Tag: Ken Watanabe

The Creator Review: A Familiar Sci-Fi Spectacle.

Gareth Edwards is a director who I was wondering what happened to for a while.
Growing up I was a big Godzilla fan, so I enjoyed his 2014 movie.
Edwards also directed Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which is probably my favourite Star Wars movie Disney has put out since they started making them.
However, after Rogue One, Edwards did not direct another film for a number of years.
So, when I was amazed by the spectacle of the trailer for The Creator, and saw that it was written and directed by Edwards, I knew I had to see it.
The Creator is a movie that is by no means original, but it still handles its familiar tropes well and with impressive effects.

The special effects of The Creator are quite impressive when you compare it to other big budget movies.

The film follows Joshua Taylor (John David Washington), a soldier who lost an arm and a leg during a nuclear attack on Los Angeles directed by AI.
After going undercover in New Asia to find and eliminate Nirmata, the one behind AI advancements, Taylor falls in love with and marries Maya (Gemma Chan), a pro-AI fighter, only to tragically lose both her and their unborn child when the mission ends.
Years later, Taylor is recruited by the army again upon learning that Maya is alive and that Nirmata is about to release their ultimate weapon, which is capable of winning the war for the AI.
And so Taylor goes back to New Asia with the goal of finding Maya and eliminating the weapon, only to find that said weapon is a young child, who he names Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles).
Disobeying orders to destroy her, Taylor takes the girl with him to try and find Maya, with a growing bond quickly emerging between the two.

Taylor’s role in this story is a familiar one but still well-written and acted.

As I have said, the story of The Creator is nothing new.
Humanity fighting AI and that AI supposedly using our weapons against us has been a concept since The Terminator.
Along with this, a man protecting a little girl in a dystopian world, with a father-daughter bond slowly emerging between the two, has been a big trend in all kinds of media ever since The Last of Us. 

Taylor’s bond with Alphie grows over the movie.

Despite The Creator’s familiarity, the story is still solid with a few twists on the trends to keep things interesting, like that the AI is supported by an entire country, which the United States is fighting against.
As for the growing bond between Taylor and Alphie, it is very well done with both Washington and Voyles giving great performances.
Where this movie truly shines, though, is in its visuals.
The Creator was made with only a budget of eighty million dollars and that is incredibly impressive when you compare it to many hundred million plus movies, which have much weaker effects.
While watching The Creator, there was only point where I consciously thought, yeah, that’s CGI.
Otherwise, ever single effect in this movie looked real to me, especially the AI’s.

The AI honestly reminded me of the motion capture for the Planet of the Apes trilogy because of how realistic they looked

These spectacular visuals alone make the film worth seeing, even if the storyline is nothing original.
Overall, The Creator is a solid film backed by spectacular sci-fi visuals.
I look forward to seeing what Gareth Edwards does next.         

Godzilla: King of the Monsters Review – Cool Monsters, Boring People.

two-and-a-half-stars
I have been a fan of the Godzilla series for a while so I was very excited to see the adaptations.
I found the first of them, Godzilla from 2014, to be good overall but with a lot of problems.
Sadly, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, directed by Michael Doughtery, also has many problems but less good things with the film largely focusing on boring, exposition spewing characters.
I was concerned about this right from the trailers, which were genuinely fantastic but also showed there were a lot of characters in the film, maybe too much even.
My fears were unfortunately realised yesterday when I went to see the film.
Picking up five years after the original, King of the Monsters follows the experiences of the Russel family, including Gary sue Mark (Kyle Chandler), his ex-wife with confusing motivations Emma (Vera Farminga) and their daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown), who I honestly forgot was in the film at times.

Russell family.jpg
Sadly, the Russell family does not hold that much emotional value. They did have potential but it is bogged down by the exposition.

Speaking of forgettable characters, Charles Dance plays the villain Alan Jonah whose character feels unneeded and, much like Emma, has very confusing motivation.
There are some returning characters like Ishiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and Vivienne Graham (Sally Hawkins), who are just as forgettable as in the first Godzilla. 
Say what you want about that film but at least it had one interesting character in Bryan Cranston’s Joe Brody.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters does not have one interesting character, and almost every scene has them sprouting exposition in ways that are not at all interesting.
I already got sick of them saying Godzilla was a beacon of hope in the first film, I did not need to hear it multiple times in this one.
Thankfully, the film does get entertaining when the monsters do show up and fight.
These battles between Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah, and Rodan have some very spectacular moments.

Ghidorah.jpg
Whenever the monsters are on screen the movie gets exciting, with King Ghidorah looking especially threatening.

There are even some points when an updated version of Godzilla’s original themes plays and this is my favourite part of the film, as it left me grinning from ear to ear.
Sure, the shots of the monsters are not as good as they were in Gareth Edward’s original film but they are competent enough here.
It is just annoying that they kept cutting to these boring characters, the worst offender being Emma because of the lack of connection between motivation and goal.

I'm Sorry..jpg
Emma’s goal makes absolutely no sense based on her motivation. Not only this, but it is never explained why the human villains have their goals either.

Whenever the monsters appeared on screen I was entertained, which is good because they have more of a screen presence than in the first film, but whenever it cut to the human characters I was bored out of my mind.
What makes it worse is that these boring humans took up most of the screen time.
Overall, Godzilla: King of the Monsters is a disappointing film.
There are some good moments of monster action, but you have to sit through scenes of boring, unrealistic characters who spew useless exposition to get to it.