Rod and Karen review Gareth Edwards’ latest science fiction flick, “The Creator.” We also discuss some movie trailers and your comments on “The Equalizer.”
Spoiled Reviews: (Protected Content)
SMR 469: The Creator
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Tons of ideas, very little payoff. The Creator in a nutshell. A movie that has such moving visuals, action sequences & special effects, you’d think it’d have the story to meet that potential & it doesn’t. I’ve seen this twice & I was admittedly impressed with it. I did notice some of the shortcomings with the story & characters development, I was just so impressed with the action, that alone was enough for me. Seeing it a little cold also helped.
Then, I realized a couple of things with ol’ Gareth Edwards, the director of The Creator. He struggled to finished his cut of Rogue One. Tony Gilroy, basically, was the clean-up director to finish what Edwards couldn’t achieve for his vision. Crazy how much I love that movie that, despite how weird it’s written at the beginning. And, of course, fucking “let them fight” but not really, but, oh wait, until the end though ass Godzilla from 2014 was jumbled mess of epic proportions. Poorly written characters, they wasted Bryan Cranston for nothing, he fucking worked, and it’s mostly boring. I don’t give a fuck how much of an ode it is to the original. Original probably is good. Make a Godzilla movie with some punch, Gareth. It’s why the Godzilla portion movies are pretty bad.
Back to The Creator. John David Washington, bless his heart, just need more time with dramas. He does lack range. In all honesty, Gemma Chan should’ve been the protagonist in this or just given more screentime, instead of killing her outright, leaving her to out of place flashbacks. She’s woefully underutilized. I know Christopher Nolan gets a ton of shit for how he uses women in his movies, he wouldn’t do this bullshit. The inclusion of Ken Watanabe is a mixed bag. Rod, dawg, he called the character played by John David Washington “brother” three times. What the fuck? Say his name, man. It honestly makes his character a little unserious. More of the scripts fault but still. Ken’s an amazing actor, but, ugh. Allison Janney & Ralph Ineson were both fine. Have the same problem as most of the characters here: they’re just undercooked. Madeleine Yuna Voyles is very good here. The best person throughout this you actually root for, even if the movie’s supposed discussion of humans vs AI is just not there. She does a very good job of her role.
Gareth Edwards & Chris Weitz just penned an undercooked script that needed more time in development to get this right. Probably needed to be longer. Honestly needed to stick to just one subject & not tons of high-concept things. Edwards’s is just not that talented clearly. This film does military conflict better and even that is questionable but the tenets are there. The backdrop of using a religion allegory with Asian people as the AI against the military and/or white people? Some things just weren’t thought out in the final draft. Glad movies like these exist. At the same time, however, with all this barking for originality, just don’t do what this film did.
Y’all brought up a lot of points during the dislikes section that I hadn’t even noticed or considered. That being said I loved the movie. There was def a lot of plot armor but it didn’t take away from my enjoyment. I’m not into sci-fi too heavy so I was skeptical going in. I think JD Washington is getting nepo baby roles but I do think that having a black American protagonist really worked for me in this movie. Aside from walking around Asia as a wanted person and not being found out immediately, I thought it’d take a black American to understand the plight of the simulants who want freedom from slavery and to be left alone to live in peace.
Also y’all tripping about that Napoleon. That joint looks good af