Tag: Gareth Edwards

The Creator (2023)

Clumsily plotted, emotionally stunted film perhaps the most AI sympathetic ever made

Director: Gareth Edwards

Cast: John David Washington (Sgt Joshua Taylor), Mardeline Yuna Voyles (Alphie), Gemma Chan (Maya Fey), Allison Janney (Colonel Howell), Ken Watanabe (Harun), Sturgill Simpson (Drew), Amar Chadha-Patel (Omni/Sek-on/Sgt Bui), Marc Menchaca (McBride), Ralph Ineson (General Andrews), Robbie Tann (Shipley)

Its 2065 and America is at war with AI, after the detonation of a nuclear warhead in Los Angeles ten years earlier was blamed on AI’s attempt to wipe out mankind. Now AI – in the form of various androids – lives in New Asia with their human allies, under constant threat of deadly nuclear air strikes from NOMAD, the destructive American space station orbiting the planet. Sgt Joshua Taylor (John David Washington) was sent undercover to locate the secretive Nirmata, AI’s genius human architect, but instead fell in love with AI ally Maya (Gemma Chan). She got pregnant and was believed killed in an airstrike after a raid blew Josh’s cover. He spiralled into depression but is called back by the promise of hardline Colonel Howell (Allison Janney) that Maya is alive and well and can be reunited with Joshua if he uses his knowledge to finally locate Nirmata.

The Creator looks great. But is a complete mess. It’s one of those films where you can take a stab at what all the twists are going to be in the first few minutes – and if you’ve seen more than one film, you’ll get nearly all of them right (starter for ten: you got one guess who the mysterious Nirmata might be. If you need a second guess… watch more movies.). The story plods through a number of hugely predictable beats and character developments without giving you anything to remotely really invest in. It presents a world overflowing with inconsistent rules about distances, securities and motivations. It’s almost completely devoid of wit or psychological complexity, and our hero is a surly and not particularly sympathetic obsessive with an angry axe to grind. It’s not good.

But the positives right? The special effects to create the robots are very well done. The androids have whirling metallic holes in their necks – I have no idea why as it seems to be a major weakness – look amazingly realistic. The camera work is often immersive, particularly when it follows the street fights between humans and AI. It does look great.

But almost everything else is a negative. The Creator surely sets some sort of benchmark as the most AI positive film ever made. Its sympathetic viewpoint towards AI, the idea that computers really could be morally superior and make a better fist of building a decent world than us organics, already feels painfully dated today (and I’m writing this only three years after its release!). Would it have killed the film to use the word simulant for the parade of humane, caring and decent robots ruthlessly machined gunned down by the humans, rather than AI? Today you’re more likely to see Hollywood turn out a film sympathetic to sex predators than AI.

So heroically and empathetically are the robots portrayed – living in kumba-ya communities with hordes of Buddhist supporters – and so tattooed, gung-ho and brutally alpha are the humans hunting them (Allison Janney, as their field commander, thinks nothing of executing captured robots with head shots) that we are in no doubts where our sympathies are meant to be. I’m mystified why the war has been going on as long as it has, so overwhelmingly does the film tip the military odds against the plucky AI. Every battle is virtually a curb-stomp – these must be the only androids in science-fiction history, where it none of them have advanced reflexes or intellect.

Ah, but I guess if they were superhuman, we’d not root for them. This basic emotional intelligence doesn’t extend to John David Washington’s Taylor. We are clearly meant to see this guy as a man on a mission to reunite with lost love Gemma Chan’s Maya. But never once does the film address Joshua started this romance with a parade of lies. Or that he intended (from the start!) to murder Maya’s android family. Or that, last time she saw him, she was so furious she turned a gun on him. Taylor is a deeply flawed egotist and incredibly possessive, who is almost sociopathically focused purely on his own wants and needs before anything else. Does the film at any point get him to acknowledge these huge flaws? Nope. In fact it almost doesn’t notice they are there, taking Taylor on his own merits. Never once does Taylor express any regret for this actions or acknowledgement that he might have done something wrong. In fact he clearly believes his destiny is to carry Maya away with him to ‘safety’, which seems to mean a life with him alone.

Which makes him feel rather like an abusive partner, hunting down the victim of his lies, convinced that she must love him. And that his memory of their uncomplicated joy is the unquestioned truth – even though it involved cutting everyone else she loved out of her life. This impression isn’t helped by Washington’s flat, unengaging and rather unlikeable performance. Even pairing him up with a child android who is the exact age his lost child would be (you got one guess…) doesn’t really soften him up. His primary motivation for protecting Alphie, for a long time, is to reclaim Maya. It never crosses his mind (or the film’s) that she might not want to see him again. Or that he should apologise or explain his actions. That’s before we even begin to consider the parade of innocents who die as collateral damage to fuel Taylor’s obsessive search.

