Gareth Edwards’ THE CREATOR: Solid But Unsurprising Sci-Fi

Opening at a multiplex near you tonight, and tomorrow:

THE CREATOR
(Dir. Gareth Edwards, 2023)

Despite helming such ginormous franchise installments in the GODZILLA (the 2014 reboot), and STAR WARS universes, Gareth Edwards isn’t quite yet an A-List, household name filmmaker. That doubtfully won’t change much with his newest effort, his fourth film, THE CREATOR, as it’s not getting much publicity from its studio, Twentieth Century Fox, and looks like it might not get much attention from movie-goers this coming weekend. 

 

If THE CREATOR does indeed fail to connect with audiences, that will be a damn shame as it’s a fairly solid sci-fi yarn with fine performances, cool visuals, and a thoughtful premise about a war between humans and AI that actually shows soul for both sides. And it’s on par with Edwards’ best work, 2016’s ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY.

 

A quick newsreel presentation opening, which, by the quality of the video in the clips, heavily implies that this film’s version of Earth adapted to having robots around earlier than our modern times (a year is never identified, but we get the idea that the film is set several decades in the future). Something went wrong with the relations between man and machines, and the AI overlords nuked Los Angeles, and a full-scale war resulted with North America outlawing all of the technology.

 

Our protagonist, an ex-special forces agent named Joshua, whose played by a wide-eyed John David Washington, probably happy that he’s in a sci-fi flick that’s easier to follow than TENET; is recruited to kill what they call “Nirmata,” that is the robotics master of the title. 

 

In a scene we’ve seen many times before, Washington’s Joshua refuses the assignment until military bigwigs Colonel Howell (Allison Janney), and General Andrews (Ralph Ineson) tell him that the mission could re-unite him with his missing wife, Maya (Genna Chan).

 

S0 off Joshua goes with Janney’s Howell, and a crew that includes country music singer/songwriter Sturgill Simpson as Drew to venture behind enemy lines in New Asia, where he finds the threat in the form of a humanoid robot child (Madeleine Yuna Voyles), who Josha names Alphie.

 

The movie becomes a familiar, formulaic road picture up until its race against the clock finale aboard the U.S. superweapon NOMAD, a space station that scarily scans the planet with blue beams – these are among the many cool visuals I was talking about. It’s never boring, but Edwards’ plotting, from a screenplay he wrote with Chris Weitz, never surprises as its story beats all recall its influences from APOCALYPSE NOW to BLADE RUNNER to, its most obvious touchstone, A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.

 

There’s also the similarities in the relationship between a warrior carting around a kid with incredible powers that THE CREATOR has with The Mandalorian, and even THE GOLDEN CHILD.

 

So, yeah, not the most original material, but there’s a lot to enjoy in Edwards’ latest starting with Washington’s edgy yet earnest performance, alongside Academy Award®-winning actress Janney as a hard as nails army lifer, who, with this and I, TONYA, has gotten as far from her original breakthrough character of C.J. from The West Wing as she can get.

 

There’s also Ken Watanabe as a Japanese robot who brings gravitas to his somewhat perplexing part as one starts to realize that Edwards has a more sympathetic to the synthetics theme than you might think going in. 

 

This fine cast, the gritty when it needs to be, glimmering the rest of the time cinematography by Greig Fraser, and Oren Soffer; and Han Zimmer’s fitting score (often broken up by rock music cues by the likes of Radiohead, and Deep Purple), are what makes the movie worthwhile.

 

THE CREATOR will be dismissed as too derivative by many (sort of like ROGUE ONE was), but it worked for me, and if movie-goers give it a chance (that is, if they hear about it at all), I bet it’ll function like the best AI for them too.

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Anatomy Of A Voice Cameo: Robert Redford In White House Plumbers

One of the best elements of the highly entertaining HBO mini-series, White House Plumbers, about the bumbling team of ex-CIA and FBO operatives who broke into Watergate in 1972, is its strong cast.

Headed by Woody Harrelson, and Justin Theroux as Richard M. Nixon’s political fixers Howard Hunt, and G. Gordon Liddy; the five episode run, which premiered in May of this year, also features fine supporting efforts from Lena Headey, Judy Greer, Domhnal Gleeson, and Katherine Turner. 

But a surprise casting choice came in episode 4, “The Writer’s Wife,” from Robert Redford reprising, or literally phoning in his famous role as Washington Post reporter, Bob Woodward from Alan J. Pakula’s 1976 classic, ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN.

Sure, it’s an uncredited voice-only appearance, and it’s only a few lines, but its notable because they didn’t just use the audio from the 47-year old film, Redford newly recorded his end of a phone call with Harrelson’s Howard Hunt with a little change in the dialogue. So let’s compare the scenes side-by-side.

 

In ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, Redford’s Woodward tries to reach Hunt first at the White House, then the Mullen public relations firm, where he is surprised to hear Hunt pick up. In White House Plumbers, Hunt receives the call at home.

Agitated, as he was before he ever got on the phone, Hunt replies:

This is the line that’s a bit different, as it originally went like this:

 

And this is how it goes down this time around:

The difference being that White House Plumbers got Woodward’s question to be more accurate - the crucial evidence of the envelope with Hunt’s name on it doesn’t appear in the 1976 film. Also Redford says “The Watergate” unlike the earlier take. Next, we see a shot of Woodward’s yellow legal pad where he notes Hunt’s reaction.

