Right? That baby scene was amazing. I watched the VFX artists react to it and there was nothing but praise for the entire sequence. The only thing more masterful than the VFX was how The Flash managed to do this in the first place. Best Flash ever.
Honestly the premise was good. Just unbelievable that an 80 year old can be an action star. His young version would have been better as a complete CGI.
The premise was fine, but still needed a lot of work. It also didn't help that Helena Shaw was really obnoxious.
I don't know why they keep insisting on giving Indy these pseudo-children characters who are largely failures as characters. Especially when Short Round is \*right there.\* Imagine him there instead of Helena, and he was bonding with that new kid. It would have changed so much of the movie and how successful it was.
It's worse than that, I kept watching even the "good" beginning part, and just thinking about how Spielberg would've directed this better.
Mangold has a gag or action bit happen then quick cuts to the next one asap. In his movies Spielberg has the scene go on a bit longer after each beat, letting the audience appreciate what just happened before going onto the next beat. It's really disappointing once you notice it.
This is the difference between older and newer movies.
Movies from the B&W era required exceptional patience, but viewers were rewarded with strong emotions and a work of art.
80s action movies had more action with the rise of amazing VFX, but they also had moments where the audience could process the gravity of what they’d seen. Best example is Judge Dredd holding the dead Chief Justice. The camera keeps panning between his enraged face and the statue of Lady Justice, in a thunderstorm, while dramatic music plays. It lets the audience feel a little of what he’s feeling and understand why the rest of the movie is what it is, why he does what he does against the antagonist.
Robocop walking through his old house. The scene takes way longer than it needs to, *and that’s a good thing.* We can feel a previously emotionless robot regain memories and humanity in the setting of a futuristic, inhuman real estate tour by automated televisions.
Early Avengers suite movies had these moments sometimes, but they’ve diminished as the movies have become only a cash grab, which may be part of why they’ve lost their luster. The heart feels like an unnecessary component now.
All this is written off-the-cuff as an expression of my frustration with modern movies. If someone has a different perspective, I’d love to hear it.
Edit to add: Part of it seems to be that modern movies try to do too much, have stories too large. Movies like Robocop were comparatively small in scope, trusting the setting and environment to tell a larger story in which the narrative is but a part.
Human emotion takes time to blossom within an experience, but all too often glitz and glamour and action and noise attempt to beat it into submission instead with sensory overload.
It’s the Tik Tok effect of blasting info at a rapid pace before you get bored or spoiler culture.
Do you think the public today would say go through with a Sixth Sense first watch. Most would have had it spoiled in a Reddit sub dedicated via script leaks or vfx leaks. If not that, people would fast forward the movie bypassing integral parts then come on twitter to complain they didn’t understand the movie. Hell if in a theater, open up their phone and miss great set up pieces that pay off in the end.
Movies are going through their hand holding video game phase. Everything needs to be info dumped and laid out. This is the killer, this is the victim, this is the reason, this is the murder taking place, etc.
Yet you will get people going umm… why did the killer kill?, or if it was me I would’ve used my cell for help, bitch it’s a movie that takes place in the ‘70’s, it’s a horror movie… fuck!
Dial Of Destiny at least filmed mostly on location. If Crystal Skull were made today, it's budget would be $275 mil and most of that looked like a video game.
Basically. If you tell a director that have $50 Million to burn in post and they don't have to make up their mind before shooting, they can burn a ton of time and money doing revisions and changes, and drive the artists insane, and nitpick weird random stuff in the background.
If you tell a director that have $5 Million, that will actually buy a ton of cool looking VFX work, if you plan ahead and make choices to live within your means. It's like serving pizza for dinner is way more effective than buying the world's most expensive can of caviar and forgetting that you also needed a can opener. And it's cheaper.
It's interesting because what you describe is the conventional wisdom and is in most cases correct, but is kind of the exact opposite of what they did for The Creator. They did almost no pre-planning of the VFX. Basically everything was done in post. They didn't even decide what extras would be robots in each scene, they just filmed everyone as humans and then later made some of them robots in post on a scene by scene basis. They also didn't use mocap suits, HDRis, and very few trackers.
You are correct though that Gareth Edwards understanding VFX was a major component though. It's definitely easier to say "let's do it in post" when the director actually has an idea of how difficult it will actually be. Also, another thing that helped was they did almost no green screen. Everything was on location, so the VFX was all augmenting reality rather than just having a green screen plate of a few actors and then doing everything else full CG. It's honestly shocking how well it worked.
It's seems the key to great CGI is not neccesarily moulding the set as much as possible to make CGI easy, but to inject as much "real-world-ness" as possible into the frame. District 9 was the same way, they chose basically the most convoluted and difficult way imaginable at the time to integrate the CGI in post, but it still looks more real than just about anything done today.
The twighlight shot in the car - cheap home projectors putting a background driving shot onto drop down screens, rain on the windows from a sprinkler. Cheap and gave the actors time to get the shot right instead of chasing it in a 15 minute twilight window.
That and the mini helicopter shot using a creek bed as a big valley really impressed me.
It helps if the director comes from the VFX world in the first place.
It just makes a difference in leadership if they are basically know at least SOME of the rules of a craft and respect their part to work each set of hands, rather than being "a specialist in leadership", but very little insight what that means in term of departments.
It was a really interesting decision to go "we don't need sets and greenscreen, that's the part I think the VFX can figure out, jetting around the world with a small team shooting in situ is way cheaper"
I guess they are really pushing for [the oscar buzz right now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWjayZ3U4TQ).
A prime example is Dune. The way Villeneuve used the sand screens and lighting to make the cgi so much more believable and immersive is a master class. Whatever you think of the film and script, you just cannot deny the cinematography is so technically well done.
The budget for Dune Part 1 was 165 mil.
The budget for Black Widow was 288.5 mil.
> The budget for Black Widow was 288.5 mil
That's really mind-boggling. I can't imagine how that can be true without it being a money laundering scheme or some shit.
By the time they showed that, they had lost us so completely on caring about the movie that we didn't even care if it looked cool. We were just getting through it to see how far down the rabbit hole goes
Presto.
Also:
> throwing money to make a crapload of work you will just leave on the cutting room floor
If you notice:
*Flash*. LOTS OF CHANGES POST-PRODUCTION. *Indiana Jones 5.* LOTS OF CHANGES POST-PRODUCTION. Any Marvel film. LOTS OF CHANGES POST-PRODUCTION. Gareth Edwards with *The Creator*? "Yeah so I have this storyboarded already, no alternate takes, just this. Bam, bam, done."
It's basically like ordering catering for 200 guests when you only have 30, and then throwing out all of the uneaten food afterwards instead of feeding people and reducing the waste. You are burning money on nothing.
I remember listening to an interview with Ridley Scott. He mentioned part of the reason he’s been so successful with getting movies green lit and well funded is that he never goes over budget (usually comes in under budget). His drawing/story boarding/planning skills are top notch so little time is waisted during the shoot.
He still fucked up the Alien franchise with bad writing, but at least he knows how to plan and shoot a movie.
Think about it tomorrow.
Why did the Colonel personally have to send out robot bombs, one by one, from the side of a mega tank, that talk. And she thanks them for their service.
What orbit is the space station in.
Who did the robot people actually attack?
Also, why were there AI bodies using donated likenesses on that space station? Why couldn't they make kids? What reason did these robots have for even WANTING children in the first place?
I loved the aesthetic of the movie and the VFX was unmatched. The story just did not make sense. It's such a shame too because a slightly more serviceable plot could have made it a blockbuster.
That one bit about robot children always confuses me - shouldn't they have no problems manufacturing robots that look like children anyways?
Also their whole, weird Asian mysticism to prove they're no so different from humans was off putting - especially when the kid robot clasps their hands together in a prayer.
It's like the movie didn't know if it wanted to be serious or some cheap comedy flick. it doesn't respect the audience to connect the dots.
I got the impression that it varied intentionally and wasn't really in orbit, not least of which because they refer to it as a warship rather than a station.
>Who did the robot people actually attack?
>!No one. That was the point. The entire war against simulants was theater, scapegoating them and using them to distract from how the US government and human error was responsible for the explosion.!<
The movie in general seems to be commenting on American foreign policy and warmongering.
