BEFORE: The Future Wars continue tonight, with a look at A.I. taking over, which was a big concern back in September of 2023 when I worked at a screening of "The Creator". I can't say if concerns have eased any since then, perhaps these fears were overtaken by the immigration threat during the election last year, and now of course we've got the fallout from THAT to deal with, like Republican buyer's remorse is a real thing after seeing the looming Cabinet of Deplorables sequel. We're going to be taking a small cruise in March, and the whole time we'll probably be wishing that we sprung for the four-year cruise that keeps you out of the U.S.A. but gets you back in time to vote in the 2028 election, if there is one. If President Coriolanus Trump allows it, in other words - if he's Dictator for Life at that point, really, all bets on the future of the future are off. Well, at least we'll all have stronger flushing toilets, right? Worth it?
Mackenzie Lansing carries over from "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes". There should be at least another Future Wars installments this month, but the battles won't start up again until late next week. My response time for watching "The Creator" was just 16 months, which for me is pretty darn good, I've got movies that have been on my DVR for a lot longer, but I have to prioritize, it's more important right now to figure out what our future's going to be with A.I. in it. Is it going to be useful, harmful, or just a tool for making whatever kind of porn people want to see?
THE PLOT: Against the backdrop of a war between humans and robots with artificial intelligence, a former soldier finds the robots' secret weapon to end the conflict, an AI in the form of a child.
AFTER: Honestly, I was kind of wondering what happened to this movie - people were clamoring to see it back in September 2023, then I guess enough of them saw it and were disappointed, so there was sort of a half-push to get some recognition during last Awards Season, then nothing. I guess it got two Oscar nominations, but only for Sound and Visual Effects, that only amounts to something in certain film-geek circles, I think. It made more than its budget, but not by much, and I think I'm right when I say that nobody is still talking about it, they've all moved on.
The story is extremely confusing - there's a war in the future between humans and A.I. robots, but some of the humans in New Asia are helping the robots and building new ones, because they didn't get the memo about how dangerous they are. And, umm, how dangerous are they? I thought A.I. was only as dangerous as it's programmed to be - but somebody in the future programmed robots to fire guns and the A.I. cops are seen roughing up suspects. So, those Rules of Robotics no longer apply, either somebody found a work-around or they were never programmed in the first place to never harm humans. We should probably keep that in mind.
The first thing this reminds me of is "Blade Runner", because it shows humans and simulants (I know, replicants were something different) living side-by-side, and you'd think it would go well, but it's just not working out. Roommates, am I right? You just want to strangle them sometimes, or blow up Los Angeles with a nuclear missile, I get it. America blames A.I. for the blast that incinerated millions of U.S. citizens, but is that what really happened? The U.S. Defense Department vows to carry on the fight and take it to the parts of the world where A.I. is still being used. To that end, Sgt. Joshua Taylor has been sent to infiltrate the community and he does, but he falls in love with Maya, the woman believed to have a connection with Nirmata, the mysterious architect/creator of the A.I. systems.
After fifteen years battling the robots, the U.S. finally turns the tide with NOMAD (North American Orbital Mobile Aerospace Defense) which is a space station with advanced radar and many missiles to drop from orbit once the ground troops can find the location of an A.I. base. Theoretically then the troops would evacuate before the explosion, but this never seems to happen in time in this film. Once Joshua's cover is blown, and his pregnant wife learns who he really is, she refuses to leave with him, and she dies in the explosion.
Five years after that, Taylor has a job cleaning up the giant crater that used to be L.A., but he gets recruited by an army general and colonel for a mission to stop "Alpha O", a new A.I. weapon that might have the power to take down the NOMAD station. They have footage that shows his wife Maya might still be alive, and might still be connected to Nirmata, and they use this to get him on board before the next infiltration. This is kind of where the movie stops being a re-tread of "Blade Runner" and turns into a re-tread of "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story", another film directed by "The Creator" director, Gareth Edwards. Well, if you can't steal from yourself, what's the point?
