Could 'The Creator' Change Hollywood Forever? (indiewire.com) 96
At the beginning of The Creator a narrator describes AI-powered robots that are "more human than human." From the movie site Looper:
It's in reference to the novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick, which was adapted into the seminal sci-fi classic, "Blade Runner." The phrase is used as the slogan for the Tyrell Corporation, which designs the androids that take on lives of their own. The saying perfectly encapsulates the themes of "Blade Runner" and, by proxy, "The Creator." If a machine of sufficient intelligence is indistinguishable from humans, then shouldn't it be considered on equal footing as humanity?
The Huffington Post calls its "the pro-AI movie we don't need right now" — but they also praise it as "one of the most astonishing sci-fi theatrical experiences this year." Variety notes the film was co-written and directed by Gareth Edwards (director of the 2014 version of Godzilla and the Star Wars prequel Rogue One), working with Oscar-winning cinematographer Greig Fraser (Dune) after the two collaborated on Rogue One. But what's unique is the way they filmed it: adding visual effects "almost improvisationally afterward.
"Achieving this meant shooting sumptuous natural landscapes in far-flung locales like Thailand or Tibet and building futuristic temples digitally in post-production..."
IndieWire gushes that "This movie looks fucking incredible. To a degree that shames most blockbusters that cost three times its budget." They call it "a sci-fi epic that should change Hollywood forever." Once audiences see how "The Creator" was shot, they'll be begging Hollywood to close the book on blockbuster cinema's ugliest and least transportive era. And once executives see how much (or how little) "The Creator" was shot for, they'll be scrambling to make good on that request as fast as they possibly can.
Say goodbye to $300 million superhero movies that have been green-screened within an inch of their lives and need to gross the GDP of Grenada just to break even, and say hello — fingers crossed — to a new age of sensibly budgeted multiplex fare that looks worlds better than most of the stuff we've been subjected to over the last 20 years while simultaneously freeing studios to spend money on the smaller features that used to keep them afloat. Can you imagine...? How ironic that such fresh hope for the future of hand-crafted multiplex entertainment should come from a film so bullish and sanguine at the thought of humanity being replaced by A.I [...]
The real reason why "The Creator" is set in Vietnam (and across large swaths of Eurasia) is so that it could be shot in Vietnam. And in Thailand. And in Cambodia, Nepal, Indonesia, and several other beautiful countries that are seldom used as backdrops for futuristic science-fiction stories like this one. This movie was born from the visual possibilities of interpolating "Star Wars"-like tech and "Blade Runner"-esque cyber-depression into primordially expressive landscapes. Greig Fraser and Oren Soffer's dusky and tactile cinematography soaks up every inch of what the Earth has to offer without any concession to motion capture suits or other CGI obstructions, which speaks to the truly revolutionary aspect of this production: Rather than edit the film around its special effects, Edwards reverse-engineered the special effects from a completed edit of his film... Instead of paying a fortune to recreate a flimsy simulacrum of our world on a computer, Edwards was able to shoot the vast majority of his movie on location at a fraction of the price, which lends "The Creator" a palpable sense of place that instantly grounds this story in an emotional truth that only its most derivative moments are able to undo... [D]etails poke holes in the porous border that runs between artifice and reality, and that has an unsurprisingly profound effect on a film so preoccupied with finding ghosts in the shell. Can a robot feel love? Do androids dream of electric sheep? At what point does programming blur into evolution...?
[T]he director has a classic eye for staging action, that he gives his movies room to breathe, and that he knows that the perfect "Kid A" needle-drop (the album, not the song) can do more for a story about the next iteration of "human" life than any of the tracks from Hans Zimmer's score... [T]here's some real cognitive dissonance to seeing a film that effectively asks us to root for a cuter version of ChatGPT. But Edwards and Weitz's script is fascinating for its take on a future in which people have programmed A.I. to maintain the compassion that our own species has lost somewhere along the way; a future in which technology might be a vessel for humanity rather than a replacement for it; a future in which computers might complement our movies rather than replace our cameras.