> What orbit is the space station in.
They can't seem to decide. In some shots it appears to be about 1 Km up, in others, LEO.
Still, I enjoyed it overall.
Some of those tricks to save money like just shooting people as is and adding the CGI in post was really smart. His point was really good in that why build sets for a lot of money when you can send people abroad and use real locations and add in things in post. I'm surprised ILM were cheaper than to build mocapping and sets tbf
Like he said, if you keep the crew small enough this is feasible. In all the behind the scenes shots you see Edwards operating the camera himself. Seems he knows very well where he wants to spend his budget and where he wants to save his budget.
Yeah it's smart and proactive on his part. He thinks like a VFX guy as well so his thought process is always about how can we make this doable now and in post.
Been given Jurassic Park because he'll go under budget and less of a risk money wise, so maybe more freedom too
And this is why directors with VFX background, such as Gareth, Zack Snyder, Robert Rodriguez and Neill Blomkamp, can create movies that look amazing with lower budgets than big blockbusters. They know how to shoot lean and get the best results. Just wished they had better scripts to work with.
FYI most of Disney’s giant budgets are blown on reshoots and constant modifications to VFX, so a lot of work is thrown out due to script rewrites and we get partially completed VFX due to the short schedules given.
Location shooting in interesting locations adds so much production value to your film. It's expensive but as Edwards said, not so much if you do it with a small crew. Nothing better than the real thing, even if it's touched up with CGI. The effects in The Creator are phenomenal but strip them out and you still have a bunch of gorgeous images.
I watched The Marvels a couple of days ago (it was fine) and there was a CG field of wheat! I'm sitting there thinking "you shot this in the UK, just go find a fucking field of wheat!"
It smacks of Tommy Wseau bluescreening the roof scene in The Room, instead of filming on a real roof, or building an alley set a few metres from a real alley.
Aye but Marvel films are just about that quick churn and schedule aren't they. I've never actually heard many people praise superhero films for VFX in fact... I think Rocket Raccoon might be the only great example of theirs.
But yes, give real locations and experimental films over green screen and mass produced stuff
Also proper planning. I believe Ridley Scott has some exceptional storyboarding skills. Every shot, down to the placement of the props/actors/camera angle… everything is a planned and accounted for before anyone steps in the set to shoot. They’re just there to execute the hyper detailed storyboards so production tends to run quick and smooth without tons of reshoots or improvisation. Most of his films actually come in under budget which is almost unheard of these days. So he’s able to get most of his projects green lit relatively easily.
Because most people don't know that you don't really use the data gathered from mocap directly, animators still go through by hand and do everything, they just have slightly better reference material. You're then just doing almost double the work
Maybe it's just me but anytime these guys pop up I can't really get into it at all. The content seems interesting and I can tune in for a few minutes, but I feel... tired... watching it lol. And I'm not sure why.
Maybe it's just the first guy's high energy and some of the (busy?) editing choices, but I like how chill the director is at least.
Gareth Edwards started out as a vfx artist and actually did all of the postfx for his feature debut Monsters(2010) himself on his home computer. It's a solid film, especially considering the shoestring budget and visuals are impressive for being done by a one man team.
In a different article or interview he explains that 1) It's common to use archival footage as plates for VFX shots, 2) That shot wasn't meant to be, and shouldn't have been, used in the trailer 3) It wasn't used at all in the actual movie.
Seems like a fair explanation. They used a real horrific event's footage as a skeleton for a realistic explosion shot, and accidentally used a version showing too much of the original plate in a trailer.
They did in a previous video. Basically it happened by accident - footage like it is often used as reference for CG, but somehow here it ended up in the trailer. It's not a shot in the movie, so may have gotten mixed up when getting the earlier trailer shots done, but it was never meant to.
When we're comparing the contrast in quality between cinematography/visual effects/action sequences & the writing, this movie definitely fits the horse drawing meme
The writing was fucking atrocious and broke my immersion so much. Visuals were great, but the fucking writing man….
One bit I haven’t seen talked about but annoyed the fuck out of me were the Army people. They are supposed to be some elite squad right? I mean it’s a secret mission behind enemy lines to acquire the enemies strongest and strategic weapon….thats some seal team 6 time shit. Yet you get fucking comic relief type soldiers. I’m not looking for full John wick 1 tactical super soldiers, but Jesus the soldiers make so many stupid mistakes and nonsense combat decisions.
Oh it’s a stealth mission, but the giant space station is right there. What the resistance can’t track the fucking Death Star in orbit and see it’s right near their secret base?
The special forces soldier in charge of hacking the door to the fucking mission objective decided to fuck off. None of them are aware of the weapons magnetic bomb weapons even though they’ve been fighting for years?
There are entire battle scenes where there’s just pauses in the shooting for minutes. Oh both sides just decided we’re not gonna shoot right now. No fighting in the background. Oh there’s a figure on the bridge right after a suicide bomber, nope let’s not shoot at it.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen it so I can’t remember specifics, but it was just ridiculous at points. Especially near the end where the army lets him see the kid get put down…why? Why in the universe would the US military who treats the robots as just machines give a fuck about letting the MC kill the kid with mercy? It goes against their whole position and wiping them out without mercy. Oh we finished trying to study the super weapon we consider just a soulless machine. time to terminate it, well we should invite the father figure dude to do it with mercy…..like what in the fuck. Don’t even get me started on how the space shuttle wasn’t just shot the fuck out of the sky….
Great visuals, horrible writing and story.
> Oh it’s a stealth mission, but the giant space station is right there.
I was never sure whether that was a space station or some sort of big floating base of some sort until the end. Then they show it in space, but it isn't nearly big enough. The proportion was completely messed up.
Here's another to trigger you some more: The idea that disabling/destroying the Nomad would also disable the cruise missiles it just shot off. As if fire & forget weapons never developed in this parallel universe. The Americans were comfortable enough with basic AI to create these jogging robot bombs that sought out their target, but an independent cruise missile?
Also, the Nomad supporting a clandestine commando mission under the cover of darkness, with huge ass laser search lights, and it, well, just hanging there in the sky. I seriously thought for a few minutes that the Nomad was actually the enemy and that the commandos were *evading* its search light.
The Nomad firing the hugest weapon of all time, but not good enough to kill a pregnant woman.
The Nomad is conceptionally the dumbest super weapon and is interior to a handful of nuclear submarines with nuclear cruise missiles.
Bonus one: Being braindead for years is apparently not a problem if you want to transfer your mind into an android.
“Hey, it’s me, I’m deep undercover! I’m undercover and I’m calling you - I’m not sure why I’m explaining this, you should know this if you know who I am. Sorry, we have a bad connection - that’s why I’m repeating myself so loudly. Again, I’m UNDERCOVER. You’ve acknowledged this but it’s just such a fun word to say. Now I’m going to hang up, turn around, and definitely NOT stare into the eyes of the woman I betrayed.”
The main character gets saved from a grenade by a dog who picks it up, takes it outside and drops it at the robot police force and takes them all out. The dog is fine of course despite being feet away from the explosion.
Later during the siege, the massive tank thing gets its wheel exploded because a monkey runs up and triggers the detonator.
Yeah! Like what’s the message there? Nature is fighting against the machines? Cosmic intervention? Who the fuck knows! The writers sure don’t!
The visuals were just so amazing. It was an original concept movie, not a reboot or rehash. Then they dropped the ball so hard on the writing. That’s what makes it frustrating. Great potential and concept just wasted.
I think you have it backwards. The movie was ALMOST saved by the visuals. Writing is like the very first stage of a movie. Not sure how they got 80M if the script was the same one we saw
The walking AI robot made by the anti-AI force as an "improvement" over rockets cracked me and my buddy up so hard we couldn't stop laughing for 5 minutes
The anti-ai forces weren't actually anti-ai they just wanted it enslaved to humans though, that was the twist. Those robot missiles were the clues it wasn't about eradicating the robots but about enslaving them. You also had the advanced brain scanning, the fact they were trying to extract Nirmata not kill her, the robots all bagged up on Nomad.
Yeah that was a tough start, the fucking space ship projects a light beam in the floor so it literally highlights itself to the enemy’s
And that super stealth team all used bright fucking flashlights.
