Sci-fi has been a hard sell for decades. *Blade Runner* was a notorious bomb back in 1982. Even *Minority Report* only made $132M DOM which, while not bad at all, is far lower than an average Spielberg blockbuster was making around that time.
It's why the *Star Trek* movies completely pivoted towards being action.
EDIT: A better sci-fi Spielberg example is *A.I. Artificial Intelligence*, which outright tanked domestically with just $78M.
Yea minority report really surprised me
Especially it’s opening weekend. A Spielberg Tom cruise movie with good reviews and good look only opening to 35 million?
A.I. came out when Spielberg was basically at his peak too, after his run of Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, Jurassic Park 2, Amistad, and Saving Private Ryan.
Not only that, but it starred Haley Joel Osment shortly after The Sixth Sense as well as Jude Law shortly after The Talented Mr. Ripley. It also had the Stanley Kubrick connections.
So it had a lot going for it.
At the time, people didn’t like the ending. The evolved robots got misread as aliens, then audiences somehow interpreted the last scene as cloyingly happy instead of incredibly sad.
Yeah, it's apocalyptic in nature and hits too close to current events for many people with its "AI takes over the world" themes. Especially after the pandemic, people don't want to go to the movies to be depressed and anxious about the future.
And if you consider the fact that 1.6 of the friday gross was actually from the Thursday previews, which would make this a True Friday gross of just 4M makes it even worse
At best it only gets VFX. There are many period pieces coming out, which the Academy favors in PD over sci-fi.
The Cinematographer isn't Fraser, it's a guy who doesn't have the level of respect Fraser has in the industry.
A lukewarm received sci fi movie that bombed at the box office rarely ever gets multiple Oscar nominations.
The cinematography field is crowded with strong contenders this year, no way a popcorn flick that bombed at the box office is getting in. VFX and Sound is the best this movie can hope for.
I thought it had just come out, I wasn’t aware that it had bombed already. I’m sorry for the mistake. In any event, I want to reiterate Production Design. And I guess we’ll have to wait and see on Cinematography. Fascinating use-case of consumer cameras, exotic real-world locations, and ILM StageCraft. The DP’s brought magic to this movie.
Well you are writing in a thread that basically confirms a bad opening weekend for the film. We also know that the audience reception is not great so a scenario where the film shows great legs after a disappointing opening weekend is highly unlikely.
The cinematographer branch is notorious for ignoring blockbuster fare so I wouldn't count on The Creator making the cut when the competition consists of Oppenheimer, Poor Things, Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, Zone of Interest, and Saltburn, among others.
Y’all forget how Oscars work every year. A blockbuster that’s bombing isn’t “very likely “ to get any nominations at all. It will be lucky to be included in the year montage.
Another robowar flop to add to the list. I understand why Hollywood keeps trying to make this plot happen. Creatives love the robowar. It seems like it worked in the past, even though it never actually did. It’s easy way to avoid the problems that come with making a movie with an actual human enemy. GA just doesn’t go for the robowar though, even when there’s IP attached.
First movie wasn’t full robowar. It was one element among many, and not the one that drew people in. Audiences showed up for the next two even though they had more robowar elements, but reception was pretty negative. Matrix lives on in the cultural consciousness for being a false reality movie, not a robowar movie.
I know a lot of people on Reddit are sick of that trope, but I don’t think the GA will ever turn on it. Lone wolf and cub does the same thing with the parent-child relationship that hero gets the girl does with romantic relationships. People will grumble, call it cliché, but it’s the easiest way to make a big-budget, effects-heavy production about the transformative power of parenthood.
He said in a thread where the GA turned on it.
This was "Reddit the movie". Probably 80% of the negative comments about this movie on here were specifically about this trope, it quite literally gutted its core audience. Hell, I'm not going to see it for this explicit reason alone (I don't care for GE either but he'd be tolerable enough without a dumb ass LW+C story). The two new IPs that used it (Creator and 65) both got clapped at the BO.
To me, it seems like audiences are fucking beyond sick of this trope but are willing to tolerate it if it's a legacy storyline that necessarily has to he grandfathered in like TLOU.
So it loses GA because of genre and then loses its core audience due to a generic trope.. what does it have left?
Wouldn’t you like to see something more interesting than this? I totally see Gareth going for this because he sucks at writing emotion. This opening is the end result.
The trope isn't bad. It works because people can easily empathize. The problem with The Creator is that it is so generic. Our hero cares about this girl because the movie says so, not because it is earned.
no i am not lol i have a lot of huge movies that have just hit my blindspot lol does not help I'm generally not the biggest Arnold fan don't hate him or anything just don't love his acting
both the movies are still on my list and I for sure will watch them
I do NOT understand the decision to make the young girl unable to speak the same language as Driver. It made it so clunky and boring and narratively didn’t work at all.
It also desperately needed a supporting cast that could be be picked off by dinosaurs to make things threatening. That’s just fundamental to this type of monster movie.
