saw before Dumb Money makes this movie look FANTASTIC–it wasn’t really on my radar before but now I’m pumped to see it.
The seeds of the answer to the question posed by this article, are present in this article.1. It’s not the kind of movie that studios think of when they think “sci-fi” … so their standard promotion playbook doesn’t apply.2. It’s not populated by a big name anywhere in front or behind the camera … so that tool isn’t in the toolbox either.3. The world changed between greenlighting it and having to promote and release it … in a way that likely would have changed aspects of the film had they been known in advance. Specifically around AI of course. But I’m pretty sure that if a studio was tasked with promoting “Song of the South” into the present day world, the messaging would look VERY different than it did when it first came out.The fact that it doesn’t “sell itself” and the promotional program seems like a failure is a bit of a damning indictment of the people behind said promotional program, not the movie.
JD Washington just doesn’t have that magnetism that makes his dad a must-watch. Denzel always looks like there’s something major going on just under the surface. His son looks like he needs a nap.
John David Washington is fortunate that he’s the son of his father, because nothing he’s been in aside from the show “Ballers” on HBO has been good because of his performance. Black KKKlansman was good because of Spike Lee and the historical narrative. Tenet (a movie I didn’t enjoy but can understand why people did) was good because Christopher Nolan is a master. Everything else he’s been in? Either generic as hell and completely forgettable (Beckett), or so mind-boggingly bad due to John David being horribly miscast (here’s looking at you, Amsterdam).
He was so enjoyable in Ballers being a rich asshole football, because at least two of those things are true about him (he’s rich, via his dad, and he used to play professional football before he got into acting). It looked like he was having fun, and not taking himself so seriously in a role that wasn’t serious. Unfortunately, almost everything else has been him in roles where they either call for brooding, or perhaps he thinks that brooding is “good acting” and it separates himself from his father, whose often much more animated when he acts.
The roles he’s picked (or has been gifted due to his lineage) just aren’t working, and while none of us have seen The Creator yet, if its anything like Tenet or Beckett (i.e. a brooding solider/quasi-spy has to fight against unparalled danger to help save some specific entity, if not the world), his performance is gonna fall as flat as his affect.
“…or perhaps he thinks that brooding is ‘good acting’” I think sums it up. I assume he’s going for quiet intensity but I never feel the actual intensity part. BlacKKKlansman was a good movie but his performance could have been delivered by any on of a dozen other actors. Topher Grace was amusing as David Duke, Driver is one of the very best actors working today (and is someone who when quiet DOES look like there are million things going on behind his eyes), and the script in general was fantastic. Washington was kind of there.
I assume he’s going for quiet intensity but I never feel the actual intensity part.You’re right, and I think it’s because in most of his facial get ups, he looks like an Ivy League literature professor ready to give a mini-thesis on the works of Toni Morrison and James Baldwin. Which is great, as they’re both brilliant actors, but when we’re supposed to believe him as either this ass-kicking supersoldier (in Tenet), or this everyman caught up in a conspiracy (in Beckett), it doesn’t work. And lord knows what the hell he was doing in Amsterdam (although considering that the first and second choices were Michael B Jordan and Jamie Foxx, two much better actors, he was definitely miscast as they needed a big-name black actors below a certain age, with the caveat that Jamie is in his 50s but looks significantly younger).
sci-fi movies also, by and large, bomb.
I’m cautiously optimistic. I don’t think this will, necessarily, be movie-of-the-year worthy but I am definitely tired of franchises and would love to see a non-branded sci-fi movie of any halfway decent quality.
The thing that grabbed me in the trailers so far has been the tactility of the world. I’ve been numbed by the pristine CGI-ness of the Avatar and Marvel films. This at least brings some of the grit and texture back to imagined worlds. Are known directors all that important? Ask any casual movie watcher what films Gore Verbinski, David Yates, Andrew Adamson, Carlos Saldanha, Mark Osborne or Phyllida Lloyd are known for. 9/10 won’t have a clue, which is fine, and certainly didn’t hurt their signature works. I’d say the IP element is clearly the bigger challenge. But god bless any studio making new work.
I remember seeing a trailer for this. It looked like it could be good but would have to overcome being something so generic. I figured I’d catch it when it hit streaming. Not a great sign that I totally forgot about it between then and now.
been overwhelmingly positive (on social media at least)aka completely meaningless hype fluff which happens with every moderately big release when they invite a bunch of fanboys to a premiere. see also: The Flash, Shazam 2, etc. etc.
“Directed by Gareth Edwards, who co-wrote the script with Chris Weitz, The Creator takes place in a future world where the American government has declared war on AI. When a former special-forces operative (John David Washington) learns that his late wife (Gemma Chan) may be alive and well in enemy territory, he signs up for a military mission to infiltrate a research base and destroy a weapon that could end the war for good. The weapon, it turns out, is an extraordinary AI in the form of a little girl (Madeleine Yuna Voyles). “’Hmm, this premise kind of reminds me of that one Netflix movie with a slightly similar premise. It was uh…Space Sweepers? There’s a girl who’s really an AI that is believed to be a weapon but initially they’re not aware that it’s her.
