Score: 7/10
“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.”
tl,dr: Picture District 9 esque sci-fi adventure, but instead of everyone being racist against the prawns, it’s Sam Altman’s AI wet dream.
The year is 2070, 15 years after artificial intelligence allegedly set off a nuclear bomb in downtown Los Angeles killing 1 million Americans. Shohei Ohtani is still collecting his deferred salary from the Dodgers. As expected, the US didn’t take too kindly to a nuclear bomb being dropped in one of their cities, even if it is LA, and have declared war on artificial intelligence to prevent the extermination of the human race. The US, as always, plays World Police and starts a global campaign to ruthlessly eradicate AI from the planet. A tale as old as time in the movie world: humans vs robots, good vs evil, USA vs Vietnam….except this time – it’s different.
John David Washington (son of Denzel, also a mediocre CFB & NFL running back ppl forget that) stars as Joshua Taylor – a double amputee US Army Sergeant (one leg, one arm if you’re wondering). He’s undercover in New Asia, where humans and AI live, work, (& fuck) in harmony with one another. Embedded in the sympathizer organization, he’s trying to find the mysterious architect of advanced AI – Satoshi Nakamoto Nirmata. Small problem, he’s fallen in love and impregnated one of the key leaders of the resistance, Maya, played by Gemma Chan (the minx from Crazy Rich Asians). He’s also the only black guy with an American accent that I could tell, not sure how he wasn’t sniffed out immediately. Anyway…Nirmata has created a S U P E R W E A P O N that’s going to exterminate mankind, an androgynous AI child named Alphie.
There are a lot of things working for this movie – it’s big budget, from a big studio, has stunning visuals, an epic Radiohead-laden scene on top of an original Hans Zimmer score. The director, Gareth Edwards, is the mastermind behind the only good Star Wars movie in recent memory Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016). JDW, for the most part, does a tremendous job in the lead role. All that adds up to a 2h13m movie that is absolutely entertaining….it’s just not great. There are a lot of plot holes and things that seemed to have been done just “cause it’ll look cool”. Some of the issues, none of which spoil anything:
- Allison Janney (The West Wing, Margot Robbie’s mom in I, Tonya) plays like a Colonel in the US army and is just completely out of place. It’s basically Jodie Foster’s character from the last season of True Detective, minus the terrible Minnesota Vikings comments.
- The AI’s having no ears / giant holes in their head is completely irrelevant and makes no sense. Also they don’t really explain why half the simulants (AI) have total robot features and have half have completely human faces (humans can donate their likeness to AI, they don’t cover if NCAA athletes are able to do this under 2070 NIL rules). Why would they stop at just the face?
- Unlike every other robots vs humans movie ever made, somehow the AI are severely outgunned compared to the humans in this. They only have like boats? No planes? Meanwhile the humans have a giant fucking trillion dollar satellite that can drop air strikes anywhere in the world.
- Jesus Christ, I get it! AI are people too. Can I watch the movie without being preached to about a fake human rights issue in the future.
In the end, similar to its performance at the box office a few years ago, you don’t really care what happens. Worth the watch, but don’t expect to be wow’ed by anything other than the visuals.
Spoilers / Reaction:
- I still don’t totally understand what Nomad is or where it is. In certain scenes it was like it was a massive, mobile space base (opening scene). At other times (final scene) it was more like a giant satellite. Also – what was the point of those (sick) blue lasers it shot at the ground? Seemed important until the end….where they just fired missiles around the entire continent from this thing.
- “Standby, not off” was so beyond predictable. Putting aside why JDW had to be the one to kill Alphie, or why Alphie was even taken anywhere and not just killed on sight… nobody felt the need to check if the fucking superweapon was in sleep mode? Such an absurd oversight and only adds to the above sentiments that the filmmakers made the U.S. so unlikeable it wasn’t even a question of who you are “supposed to” root for. For the record, I was rooting for the Americans the whole time. The bad guys won.
- Allison Janney death scene was top notch – despite rooting for our troops I was rooting against her. That said, she was the 2nd person to die by the ole shoot-them-with-a-sticky-bomb-and-theyll-forget trick. Did she forget she was shot in the back or think it was just a gust of wind? Idiot.
- Didn’t realize JDW’s homeboy who explains everything, Drew, was Sturgill Simpson until the credits rolled. Beast.