The Huffington Post calls its "the pro-AI movie we don't need right now" — but they also praise it as "one of the most astonishing sci-fi theatrical experiences this year." Variety notes the film was co-written and directed by Gareth Edwards (director of the 2014 version of Godzilla and the Star Wars prequel Rogue One), working with Oscar-winning cinematographer Greig Fraser (Dune) after the two collaborated on Rogue One. But what's unique is the way they filmed it: adding visual effects "almost improvisationally afterward.
"Achieving this meant shooting sumptuous natural landscapes in far-flung locales like Thailand or Tibet and building futuristic temples digitally in post-production..."
IndieWire gushes that "This movie looks fucking incredible. To a degree that shames most blockbusters that cost three times its budget." They call it "a sci-fi epic that should change Hollywood forever." Once audiences see how "The Creator" was shot, they'll be begging Hollywood to close the book on blockbuster cinema's ugliest and least transportive era. And once executives see how much (or how little) "The Creator" was shot for, they'll be scrambling to make good on that request as fast as they possibly can.
Say goodbye to $300 million superhero movies that have been green-screened within an inch of their lives and need to gross the GDP of Grenada just to break even, and say hello — fingers crossed — to a new age of sensibly budgeted multiplex fare that looks worlds better than most of the stuff we've been subjected to over the last 20 years while simultaneously freeing studios to spend money on the smaller features that used to keep them afloat. Can you imagine...? How ironic that such fresh hope for the future of hand-crafted multiplex entertainment should come from a film so bullish and sanguine at the thought of humanity being replaced by A.I [...]
The real reason why "The Creator" is set in Vietnam (and across large swaths of Eurasia) is so that it could be shot in Vietnam. And in Thailand. And in Cambodia, Nepal, Indonesia, and several other beautiful countries that are seldom used as backdrops for futuristic science-fiction stories like this one. This movie was born from the visual possibilities of interpolating "Star Wars"-like tech and "Blade Runner"-esque cyber-depression into primordially expressive landscapes. Greig Fraser and Oren Soffer's dusky and tactile cinematography soaks up every inch of what the Earth has to offer without any concession to motion capture suits or other CGI obstructions, which speaks to the truly revolutionary aspect of this production: Rather than edit the film around its special effects, Edwards reverse-engineered the special effects from a completed edit of his film... Instead of paying a fortune to recreate a flimsy simulacrum of our world on a computer, Edwards was able to shoot the vast majority of his movie on location at a fraction of the price, which lends "The Creator" a palpable sense of place that instantly grounds this story in an emotional truth that only its most derivative moments are able to undo... [D]etails poke holes in the porous border that runs between artifice and reality, and that has an unsurprisingly profound effect on a film so preoccupied with finding ghosts in the shell. Can a robot feel love? Do androids dream of electric sheep? At what point does programming blur into evolution...?
[T]he director has a classic eye for staging action, that he gives his movies room to breathe, and that he knows that the perfect "Kid A" needle-drop (the album, not the song) can do more for a story about the next iteration of "human" life than any of the tracks from Hans Zimmer's score... [T]here's some real cognitive dissonance to seeing a film that effectively asks us to root for a cuter version of ChatGPT. But Edwards and Weitz's script is fascinating for its take on a future in which people have programmed A.I. to maintain the compassion that our own species has lost somewhere along the way; a future in which technology might be a vessel for humanity rather than a replacement for it; a future in which computers might complement our movies rather than replace our cameras.
No (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know what trailers these guys saw, but to me it looked like absolutely standard "Is this human-looking, human-acting, human-coded entity actually deserving of being treated like a human?". This has been covered so often in sci-fi that it's a joke.
What's true in a movie's version of reality isn't what's true in actual reality. In the movie, I'm sure, as always, the AI will be portrayed as being huamn and sentient. And in movies magic can happen, ghosts are real and everyone should believe in aliens/pixies/dragons etc. Just because the toys in Toy Story were sentient doesn't mean we should be treating real toys as though they were. In reality, "artificial intelligence" in only living up to the first half of its name anyway.
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Welcome to Slashdot, Sid.
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OP is not talking about an imaginary use case of a "Play session" - but about a real case of reality. As in "for Reals".