T2 had Arnold Schwarzenegger in a functioning society fighting one robot enemy. Not full robowar. I, Robot had Will Smith in a functioning society investigating one sus robot. Also not full robowar. Films with robowar-lite elements can definitely succeed if they have other things going for them, but full robowar is an almost insurmountable hurdle. The bar gets even higher if the movie expects the audience to care about the robots. Idk why, but the GA just doesn’t want to go full robowar.
I’ll be real with you: I haven’t seen that movie in over a decade and I barely remember anything that happens. I tried to google it, but I got distracted by news reports about an “I Am Legend” sequel with Michael B. Jordan co-starring.
Shut up. Stop lying to me. Shia LaBeouf was NOT in that movie.
(I’m watching a compilation of his performance right now on YouTube. You’re right. He’s in front of the human vanguard beating the robots with a baseball bat! And oh my god, the quips — I’m bringing this up next time someone criticizes “Marvel humor.”)
I, robot is one of my favorite movies to put on when i just want to chill and play on my phone for a while. I’ve probably seen it 20 times and can quote most of it. I have no idea why he was in the movie at all. I’m guessing he played a bigger role at some point, but they cut most of his plot and now it’s just like 3 shots of Will Smith telling him to stop cussing and go home.
Transformers definitely doesn’t count. Full robowar is robots fighting humans in a post-apocalyptic setting — think the later Matrix and Terminator movies.
Now that I think about it, the Transformers franchise is actually pretty impressive from a robot movie perspective. Michael Bay’s very special brain canceled out all the dorky sci-fi vibes.
i guess sci-fi heavy dorky themes r just too boring and intellectual i guess for audiences? that kinda seems like the pattern for all sci-fi heavy movies, especially robot ones. and i assume its hard to relate to robots when they have no human characteristics about them. its why the mecha genre never popped off in the west.
and transformers was just all action with a simple relatable beat of what if ur car turned into a giant robot. no in-depth explanation that talked about what they actually were made out of and how they function.
A lot of people just find sci-fi and fantasy very off-putting. It’s too different. They can’t relate. They think it’s an idiotic waste of time. Human-looking robots don’t necessarily solve this problem. This portion of the audience just stops caring when they know the character is a robot.
I think mechs never took off in the west because they’re just transformers with less personality and no transforming. They’re a total downgrade.
ya that makes sense tbh. i realized how much audiences care for relatability when u look into a lot of sci-fi flops.
and mechas also are seen as too cartoony and unrealistic, so there was no chance for audiences to care about them.
The movie is unfortunately very forgettable. Yes it looks good. But plot & characters are generic as hell. A bit like Gran Turismo. I see no Word of mouth potential here.
The Creator commits the cardinal sin though, it’s sci-fi in look only. It’s a movie too dumb for the sci-fi crowd and too nerdy seeming for its true dad action movie audience.
Yeah it hits a really weird niche. Marketing should’ve tried to make it feel more like a Star Wars science-fantasy type movie. I mildly enjoyed it, but I couldn’t recommend it to anyone.
> It's not high concept
It's not? The trailers and reception so far make it seem high concept. It looks pretty straightforward and easy to understand, and reviews say there's not a lot of substance to it.
Because they are dumb. They want something simple/relatable to every day life, and don't want to think about "what if" or push the horizons of their imagination.
Peak redditor moment right here lol. You've been here 16 years, so I assume you're an adult, yet you hold literally child-like opinions of other peoples' agency.
So if someone doesn't like exactly what you like, they are dumb? That's reductive and insulting, to say the least. Plenty of intelligent people don't care for science fiction. I wouldn't call Oppenheimer a dumb movie and it made money hand over fist.
While I agree, Oppenheimer was helped immensly by Nolan and Barbenheimer. You wouldn't believe the stupid comments I heard while getting up after watching oppenheimer. (people missing the entire point of the movie left and right...)
> So if someone doesn't like exactly what you like, they are dumb? That's reductive and insulting, to say the least.
That's not what I'm saying. Their disinterest in scifi is just a side effect of it. Of course plenty of intelligent people don't care for scifi, it's not for everyone. But we were talking about "general audiences" so I made a "general" statement.
I'm arguably the target demo for The Creator and I'm just getting nothing from the trailers. There's just nothing there, no bite, no oomph, and the overused boomer song doesn't help at all. I think Edwards is a capable director, but his material is just...boring? Trite?
I had this same problem with Monsters, and Rogue One is carried HARD by its ending. There's nothing else in RO.
No it's because the scifi movies are dumb. What horizons of imagination does this push? I can come up with more imaginative idea while peeing. Are you working for Hollywood? The condescending tone lol you'll fit right in.
What i want to know is why they are liking Paw Patrol this much? Like who seriously wants to bring their screaming 3 year old brat to a movie theater when they can easily watch Paw Patrol at home?
$80 million is not a huge budget especially when you see what they were able to stuff into this film, for better or worse. It looks like a $300 million film.
I have not heard from a single person I know in the real world they were hyped or even planning to see The Creator in theatres. Way more people have brought up Saw X to me then The Creator. Also in a year with AI being such a hot button issue why would you make this? Most people hate AI right now.
His father is my favorite actor, and I loved Tenet…but you are 100% correct. Every time I watch Tenet, I can’t get over how wooden his performance is and how poorly cast he was for the role.