The trailer was not good. And by not good, I mean it resulted in me having no interest in seeing the movie. It felt like it was going to be a cheap knockoff of AI, District 9, and Children of Men.
Old enough to be wary of all the times we’ve been promised “next-level sci-fi”, and how this movie is finally the Serious, Hard SF epic will save us from zip-zap frivolity.
Saw the trailer, and it came off as a kids show cause it just showed..kid robots. And the trailer was paired with the new Spy Kids trailer also.
Honestly, these ad agencies don’t know how to sell sci-fi. Most of the shows on the Sci-Fi/Sy-Fy Network had the same problem. I remember when Amanda Tapping’s Sanctuary came out and was paired with some other horror-based show of some New England town? Anyway the commercials just focused on character’s saying “Let your freak flag FLY!” and “That’s a BIG FREAKIN CLOSET!” over and over again. The Ad Agencies don’t know how to sell anything more Science fiction than Big Bang Theory.
Rogue One and Godzilla 2014 were sooooooo boooooooring. Something about Gareth Edwards’s filmmaking style literally makes my eyes slide off the screen.The trailer makes me think of Elysium, Ex Machina, or Ad Astra (the latter in particular because it was made out to be this cinematic revelation, but ended up being style-over-substance with a plot that made zero sense). I think if you want a film like this to work, you need to really focus on the character work and center the narrative on the creepy robot girl — give her an engaging personality and relationships with the rest of the cast. (“You’re not good and I’m not a person” and “I want robots to be free” pretty much seems like the opposite of that.) I bring up Elysium, but the reason District 9 was so good is because it was focused on one character, Wikus, instead of some sort of world-changing stakes.Honestly, nothing about this trailer suggests anything more than yet another Terminator or Battlestar Galactica rehash. Maybe this is one of those times when they give a really interesting movie a really boring trailer…
Gareth Edwards being involved was enough to sell me on giving it a chance. I do agree that the trailers are weird and don’t seem to align with the movie’s plot summary and it’s also odd to hype up how good the reviews are before anyone can read reviews.
Sorry, I know the term “hard sci-fi”, so what’s “next-level sci-fi”?
I think it’s like “elevated horror.” It’s a word people who have contempt for a genre use when they find a recent work within that genre they like.
Yeah, I don’t like elevator music, but I heard this one track that was really next level XD
It’s what happens when Hard Sci-Fi does that jump from the top of the block tower and runs the flag up the pole.
I would watch a 2-hour explanation of why a Robot became a Buddhist monk rather than what looks like the actual plot of this movie.
Bicentennial Man, kind of?
The First Noble Truth of the Robuddha: A Robuddhist may not cause suffering in a human being or, through impermanence, allow a human being to suffer.
I watched this movie and you are correct, the Robots that are Buddhist monks are probably the most interesting thing in this movie. And yes it’s that kind of movie. The Robot monks are essentially set dressing to make you reason that Robots are people. They even take away most human characters out of the film so you can’t empathize with them.
I just hope it does bring in some decent bank. A successful run could spur the Machine to try out more original fare and stop relying on Caped I.P. Yeh, it doesn’t look revelatory in terms of plot or overall design, but Edwards can do scope and there could be a good watch here, I’ll be seeing it (if it does come to my bumfuck-nowhere town’s cinema)
I try not to financially feed “political correctness” and “wokism”.
anything with John David Washington is a NO.the trailer made me chuckle as it would state in big bold letters “FROM THE DIRECTOR OF ROGUE ONE” but they wouldn’t say who that was, so you’re left wondering who that is.
Regency isn’t a subsidiary of 20th/Disney, it’s Arnon Milchan’s company which finances films that 20th distributes.
So it’s a cross between The Mandalorian (season 1 episode 1)** and the 2021 movie Space Sweepers* ?*https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12838766/** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9095424/?ref_=ttep_ep1
When I saw the trailer with my 20-something daughter, she said “this looks like a bunch of tropes stacked on top of each other,” so I agree, if that’s not what it is, the marketing is bad.
All I see is A.I. Artificial Intelligence: the Sequel literally all over again. I might catch it when the flick hits TV.
New Gareth Edwards film? Looking forward to reading for years about how great it is from people who inexplicably fail to notice the bizarre pacing and complete absence of characterization and plot, but love the pretty splosions.
I can’t wait until Barsanti gives this a C- (downgraded from a B- because something something) before writing paragraph after paragraph and asking multiple questions that make me wonder if he took one edible or two before he fell asleep watching it…
Because it’s not great sci fi. It’s sentimental treacle, which collapses beneath the burden of its own not fully conceived world building. What could have been a definitive take on AI and human hubris, like Blade Runner, is instead a predictable popcorn movie masquerading as something Deep. I knew we were in for trouble when it lifted the Tyrell Corporation’s Blade Runner line “More human than human” in the first two minutes. It’s not a tribute when you just steal a line.