Budget Version of Avatar (Score:2)
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If you squint hard enough, every movie story ever told has been done before. The question is, how well is this one redone? Does it manage to feel fresh, even though inevitably you can index every scene to tvtropes.org? If the screenwriter, director, and editor do their jobs, as you're watching you aren't aware you've seen all this before -- that's for wags on YouTube to point out.
The editor in particular has a huge impact on a film. The first cut of Star Wars was notoriously boring and nonsensical; Lucas
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If you squint hard enough, every movie story ever told has been done before.
That is certainly true of all recent films I can think of but there are sometimes original stories, ideas or approaches or an old story or trope is done sufficiently differently that it feels new. So I suppose really what it boils down to is how hard you have to squint to see the similarity to something that went before. To be honest we've pretty much stopped going to the cinema because it feels like we hardly have to squint at all.
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We routinely go over the dangers of AI and the dangers of Humans regarding AI as subhuman.
And yet here we are with people setting the foundation for treating AI's as subhuman (when they could become superhuman without warning a few hours) and connecting AI without any safety protocols directly to the internet.
Also, there are no new stories. What matters is whether the story is told well and if it's been told *very recently*.
Alachia Queen says this movie looks good but it's weak plot wise. However, it onl
Best movie ever - according to criteria above. (Score:2)
We Are Your Friends [wikipedia.org] - starring Zac Efron as "a disc jockey" and Emily Ratajkowski as "a human female".
Not only is it a "human drama" about a young man struggling to find a correct sequence of buttons to push in order to play pre-recorded sound samples in a sequence resembling rhythm [youtube.com] (and finding it within himself) while selling a message so shallow even Zac Efron seems to be asking himself "What am I supposed to be doing here?"...
It was also made for just $2 million, making $1.8 million in its opening weeke
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I don't know what trailers these guys saw, but to me it looked like absolutely standard "Is this human-looking, human-acting, human-coded entity actually deserving of being treated like a human?".
I watched the trailer in TFA, which was entertaining, and it seems like a mashup of "I, Robot" and "The Terminator" -- maybe the title should be "I, Terminator"?
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The review linked there basically is saying this is an entirely boring, predictable, trope laden movie who's remarkable feature is that the whole thing was shot so cheaply (oddly they seem to omit the ACTUAL NUMBER: $80 million). Meh, I guess that's cheap in Hollywood. And the SFX are quite good in the trailer.
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I note that Avatar had more or less a similar critiques (except for the cost).
To me, the plot was just something to hang a spectacle on, and it worked.
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After seeing both Avatar movies, I'd rather just watch FernGully instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I saw this movie on Friday, and really wish I hadn't, although my friend and I did have an hour of amazing laughs picking apart all the glaring plot holes, tropes, and shitty dialog. It sucks because the special effects are awesome, the actors are great, and the lulls you into thinking this is going to be a great movie, but it's really just not. There's no good reason why it couldn't have been a great movie, I'm certain that most of the people on this site could write a better technical or emotional or ac
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I like Sci-Fi and I like robot movies and I don't watch trailers for movies so I can be surprised going in. Boy was I surprised... More plot holes than Swiss cheese.
Here are a few you forgot.
- There doesn't seem to be a president or congress or anything else that makes military decisions. Only one General, always in dress uniform. And no one else questions his actions.
- For some reason they are encouraging people to donate their face likeness for the Robots to use, because I guess it's too hard to make huma
What drivel is this? (Score:4, Informative)
Did someone just learn how VFX works? Also what is sensible about the movie's budget and how does it relate to VFX? If you want to compare it to marvel, yes let's compare it to marvel: The Creator $80million budget. Endgame: $75million payment just to Robert Downey Jr. The $300m blockbusters spend a significant amount of money on their cast, which for better or worse has zero to do with VFX quality or budget.
Also call me crazy but I greatly prefer a CGI explosion compared to using footage of an actual explosion which cost the lives of 218 people and wounded 6000 more.
The Creator Trailer: https://youtu.be/ex3C1-5Dhb8?s... [youtu.be]
Beirut Ammonium Nitrate explosion: https://youtu.be/LNDhIGR-83w?s... [youtu.be]
Also there's nothing unique about The Creator in the VFX department. Many movies look incredible, many movies mix elements like this, and many movies who have a VFX supervisor on set actually talking with the director result in this. Comparing it to Marvel superhero movies / greenscreens is just stupid. Different process, different purpose, different art style.