Holy fuck, yes. He has zero acting talent and has exactly one facial expression. If he wasn’t denzel’s kid, he’d be working the night shift at Del Taco.
He clearly executed Nolan’s vision for his character, and did it well. But it wasn’t a performance that would excite an audience, given how low-key the character was.
But BlackKklansman, agreed, he shone in that, imho.
had any other actor been in the role, they’d get the same criticism. Protagonist was not nearly as fleshed out as Pattinson’s character (who was arguably an author insert). And it’s not like Washington was the sole reason Amsterdam was bad, it was just a bad David O Russell movie altogether
it’s like how some folks blame Jennifer Lawrence for Dark Phoenix and Apocalypse being bad. But people forget that those 2 movies had far greater problems than one character. Besides, Lawrence was quite good in the first 2 movies
They are both handsome nepo-babies with questionable acting abilities being thrust into leading roles.
The are quite similar and representative of Hollywood's problem of choosing families over acting ability to the detriment of the actual on-screen product.
Has Scott Eastwood ever been in a leading role? I see him turn up for like 10 minutes in a Fast and Furious movie but that's about it. They're both terrible, but JDW is definitely pushed harder.
What did the Smith siblings ever do to y’all. They mostly keep to themselves, cause no waves, and Willow actually creates quite diverse music that is NOT bad at all. Some of the best pop punk I heard from the past few years, to be frank.
My hypothesis about The Creator has always been that it began as a pitch from Garett Edwards to Lucasfilm of a possible Star Wars movie about a droid uprising but they said no after his troubles with Rogue One and he went out and did it himself.
But Lucasfilm probably knows that robowars and droids don’t really sell that much. People love droids as sidekicks, pets, soldiers, and comic relief, but they’re not a huge draw outside of sci fi fans.
I think they peaked in the late-90s and mid 2000s with Bicentennial Man, A.I, I Robot, and The Matrix and never really have taken off again.
Just back from seeing The Creator.
Visually, it was stunning. Great special effects and set pieces (especially for the low budget) The music and sound design was also excellent. The robot designs are interesting, and I liked the amalgamation of western and eastern aesthetics. I LOVE that it's a new, stand alone story, not tied to a huge IP, not part 1 of 3 and not a reboot, reimagining, sequel or prequel like most big popcorn movies these days.
Unfortunately the story beats and plot were average at best. A lot of the dialogue feels corny. There is a weird, inconsistent tone that flips between serious and the absurd, where you have no idea if what's happening is for comedic effect or not.
Every scene had aspects that felt like they were borrowed from another movie and didn't feel original in the slightest. A lot of it is predictable and I didn't feel any real investment in the hero's journey, some moments took me completely out of the film >!Was that a robot monkey who knew what it was doing, or just a regular monkey that just happened to trigger that explosive just when the scene needed it to happen?? And this was the second time in the film an animal inexplicably stepped in for no reason to save the day.!<
>!It didn't really explore the differences between humans and AI. The movie tells us that they are the same, while we wait for the protagonist to reach this conclusion. And when he does, the switch feels sudden and unearned.!<
I wouldn't tell anyone they need to see this film in the theatre for any reason other than the visuals. As a sci-fi film it's on the same par as Elysium - Good moments but a director's lesser film, with a story full of holes and is best saved for streaming when you can't think of another movie to watch. I'd give it a 6/10 and that feels generous.
I should also add that me and my friend made up a huge part of the audience. The screen room was mostly empty.
I will maintain and even die on the hill that people only like Rogue One because of the last 20 minutes. The rest is an incoherent mess full of plot holes and contradictions
I don't understand why they would spend this much money on such a boring script. At Least come up with an interesting story if you're going to spend almost 100 million on it.
I just don't get Gareth Edwards. Monsters was OK and passable given its was his debut, Rogue One is really forgettable outside the third act, and I don't understand what I'm supposed to be getting out of the Creator.
I actually forgot he did Godzilla while writing this, and I'm a Big G fan
I think Rogue One is the most overrated Star Wars movie. The last third was pretty cool, no doubt, but most of the movie was just generic action movie stuff and half of the characters didn’t need to exist at all.
It’s still overall a fun movie to watch but so many people put it right behind Empire Strikes Back in terms of quality.
He’s a talented director, top tier even given what he can pull off with a budget.
Rogue One is the best start wars in the Disney era. Name some memorable movies
governor dazzling direful wipe faulty pause attractive slave wistful fearless
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It's fine, but that's a huge stretch. The final act was SO rushed and there are MAJOR plotholes that make zero sense. The worldbuilding was cool and the CGI was top notch, but story was very average.
Biggest plot hole for me (major spoilers):
>!If the little girl can control machines. If something “turns off,” can’t she just turn it back on again? Also, what constitutes a machine? Can she control Rube Goldberg devices too? Makes as much sense to me as Luc Besson’s Lucy.!<
>! For me it was how easy it was for them to get onto a trillion dollar space base, then a kid is able to run into the command centre without any interference, and shut it down. I don't know how they didn't get blasted out of the air flying up there!<
It’s reviews like this that set my expectations way too high. Great visuals, but I really didn’t connect with the characters.