Hunt’s comment is exactly the same in both versions:

And from Redford/Woodward’s end:

Hunt hangs up, and the cameo is done. Halfway through putting together this post, I found that someone had done a mash-up combining the scenes on YouTube - something I should’ve figured someone would do. I’ll leave you with it what one commenter calls, and I agree, an awesome Easter egg:

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Summer ’23: How BARBENHEIMER Rose Above All The Flopbusters

I’m most likely the last person who writes about film to weigh in on BARBIE, Greta Gerwig’s billions-grossing fantasy comedy, but since the season is winding down, I thought I’d opine at how it, and its odd blockbuster bedfellow, OPPENHEIMER became a huge event, or even a movement this last summer at the cinema (or more aptly, the multiplex).

The build-up to the release date (July 21) for both films prompted many memes, fake trailers, and a lot of op-ed action to comically address the internet phenomenon that was dubbed BARBENHEIMER (it even has a Wikipedia page!), as it seemed everyone thought it was so hilarious that two such polar opposites were opening on the same day.

Christopher Nolan’s OPPENHEIMER was the true winner artistically as it’s a must-see-on-the-big-screen masterpiece (read my review), but while BARBIE was far from an essential work, it’s a fairly fun piece of satire. A radiant Margot Robbie, as “Stereotypical Barbie,” perfectly brings to life the first ever live-action version of the Mattel model doll, who lives in the surreal Barbieland, a largely pink, plastic world populated by discontinued Barbies - the identifying of which, like Video Girl Barbie, Barbie’s friend, Pregnant Midge; and Sugar Daddy Ken, is a running joke throughout the film (aided by Helen Mirren as “The Narrator” - another nice touch).

With both the charm of his sympathy, and his stupidity, Ryan Gosling’s Ken more than holds his own with Robbie’s Barbie, and may even get more laughs. The premise, which deals with Barbie beginning to become human, and journeying to the real world (present-day Los Angeles) to find the troubled little girl whose influence on her doll brought on Barbie’s existential crisis (something like that), is pretty basic fish-out-of-the-water stuff, but it moves along briskly gag to gag.

Will Ferrell, in a role that could be his character from THE LEGO MOVIE, but I bet that’s just wishful thinking, plays the Mattel CEO bad guy here with an all-male (not true in real life) Board of Directors. A mostly funny Ferrell’s loud bluster bounces around the lavish boardroom, another example of Sarah Greenwood’s excellent production design, that calls upon the War Room in DR. STRANGELOVE. That’s actually the second Kubrick reference on display as the movie opens with a hilarious parody of the apes at the dawn of time sequence at the start of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.

However, it did feel a bit padded with a chase sequence through a maze through corporate office cubicles before heading into more standard automobile activity that could’ve been cut completely, and not made a difference - especially as the movie is nearly 2 hours. Also, as funny as Gosling’s big number “I’m Just Ken” is, it felt uneven in that the movie seemed to decide to become a musical in its last third.

One of BARBIE’s most controversial moments comes in the form of a fiery America Ferrera as Gloria, a Mattel employee who unites with our heroine, and accompanies her back to Barbieland. Ferrera gives a speech, more like a rant, about the struggle of being a woman in a man’s world - sample line: “You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining.”

Ferrera’s mouthful (which you can read in full here) is effectively edgy, yet heartfelt part of the film, but that didn’t stop many on the right to condemn BARBIE as a preachy, man-hating piece of left-wing propaganda. One such dickhead, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who called the film, “the most woke movie I’ve ever seen,” actually set a trashcan of Barbie toys on fire to make, uh, some point. If you’re glutton for punishment, you can watch Shapiro’s 43-minute review, which features him setting what looks like a few hundred dollars of Barbies ablaze.

An over-used expression these days by Shapiro, and many of the folks at Fox News, is “if you go woke, you go broke,” but the incredible success of BARBIE proves that to be B.S., just like just about every rule that anybody makes about going woke. Sure, it can be seen as just a silly spoof of a toy for little girls, but Gerwig, and co-writer (and her long-time partner) Noah Baumbach had some layers they wanted to playfully explore, and it makes for a movie that’s sure to be a repeated, and relished part of pop culture for a long, long time.

But while the double bill of BARBENHEIMER is the big hit of our hottest ever summer, there was another notable phenomenon, that being that this has been the era of the flopbuster. Sometimes, as the Urban Dictonary defines it, a flopbuster is a movie that was supposed to be a blockbuster but flopped at the box office, other times, it’s a terrible movie that still makes lots of money.

This summer was jammed packed with flopbusters including THE FLASH, INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY (read my review), HAUNTED MANSION (my review), and MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: DEAD RECKONING PART I. As people were probably burned out, or felt burned, by Indy since his last, much lambasted adventure, or passed on Cruise’s latest mission while ignoring its acclaim, and turned their nose up at THE FLASH, like I did, despite it containing the return of Michael Keaton’s Batman, it seems obvious why audiences opted instead for the brainer/no-brainer combo that is BARBENHEIMER.

In the wake of the success of BARBIE, it was announced that Lena Dunham, of HBO’s Girls fame, was going to make a movie based on Mattel’s ‘90s mini-doll “Polly Pocket.” Actor/writer/director Randall Park had a great reaction to that:

“Barbie is this massive blockbuster, and the idea is: Make more movies about toys! No - make more movies by and about women!”

Now, is that really so woke an idea?

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