I'm looking forward to this film, but the guy from Indiewire should absolutely not be writing about movies.
Re:What drivel is this? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an ad for a movie, disguised as an article.
C'mon, Slashvertising wasn't invented today.
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It's an ad for a movie, disguised as an article.
C'mon, Slashvertising wasn't invented today.
Discussing something that is happening right now doesn't make a slashvertisement. There's interesting discussions to be had about what we are doing now, but this article just sounds like it was written by an idiot who has never seen a movie before.
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Discussing something that is happening right now doesn't make a slashvertisement.
no, it being posted by a slashdot editor for a fee does.
it was written by an idiot who has never seen a movie before.
yes? like ... maybe ... and advertisement? i wonder, ... might there be a pattern here? :p
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no, it being posted by a slashdot editor for a fee does.
So you can show this one was posted for a fee? Or do you just imagine the world to suit your pre-existing bias?
yes? like ... maybe ... and advertisement? i wonder, ... might there be a pattern here? :p
Not all things written by idiots are advertisements. For example your post doesn't seem to be advertising anything.
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i'll give you a point for the conclusion. it was funny, well put.
but i can't really give you a "well played, sir", because you kinda spoiled that gem pre-birth with the first point, which is just overdefensive stupid drivel, thrown at a hill not worth dying for because no one threatened you. so why do you act like you are being threatened? see, it taints the entire message. often less is more.
keep at it. you're improving :-D
Also, astroturfing. (Score:2)
Various "news" portals have been advertising this movie to me as if it is some kind of a revolution in slicing bread.
Unfortunately for them, I've already seen the trailer and the movie is obviously garbage.
Not that I'd watch it for free either.
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To play DA here, the sheer extent of cutouts on heads and body replacement, without requiring mocap suits or anything, is impressive to me, as was the way they shot the robots -- they were human actors giving human performances
So literally every movie that doesn't have a full CG character? This is not special. This is stock standard VFX done in the way that VFX have been done for decades.
And before you DA again and say but they created something new,... you'd be amazed at the number of movies who did. In fact many of the movies you think of will have created some new way to do a VFX thing during their development as the VFX industry is literally built on the basis of making things up as they go along.
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No. You're understanding of VFX is very narrow. Greenscreen and mocap has taken up only a tiny portion of VFX history. People have been doing these kinds of edits for decades without the assistance of green screens, heck they even adopted the term for these kinds of non-green screen edits from a technique used in the late 1800s - rotorscoping (though when talking about rotorscoping in VFX terms it isn't anything resembling what they were doing back then).
Their technique here is unique but it's a minor tweak
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The Creator $80million budget.
I did wonder why the budget wasn't mentioned in the slashvert. $80million isn't what most people would call cheap.
The $300m blockbusters spend a significant amount of money on their cast
Yep, that's the part that's really out of control.
We live in a celebrity culture. There's no way any actor brings that much added value to a movie.
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If the celebrity can add 40 million to the bottom line, then they have a right to ask for a high salary.
People were not going to see Endgame with Jack Black as Iron Man.
It's on the producers and investors to look at the potential movie profits and manage costs.
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People were not going to see Endgame with Jack Black as Iron Man.
Speak for yourself. That sounds awesome.
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Why does it bother you that they made a series of fairly faithful, high quality films with good actors based on classic popular comic books?
Sure.. they've gone off the reservation now, but we got a decade of good stuff with tight plotting, good writing, acting, and skillful cgi and direction.
I laughed, I cried, I kissed $6 bucks goodbye.
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Whoa whoa whoa.
I prefer the Beirut one.