But the plot demands that Taylor, as we know he must (because he’s the lead character), switches sides to sympathise with the AI. And that he accepts Alphie as a surrogate child, despite their striking lack of chemistry. The final act is a conga line of convenient plot holes and sudden reversals, which allow our heroes to break into NOMAD. The station’s security is apparently so strict that they need little more than a hat, stolen jumper and the ability to run to break on board. By the time we hit the end, the logic train has long since departed – and the film ends with such a clumsy, utterly unearned series of ‘emotional’ encounters, you’ll be dying for the thing to end.

Edwards is a cool visualist and has some neat ideas. But, as this and films like Rogue One and Godzilla have shown, he is a poor storyteller. The Creator gives us heroes it’s almost impossible to relate to and villains who are too boring and clumsily drawn to hate. It takes a long time to grind its way to a series of illogical endings that will leave you frustrated, bored and unengaged. It’s a terrible film.

Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025)

Back-to-basics monster mash that feels like a reheated remix of several elements from the previous films

Director: Gareth Edwards

Cast: Scarlett Johansson (Zora Bennett), Mahershala Ali (Duncan Kincaid), Jonathan Bailey (Dr. Henry Loomis), Rupert Friend (Martin Krebs), Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (Reuben Delgado), Luna Blaise (Teresa Delgado), David Iacono (Xavier Dobbs), Audrina Miranda (Isabella Delgado), Ed Skrein (Bobby Atwater), Bechir Sylvain (LeClerc), Philippine Velge (Nina)

Those InGen scientists never know when to stop. The latest Jurassic film reveals yet another tropical island awash with prehistoric beasties. This one was also home to a Frankenstein-factory, where terrible genetic abominations were created, cross-bred dinosaurs with extra wow-factor (like flying velociraptors). But of course, almost twenty years later, they roam free, causing trouble for a team of mercenaries. Led by Zora (Scarlett Johansson) and Duncan (Mahershala Ali), they are working for Big Phama Baddie Martin (Rupert Friend) and friendly palaeontologist Dr Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) to capture blood samples from the three largest dinosaurs ever to unlock a cure for heart disease (and millions of dollars). Things don’t go to plan when they end up stranded on an island, with a young shipwrecked family in tow.

It’s called Jurassic World: Rebirth but it could be Jurassic World: Reheated. Gareth Edwards film is shot with nerdy charm and crammed with lots of 90s-child fan-bait images of “Objects are closer than they appear” mirrors and “When Dinosaurs ruled the Earth” banners. But it’s also a blatant reheat of many elements of the first three films, often presented in a strikingly similar way. Like the little-loved, low-key and formulaic Jurassic Park 3, a team of mercs is stranded on an island with a family in tow. Perilous journeys take them into the nests of pterodactyls and down river against a gigantic dinosaur opponent. Throw in many other recognisable beats and scenes and you’ve got a film that will be feel more enjoyable and diverting, the less familiar you are with the preceding seven films.

In fact, much as I have a childish glee for dinosaurs still, Jurassic World: Rebirth makes me feel actually we might have gone as far as we can go. Even if the last two films were not complete successes, at least their vision of dinosaurs emerging to become everyday creatures we might encounter anywhere felt different. Rebirth shuts that down in the opening credit crawl, stating dinosaurs could only survive long-term in the tropics. Once again, they reside live on deserted islands miles from rescue. To hammer (multiple) points home, it opens with Friend’s phama boss whining because a dying brachiosaurus is blocking his four-by-four in the New York traffic.

It’s so we can get the familiar set-up, with a rag-tag mix of unlikely heroes thrown together to survive while shrieking and running in the jungle. There is precious little to surprise you in Rebirth, not least the fate of the characters. Every single Jurassic film has thrown children-in-peril into the mix and Rebirth literally can’t imagine setting itself up without the same, so introduces the Delgado’s, a divorced Dad with two daughters the oldest of whom brings with her waster boyfriend who has “redemption in waiting” written all over him. Just as we’ve seen now countless times before, no matter how terrified and dangerous things get, these kids have tooth-proof plot armour. Not a T-rex by the river or a flying velociraptor (in an almost neat restage of the kitchen scene from the first film) stand a change of laying a claw on them.