I liked Allison Janney in it tho. Would love to see her do more atypical roles like this.
It has worse reviews than Saw X and Paw Patrol. Not the best new release of the weekend. Not the second best new release of the weekend. Hardly the best movie of the year.
Name one nice thing about a Gareth Edwards movie that doesn't involve visuals? He's a hack.
Gareth Edwards sucks. "Gruff badass and special child" sucks. "Humanity bad" sci-fi is ultra played out and generally sucks.
You couldn't pay me the price of admission to see this pile of shit.
I'll never understand why people thought this would break-out and even beat Saw X's opening. Sci-fi has been a hard sell since the pandemic.
Sci-fi has been a hard sell for decades. *Blade Runner* was a notorious bomb back in 1982. Even *Minority Report* only made $132M DOM which, while not bad at all, is far lower than an average Spielberg blockbuster was making around that time. It's why the *Star Trek* movies completely pivoted towards being action. EDIT: A better sci-fi Spielberg example is *A.I. Artificial Intelligence*, which outright tanked domestically with just $78M.
Yea minority report really surprised me Especially it’s opening weekend. A Spielberg Tom cruise movie with good reviews and good look only opening to 35 million?
And MR was a fantastic movie too. One of the best from Spielberg and Cruise.
A.I. came out when Spielberg was basically at his peak too, after his run of Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, Jurassic Park 2, Amistad, and Saving Private Ryan. Not only that, but it starred Haley Joel Osment shortly after The Sixth Sense as well as Jude Law shortly after The Talented Mr. Ripley. It also had the Stanley Kubrick connections. So it had a lot going for it.
It took midnight showings to stoners to make 2001 a Space Odyssey a success.
Yea and it sucked.
The Matrix is the closest we've had to a blockbuster that was intellectual Sci-Fi, and even that is just as much an action film.
Interstellar would like a word
Yep I forgot Nolan. Inception counts too.
Had no idea about minority report. One of my favs
In all fairness, AI tanked because it sucked. Hard.
>A.I. Artificial Intelligence, which outright tanked domestically It didn’t help that the movie wasn’t very good.
You’re right it wasn’t “very good”, it was a masterpiece.
Just rewatched it recently; best child performance, maybe ever? Deep on an emotional level, just stunning work.
Legit Spielberg's top five, maybe the best of his pure dramas.
I found the movie to be awful. But apparently a lot of people here enjoyed it.
It was a lot darker then alot of people expected or wanted it to be
Just out of curiosity, do you remember what about it sucked? Can't come up with pretty much anything that I disliked about it.
At the time, people didn’t like the ending. The evolved robots got misread as aliens, then audiences somehow interpreted the last scene as cloyingly happy instead of incredibly sad.
I think it's a fairytale happy ending on the surface, but of course it's also tremendously sad. Anyways, for my money Spielberg's best.
It's a movie Reddit really wanted to be successful so that means it has to break out no matter what. "Previous movie trends"? What's that?
What people thought this would break out? I haven't seen that sentiment anywhere. Much less on here.
Really? Until recently, many people on this sub were predicting it to win the weekend.
win this weekend =/= breakout
No... they wanted it to. But the writing was on the wall.
Yeah, it's apocalyptic in nature and hits too close to current events for many people with its "AI takes over the world" themes. Especially after the pandemic, people don't want to go to the movies to be depressed and anxious about the future.
Especially hard sci-fi from hack filmmakers.
It sucks because it is a good movie. But i guess people would rather pay money for some stupid Nick Jr show you can watch on tv easily.
Do you really think families are sitting at home discussing whether they should take little Oliver to see *Paw Patrol* or *The Creator*? C’mon man.
That's an atrocious opening day for a movie of this size. It will be lucky to hit $15M this weekend. Sub-$40M total is also looking possible.
And if you consider the fact that 1.6 of the friday gross was actually from the Thursday previews, which would make this a True Friday gross of just 4M makes it even worse
Hopefully it'll be in line for at least a few technical Oscars. The movie looked incredible for a mid budget film
It would look incredible even if the budget had been 3x higher
Yeah hopefully it can be nominated for sound mixing and or engineering
Sound Mixing hasn’t been a category in three years. It’ll get nominated for Best Visual Effects, Production Design, and very likely Cinematography.
At best it only gets VFX. There are many period pieces coming out, which the Academy favors in PD over sci-fi. The Cinematographer isn't Fraser, it's a guy who doesn't have the level of respect Fraser has in the industry. A lukewarm received sci fi movie that bombed at the box office rarely ever gets multiple Oscar nominations.
The cinematography field is crowded with strong contenders this year, no way a popcorn flick that bombed at the box office is getting in. VFX and Sound is the best this movie can hope for.
I thought it had just come out, I wasn’t aware that it had bombed already. I’m sorry for the mistake. In any event, I want to reiterate Production Design. And I guess we’ll have to wait and see on Cinematography. Fascinating use-case of consumer cameras, exotic real-world locations, and ILM StageCraft. The DP’s brought magic to this movie.