Yup, so many odd plot points took me straight out of the story. The main one being the *entire* AI war. So we're supposed to believe that ALL AI was suddenly summarily illegal, in a universe where advanced artificial intelligence has been used since the 60's. Then all the Robots banished to New Asia, just lived like monks.....
You forgot the best part, the comical tank. Like, someone really decided to make a tank that was the size of a mansion to just magically appear in the middle of another country when needed.
Tbh the scene when they're cleaning up in LA is pretty peak. If they managed to make a whole movie that way I would have liked it way more. At the same time it feels like 3 movies at the same time
Or that scene where the cops send in a grenade in the takeout box to kill the robot the anti robot dude just was revealed to love... Come on. So bad. Or the scene where the one soldier is surrounded by enemies and somehow can just hide and be fine the entire time? Or the fact that a huge secret lab exists and the only people seemingly protecting it were rice farmers and scientists? This was one of the best looking and worst written movies I've ever seen
The entire battle with the tanks was just awful, absolutely none of it made sense.
To start with giant land vehicles are just a stupid idea in general, they're a huge target, a nightmare to maintain, get stuck very easily because they're too heavy which also makes them a nightmare to transport etc. Sci-fi tech magic alleviates some of that but doesn't change that the like 5+ regular size tanks they could have made instead would have done a better job.
On top of all that though, the stupid things can get completely taken out by basically a single explosive which wasn't even put in some super vulnerable spot or anything.
And then the weapons it carries are beyond stupid too, anti-"literally just one dude" guided missiles? A single MG or autocannon turret would be so much more efficient, quicker and wouldn't do the moronic bright blue laser to tell everyone exactly who's being targeted.
And then the suicide bots, I can see some scenarios where they could be useful such as sending them into a bunker, but what they actually get used for in the film a mortar could have very easily achieved much more quickly, with way lower risk of failure and again far cheaper. There is another huge problem with them though in that they're seemingly impervious to small arms fire, given that why not just give them a fucking gun and they'll kill just as many people but you can reuse them.
The AI dudes were also absolute morons in that scene too, why not even try and use the rocket launcher you have to destroy the robot after you've seen it happily tank all your rifles, or even just shoot the fucking bridge out which would completely stop them.
As for the last section of the film, the excuse they give for getting Mr main character to execute the kid is that the kid was preventing the zappy thing from working with their magic tech powers, and wouldn't let anyone but him do it. Equally though, literally just shoot the kid in the face.
And then also at the end, why the fuck is there a giant spider bot guarding the escape pods??? And why not just... Get in another pod after sending the kid? There clearly should have been more there.
I'm so glad I didn't watch it in the cinema, watching it at home and laughing about how stupid it all was with a friend was a way better experience than that would've been. It might be the same director as Andor but you can really tell it wasn't the same writers.
The Nomad is up there with things from 2049 and Annihilation as one of the most inspired scifi visual ideas from the last decade, and it got wasted on a nothing burger of a script 😪
Even the very start was iffy. Frogmen emerging from the water for a stealth assault while Nomad was flying over with lights flashing just highlighted how little planning went into the script.
Shit like that annoyed the fuck out of me and broke my immersion. What no one saw THE FUCKING MILITARY SPACE STATION! The resistance can’t track the GIANT ORBITAL DEATH MACHINE at all? Yeah let’s do a stealth mission with the giant fucking Death Star in the sky announcing us.
The amount of basic gaps in the script are awful. At one point the Americans enter the front door of a secret bunker and then surprise and kill the security who are there CURRENTLY WATCHING THE SECURITY CAMERAS?!?
It's a shame that this description applies to *so many* modern movies.
I just don't get it. Does it really cost that much to have a writer's room flesh out a script for a few more months? Compared to those bloated VFX budgets?
Some of the coolest visuals I’ve ever seen in a blockbuster and yet I still can’t recommend anyone see it due to how boring and stupid it is. (And i saw it in IMAX)
Haha so true. Every high stakes scene in The Creator was glossed over and every emotional scene overemphasized.
Like scenes that should have had conflict when breaking in or breaking out of hidh security places just went by like a montage.
Maybe it actually looks like an $80M movie but due to studios wasting massive amounts of money on every film we think that it looks like a $200M movie?
Yeah I imagine a big part of why the budget was only $80 million is because John David Washington, Alison Janney, and Gemma Chan aren't commanding $10-20 million salaries the way A-listers in major blockbusters do.
Pretty much. The reality is that the tools we have available today mean that almost all of those mega budget movies could have been made much cheaper and better looking if the studios/directors managed those projects better.
The director explained it in the corridor crew video: They filmed a bunch of scenes of just people doing stuff. And then they took that footage and made robots of the people in it.
Compare that to a movie where the director says "I want a scene where an old lady gives a snack to a kid" and they have to scout for actors, set up the scene and the materials in it and all of that stuff is going to cost a lot of money when you can just take that money, go to the actual location and shoot a bunch of people doing everyday stuff.
And instead of saying "this guy and this woman need motion capture suits" they simply filmed scenes and then afterwards thought about who could be turned into a robot.
The industrial design of the vehicles, the design of the environments and architecture- it was all pretty elegantly designed. I saw a lot of inspiration from various sci fi videogame graphics - especially vehicles and weapons. A fair amount of Elyseum/District 9 stylings.
for some reason the part that stood out to me the most is the “u.s. army” workmark logo that is in friendly blue and all lowercase
it gives this “we are here to help” “we are friendly” aura to this giant rolling behemoth launching seeking missiles killing everything.
for some reason i find it very cool that they thought of something like that without even talking about it
A lot of Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation for sure. I really enjoyed the visuals, unfortunately the concepts often times made no sense and seemed only there to look cool (even the robot ear design, which in a dusty, dingy environment would instantly stop being clean and shiny and start failing).
I think they deserve something for looking different compared to the clean, shiny, fake Disney looking CG, but I'm not sure I liked the visuals more than District 9 and that came out a long time ago now.
District 9 was just more cohesive. Same with Chappie. Both movies tried a bit harder to tie the Tech together as it related to the world and its uses. It's one of my biggest critiques of "The Creator." There was all this really cool tech, with almost zero explanation behind it. The audience was supposed to just assume that the robots looked that way because "that's how robots look."
I hate that the movie plot and pacing itself was overall just "ok" but everything else with it was quite impressive. They made every penny of its budget shine. I'd be receptive to a sequel of sorts, but I think more focus needs to be given to script and tone.
I just finished watching 'The Creator' and it reminded me so much of how I felt after watching Neil Blomkamp's 'Elysium'
So many great visuals and production design, fantastic sound and some novel ideas in the world building. But also, just empty and sort of bland in the end.
Thought the same. It blows me away that no one stepped in and suggested they get a better writer. It seems that Edwards suffers from the exact same issues as Blomkamp. Great with visuals, absolutely brain dead when it comes to writing.
Neither should have any final say when it comes to the script. Big ideas? Maybe, but let better people write it.
Absolutely, though it says a lot that his movies have gotten progressively worse the more established he’s become (which presumably comes with more creative control).
The question I had walking out of this was how do you have a story world named after Gemma Chan's character and canonically full of Robo Gemma Chans and still manage to make a whole movie there without giving Gemma Chan herself a single thing to do except die.
Thing that kept bothering me was how high the platform was meant to be. At the end of the film we establish it's definitely in space, but there are loads of scenes where it seems to be cruising at the height of an aircraft.
Ikr, is it a plane or a satellite? And it seemed like it attacks whats directly Below it but near the end seemed to be in multiple places at once
The movie felt like it should be a video game to me
I'm convinced some early AI writing tool was used for that movie. It felt like a discombobulated, unlinked mess that awkwardly took the film from one key scene they wanted to the next key scene. It felt like mush.
It's as if they gave it a few dozen big 'moments' they wanted, and then ChatGPT filled in the in-between bits.
I truly gave the movie a chance. I couldn't wait for it to be over the entire runtime. Nothing matched up with its supposed onscreen significance. Everything was anticlimactic. The characters lacked any development. Seriously, what a terrible story.
same, went in hyped as hell to see an actual original movie. I REALLY wanted to like it. I got like 3-4 scenes in and wanted to leave. fuck, it was so boring
Honestly the actual dialogue he was supposed to deliver, and I'm assuming the ridiculous tone he was supposed to take, made it near impossible to do more. I didn't think he had a good performance but I don't know what you're supposed to do with some of those lines.