In fact, the rest of the cast feels the same. There is a weary paint-by-numbers inevitability about who will bite it and when. The second Ed Skrein’s arrogant merc turns up, you know he’s toast – just as Rupert Friends’ cowardly, profit-focussed exec might as well put himself in a dino lunch box and save us all time (though first he has to prove to the viewer, how shitty he is). The team is made up of three big name actors and a parade of red shirts who look and feel like red shirts from the second their under-developed mouths spew out their formulaic dialogue. A thick coating of plot armour is strapped onto the backs of nearly every other character, and not once in the film did I either (a) really fear for the lead characters or (b) think that any of them would turn out to be anything other than saints (I briefly thought Henry almost sharing a name with Halloween’s mad scientist might be a subtle reveal… it isn’t).

In fact, this lot are the nicest parade of mercs you’ll ever beat and both Johansson and Ali carry with them the sort of character-developing past trauma that is such basic scriptwriting 101 you almost feel sorry for the actors working with it. (To wit: Ali is a grieving father, Johansson is dealing with the loss of a boyfriend on a past op – if you can’t work out where those motivations might take you, you need to see more movies). These mercs are decent, hard-working, honourable guys about a million miles from what you think real merc, who shoot guns at people for money, might be like. They’re more like charming humanitarians.

The most interesting stuff in Rebirth are the moments that feel new. A prologue, set 17-years before, showing how all hell broke loose on the lab is well-done (even if its a lift from Edward’s past Godzilla film), both in its mounting dread and its almost satiric ‘no security system works in the movies’ resolution of a discarded snickers wrapper short-circuiting a billion-dollar system keeping the abominations secure. The abominations are also interesting: a flapping, vicious velociraptor feels new (it even proves its chops by devouring a normal velociraptor) while the D-Rex hybrid (a sort of grotesque mix of a T-Rex and the creature from Alien) is artfully shot by Edwards in a series of slow half-reveals before we see its real horror.

It’s a shame there isn’t more of that. Because otherwise, Rebirth passes the time but it’s a film for people who vaguely remembered the original films rather than someone who has watched them more than once. For anyone who has, there is nothing either new or surprising here, nothing that does anything remotely different, no character who doesn’t feel like they’ve been plucked and retooled from one of the earlier films. It’s a back-to-basics approach (staffed, to be fair, with some good actors) that gives you exactly what you expect all the time. That might be fine at times, but it’s hard not to wish for a little bit more. It is at least, though, twice as good as the woeful fanbait that was Dominion.

Godzilla (2014)

Godzilla the only character this film is truly interested in.

Director: Gareth Edwards

Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Ford Brody), Ken Watanabe (Dr Ishiro Serizawa), Bryan Cranston (Joe Brody), Elisabeth Olsen (Elle Brody), Juliette Binoche (Sandra Brody), Sally Hawkins (Dr Vivienne Graham), David Strathairn (Admiral William Stenz)

There is a lot of affection out there for Godzilla. I’ve never quite felt it myself, so I guess I was the wrong person to watch this film. This is a film celebrating the legend of a series of films from Japan about a guy in a rubber suit hitting other guys in rubber suits in a set designed to look like a miniature city. Gareth Edwards’ has directed an affectionate homage that at times flirts with being a more interesting film but never really commits to it.

In 1999, Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) is forced to watch his wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche) die in front of him in a mysterious accident at the nuclear plant in Japan they work at. Fifteen years later, his now grown-up estranged son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a bomb disposal expert, is called to Japan after Joe trespasses into the exclusion zone. There Ford and Joe discover there is no fall-out at the accident site – and that the accident was actually linked to a series of mighty beasts from prehistoric times who feed off radiation. The beasts are being investigated and monitored by a global organisation called Monarch – and they are starting to stir. Soon cities are at risk and our only chance of survival may be from alpha-predator Godzilla bashing the other monster out of existence.

Godzilla starts with a brilliant human interest story – a husband forced to sacrifice his wife to save hundreds of thousands of others. But around the halfway mark it loses all interest in its human characters, who become mere spectators to the mighty monsters hitting each other. By the final act, your interest in the action will depend on how much you can invest in a huge CGI monster hitting another huge CGI monster. With nary a character in sight, I’m not sure how much I could.

Gareth Edwards does a good job directing the film. It’s intelligently and imaginatively framed and Edwards shows some wonderful restraint in showing Godzilla himself, gently avoiding showing too much too soon (the monster doesn’t appear full in camera for well over an hour into the film). In fact, Edwards has a lot more interest in showing the perspective of ordinary people watching the rampage, running or simply standing in awe starring upwards at these mighty beasts. It immediately hammers home the scale and awe of these creatures. Edwards often films from the perspective of those on the ground, with the camera craning upwards seeing the colossal beasts.