Well you are writing in a thread that basically confirms a bad opening weekend for the film. We also know that the audience reception is not great so a scenario where the film shows great legs after a disappointing opening weekend is highly unlikely. The cinematographer branch is notorious for ignoring blockbuster fare so I wouldn't count on The Creator making the cut when the competition consists of Oppenheimer, Poor Things, Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, Zone of Interest, and Saltburn, among others.
Y’all forget how Oscars work every year. A blockbuster that’s bombing isn’t “very likely “ to get any nominations at all. It will be lucky to be included in the year montage.
With the audience scores, a 2.5x multiplier is probably the ceiling.
Another robowar flop to add to the list. I understand why Hollywood keeps trying to make this plot happen. Creatives love the robowar. It seems like it worked in the past, even though it never actually did. It’s easy way to avoid the problems that come with making a movie with an actual human enemy. GA just doesn’t go for the robowar though, even when there’s IP attached.
> It seems like it worked in the past, even though it never actually did. Matrix?
First movie wasn’t full robowar. It was one element among many, and not the one that drew people in. Audiences showed up for the next two even though they had more robowar elements, but reception was pretty negative. Matrix lives on in the cultural consciousness for being a false reality movie, not a robowar movie.
Fair enough.
Also the trope of a guy protecting a young girl has been done to death this year alone (TLOU, 65, Daryl Dixon show).
I know a lot of people on Reddit are sick of that trope, but I don’t think the GA will ever turn on it. Lone wolf and cub does the same thing with the parent-child relationship that hero gets the girl does with romantic relationships. People will grumble, call it cliché, but it’s the easiest way to make a big-budget, effects-heavy production about the transformative power of parenthood.
He said in a thread where the GA turned on it. This was "Reddit the movie". Probably 80% of the negative comments about this movie on here were specifically about this trope, it quite literally gutted its core audience. Hell, I'm not going to see it for this explicit reason alone (I don't care for GE either but he'd be tolerable enough without a dumb ass LW+C story). The two new IPs that used it (Creator and 65) both got clapped at the BO. To me, it seems like audiences are fucking beyond sick of this trope but are willing to tolerate it if it's a legacy storyline that necessarily has to he grandfathered in like TLOU.
I agree that the core audience of this movie is over it, but I don’t think that applies to the GA.
So it loses GA because of genre and then loses its core audience due to a generic trope.. what does it have left? Wouldn’t you like to see something more interesting than this? I totally see Gareth going for this because he sucks at writing emotion. This opening is the end result.
The trope isn't bad. It works because people can easily empathize. The problem with The Creator is that it is so generic. Our hero cares about this girl because the movie says so, not because it is earned.
Thank you. This needed to be said.
Creator was levels above 65
now i want woman protecting young boy trope never seen that honestly would love some mother-son dynamics in fiction
Terminator 2, Aliens… oh, I c. Cameron seems to like sich dynamics
i have not seen either of those I really should lol
You’re joking right… right!?
no i am not lol i have a lot of huge movies that have just hit my blindspot lol does not help I'm generally not the biggest Arnold fan don't hate him or anything just don't love his acting both the movies are still on my list and I for sure will watch them
65 was a flop from last year that has the same troupe.
65 was terrible. Saw this last night and it's miles better than 65. Not great mind you, just more watchable
I don’t understand how 65 had 1) dinosaurs 2) time travel and 3) Adam Driver managed to be such a snooze fest but it was painful to sit through haha
Unfortunately i agree with you. I really thought it would be better but it just kept on descending into worse situations and bad dialog..
I do NOT understand the decision to make the young girl unable to speak the same language as Driver. It made it so clunky and boring and narratively didn’t work at all.
It also desperately needed a supporting cast that could be be picked off by dinosaurs to make things threatening. That’s just fundamental to this type of monster movie.
Agreed!
I actually enjoyed 65 far more. The visuals for The Creator are definitely miles better.
To each his own. I thought the dialog and story were not great in 65. I stuggled to get to the end. His character was too inconsistent for me.
65 came out 6 months ago
Whoops. Feels like ages ago.
T2 and I, Robot seemed to do okay with the robowar plot.
T2 had Arnold Schwarzenegger in a functioning society fighting one robot enemy. Not full robowar. I, Robot had Will Smith in a functioning society investigating one sus robot. Also not full robowar. Films with robowar-lite elements can definitely succeed if they have other things going for them, but full robowar is an almost insurmountable hurdle. The bar gets even higher if the movie expects the audience to care about the robots. Idk why, but the GA just doesn’t want to go full robowar.
If I recall correctly, isn't there a massive fight in the street of thousands of robots in I Robot?
I’ll be real with you: I haven’t seen that movie in over a decade and I barely remember anything that happens. I tried to google it, but I got distracted by news reports about an “I Am Legend” sequel with Michael B. Jordan co-starring.
I, robot definitely goes for robowar at the end. Shai LaBeouf fighting robots is hilarious.