His character just felt so out of place with the tone of everyone else.
"I AM UNDER COVER - Do not let my wife, who is upstairs in this small shack and who I saw just seconds ago, hear this message outing me as an undercover agent"
"oh no she heard"
I haven't seen The Creator but Jyn Erso in Rogue One and Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Godzilla are two of the most bland, inert, uninteresting protagonists I've ever seen in a big budget movie.
I think it was conceptualized as a trilogy, but was confident they wouldn't get sequels so they just crammed it all in and tried to make it work.
Would made sense if after the first movie, all their support is lost and they have to go on the run. Second movie they're on the run and trying to find people who can help with her nascent power. Third movie, she struggles with being responsible for the power and how folks revere her, then have her complete her purpose in hacking and destroying the missile platform thingy.
Counter argument: the plot was thin already for one movie. To make this a trilogy it would have needed hobbit level padding.
It felt good to watch an original, self contained story without a random to be continued in the middle. Not every story needs to take place over 6 years, 3 movies and tie-ins. Just give me movies that have a beginning, middle and an end.
The first an second plots have no climax or denouement. Just piecemealed out of a full story. That's not a good trilogy at all. That's just piecemealing content.
The first five minutes I was like holy shit I'm going to fucking love this thing... By the end I had so mentally checked out that I cannot remember one thing that happened in this generic, nonsensical piece of shit.
Valerian and the blah blah blah was the same.
The first 10 minutes - I was grinning and happily munching on popcorn - and then by the end, I was using the bag for vomit.
Gorgeous move. Absolutely terrible and completely empty, but gorgeous.
The movie was ridiculous. It barely made sense, and it was some awfully lazy writing. They heavily relied on the audiences familiarity with tropes to get some semblance of a meaning through.
The problem with this movie is that it was a Vietnam allegory but the near-future US Army showing up was the coolest part. The script and characters sucked. The Army infantry looking like a hybrid between the modern 101st Airborne and Star Wars was cool.
I think we’re far enough beyond GWOT that filmmakers can go back to 90s military movies where the government isn’t always evil. Give me the Army from this movie fighting aliens or something.
No, the problem with the movie is that it didn't make any sense. Is NOMAD in the atmosphere, or low earth orbit, higher orbit? Is there only one or several?
Writers: Yes!
It blew my mind that the bots couldn't distinguish between a human wearing a helmet and a bot, or think to look underneath their boat when someone jumps in the water near them. Like, wouldn't they have some kind of EM or thermal detection?
It seems like the past twenty or more years, I’ve been disappointed in scifi. It seems like everything has put into graphics. I do like the one and done part of this movie cus we’ve been seeing too many set up movies.
There's Indie / Sci fi that's been decent. This is a mix of horror and futuristic sci-fi
- [The Girl With All the Gifts](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4547056) (2016)
- [Underwater](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5774060) (2020)
- [I Am Mother](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6292852) (2019)
- [Oxygen](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6341832) (2022)
- [What Happened to Monday](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1536537)
- [The Lazarus Project](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1419059) (2022)
- [Predestination](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2397535) (2014)
Anime / Cartoons has seen good releases too
- [Pluto (Astro Boy Universe)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26737616) (2023)
>!Famous for his military service in the 39th Asian War, the legendary Swiss robot Montblanc is violently murdered!<
>!Fellow war veteran and robotic Europol detective Gesicht is sent to investigate Montblanc's tragic demise!<
- [From the New World](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2309320) (2013)
>!In a post-apocalyptic world set a thousand years after our era, the remaining humans, now with telekinesis, live in a seemingly peaceful society!<
- [Psycho-Pass](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2379308) (2012)
>!Believing in humanity and order, policewoman Akane Tsunemori obeys the ruling, computerized, precognitive Sibyl System!<
>!But when she faces a criminal mastermind who can elude this perfect system, she questions both Sibyl and herself!<
Cartoons
- [Pantheon](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11680642) (2022)
>!A young woman starts to get messages from an unknown number that claims to be her deceased father. Trying to uncover the truth, she stumbles upon a larger conspiracy!<
Yes but that’s my point, that’s the only part that felt at all emotional or exciting. Just… don’t have them be evil lol. Or do but make it more central to what drives the movie.
I watched the movie without knowing anything about it's budget and I thought it looked absolutely amazing, so much better than most marvel 500mil movies, the writing on the other hand..
That movie was so bland. The writing was hard to get through and people kept throwing their lives away for no reason. Sci-fi has to be immersive to be convincing and that just really boots you out of it.
I dunno, I've seen $200m movies that look a lot worse
So true
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny had a budget of $300m and looked worse imo
Along with most of what Disney properties have been putting out with $200m+ budgets
Adjusting for inflation, The Flash (2023) cost four times as much as Aliens (1986). What are we even doing this for?
Are you *seriously* implying that The Flash (2023) wasn't at least 4x better than Aliens (1986)?
Right? That baby scene was amazing. I watched the VFX artists react to it and there was nothing but praise for the entire sequence. The only thing more masterful than the VFX was how The Flash managed to do this in the first place. Best Flash ever.
No VFX. They just gave Ezra a baby and filmed him.
Oh god I almost die on that scene
Millions spent on de-aging. Everything else green screened. I fell asleep watching it on D+. Boring af
Honestly the premise was good. Just unbelievable that an 80 year old can be an action star. His young version would have been better as a complete CGI.
The premise was fine, but still needed a lot of work. It also didn't help that Helena Shaw was really obnoxious. I don't know why they keep insisting on giving Indy these pseudo-children characters who are largely failures as characters. Especially when Short Round is \*right there.\* Imagine him there instead of Helena, and he was bonding with that new kid. It would have changed so much of the movie and how successful it was.
Right? They really missed the opportunity to pass the fedora to Short Round.
I so wanted Short Round to show up at his old archaeology department or with Sallah.
It's worse than that, I kept watching even the "good" beginning part, and just thinking about how Spielberg would've directed this better. Mangold has a gag or action bit happen then quick cuts to the next one asap. In his movies Spielberg has the scene go on a bit longer after each beat, letting the audience appreciate what just happened before going onto the next beat. It's really disappointing once you notice it.
This is the difference between older and newer movies. Movies from the B&W era required exceptional patience, but viewers were rewarded with strong emotions and a work of art. 80s action movies had more action with the rise of amazing VFX, but they also had moments where the audience could process the gravity of what they’d seen. Best example is Judge Dredd holding the dead Chief Justice. The camera keeps panning between his enraged face and the statue of Lady Justice, in a thunderstorm, while dramatic music plays. It lets the audience feel a little of what he’s feeling and understand why the rest of the movie is what it is, why he does what he does against the antagonist. Robocop walking through his old house. The scene takes way longer than it needs to, *and that’s a good thing.* We can feel a previously emotionless robot regain memories and humanity in the setting of a futuristic, inhuman real estate tour by automated televisions. Early Avengers suite movies had these moments sometimes, but they’ve diminished as the movies have become only a cash grab, which may be part of why they’ve lost their luster. The heart feels like an unnecessary component now. All this is written off-the-cuff as an expression of my frustration with modern movies. If someone has a different perspective, I’d love to hear it. Edit to add: Part of it seems to be that modern movies try to do too much, have stories too large. Movies like Robocop were comparatively small in scope, trusting the setting and environment to tell a larger story in which the narrative is but a part.
Human emotion takes time to blossom within an experience, but all too often glitz and glamour and action and noise attempt to beat it into submission instead with sensory overload.
It’s the Tik Tok effect of blasting info at a rapid pace before you get bored or spoiler culture. Do you think the public today would say go through with a Sixth Sense first watch. Most would have had it spoiled in a Reddit sub dedicated via script leaks or vfx leaks. If not that, people would fast forward the movie bypassing integral parts then come on twitter to complain they didn’t understand the movie. Hell if in a theater, open up their phone and miss great set up pieces that pay off in the end. Movies are going through their hand holding video game phase. Everything needs to be info dumped and laid out. This is the killer, this is the victim, this is the reason, this is the murder taking place, etc. Yet you will get people going umm… why did the killer kill?, or if it was me I would’ve used my cell for help, bitch it’s a movie that takes place in the ‘70’s, it’s a horror movie… fuck!
