The Creator film review: a bit of Star Wars, Blade Runner and Avatar
A higher AI species threatening extinction taps into our fears of the moment, but a talented cast can’t save this mashed-up mix.
The Creator (M)
In cinemas
★★
It’s Oscar winner Allison Janney, as an exterminate-all-the-brutes US Army colonel, who sums up the problem facing humankind in the futuristic sci-fi thriller The Creator.
She points out that the Neanderthals were not as dumb as we pretend to think. They were humane and artistic. But a slightly smarter species, homo sapiens, came along, thought about it, and wiped them out.
In 2065 homo sapiens are the new Neanderthals and the higher IQ species with extinction on its mind is the baddie of the moment: artificial intelligence. The world is divided, Ninety Eighty-Four like, into the West (read the US) and New Asia, where AI has concentrated its forces.
The cause of this war was a nuclear bomb killing a million people in Los Angeles a decade earlier. Humans say it was detonated by AI. The US has since built a super-weapon, a sort of Death Star, but believes AI has an even more powerful device at its disposal. That device must be located and destroyed otherwise humanity is finito.
The mission goes to a US special forces sergeant, Joshua Taylor (John David Washington), who soon locates the AI super-weapon but hesitates on the destroy part of his brief. It is a replicant that looks like a little girl (Madeleine Yuna Voyles). He pulls his gun, it clutches a soft toy. Its AI name is Alpha One so he calls it Alphie.
That “it” factor is important. “They’re not real, they don’t feel shit. It’s just programming,’’ Joshua says in a flashback to his black op days infiltrating, undermining and switching off AI “terrorists”.
That may be the case but does it change when a six-year-old girl, replicant or not, looks at you and smiles, or cries, or asks about heaven? And does it change even more if you have a bit of a romantic history with AI and its creator?
Joshua’s wife, Maya (English actor Gemma Chan), who may or may not be dead, was/is a robotics whiz. Also, hint, hint, she was pregnant when he last saw her.
That’s the set-up for this 133-minute movie directed by English filmmaker Gareth Edwards, who co-wrote the script with American writer and director Chris Weitz (Oscar nominated for the 2002 Nick Hornby adaptation About a Boy).
Two Oscar winners are involved: Australian cinematographer Greig Fraser and German musical director Hans Zimmer. Washington, son of Denzel, is a fine actor (BlacKkKlansman, Tenet and especially Malcolm & Marie) who does his best here.
Which brings me to the two-star rating.
This film is based on an interesting, timely idea and has some talented people on board. But other than the film-work — the action scenes look good on the big screen — it’s a complete mess. Story-wise, plot-wise, dialogue-wise, attempted humour-wise, meaning-wise.
It’s an incompatible mix of Star Wars (the director made the 2016 instalment Rogue One, also filmed by Greig), Blade Runner, Apocalypse Now (there’s a US general who likes the smell of nukes in the morning), Neill Blomkamp’s terrific 2009 sci-fi film District 9 and James Cameron’s humans-are-the-real-baddies Avatar.
We travel forward to an AI-dominated future that includes kamikaze R2D2s, back to echoes of the Vietnam War and, in the Joshua-Alphie relationship, into an atomic level of schmaltz. If you watch The Creator and end up wondering what on earth it is about, you will not be alone.
-
Slant (MA15+)
In cinemas from October 12. Preview screenings with director and cast Q&A on October 5 in Melbourne, October 6 in Hobart. Details: www.slant-movie.com
★★★
“Everybody loves a dysfunctional family tragedy,” hard-nosed newspaper editor Una Power (an excellent Kate Lister) tells a just-hired reporter in the Australian black comedy-thriller Slant.
Her message is that such stories sell papers. Sometimes, though, the families behind the news are even more dysfunctional, as in the award-winning television series Succession.
That’s certainly the case in this tongue-in-cheek movie that centres on two families with sordid secrets. The setting is Melbourne in late 1999. The bug that did not bite, Y2K, is in the news.
The main headline, however, is the disappearance of a wealthy socialite, Elizabeth McGowan (Petra Yared). Her husband, Martin (Neil Pigot), is the prime suspect, according to the missing woman’s outspoken sister, Kaye (Elle Mandalis).
The new newshound, Derek Verity (Michael Nikou, who wrote the script), is put on to the story, which irks his more seasoned colleague Olyvia (Ra Chapman). An early twist reveals Derek and Una, who runs the features section, know each other quite well.
Derek’s mother, Vivianne (Sigrid Thornton), is a down-on-her luck actor with a drinking problem. In a nice touch, she is auditioning for the lead in Euripides’s Medea. Talk about a dysfunctional family!
Her other adult son, Billy (Ryan A. Murphy), still lives at home. He has a short fuse and a weak stomach, which proves an unfortunate combination.
“He’s going to murder somebody some day,’’ Vivianne is warned.
So we have a scoop-or-die reporter from a messed-up family investigating the disappearance/presumed murder of a socialite from a messed-up family. What could go wrong?
This movie is partly about the shallowness of the fourth estate, present company excepted! It becomes much more than that when Derek’s two worlds, professional and private, collide.
The filmmakers and cast camp up the horror, perhaps drawing on another journalistic adage: If it bleeds, it leads. There are surprises that link the main characters in unexpected and, of course, unpleasant ways.
This 113-minute movie is the debut feature of Melbourne-based film production firm BimBim Films, of which star and scriptwriter Nikou is a founder. The director, James Vinson, has TV credits including Wentworth and Glitch.
Having Thornton on board is a coup for the fledgling company. She is coolly funny as an actor who can’t act auditioning for a role as a mother who kills her children. She will be at the Q&As at the preview screenings in Melbourne and Hobart.
Slant is original, funny, pulpy and a little loopy.
It’s a promising start for an Australian film production outfit that believes art house and popcorn go well together.
More Coverage