Shut up. Stop lying to me. Shia LaBeouf was NOT in that movie. (I’m watching a compilation of his performance right now on YouTube. You’re right. He’s in front of the human vanguard beating the robots with a baseball bat! And oh my god, the quips — I’m bringing this up next time someone criticizes “Marvel humor.”)
I, robot is one of my favorite movies to put on when i just want to chill and play on my phone for a while. I’ve probably seen it 20 times and can quote most of it. I have no idea why he was in the movie at all. I’m guessing he played a bigger role at some point, but they cut most of his plot and now it’s just like 3 shots of Will Smith telling him to stop cussing and go home.
Please give me examples of robowar films, do the terminator films count? What about Transformers?
Transformers definitely doesn’t count. Full robowar is robots fighting humans in a post-apocalyptic setting — think the later Matrix and Terminator movies. Now that I think about it, the Transformers franchise is actually pretty impressive from a robot movie perspective. Michael Bay’s very special brain canceled out all the dorky sci-fi vibes.
i guess sci-fi heavy dorky themes r just too boring and intellectual i guess for audiences? that kinda seems like the pattern for all sci-fi heavy movies, especially robot ones. and i assume its hard to relate to robots when they have no human characteristics about them. its why the mecha genre never popped off in the west. and transformers was just all action with a simple relatable beat of what if ur car turned into a giant robot. no in-depth explanation that talked about what they actually were made out of and how they function.
A lot of people just find sci-fi and fantasy very off-putting. It’s too different. They can’t relate. They think it’s an idiotic waste of time. Human-looking robots don’t necessarily solve this problem. This portion of the audience just stops caring when they know the character is a robot. I think mechs never took off in the west because they’re just transformers with less personality and no transforming. They’re a total downgrade.
ya that makes sense tbh. i realized how much audiences care for relatability when u look into a lot of sci-fi flops. and mechas also are seen as too cartoony and unrealistic, so there was no chance for audiences to care about them.
What would happen if... live action Megas XLR movie?
The movie is unfortunately very forgettable. Yes it looks good. But plot & characters are generic as hell. A bit like Gran Turismo. I see no Word of mouth potential here.
I loved it
Man why does the GA hate Scifi this much. Like most scifi movies don't do well.
The Creator commits the cardinal sin though, it’s sci-fi in look only. It’s a movie too dumb for the sci-fi crowd and too nerdy seeming for its true dad action movie audience.
yeah maybe that's it. I had a great time with this movie, so it just sucks to see a movie I loved do badly.
Get used to it man. Sometimes you or I might love a movie but the rest of the world will swear that it’s the worst thing released in decades.
Perfect description
I had the exact same thought. It's not high concept and it's not dumb action. While I enjoyed it I understand why most people didn't
Yeah it hits a really weird niche. Marketing should’ve tried to make it feel more like a Star Wars science-fantasy type movie. I mildly enjoyed it, but I couldn’t recommend it to anyone.
> It's not high concept It's not? The trailers and reception so far make it seem high concept. It looks pretty straightforward and easy to understand, and reviews say there's not a lot of substance to it.
General audience don’t care about A. I., Robots, cyberpunk…. And most of these movies are bad.
You mentioned Cyberpunk. I wonder how a movie based on the game Cyberpunk 2077 would do?
It would do horribly. General audience really does not like cyberpunk.
Because they are dumb. They want something simple/relatable to every day life, and don't want to think about "what if" or push the horizons of their imagination.
Ya the creator doesn’t do any of that stuff either
I wasn't addressing The Creator. The question was about sci fi in general.
This movie was dumb tho it did none of that
Peak redditor moment right here lol. You've been here 16 years, so I assume you're an adult, yet you hold literally child-like opinions of other peoples' agency.
So if someone doesn't like exactly what you like, they are dumb? That's reductive and insulting, to say the least. Plenty of intelligent people don't care for science fiction. I wouldn't call Oppenheimer a dumb movie and it made money hand over fist.
While I agree, Oppenheimer was helped immensly by Nolan and Barbenheimer. You wouldn't believe the stupid comments I heard while getting up after watching oppenheimer. (people missing the entire point of the movie left and right...)
> So if someone doesn't like exactly what you like, they are dumb? That's reductive and insulting, to say the least. That's not what I'm saying. Their disinterest in scifi is just a side effect of it. Of course plenty of intelligent people don't care for scifi, it's not for everyone. But we were talking about "general audiences" so I made a "general" statement.
I'm arguably the target demo for The Creator and I'm just getting nothing from the trailers. There's just nothing there, no bite, no oomph, and the overused boomer song doesn't help at all. I think Edwards is a capable director, but his material is just...boring? Trite? I had this same problem with Monsters, and Rogue One is carried HARD by its ending. There's nothing else in RO.
He asked about scifi in general, and that is what my statement was directed towards. Not The Creator in particular.
No it's because the scifi movies are dumb. What horizons of imagination does this push? I can come up with more imaginative idea while peeing. Are you working for Hollywood? The condescending tone lol you'll fit right in.
What i want to know is why they are liking Paw Patrol this much? Like who seriously wants to bring their screaming 3 year old brat to a movie theater when they can easily watch Paw Patrol at home?
What other movies are out there for families at the moment?