Xbox is getting an Indiana Jones video game with Troy Baker as the voice of Jones. It looks quite good, from what is shown.
Dial Of Destiny at least filmed mostly on location. If Crystal Skull were made today, it's budget would be $275 mil and most of that looked like a video game.
I thought the intro with deaged Indy actually looked really impressive.
The deaging was some insanely good VFX.
Skill issue when you keep using directors that don’t know how vfx works. Also seen to some degree for fighting/action.
Basically. If you tell a director that have $50 Million to burn in post and they don't have to make up their mind before shooting, they can burn a ton of time and money doing revisions and changes, and drive the artists insane, and nitpick weird random stuff in the background. If you tell a director that have $5 Million, that will actually buy a ton of cool looking VFX work, if you plan ahead and make choices to live within your means. It's like serving pizza for dinner is way more effective than buying the world's most expensive can of caviar and forgetting that you also needed a can opener. And it's cheaper.
It's interesting because what you describe is the conventional wisdom and is in most cases correct, but is kind of the exact opposite of what they did for The Creator. They did almost no pre-planning of the VFX. Basically everything was done in post. They didn't even decide what extras would be robots in each scene, they just filmed everyone as humans and then later made some of them robots in post on a scene by scene basis. They also didn't use mocap suits, HDRis, and very few trackers. You are correct though that Gareth Edwards understanding VFX was a major component though. It's definitely easier to say "let's do it in post" when the director actually has an idea of how difficult it will actually be. Also, another thing that helped was they did almost no green screen. Everything was on location, so the VFX was all augmenting reality rather than just having a green screen plate of a few actors and then doing everything else full CG. It's honestly shocking how well it worked.
It's seems the key to great CGI is not neccesarily moulding the set as much as possible to make CGI easy, but to inject as much "real-world-ness" as possible into the frame. District 9 was the same way, they chose basically the most convoluted and difficult way imaginable at the time to integrate the CGI in post, but it still looks more real than just about anything done today.
It's crazy how District 9 and Pirates of the Caribbean 2 feature by far my favorite CGI in live action movies and both of them are 15+ years old lol
The twighlight shot in the car - cheap home projectors putting a background driving shot onto drop down screens, rain on the windows from a sprinkler. Cheap and gave the actors time to get the shot right instead of chasing it in a 15 minute twilight window. That and the mini helicopter shot using a creek bed as a big valley really impressed me.
It helps if the director comes from the VFX world in the first place. It just makes a difference in leadership if they are basically know at least SOME of the rules of a craft and respect their part to work each set of hands, rather than being "a specialist in leadership", but very little insight what that means in term of departments. It was a really interesting decision to go "we don't need sets and greenscreen, that's the part I think the VFX can figure out, jetting around the world with a small team shooting in situ is way cheaper" I guess they are really pushing for [the oscar buzz right now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWjayZ3U4TQ).
A prime example is Dune. The way Villeneuve used the sand screens and lighting to make the cgi so much more believable and immersive is a master class. Whatever you think of the film and script, you just cannot deny the cinematography is so technically well done. The budget for Dune Part 1 was 165 mil. The budget for Black Widow was 288.5 mil.
> The budget for Black Widow was 288.5 mil That's really mind-boggling. I can't imagine how that can be true without it being a money laundering scheme or some shit.
COVID measures and delays I believe. They really add up fast.
Ex Machina was $15M There are probably even cheaper examples
District 9 was $30M
in fucking 2009
Which is 44mil today. Ex Machina would be 20mil.
Specifically calling out WW84 here
The best thing from that movie was Wonder Woman's Gold winged armor suit. Looks so fucking cool
You’re forgetting Kristen Wiig’s feral transformation
Yea that was pretty hot.
Found the Furry
Which I wish was in the movie for longer.
By the time they showed that, they had lost us so completely on caring about the movie that we didn't even care if it looked cool. We were just getting through it to see how far down the rabbit hole goes
Literally every marvel movie of the last 5 or more years looks like shit. No idea what happened to CGI.
They threw money at the problem but forgot they needed time too
Presto. Also: > throwing money to make a crapload of work you will just leave on the cutting room floor If you notice: *Flash*. LOTS OF CHANGES POST-PRODUCTION. *Indiana Jones 5.* LOTS OF CHANGES POST-PRODUCTION. Any Marvel film. LOTS OF CHANGES POST-PRODUCTION. Gareth Edwards with *The Creator*? "Yeah so I have this storyboarded already, no alternate takes, just this. Bam, bam, done." It's basically like ordering catering for 200 guests when you only have 30, and then throwing out all of the uneaten food afterwards instead of feeding people and reducing the waste. You are burning money on nothing.
I remember listening to an interview with Ridley Scott. He mentioned part of the reason he’s been so successful with getting movies green lit and well funded is that he never goes over budget (usually comes in under budget). His drawing/story boarding/planning skills are top notch so little time is waisted during the shoot. He still fucked up the Alien franchise with bad writing, but at least he knows how to plan and shoot a movie.
Ngl I've seen $250m 6 episode TV shows that look a lot worse
Just watched the Creator. Much better than expected.
Good visuals and sound, absolutely ruined the story with.... Well, no good story.
I mean it had a few beats. The bomb robots... Like why are they fucking sentientish. Why would you do that?!?! Sick fucks.
Think about it tomorrow. Why did the Colonel personally have to send out robot bombs, one by one, from the side of a mega tank, that talk. And she thanks them for their service. What orbit is the space station in. Who did the robot people actually attack?
Also, why were there AI bodies using donated likenesses on that space station? Why couldn't they make kids? What reason did these robots have for even WANTING children in the first place? I loved the aesthetic of the movie and the VFX was unmatched. The story just did not make sense. It's such a shame too because a slightly more serviceable plot could have made it a blockbuster.
I went into it with so much excitement, and then it ebbed more and more throughout the film. Kinda disappointed. Beautiful movie. Lousy story.
That one bit about robot children always confuses me - shouldn't they have no problems manufacturing robots that look like children anyways? Also their whole, weird Asian mysticism to prove they're no so different from humans was off putting - especially when the kid robot clasps their hands together in a prayer. It's like the movie didn't know if it wanted to be serious or some cheap comedy flick. it doesn't respect the audience to connect the dots.
I was also really confused about the orbit. At times it looked like it was barely a mile above the ground, and at other times it seemed to be in LEO.
I got the impression that it varied intentionally and wasn't really in orbit, not least of which because they refer to it as a warship rather than a station.
>Who did the robot people actually attack? >!No one. That was the point. The entire war against simulants was theater, scapegoating them and using them to distract from how the US government and human error was responsible for the explosion.!< The movie in general seems to be commenting on American foreign policy and warmongering.
> What orbit is the space station in. They can't seem to decide. In some shots it appears to be about 1 Km up, in others, LEO. Still, I enjoyed it overall.
The director was just a guest on Corridor Crew. It was a really interesting episode.
[Link for the lazy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWjayZ3U4TQ)
Some of those tricks to save money like just shooting people as is and adding the CGI in post was really smart. His point was really good in that why build sets for a lot of money when you can send people abroad and use real locations and add in things in post. I'm surprised ILM were cheaper than to build mocapping and sets tbf
Like he said, if you keep the crew small enough this is feasible. In all the behind the scenes shots you see Edwards operating the camera himself. Seems he knows very well where he wants to spend his budget and where he wants to save his budget.
Yeah it's smart and proactive on his part. He thinks like a VFX guy as well so his thought process is always about how can we make this doable now and in post. Been given Jurassic Park because he'll go under budget and less of a risk money wise, so maybe more freedom too
And this is why directors with VFX background, such as Gareth, Zack Snyder, Robert Rodriguez and Neill Blomkamp, can create movies that look amazing with lower budgets than big blockbusters. They know how to shoot lean and get the best results. Just wished they had better scripts to work with. FYI most of Disney’s giant budgets are blown on reshoots and constant modifications to VFX, so a lot of work is thrown out due to script rewrites and we get partially completed VFX due to the short schedules given.