It’s a shame that the film doesn’t lavish as much attention on the cardboard cut-out characters who are running around beneath the beasts. A fine company of actors are assembled, most of whom are relegated for much of the first half of the film to spouting exposition and the second half of the film to staring upwards in awe. Remember when Edwards made his breakthrough film Monsters? This film, sure, had monsters in it but it was a human interest story about two very different people thrown together after cataclysmic events. Edwards’ film worked because it was above all about people and their problems. Hollywood came calling.

And Hollywood of course missed the point. Edwards is a director who I think has some truly interesting work in him. Watch the scene as Cranston is forced to slam the safety doors on Binoche. This is a scene crammed with more drama, emotional investment and tragedy than the whole of the rest of the runtimes of Godzilla and Edwards’ Rogue One. Both of those films are well-made but derivative bits of geek chic, pandering towards the crowds by giving them parts of what they think they want, homage-stuffed retreads of other films that focus on bashes and toys rather than on people and characters. Edwards is becoming a purveyor of B-movie thrills, well made, but basically empty.

That’s your Godzilla movie here. Well-made but rubbish. Full of spectacle wonderfully filmed, but fundamentally empty. A film that is careful about what it shows you and when, but is basically lacking any real soul.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

The characters of Rogue One. I struggle to remember their Dingly-Dang sci-fi names.

Director: Gareth Edwards (Tony Gilroy)

Cast: Felicity Jones (Jyn Erso), Diego Luna (Cassian Andor), Ben Mendelsohn (Director Krennic), Donnie Yen (Chirrut Imwe), Mads Mikkelsen (Galen Erso), Alan Tudyk (K-2SO), Riz Ahmed (Bohdi Rook), Jiang Wen (Baze Malbus), Forest Whitaker (Saw Gerrera), Genevieve O’Reilly (Mon Mothma), Jimmy Smits (Bail Organa), Guy Henry (Grand Moff Tarkin), Alistair Petrie (General Draven)

When Disney got hold of the complete rights for Star Wars, they were motivated by one thing above all: making a shitload of cash. In that goal, they’ve been very, very successful. Rogue One fills out (pads out) the story of how the Rebels got hold of the Death Star plans, something the original film (correctly?) reckoned could be covered in a few lines of dialogue. Anyway, for complex, muddily explained reasons, the rebels needs Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), daughter of chief designer on the Death Star Galen (Mads Mikkelsen), to rescue a pilot from a rogue general to get a message from her father. Or something. Anyway, things eventually lead to a major space battle as our heroes try to steal the plans from a giant computer database.

Rogue One is hugely popular. You’ll go a long way before you meet someone willing to say a bad word about it. It’s been hailed as a far superior dip into the franchise ocean than JJ Abrams’ The Force Awakens. This is inexplicable to me. I genuinely can’t understand it. As far as I can tell, Rogue One is little more than a fair to middling action film, hugely reliant on ramming in as many references and easter eggs from previous films as it can, rather than actually doing anything new or unique with the franchise.

For me it’s a sprawling, rather dull film with no depth or patience. The first hour is genuinely quite boring, with each over-designed location blending into the next. The whole film seems designed to require as little attention as possible: short scenes, planet to planet, each having little real impact on the next emotionally. The battles are designed and shot like things intended to be cut up into YouTube clips. No-one talks during the fights, we rarely learn anything about characters during the prolonged action – instead it’s a series of moments, straining at the leash to be cool, with personal sacrifices determined by plot requirements rather than by natural character growth.

Watching parts of it you can enjoy the moments: a blind man taking out Stormtroopers, or Darth Vader cutting down rebels. But there is little to tie these moments together. Plot and characterisation are treated in the same chunked way – events grind to a halt so Mads Mikkelson can tell us what happens next, or Cassian can bluntly talk about how being a rebel is tough on the nerves. In the original Star Wars, plot, character and action were woven together so we learned about all three together. Here they are silos, with action the focus. It feels like a film made for YouTube, more interested in pop culture references with only the flimsiest story propping it up, designed to be spliced up online.