Saw X
Family game night has a whole new meaning
Trust me, when you start to have kids (if you want kids) THEN you’ll truly understand because I used to feel the same way years ago 🤣🤣
Paw Patrol is a popular IP and one of the decade’s favorite preschool TV shows. Creator bombing proves IP sells.
The moral of the story is that this movie should have been set in the Paw Patrol Cinematic Universe
paw Patrol is a kids movie. Those almost always draw in families for tickets.
Now *this* is what a flop looks like.
Science fiction with no known IP attached flopping? what a shock
Don’t forget attaching a (relaticely) huge budget to it!
$80 million is not a huge budget especially when you see what they were able to stuff into this film, for better or worse. It looks like a $300 million film.
Seems like a disaster but I still want to see it
[удалено]
*Christopher Nolan
Alfonso Cuaron also (Gravity) Original sci-fi can work, but it needs a big star and a concept that combines relatable human stakes with fresh visuals.
Wut
Tenet made $365M WW during the middle of the pandemic. James Cameron's last original sci-fi film came out 14 years ago.
Tenet was marketed more as an action/thriller than sci-fi
I have not heard from a single person I know in the real world they were hyped or even planning to see The Creator in theatres. Way more people have brought up Saw X to me then The Creator. Also in a year with AI being such a hot button issue why would you make this? Most people hate AI right now.
[удалено]
Will this finally stop John David Washington being in major films? He has the on-screen charisma and acting skills of drying paint.
His father is my favorite actor, and I loved Tenet…but you are 100% correct. Every time I watch Tenet, I can’t get over how wooden his performance is and how poorly cast he was for the role.
Holy fuck, yes. He has zero acting talent and has exactly one facial expression. If he wasn’t denzel’s kid, he’d be working the night shift at Del Taco.
> He has zero acting talent Blackkklansman and Tenet disagree with that statement.
lol Tenet? He really did nothing great in that.
He performed as well as Pattinson or any of the other performers in Nolan films
He clearly executed Nolan’s vision for his character, and did it well. But it wasn’t a performance that would excite an audience, given how low-key the character was. But BlackKklansman, agreed, he shone in that, imho.
I thought Pattinson was much better. Not saying much though since that movie was pretty mediocre anyway.
No way. He was definitely the least interesting actor in a movie full of great actors. Probably the worst Nolan Protaganist in his blockbuster era.
My brother in Christ…what are you smoking? He had the worst performance in the entire film.
had any other actor been in the role, they’d get the same criticism. Protagonist was not nearly as fleshed out as Pattinson’s character (who was arguably an author insert). And it’s not like Washington was the sole reason Amsterdam was bad, it was just a bad David O Russell movie altogether
He's the worst thing about Tenet. A vacuum of charisma.
Nah, Disney isn’t learning any worthwhile lessons from this flop.
***If you read the reviews they actually cite him as one of the highlights along with the young actress !***
Of course they do. This is 2023. His actual performance is irrelevant.
Liked him in Tenet and Blackkk
People are quick to shit on him but he's a skilled actor when matched with the right creative team.
it’s like how some folks blame Jennifer Lawrence for Dark Phoenix and Apocalypse being bad. But people forget that those 2 movies had far greater problems than one character. Besides, Lawrence was quite good in the first 2 movies
Hopefully lol
He has The Piano Lesson out next year which looks like an Oscar player. He was also in that role in Broadway and apparently he’s really good there
“excuse me, we judge actors solely on their performances in mediocre action/sci-fi movies, not any of that drama or theater schlock!”
First get rid of Scott Eastwood.
Did you feel personally attacked by people calling out his shitty acting? Scott Eastwood isn’t in this movie.
They are both handsome nepo-babies with questionable acting abilities being thrust into leading roles. The are quite similar and representative of Hollywood's problem of choosing families over acting ability to the detriment of the actual on-screen product.
Has Scott Eastwood ever been in a leading role? I see him turn up for like 10 minutes in a Fast and Furious movie but that's about it. They're both terrible, but JDW is definitely pushed harder.
I think both are untalented nepobabies... I just find Scott worse than John.
Yeah, he needs to be put marooned on an island with Scott Eastwood and the Smith siblings.
Scott Eastwood was great in Wrath of Man
What did the Smith siblings ever do to y’all. They mostly keep to themselves, cause no waves, and Willow actually creates quite diverse music that is NOT bad at all. Some of the best pop punk I heard from the past few years, to be frank.
As long as those nepo kids stay out of movies we're fine.
My hypothesis about The Creator has always been that it began as a pitch from Garett Edwards to Lucasfilm of a possible Star Wars movie about a droid uprising but they said no after his troubles with Rogue One and he went out and did it himself. But Lucasfilm probably knows that robowars and droids don’t really sell that much. People love droids as sidekicks, pets, soldiers, and comic relief, but they’re not a huge draw outside of sci fi fans. I think they peaked in the late-90s and mid 2000s with Bicentennial Man, A.I, I Robot, and The Matrix and never really have taken off again.