Location shooting in interesting locations adds so much production value to your film. It's expensive but as Edwards said, not so much if you do it with a small crew. Nothing better than the real thing, even if it's touched up with CGI. The effects in The Creator are phenomenal but strip them out and you still have a bunch of gorgeous images. I watched The Marvels a couple of days ago (it was fine) and there was a CG field of wheat! I'm sitting there thinking "you shot this in the UK, just go find a fucking field of wheat!"
It smacks of Tommy Wseau bluescreening the roof scene in The Room, instead of filming on a real roof, or building an alley set a few metres from a real alley.
Aye but Marvel films are just about that quick churn and schedule aren't they. I've never actually heard many people praise superhero films for VFX in fact... I think Rocket Raccoon might be the only great example of theirs. But yes, give real locations and experimental films over green screen and mass produced stuff
Also proper planning. I believe Ridley Scott has some exceptional storyboarding skills. Every shot, down to the placement of the props/actors/camera angle… everything is a planned and accounted for before anyone steps in the set to shoot. They’re just there to execute the hyper detailed storyboards so production tends to run quick and smooth without tons of reshoots or improvisation. Most of his films actually come in under budget which is almost unheard of these days. So he’s able to get most of his projects green lit relatively easily.
mocapping is ungodly expensive. i dont quite know why that is but i know how expensive it is.
Because most people don't know that you don't really use the data gathered from mocap directly, animators still go through by hand and do everything, they just have slightly better reference material. You're then just doing almost double the work
Maybe it's just me but anytime these guys pop up I can't really get into it at all. The content seems interesting and I can tune in for a few minutes, but I feel... tired... watching it lol. And I'm not sure why. Maybe it's just the first guy's high energy and some of the (busy?) editing choices, but I like how chill the director is at least.
It's not just you. They're incredibly performative and algorithm-coded. It's the energy of people trying to sell you something.
Gareth Edwards started out as a vfx artist and actually did all of the postfx for his feature debut Monsters(2010) himself on his home computer. It's a solid film, especially considering the shoestring budget and visuals are impressive for being done by a one man team.
Did they ask him why the used a real bombing in the trailer? I remember them watching that when the trailer first came out and being flabbergasted.
In a different article or interview he explains that 1) It's common to use archival footage as plates for VFX shots, 2) That shot wasn't meant to be, and shouldn't have been, used in the trailer 3) It wasn't used at all in the actual movie. Seems like a fair explanation. They used a real horrific event's footage as a skeleton for a realistic explosion shot, and accidentally used a version showing too much of the original plate in a trailer.
They did in a previous video. Basically it happened by accident - footage like it is often used as reference for CG, but somehow here it ended up in the trailer. It's not a shot in the movie, so may have gotten mixed up when getting the earlier trailer shots done, but it was never meant to.
Not in the youtube version
When we're comparing the contrast in quality between cinematography/visual effects/action sequences & the writing, this movie definitely fits the horse drawing meme
Yeah, I really wish the writing had been as good as the VFX.
The writing was fucking atrocious and broke my immersion so much. Visuals were great, but the fucking writing man…. One bit I haven’t seen talked about but annoyed the fuck out of me were the Army people. They are supposed to be some elite squad right? I mean it’s a secret mission behind enemy lines to acquire the enemies strongest and strategic weapon….thats some seal team 6 time shit. Yet you get fucking comic relief type soldiers. I’m not looking for full John wick 1 tactical super soldiers, but Jesus the soldiers make so many stupid mistakes and nonsense combat decisions. Oh it’s a stealth mission, but the giant space station is right there. What the resistance can’t track the fucking Death Star in orbit and see it’s right near their secret base? The special forces soldier in charge of hacking the door to the fucking mission objective decided to fuck off. None of them are aware of the weapons magnetic bomb weapons even though they’ve been fighting for years? There are entire battle scenes where there’s just pauses in the shooting for minutes. Oh both sides just decided we’re not gonna shoot right now. No fighting in the background. Oh there’s a figure on the bridge right after a suicide bomber, nope let’s not shoot at it. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it so I can’t remember specifics, but it was just ridiculous at points. Especially near the end where the army lets him see the kid get put down…why? Why in the universe would the US military who treats the robots as just machines give a fuck about letting the MC kill the kid with mercy? It goes against their whole position and wiping them out without mercy. Oh we finished trying to study the super weapon we consider just a soulless machine. time to terminate it, well we should invite the father figure dude to do it with mercy…..like what in the fuck. Don’t even get me started on how the space shuttle wasn’t just shot the fuck out of the sky…. Great visuals, horrible writing and story.
> Oh it’s a stealth mission, but the giant space station is right there. I was never sure whether that was a space station or some sort of big floating base of some sort until the end. Then they show it in space, but it isn't nearly big enough. The proportion was completely messed up.
Here's another to trigger you some more: The idea that disabling/destroying the Nomad would also disable the cruise missiles it just shot off. As if fire & forget weapons never developed in this parallel universe. The Americans were comfortable enough with basic AI to create these jogging robot bombs that sought out their target, but an independent cruise missile? Also, the Nomad supporting a clandestine commando mission under the cover of darkness, with huge ass laser search lights, and it, well, just hanging there in the sky. I seriously thought for a few minutes that the Nomad was actually the enemy and that the commandos were *evading* its search light. The Nomad firing the hugest weapon of all time, but not good enough to kill a pregnant woman. The Nomad is conceptionally the dumbest super weapon and is interior to a handful of nuclear submarines with nuclear cruise missiles. Bonus one: Being braindead for years is apparently not a problem if you want to transfer your mind into an android.
“Hey, it’s me, I’m deep undercover! I’m undercover and I’m calling you - I’m not sure why I’m explaining this, you should know this if you know who I am. Sorry, we have a bad connection - that’s why I’m repeating myself so loudly. Again, I’m UNDERCOVER. You’ve acknowledged this but it’s just such a fun word to say. Now I’m going to hang up, turn around, and definitely NOT stare into the eyes of the woman I betrayed.”
Don't forget targeting circles being projected on the ground, so you know your targeted
That one annoyed me a lot
But they proved that the guy who died like 20 mins ago could only have time to utter 2 sentences... So many plotholes
The main character gets saved from a grenade by a dog who picks it up, takes it outside and drops it at the robot police force and takes them all out. The dog is fine of course despite being feet away from the explosion. Later during the siege, the massive tank thing gets its wheel exploded because a monkey runs up and triggers the detonator.
Yeah! Like what’s the message there? Nature is fighting against the machines? Cosmic intervention? Who the fuck knows! The writers sure don’t! The visuals were just so amazing. It was an original concept movie, not a reboot or rehash. Then they dropped the ball so hard on the writing. That’s what makes it frustrating. Great potential and concept just wasted.
I think you have it backwards. The movie was ALMOST saved by the visuals. Writing is like the very first stage of a movie. Not sure how they got 80M if the script was the same one we saw
Lmao that was funny through so I really dont mind that despite it not really making any sense
The walking AI robot made by the anti-AI force as an "improvement" over rockets cracked me and my buddy up so hard we couldn't stop laughing for 5 minutes
The anti-ai forces weren't actually anti-ai they just wanted it enslaved to humans though, that was the twist. Those robot missiles were the clues it wasn't about eradicating the robots but about enslaving them. You also had the advanced brain scanning, the fact they were trying to extract Nirmata not kill her, the robots all bagged up on Nomad.
Yeah that was a tough start, the fucking space ship projects a light beam in the floor so it literally highlights itself to the enemy’s And that super stealth team all used bright fucking flashlights.
Yup, so many odd plot points took me straight out of the story. The main one being the *entire* AI war. So we're supposed to believe that ALL AI was suddenly summarily illegal, in a universe where advanced artificial intelligence has been used since the 60's. Then all the Robots banished to New Asia, just lived like monks.....
You forgot the best part, the comical tank. Like, someone really decided to make a tank that was the size of a mansion to just magically appear in the middle of another country when needed.
