The Creator:

AI and robots get developed in not so distant future. They nuke LA, which triggers a war between AI and humans. But not all humans. United Asian nations still develop and coexist with AI, while The West helmed by The Americans wages war on robots everywhere, even (or mostly) on foreign soil. Main character is an American tasked with destroying a secret weapon, but the situation takes a turn when that weapon turns out to be a very special robot child.

I heard mildly positive reviews of this film, so when my father asked me to watch it, I was eager.

Whoa. What a pile of shit.

Fight choreography:

It was bad or non-existent throughout, just blind shooting with shots seemingly having 100% or 0% of accuracy depending on situation. Cars are bullet Energy projectile(?) proof, Bombs (and even grenades) beep and have visible counters on them. All the staples of a very good action sci-fi.

The script:

It's never strong, but It starts alright (6/10 probably), and it takes its time until it descents into true garbage. But when it reaches the finale it's really, really bad, absolute shit tier.

The government tasks the only person they shouldn't with destroying the super-weapon, and he has to use some stupid EMP gun, (with a stun option), instead of just beheading the child like they should. There is so much bullshit after that point that I can't even bother to point it out. The escapade on NOMAD that out „heroes” are having is contrived to the extreme, everything just all falls into place for them to achieve their goals. There was one thing I loved: during the sad goodbye scene our protagonist says to the child „I'm dying because of you.” while trying to comfort it. That was unintentionally hilarious.

Finally the ending reunion with the wife robo-clone in a (tomato?) field… I had no words for that, it just made me scream from pain because the cringe was killing me.

Yet, with all that, my biggest problems with the film are actually with characters and the meta of the AI vs humans conflict.

The Characters:

They are mostly flat and boring. That's my critique of that. Outside of the main character and the robo child everyone is one dimensional cardboard cutout.

Personal nitpick:

One minor meta reason is the reverence this film shows to eastern tradition with its monks and all the other spiritual stuff, when I can't remember the last film with a priest that is not a libertarian.

It seems preferential and biased, but that's just me.

The big problem – The thmes and central conflict: AI vs humans:

While explored many times before, it's very topical in today's world. From the start it's obvious our hero will learn robots are human too. Naive and stupid, but whatever, it's a perspective.

Then we properly meet The Americans and yes they are a bit one dimensional and on the bad side, but that one older lady has a valid reason to hate robots. Her backstory also gives us a perspective on how the robots and their friends are maybe not so pure and innocent. Most people will forget that before the end of the film however, because from that point onward The Americans are just pure evil (and sometimes pathetic) while the robots are more and more good and sympathetic.

It's actually fascinating how nuance evaporates over time. In the tail end of the film, the AI side consist only of old bot-people, peaceful robo monks, children (who I'm convinced are created by cloning, since all adults around them are seemingly robots) and poor underdog rebels who can't shoot for shit.

What is even more baffling is that Humans vs AI is not the central conflict in the end. It turns out: actually robots didn't blow up LA, it was the humans making a mistake. The whole conflict is based on false premises, and The Americans know that. They are secretly creating androids and some robo octupus (as well as intelligent AI suicide robots for some fricking reason). I assume they just want AI monopoly or something. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a deleted scene where it is revealed that the military lady son was killed by government to radicalize her. It's comical how shallow the conflict becomes.

The moment that convinced me to create this wall of text is our main character saying to the military lady „are you playing God now?” while she is cloning brain of a dead person. He says that when his wife created a super advanced evolving artificial human. It's hilariously tone-deaf and indicative of the absolute lack of thought put into the themes this film was pretending to explore.

The real message is: „what if robots were good?”, but delivered in a shitty backhanded way, and with robots that are actually humans mostly diffrentiated by having weird heads. Their humanity is never discussed, the film treats that as a given. They are humans but machines. Yet I'm left to wonder, who programmed them to be so good and righteous, and why? And maybe they are not actually people if the only thing they are capable of is being good?

Conclusion:

It's bad.

Special effects and sound were great, too bad they are wasted on this garbage.

The Creator is Neil Blomkamp's Elysium/10.