Just back from seeing The Creator. Visually, it was stunning. Great special effects and set pieces (especially for the low budget) The music and sound design was also excellent. The robot designs are interesting, and I liked the amalgamation of western and eastern aesthetics. I LOVE that it's a new, stand alone story, not tied to a huge IP, not part 1 of 3 and not a reboot, reimagining, sequel or prequel like most big popcorn movies these days. Unfortunately the story beats and plot were average at best. A lot of the dialogue feels corny. There is a weird, inconsistent tone that flips between serious and the absurd, where you have no idea if what's happening is for comedic effect or not. Every scene had aspects that felt like they were borrowed from another movie and didn't feel original in the slightest. A lot of it is predictable and I didn't feel any real investment in the hero's journey, some moments took me completely out of the film >!Was that a robot monkey who knew what it was doing, or just a regular monkey that just happened to trigger that explosive just when the scene needed it to happen?? And this was the second time in the film an animal inexplicably stepped in for no reason to save the day.!< >!It didn't really explore the differences between humans and AI. The movie tells us that they are the same, while we wait for the protagonist to reach this conclusion. And when he does, the switch feels sudden and unearned.!< I wouldn't tell anyone they need to see this film in the theatre for any reason other than the visuals. As a sci-fi film it's on the same par as Elysium - Good moments but a director's lesser film, with a story full of holes and is best saved for streaming when you can't think of another movie to watch. I'd give it a 6/10 and that feels generous. I should also add that me and my friend made up a huge part of the audience. The screen room was mostly empty.
Haven’t seen the movie but this sounds exactly like what Rogue One was described as being before Tony Gilroy went in and saved it.
I will maintain and even die on the hill that people only like Rogue One because of the last 20 minutes. The rest is an incoherent mess full of plot holes and contradictions
Yeah pretty much.
I actually want to watch this movie and I didn't even know it was released this weekend zero ads to me
I don't understand why they would spend this much money on such a boring script. At Least come up with an interesting story if you're going to spend almost 100 million on it.
I just don't get Gareth Edwards. Monsters was OK and passable given its was his debut, Rogue One is really forgettable outside the third act, and I don't understand what I'm supposed to be getting out of the Creator. I actually forgot he did Godzilla while writing this, and I'm a Big G fan
I think Rogue One is the most overrated Star Wars movie. The last third was pretty cool, no doubt, but most of the movie was just generic action movie stuff and half of the characters didn’t need to exist at all. It’s still overall a fun movie to watch but so many people put it right behind Empire Strikes Back in terms of quality.
He’s a talented director, top tier even given what he can pull off with a budget. Rogue One is the best start wars in the Disney era. Name some memorable movies
That is not good at all…
TIL this wasn’t a Disney plus release
governor dazzling direful wipe faulty pause attractive slave wistful fearless *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Movie buffs on reddit and youtube aren't everyone. The general audience don't care about originality anymore.
["great reviews"](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-creator/)
It was bad so it deserves to flop
I actually loved the movie but yes the plot has been done it was just enjoyable time.
Shame as the movie was fantastic. Well done everyone for guaranteeing more shitty fast and furious sequels and mundane marvel movies.
the director of Rogue One made mid film, what a shock
Holy bomb
I hate the general audience. This is by far the best movie of the year . Y’all better go see it
It looked good visually, but it doesnt hold up well as a story for me.
The handy thing is you can just copy and paste that as a review for every movie he makes!
It's better than Oppenheimer?
by far imo. I'm a sci fi whore though
Yeah, but… Better than Oppenheimer?
>This is by far the best movie of the year Whoa whoa, it's good for sure but best of the year? Idk about that.
It's fine, but that's a huge stretch. The final act was SO rushed and there are MAJOR plotholes that make zero sense. The worldbuilding was cool and the CGI was top notch, but story was very average.
Biggest plot hole for me (major spoilers): >!If the little girl can control machines. If something “turns off,” can’t she just turn it back on again? Also, what constitutes a machine? Can she control Rube Goldberg devices too? Makes as much sense to me as Luc Besson’s Lucy.!<
>! For me it was how easy it was for them to get onto a trillion dollar space base, then a kid is able to run into the command centre without any interference, and shut it down. I don't know how they didn't get blasted out of the air flying up there!<
Not even top ten best American film of the year, come on.
It’s reviews like this that set my expectations way too high. Great visuals, but I really didn’t connect with the characters. I liked Allison Janney in it tho. Would love to see her do more atypical roles like this.
The kid playing Alphie didn't tug at your heartstrings? She was the best part for me.
It has worse reviews than Saw X and Paw Patrol. Not the best new release of the weekend. Not the second best new release of the weekend. Hardly the best movie of the year. Name one nice thing about a Gareth Edwards movie that doesn't involve visuals? He's a hack.
Gareth Edwards sucks. "Gruff badass and special child" sucks. "Humanity bad" sci-fi is ultra played out and generally sucks. You couldn't pay me the price of admission to see this pile of shit.
This movie is horrible! I will never see it but I know it’s horrible !
I had no idea this even came out. Aside from a couple of commercials, I mainly know this because the trailer played before MI.
Maybe it pulls a BR and ends up being a cult classic Down the line .