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Also call me crazy but I greatly prefer a CGI explosion compared to using footage of an actual explosion which cost the lives of 218 people and wounded 6000 more.
well i wouldn't. that's very obviously not reused footage, but from the similarities in angle and 2 secs of action shot it is indeed plausible that they used it as inspiration, which is actually a great idea and a commendable and professional approach imo, as i would much prefer a representation inspired on actual reality to the usually physically impossible and often caricaturized and overstylized "cgi explosions". of course this is just a general preference, in reality it depends on the context, style and
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Per "Breakthrough (and Expensive!) CGI Scenes in MCU Movies
by Tina Lee | Last updated Feb 16, 2023",
"MCU movies could be broken down into two categories, standalone films (Ironman, Thor, Captain America, etc.) and the Avengers movies, which feature an ensemble cast. The Avengers movies tend to be more expensive compared to standalone Marvel movies because every characterâ(TM)s unique traits and powers require extensive CGI effects. The cost of CGI effects in standalone MCU films is about $100 to $200 m
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Really the issue is storytelling. VFX is just another tool for doing that.
Back before they had VFX people still told compelling stories using simple but crude practical effects [youtube.com]. In extreme cases, great filmakers can lean into [wikipedia.org] their techncial limitations and produce images audiences will accept as "real", no because they were realistic, but because they were vivid and nightmarish.
When we started to be able to do VFX, we stepped onto a kind of treadmill where our belief that what we were seeing on screen w
Producers find... (Score:4, Insightful)
*The suffering in the real world, rather than Hollywood, is mostly as a direct consequence of empires, e.g. British, French, & US. Empires are the result of nationalist exceptionalism (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]), AKA "We are the chosen ones," & are not inevitable. In fact, we should all be doing our utmost to prevent exceptionalism, the same way that we teach our children not to steal, fight, or kill each other. In other words, learn a little humility & openness to other cultures.
Re: Producers find... (Score:2)
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And Jesús' message? There are plenty of Jesús' today & with modern telecommunications they can & are spreading their messages far & wide.
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I think I could do without a lot of Jesus' works; he was a fundamentalist Jew pissed off that the local temples were corrupted from Biblical law as he interpreted it. He'd have a lot of complaints about the world today, and I'd bet most of us would be looking around for a Roman to deal with him if he managed to start stirring up trouble again. ...and that's without entertaining the possibility that 99% of his story was invented by his acolytes after he died, to add mysticism to their fledgling cult and mak
There, fixed that for you. (Score:2)
and that's without the fact that his story was completely invented
There is ZERO historical evidence for existence of Jesus. All of supposed "evidence" is literally sourced from the Bible - a known collection of made up bullshit.
Might as well argue for historical existence of Tarzan. Or Mickey Mouse.
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"More Human Than Human" (Score:2)
I prefer to think of it as an homage to White Zombie.
(yeah, yeah, I know...)
Slashvertisement (Score:1)
Sounds like crap.
Rambo but with robots.
"The pro-AI movie we don't need right now" (Score:5, Interesting)
Given that I just watched a person get brutally attacked online by hundreds of people for using AI tools (plus his own writing, and manual work) to make a fanart Calvin and Hobbes strip, including being told to kill himself, I think we as society could benefit from dialing the angry anti-AI hyperbole down at least a little bit.
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There's always an internet fuckwad willing to go there. The fact they're never punished or doxxed shows how dysfunctional internet social media is. I'm usually against doxxing but this we need to stop: Some fuckwad does not get to own the internet for a millisecond and decide who does not deserve a voice and a life.
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But you have to admit, life would be easier and the world, in general, better if we removed that right from a considerable portion of the population.
Re:"The pro-AI movie we don't need right now" (Score:4, Informative)
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Yes, that's totally Occam's Razor... *eyeroll*
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Re: "The pro-AI movie we don't need right now" (Score:2)
Considering how easy it is to create bot farms, and that twitter has a major bot issue that has been exacerbated by all the recent AI tech it is not actually as absurd of a notion as we may think. Hell I have been seeing a lot of bot accounts rising up as of late that weâ(TM)re created within the span of a few months.
For all the bs Elon spews, he may have had a point regarding the bot issue back when the deal for twitter had yet to be finalized.
