TPToA Podcast 334 – The Creator

The Periodic Table of Awesome Podcast

Fire up your positronic brains and get down with your bad A.I. simulant-selves as we check out the new film from Gareth Edwards: The Creator. Cyberpunk, sci-fi military war-movie and zen Buddhist anti-imperial colonialism come crashing together in this visual treat. But is it actually a good film? That’s very much a personal preference and one which will be hotly discussed in this podcast.

Dion and Peta were our two intelligences on this podcast due to a sudden bout of food poisoning taking Quinny out at the last minute.

He has also had some thoughts on the film and wanted to add them and his score here as well:

This is a visual treat that I adored watching up until the last act. It has some really sketchy sexual politics and the totally unnecessary fridging feels like a hangover from a time that this film might have been more at home in. It’s focus on grand visuals to back up it’s world building is certainly playing to it’s strengths, but sadly the more you scratch the surface the more it feels like it’s nowhere near as deep or meaningful as it wishes to be.

It relies heavily on tropes we have seen a lot before, and also surprisingly on some race based stereotypes that are a bit awkward in this day and age. When it does pose intriguing moral questions it does so almost too quietly; so you miss them, or sometimes too blatantly so you’re being beaten over the head with the allegory. The magical child needing a father figure/saviour feels like its lifted from the Golden Child, or one of a hundred other films and any reveals about the child or its genesis are telegraphed massively.

But the world was so intriguing and beautiful that I found it hard to dislike. Yes the third act falls apart and becomes Deus Ex Machina after Deus Ex Machina (gaming reference intended). and yes the logic of where Nomad is, or how big it is or far away it is seems a bit flexible. But this is gorgeous Cyberpunk cinema that looks amazing (especially considering what it was shot on!) and it really is a big example of “Style over substance”.
I am glad i watched it on the biggest screen i could and am not ashamed to say i enjoyed the visual treat I was served, even if it was pure empty calories.

87 from Quinny

https://youtu.be/LsANRXOI8rU

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https://youtu.be/MAZuGdi32bk?si=Ch3aAJSzYVoisz_s