Darth Vader lets rip in a section that seems designed as a YouTube moment of the future

Now the lead character, Jyn Erso. I don’t understand this character. Who is she? What is it she actually wants? For the first hour or so of the film she makes no decisions at all, but does what a series of older male characters tell her to do. There is nothing in the film that allows us to get to know her. Her actions aren’t dictated by character, or even logic, she simply shuttles around the carousel of ever-changing planets whenever the plot needs her to, mouthing whatever sentiments the film needs in order to move on. The film needs her to be a disaffected criminal? She is. The film needs her to be a distraught daddy’s girl? There we go. The film needs her conversion into a rebel freedom fighter? Boom. What does she feel about this? What awakes her idealism, and converts her from criminal to self-sacrificing hero? Nobody knows, the film doesn’t care. It doesn’t help that Felicity Jones’ headgirlish primness is a total mismatch for a gritty, tough-as-nails fighter from the wrong-end-of-the-tracks.

There are many people in this film, but precious few characters. It’s quite damning that the person who makes the biggest impact isn’t a person at all but a robot – and K-2SO is basically a walking cynical punchline, a battle-ready C3PO. Diego Luna’s Cassian is so thinly sketched it’s hard to invest in him at all: the film has no interest in character development so we are bluntly told his characteristics in ham-fisted dialogue. He has a vague speech about how he’s Seen Bad Things, and that’s deemed sufficient to explain all his actions. The worst is Riz Ahmed’s pilot, whose motivations are so unaddressed he spits out some final words to supply his motivation just as he snuffs it. Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen are little more than a collection of cool sounding quirks – Blind One, and Blind One’s Friend. Can you even remember their names?

On the plus side, Ben Mendelsohn is pretty good as an ambitious Imperial officer edging his way up the greasy pole – most of the more interesting dialogue scenes feature Death Star office politics. Mads Mikkelson mines every inch of humanity and compassion from his role. At the other end of the spectrum, an unrestrained Forest Whitaker lets rip as a plot mouthpiece, delivered in his most overripe manner. (There’s some kind of backstory to his relationship with Jyn, but the film never bothers to go into this, because that time is better spent with Whitaker spouting bland, faux-epic, lines like “Save the rebellion. Save the dream”, round mouthfuls of scenery.)

There has been a lot of discussion of the digital recreation of Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin – I’ve no real moral problem with it (lord knows, a glance at his CV tells you Cushing would probably have loved to have been in this film), and Guy Henry does a pretty good vocal recreation of Cushing. It looks a little odd the more you watch it – it’s probably going to date the film quite badly in ten years time – with more than a hint of the “uncanny valley” in Tarkin’s face. It makes sense, though, including the character in the film – and at least we get some characterisation and motivation.

Edward’s visual ability allows him to film his toy collection in a way that at least feels a bit fresh, but it’s a film made by a fanboy, more interested in getting as many references from the past in than creating something new. Edwards rams in everything from Blue Milk to AT-ATs. Now there is a certain pleasure in spotting this stuff, don’t get me wrong. But will it reward future viewing? The final space battle sequence might as well be a child filming smashing his toys together.

My point is, remove all the vast amount of Star Wars ephemera from this, and what do you have left? Once you’ve exhausted the pleasure of seeing that bloke Obi-Wan cuts the arm off in the bar in the first film, or you’re no longer excited by admiring the recreation of the Rebels’ base, what is there left in the film for you to enjoy? Imagine this was a stand-alone story – what would really make you come back? It’s so shrunken and dependent on Star Wars that it stops almost exactly 5 minutes before Star Wars starts – and, I would argue, means the start of that film makes much less sense.

That’s the final problem – for all the talk of Star Wars being a huge universe, this film only stresses how small it is, how reliant it is on events that have already happened or spinning its plotlines off from references in other films. No matter where we go, the same people keep popping up, the same beats keep getting hit. The film is daring, I suppose, in killing off nearly the entire cast over the course of the film – but these characters have been so poorly developed that their deaths lack any impact. It’s a film overwhelmingly fascinated by surface and fan-wanking over the old films, than showing anything new.

Now I know you could level some of these charges against The Force Awakens – but that was a film with engaging characters and fresh, enjoyable dialogue that introduced a few new concepts for the films to go forward with. Within moments of their first appearances, you knew what kind of person Rey was (bold, determined, wistful, searching) or Finn (conscience-stricken, inventive, desperate) – hell the dinky robot had more character than the cardboard cutouts here. The internet obsession with shipping Finn & Po shows how much these characters came alive. Can you imagine anyone spinning out theories of backstory or subtext about any of the people here? No, because they’re not people, they’re plot devices.

If a truly inventive director had got hold of this material, we could have ended up with something that felt really fresh. Instead we have something that is basically juvenile and dim: front row seats at a child’s game that jumps from set-piece to set-piece with no interest in weaving them together. Possibly only the 6^th best Star Wars film.