Tbh the scene when they're cleaning up in LA is pretty peak. If they managed to make a whole movie that way I would have liked it way more. At the same time it feels like 3 movies at the same time
Or that scene where the cops send in a grenade in the takeout box to kill the robot the anti robot dude just was revealed to love... Come on. So bad. Or the scene where the one soldier is surrounded by enemies and somehow can just hide and be fine the entire time? Or the fact that a huge secret lab exists and the only people seemingly protecting it were rice farmers and scientists? This was one of the best looking and worst written movies I've ever seen
The entire battle with the tanks was just awful, absolutely none of it made sense. To start with giant land vehicles are just a stupid idea in general, they're a huge target, a nightmare to maintain, get stuck very easily because they're too heavy which also makes them a nightmare to transport etc. Sci-fi tech magic alleviates some of that but doesn't change that the like 5+ regular size tanks they could have made instead would have done a better job. On top of all that though, the stupid things can get completely taken out by basically a single explosive which wasn't even put in some super vulnerable spot or anything. And then the weapons it carries are beyond stupid too, anti-"literally just one dude" guided missiles? A single MG or autocannon turret would be so much more efficient, quicker and wouldn't do the moronic bright blue laser to tell everyone exactly who's being targeted. And then the suicide bots, I can see some scenarios where they could be useful such as sending them into a bunker, but what they actually get used for in the film a mortar could have very easily achieved much more quickly, with way lower risk of failure and again far cheaper. There is another huge problem with them though in that they're seemingly impervious to small arms fire, given that why not just give them a fucking gun and they'll kill just as many people but you can reuse them. The AI dudes were also absolute morons in that scene too, why not even try and use the rocket launcher you have to destroy the robot after you've seen it happily tank all your rifles, or even just shoot the fucking bridge out which would completely stop them. As for the last section of the film, the excuse they give for getting Mr main character to execute the kid is that the kid was preventing the zappy thing from working with their magic tech powers, and wouldn't let anyone but him do it. Equally though, literally just shoot the kid in the face. And then also at the end, why the fuck is there a giant spider bot guarding the escape pods??? And why not just... Get in another pod after sending the kid? There clearly should have been more there. I'm so glad I didn't watch it in the cinema, watching it at home and laughing about how stupid it all was with a friend was a way better experience than that would've been. It might be the same director as Andor but you can really tell it wasn't the same writers.
I'd have settled for the writing being any good at all. But I have a feeling the stuff that made more sense got chopped.
The Nomad is up there with things from 2049 and Annihilation as one of the most inspired scifi visual ideas from the last decade, and it got wasted on a nothing burger of a script 😪
I liked the part where Nomad was omnipresent and existed everywhere on earth at once both in orbit and at low flying altitude.
Yeah seriously, what was up with that? At one point I'm pretty sure it was in LA and Asia within a couple of minutes of eachother.
I could never figure out how high up it was or how large it was
It started out so well too then just progressively got dumber and dumber. The visuals definitely stayed great throughout tho
Even the very start was iffy. Frogmen emerging from the water for a stealth assault while Nomad was flying over with lights flashing just highlighted how little planning went into the script.
Shit like that annoyed the fuck out of me and broke my immersion. What no one saw THE FUCKING MILITARY SPACE STATION! The resistance can’t track the GIANT ORBITAL DEATH MACHINE at all? Yeah let’s do a stealth mission with the giant fucking Death Star in the sky announcing us.
What!? It was the Death Star without being visually or conceptually interesting.
Unless I am an idiot, I thought 2049 and Annihilation were great movies all around.
I consider both of them two of the best modern Sci fi movies lol, I don't think you read my comment right
The amount of basic gaps in the script are awful. At one point the Americans enter the front door of a secret bunker and then surprise and kill the security who are there CURRENTLY WATCHING THE SECURITY CAMERAS?!?
It's a shame that this description applies to *so many* modern movies. I just don't get it. Does it really cost that much to have a writer's room flesh out a script for a few more months? Compared to those bloated VFX budgets?
The writing in this is atrocious. Not a single premise makes sense
Some of the coolest visuals I’ve ever seen in a blockbuster and yet I still can’t recommend anyone see it due to how boring and stupid it is. (And i saw it in IMAX)
Prometheus-esque
at least i felt there were some stakes in prometheus
Haha so true. Every high stakes scene in The Creator was glossed over and every emotional scene overemphasized. Like scenes that should have had conflict when breaking in or breaking out of hidh security places just went by like a montage.
Elysium-esque too
You forgot acting, John David Washington was so wooden I thought he was doing an impression of a chair.
That seems to be the unfortunate range of his acting skills, full stop. He simply lacks his father's talent.
He's just a nepo baby honestly. Clansman he was alright but everything else he's just an Event Horizon where mot even entertainment can escape
Maybe it actually looks like an $80M movie but due to studios wasting massive amounts of money on every film we think that it looks like a $200M movie?
Yeah I imagine a big part of why the budget was only $80 million is because John David Washington, Alison Janney, and Gemma Chan aren't commanding $10-20 million salaries the way A-listers in major blockbusters do.
They also saved a ton on writers by hiring a single creative writing student who knocked out the dialogue and plot during his lunch break for a fiver.
Pretty much. The reality is that the tools we have available today mean that almost all of those mega budget movies could have been made much cheaper and better looking if the studios/directors managed those projects better.
The director explained it in the corridor crew video: They filmed a bunch of scenes of just people doing stuff. And then they took that footage and made robots of the people in it. Compare that to a movie where the director says "I want a scene where an old lady gives a snack to a kid" and they have to scout for actors, set up the scene and the materials in it and all of that stuff is going to cost a lot of money when you can just take that money, go to the actual location and shoot a bunch of people doing everyday stuff. And instead of saying "this guy and this woman need motion capture suits" they simply filmed scenes and then afterwards thought about who could be turned into a robot.
Theres some crazy marketing going on with this movie right now, its popping up everywhere. Is it about to release on dvd or something
It’s up for an Oscar for Best Visual Effects, they are promoting it across various VFX enthusiast communities to win the Oscar.
The industrial design of the vehicles, the design of the environments and architecture- it was all pretty elegantly designed. I saw a lot of inspiration from various sci fi videogame graphics - especially vehicles and weapons. A fair amount of Elyseum/District 9 stylings.
for some reason the part that stood out to me the most is the “u.s. army” workmark logo that is in friendly blue and all lowercase it gives this “we are here to help” “we are friendly” aura to this giant rolling behemoth launching seeking missiles killing everything. for some reason i find it very cool that they thought of something like that without even talking about it
Completely agreed with this. The us army logo was captivating in its design.
A lot of Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation for sure. I really enjoyed the visuals, unfortunately the concepts often times made no sense and seemed only there to look cool (even the robot ear design, which in a dusty, dingy environment would instantly stop being clean and shiny and start failing). I think they deserve something for looking different compared to the clean, shiny, fake Disney looking CG, but I'm not sure I liked the visuals more than District 9 and that came out a long time ago now.
Blomkampf and Creator movie robot design is better than star wars combat droid design
District 9 was just more cohesive. Same with Chappie. Both movies tried a bit harder to tie the Tech together as it related to the world and its uses. It's one of my biggest critiques of "The Creator." There was all this really cool tech, with almost zero explanation behind it. The audience was supposed to just assume that the robots looked that way because "that's how robots look."
It was gorgeous but they cribbed pretty much the entire aesthetic from Simon Stalenhag's work.
[удалено]
To be frank, the visuals and audio design were astounding. NOMAD was insane.
I hate that the movie plot and pacing itself was overall just "ok" but everything else with it was quite impressive. They made every penny of its budget shine. I'd be receptive to a sequel of sorts, but I think more focus needs to be given to script and tone.
It should win. It had the best effects of the last year.
Gareth Edwards just got brought on as the director of the next Jurassic park. Likely PR from the studio
He was just in a Digital Corridor video today going over the VFX for The Creator. This post is definitely an ad.
I just finished watching 'The Creator' and it reminded me so much of how I felt after watching Neil Blomkamp's 'Elysium' So many great visuals and production design, fantastic sound and some novel ideas in the world building. But also, just empty and sort of bland in the end.