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I used to be 100% onboard with your sentiment... but at the population level people are just too easy to manipulate by continually battering them with the same message. Given time and market saturation, you can change a culture. And it's already been done to us, and they got away with it for generations. In fact, given the almost complete lack of consequences once past domestic propaganda became generally known and the lack of concern about it outside a few special interest groups everyone ignores... I'd
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Yes, I too pine for the olden days when a movie was just for entertainment. The excitement of the plucky homesteaders circling their wagons to ward off the attacks from the dastardly natives until the cavalry came trumpeting over the hill never failed to thrill.
No messaging there.
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The first sentence of your post implies you are sarcastically disagreeing with me, but the second and third are sarcastically agreeing with me.
Did you somehow miss the part where I said the propaganda's been going on for generations?
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Sorry, yeah, that was confusing and snarky. I must learn to not hit submit until I've had my second cup of coffee.
Actually I tend agree with you. Ancient myths and legends might be considered a form of propaganda, for a loose definition of the word. I believe it was Alexander the Great who had the first documented propaganda corp, although such things could be implied by the writings of the Pharaohs. I'm re-reading Caesar's Commentaries at the moment. Great propaganda for Rome, and especially great for one
Third world prices! (Score:2)
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Errrm, .... Wutt? (Score:4, Interesting)
The Creator to me looks a bit like a rehash of Steven Spielbergs "A.I." which I found pretty "Meh." and unspectacular. Storywise it's quite unimaginative, at least that's what the trailer suggests
Aside from that it rehashes Denis Villeneuve/Lionel Feininger esthetics, with some StarWars/ Transformers and a few leading SF videogames or Simon Stalenhag stories mixed in. That's actually the most interesting bit, but in the trailer it looked a tad overloaded and non-sensical to me.
I'm way more excited about the second part of Denis Villeneuves Dune redo. _That's_ a promising and interesting SF movie coming up.
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I suspect Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune would have resulted in a huge flop and massive disappointment. A huge list of celebrities doesn't automatically make a good movie.
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>a rehash of Steven Spielbergs "A.I." which I found pretty "Meh."
A beautiful movie for the first 80%, it toys with people treating a basic AI as human, then it moves on to whether the AIs are self-aware but enslaved to an overly simplistic programmed motivations.
And then, at the last, it turns into complete fantasy bullshit and retroactively ruins the whole thing.
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I think it's aged pretty well. I believe it was over-hyped at the time, it was overshadowed by the idea that it was an unfinished Kubrick joint and Spielberg have gotten long in the tooth and sappy in his age. I thought the ending was alright. Maybe I rewrote in my head to be humans that came back many eons in the future to what would be an archeological dig and them trying to reconstruct it. Sappiness aside I liked the idea I made of it. The whole Pinocchio complex he tried to shoehorn in to 20 minutes see
Slash... (Score:3)
Early sci-fi novels (Score:4, Informative)
We've seen that in Terminator (1984) and Ex machina (2014). We see slavery in Blade runner (1982, from a novel) and a number of lesser movies. While early sci-fi novels grappled with robots as individuals, there aren't many movies: Bicentennial man (1999, from a novel), "I, robot" (2004, from a novel) and Her (2013) are the bulk.
Re: Early sci-fi novels (Score:2)
Years before "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" there was "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" by Harlan Ellison. That is one of my favorite short stories and with a theme rather similar to Philip K. Dick's later story.
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Do you dare add in Alita: Battle Angel? :)
Man I loved Bicentennial Man as a kid. I mean, not that he's terribly special: How long did Data attempt to understand the human experience? Emotions chip, skin grafts (OK, this one was under duress or part of subterfuge), and eventually death.
Way too many words... (Score:2)
... when the answer is no.
Just burn already (Score:1)
Not a good movie (Score:3)
I am not telling the movie is bad, it is just entertaining. VFX were nice, with some few odd artistic choices (e.g. crosshair). I will definitely forget about it next week.
This passes for a review? (Score:5, Insightful)
IndieWire gushes that "This movie looks fucking incredible.
Using fucking in this sense does not make you look edgy or hip or whatever made up term is being thrown around today. It doesn't emphasize anything nor does it contribute to the comment. In fact, its usage detracts from the point attempting to be made.
If you can't speak (or write) a coherent sentence without using the word fucking, why should I listen to you? The only thing it does is make one look and sound like a fucking moron (the correct usage).