Both films have a space station orbiting a planet that can destroy anything at ground level - NOMAD is really just a replacement for the Death Star here. And both films have a ragtag bunch of survivor losers with various skills that need to work together to take down the unseen enemy - and there's a robot on both teams, "Alphie" here is very different from K-2SO but the principle isn't, can a robot rise above its programming? In some ways this is just a "Star Wars" film that's set on future Earth instead of a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
But of course, there are many big differences, too - in "Rogue One" Jyn Erso was recruited for the Rebel Alliance because of holograms suggesting her father was working for the Empire to build a superweapon, and here Joshua is recruited for a U.S. Army mission with video footage suggesting his wife was working with the A.I. to build a superweapon. Totally not the same. And then in both films they manage to blow up a whole lot of stuff, this seems to be the director's answer to everything.
There are some innovative things here, though, designed to make you think about the nature of A.I. and what it might look like in the coming days - the U.S. troops use these "smart bombs" that can run to where they need to be when they blow themselves up, which ideally would be in the middle of a pack of other robots. Suicide robot bombers, essentially. Also effective against the robots is a dog who "fetches" their own grenade back to them, and drops it on the ground where it rolls around and they can't manage to pick it up in time. As a result, the robots stumble around looking for their own blown-off heads, which seems like a pretty poor design. Even in the future, robot building clearly still has a long way to go.
NITPICK POINT: These robots can fire weapons and hurt humans, but they're incapable of pulling the plug on someone who's on life support, which would be a mercy killing? That seems like a very odd place to draw that moral line. Humans, however have no problem with killing robots or killing other humans, or sacrificing themselves for the greater good if needed. This kind of calls into question which beings are more advanced, and why the two societies just can't seem to get along, even though one created the other. Why couldn't the humans just program the robots to be satisfied and fulfilled serving mankind, their creators, was that not possible? Or did nobody think of doing that? And when Alphie finally says that the goal of robots is to be free, why is the natural human response to kill something to make sure that doesn't happen? I guess maybe there is a lot to think about here.
The ending is beyond confusing, Joshua goes from working with the U.S. army to teaming up with Alphie to try and take NOMAD down. Obviously there's the personal connection he develops with the A.I. during their time together, but is that enough to betray his entire country? Or is it the fact that they used footage of his wife to make him think she was still alive, and most likely that was just an A.I. that was mimicking her appearance? But he's still holding out some kind of hope that she's alive again in some fashion, when it's just not possible - with all he knows about A.I., how can he not tell the difference between her and a simulant designed to look like her and programmed to act like her? Or is the programming SO lifelike that it doesn't really matter?
Also starring John David Washington (last seen in "Beckett"), Madeleine Yuna Voyles, Gemma Chan (last seen in "Don't Worry Darling"), Allison Janney (last seen in "The People We Hate at the Wedding"), Ken Watanabe (last seen in "Memoirs of a Geisha"), Sturgill Simpson (last seen in "The Hunt"), Amar Chadha-Patel (last seen in "Blinded by the Light"), Marc Menchaca (last seen in "The Alamo"), Robbie Tann (last seen in "The Family Fang"), Ralph Ineson (last seen in "The Green Knight"), Michael Esper (last seen in "Beau Is Afraid"), Veronica Ngo (last seen in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny"), Ian Verdun, Daniel Ray Rodriguez, Rad Pereira, Syd Skidmore (last seen in "Me Time"), Karen Aldridge (last seen in "The Dilemma"), Teerawat Mulvilai, Leanna Chea, Sahatchai Chumrum, Mariam Khummaung, Charlie McElveen, Brett Bartholomew, Jeb Kreager (last seen in "Armageddon Time"), Agneta Catarina Bekassy de Bekas, Brett Parks, James Henry, Eoin O'Brien.
RATING: 6 out of 10 EMP weapons
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