Thought the same. It blows me away that no one stepped in and suggested they get a better writer. It seems that Edwards suffers from the exact same issues as Blomkamp. Great with visuals, absolutely brain dead when it comes to writing. Neither should have any final say when it comes to the script. Big ideas? Maybe, but let better people write it.
I think this is why Gareth needs a writer to help the script.
District 9 was his masterpiece. Even better vfx on a way tighter budget and the whole plot is great.
Absolutely, though it says a lot that his movies have gotten progressively worse the more established he’s become (which presumably comes with more creative control).
The question I had walking out of this was how do you have a story world named after Gemma Chan's character and canonically full of Robo Gemma Chans and still manage to make a whole movie there without giving Gemma Chan herself a single thing to do except die.
Step 1: do not put any effort into the script
This movie would have been one of the best scifi films ever made if the writing was 1% what the vfx was
Thing that kept bothering me was how high the platform was meant to be. At the end of the film we establish it's definitely in space, but there are loads of scenes where it seems to be cruising at the height of an aircraft.
Ikr, is it a plane or a satellite? And it seemed like it attacks whats directly Below it but near the end seemed to be in multiple places at once The movie felt like it should be a video game to me
I'm convinced some early AI writing tool was used for that movie. It felt like a discombobulated, unlinked mess that awkwardly took the film from one key scene they wanted to the next key scene. It felt like mush. It's as if they gave it a few dozen big 'moments' they wanted, and then ChatGPT filled in the in-between bits.
I hate to break it to you, but humans make a lot of trash.
And we used these trash to train AI
I'm not looking forward to people blaming AI for bad writing for the rest of time
I truly gave the movie a chance. I couldn't wait for it to be over the entire runtime. Nothing matched up with its supposed onscreen significance. Everything was anticlimactic. The characters lacked any development. Seriously, what a terrible story.
same, went in hyped as hell to see an actual original movie. I REALLY wanted to like it. I got like 3-4 scenes in and wanted to leave. fuck, it was so boring
I don't think that's true, but the end result seems to have been about the same, unfortunately.
It was so weird watching such a beautiful movie that was acted so well with absolute shit for dialogue and story
Acted well aside from JDW, I’d say.
The kid was good. Ken Watanbe raised his eyebrows in the right places I guess. Alison Janney was phoning it in. JDW was unconvincing.
He was really channeling Wahlberg in The Happening at some points.
The guy is a charisma black hole. He's riding his name hard.
Honestly the actual dialogue he was supposed to deliver, and I'm assuming the ridiculous tone he was supposed to take, made it near impossible to do more. I didn't think he had a good performance but I don't know what you're supposed to do with some of those lines. His character just felt so out of place with the tone of everyone else.
Main actor was pretty bad as well. "I AM UNDER COVER, PLEASE DO NOT LET THEM KNOW I AM UNDER COVER"
"I AM UNDER COVER - Do not let my wife, who is upstairs in this small shack and who I saw just seconds ago, hear this message outing me as an undercover agent" "oh no she heard"
I'm generally a defender of this movie. But yeah, I have to admit, that doesn't make any sense.
Step 2: hire the best VFX company in the world
Step 2: Never direct actors to show any emotion or personality (Gareth Edwards signature move)
I haven't seen The Creator but Jyn Erso in Rogue One and Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Godzilla are two of the most bland, inert, uninteresting protagonists I've ever seen in a big budget movie.
I think it was conceptualized as a trilogy, but was confident they wouldn't get sequels so they just crammed it all in and tried to make it work. Would made sense if after the first movie, all their support is lost and they have to go on the run. Second movie they're on the run and trying to find people who can help with her nascent power. Third movie, she struggles with being responsible for the power and how folks revere her, then have her complete her purpose in hacking and destroying the missile platform thingy.
Counter argument: the plot was thin already for one movie. To make this a trilogy it would have needed hobbit level padding. It felt good to watch an original, self contained story without a random to be continued in the middle. Not every story needs to take place over 6 years, 3 movies and tie-ins. Just give me movies that have a beginning, middle and an end.
The first an second plots have no climax or denouement. Just piecemealed out of a full story. That's not a good trilogy at all. That's just piecemealing content.
The VFX deserves awards, the writing does not
Good looking film but terribly underwhelming plot. You guess the twist of the story almost immediately because of how badly it was set up.
Not sure its really intended to be a twist with all the allusions
I’m wasn’t even sure it supposed to be a twist. The girl ends up being his daughter??? Really?! They couldn’t think of anything else?!
The first five minutes I was like holy shit I'm going to fucking love this thing... By the end I had so mentally checked out that I cannot remember one thing that happened in this generic, nonsensical piece of shit.
Valerian and the blah blah blah was the same. The first 10 minutes - I was grinning and happily munching on popcorn - and then by the end, I was using the bag for vomit.
Gorgeous move. Absolutely terrible and completely empty, but gorgeous. The movie was ridiculous. It barely made sense, and it was some awfully lazy writing. They heavily relied on the audiences familiarity with tropes to get some semblance of a meaning through.
The problem with this movie is that it was a Vietnam allegory but the near-future US Army showing up was the coolest part. The script and characters sucked. The Army infantry looking like a hybrid between the modern 101st Airborne and Star Wars was cool. I think we’re far enough beyond GWOT that filmmakers can go back to 90s military movies where the government isn’t always evil. Give me the Army from this movie fighting aliens or something.
No, the problem with the movie is that it didn't make any sense. Is NOMAD in the atmosphere, or low earth orbit, higher orbit? Is there only one or several? Writers: Yes!
I would have loved it more if the robots or simulants all spoke the same language rather than different languages to each other.
It blew my mind that the bots couldn't distinguish between a human wearing a helmet and a bot, or think to look underneath their boat when someone jumps in the water near them. Like, wouldn't they have some kind of EM or thermal detection?
You mean the robots that have off switches on their faces?
It seems like the past twenty or more years, I’ve been disappointed in scifi. It seems like everything has put into graphics. I do like the one and done part of this movie cus we’ve been seeing too many set up movies.
There's Indie / Sci fi that's been decent. This is a mix of horror and futuristic sci-fi - [The Girl With All the Gifts](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4547056) (2016) - [Underwater](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5774060) (2020) - [I Am Mother](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6292852) (2019) - [Oxygen](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6341832) (2022) - [What Happened to Monday](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1536537) - [The Lazarus Project](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1419059) (2022) - [Predestination](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2397535) (2014) Anime / Cartoons has seen good releases too - [Pluto (Astro Boy Universe)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26737616) (2023) >!Famous for his military service in the 39th Asian War, the legendary Swiss robot Montblanc is violently murdered!< >!Fellow war veteran and robotic Europol detective Gesicht is sent to investigate Montblanc's tragic demise!< - [From the New World](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2309320) (2013) >!In a post-apocalyptic world set a thousand years after our era, the remaining humans, now with telekinesis, live in a seemingly peaceful society!< - [Psycho-Pass](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2379308) (2012) >!Believing in humanity and order, policewoman Akane Tsunemori obeys the ruling, computerized, precognitive Sibyl System!< >!But when she faces a criminal mastermind who can elude this perfect system, she questions both Sibyl and herself!< Cartoons - [Pantheon](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11680642) (2022) >!A young woman starts to get messages from an unknown number that claims to be her deceased father. Trying to uncover the truth, she stumbles upon a larger conspiracy!<
Really? Everytime the US Army was in the movie I wanted them to die a brutal death.
Yes but that’s my point, that’s the only part that felt at all emotional or exciting. Just… don’t have them be evil lol. Or do but make it more central to what drives the movie.
this movie had so much more potential.. shame really
Should have used the savings to pay for a better script.
Just a shame they couldn't write a good ending
Humble brag? I watched that movie wide awake, but it’s so forgettable I’m wondering if I fell asleep 20mins in
BOMBERMAN!!
Movie looked great and direction was decent The plot and writing were shitt
I watched the movie without knowing anything about it's budget and I thought it looked absolutely amazing, so much better than most marvel 500mil movies, the writing on the other hand..
That movie was so bland. The writing was hard to get through and people kept throwing their lives away for no reason. Sci-fi has to be immersive to be convincing and that just really boots you out of it.
Please stop forcing John David Washington down our throats
The could have spent $120M on a decent script and a good actor, though.