Re:This passes for a review? (Score:4, Insightful)
Great movie, breath of fresh air - go and see it. (Score:2)
Loss of respect (Score:3)
Early superhero movies were interesting. The advancement in CGI made it possible to portray superhuman forces. It quickly lost appeal though, because of the endless milking of the franchises.
I am glad that actual reality would make a comeback, because like with miniature ships, the camera and actors as physical objects respect the physical world as well. There is a certain graciousness and largeness in that, which is rarely attained with CGI. Directors, cinematographers, and producers create wild and nausea-inducing unrealistic movements - only because it is possible and the audience is made to want that, to beat some other silly production. In the end everything feels small.
Of the recent movies Dune got the scale of things right, quite nicely.
Re:Loss of respect (Score:4, Interesting)
>I am glad that actual reality would make a comeback, because like with miniature ships, the camera and actors as physical objects respect the physical world as well
While I agree that CGI, however impressive, eventually looks cartoonish as you become used to it and start giving it a critical eye... that is no longer because the lighting is wrong. What's left is the physics, which is why motion capture is currently the best way to make a CGI character look realistic. CGI doesn't respect Newton, and your brain knows it.
This, however, is a matter of time. If location shots in exotic locales are currently more affordable and more effective than top-tier CGI, that's only until the CGI tools and the artists who wield them learn to respect the laws of physics. The computing power continually increases and simultaneously gets less expensive, and reality can't beat that forever.
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Early superhero movies were interesting. The advancement in CGI made it possible to portray superhuman forces. It quickly lost appeal though, because of the endless milking of the franchises.
I am glad that actual reality would make a comeback, because like with miniature ships, the camera and actors as physical objects respect the physical world as well. There is a certain graciousness and largeness in that, which is rarely attained with CGI. Directors, cinematographers, and producers create wild and nausea-inducing unrealistic movements - only because it is possible and the audience is made to want that, to beat some other silly production. In the end everything feels small.
Of the recent movies Dune got the scale of things right, quite nicely.
I've been thinking on this a bit lately and I think that the over-reliance on CGI has lead to a dearth in other skills that end up making good films.
Aliens was a film from the pre CGI time (I tend to define CGI becoming mainstream after Jurassic Park), how many Aliens were on screen at any one time? Only a few, there were 12 costumes worn by dancers and 4 static models for poses that were impossible for humans. However the script, lighting, cinematography gave you the impression that there were hundreds,
Re: Loss of respect (Score:2)
One aspect has been the focus on a few things only. In Alien a memorable thing was the birthing process of the creature. Nowadays there can easily be photorealistic portrayals of any fantastical violence or events, and it becomes a blur eventually - a gimmick to keep the attention up rather than having to do something with storytelling.
But, this is how it has always been. In the end only few productions will be remembered, because of being good cinema. Others are there to fill the gaps.
I predict... (Score:1)
It will be more of the same. aka. fucking dogshit not worth watching, like everything else they created in the last five years, or last 10 years to a slightly lesser degree, or last 15 years to a minimally slighter even lesser degree. Look at that, I write better shit than they do already. You are entertained. You give now money.
$14 Million opening weekend (Score:1)
What happened to Slashdot summaries? (Score:2)
/old man mode= on
What the hell ever happened to actual summaries on Slashdot? The "summary" here is as long as three or four summaries from years long ago.
Hey editors, put a little effort into trimming submissions down into actual summaries. /old man mode=off
The director used a relatively affordable camera (Score:2)
Should anyone be interested, this is the mini review I posted yesterday:
I watched The Creator today. Visually impressive, enthralling science ficti
Permanent Hyperbole (Score:2)
No. Reviews are "Not Fucking Believable" as IndieWire would put it. That in itself is hyperbole.
Review over at The Daily Beast, said what I'm going t
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes (Score:2)
That goes for the 'creators' and the 'blogger' who wrote this trash tier review.
"AI" isn't going to change anything. References to PKD without the author having actually read PKD are nonsensical. Dune, Villeneuve edition, sucked, especially in cinematography. Rogue One did nothing but suck. Soft rebooting the concept of "I, Robot" wins one of several stupid prizes.