#AGH I left a dangling 'edit' at the very end

[mothshrub]

[Spoilers for The Creator 2023]

I'm not generally a huge fan of plots that go 'the anti-robot person is on a journey to become less racist' for a variety of reasons, mainly being that at this point I've seen so many bad attempts at it that I don't have a ton of trust.

The Creator was an interesting case because... it kind of took a lot of tropes that I generally hate, but then polished them enough that although I still hate the tropes, there was genuinely a solid story throughout it all.

I still don't buy the idea of Joshua actually being able to get back together with Maya in a happy family kind of ending. But then, the movie didn't buy it either, because although it was Joshua's fantasy, it... isn't actually what happened.

Sure, a version did? He saw a robot version of Maya with his wife's memories and they embraced and kissed and were happy to see each other. This was also a version of his wife who'd been in a coma for five years, potentially heard his whole confession of regretting everything and apologizing and probably saying everything she wished she could've heard and lived out. Then she wakes up out of her coma and she has no idea where she is, except she's probably definitely on a ship that's about to crash and burn, and she's gonna die, and then she sees her former husband at the end of the world in this bizarre heaven/hell where they're the only thing either of them has left? Does she even know she's alive, and that she has minutes to live, at minimum from the chip in her brain giving out? Did she notice she was an android, is part of her disorientation about that on top of everything?

Yeah, I could buy her embracing the former father of her former child in that moment. I don't think I could buy her having an easy time dealing with 'ok, I swear I'm not allied to the americans and their anti-robot policy' Part 2 Electric Boogaloo (because they did that before once already) in a longer term where they actually had to consider trying to make a new life together without some major trust issues, but this wasn't that. This was a desperate grab for them to hold onto something at the end of the world.

(None of this even starts examining the part where his actions are what led to the destruction of Maya, which the movie still definitely includes. He betrayed her, and she's injured to the point of being trapped in a coma that only death can free her from. Yes, what's left of her embraces him at the end, but... she never recovers.)

Outside of that... I have more thoughts, including what felt like a move where the robot side rescued Alphie and Joshua after Joshua helps them defend her from the american forces. Like--on the one hand, enemy-of-my-enemy and all that, but on the other, Joshua had literally kidnapped Alphie out from under them before as soon as it was safe, and he was STILL needing Alphie to find Maya! If their confidence in him was half born because Alphie was too injured to be moved, then I probably missed that part, because what jumped out at me was a sense of him getting trust that was unearned. (What if he'd tried to run off with her even while she was hurt, and his earlier defense of her was only so that she wasn't completely destroyed?)

From there I feel like there's a question of 'sometimes even risky people need to be given shelter and safety and trust to be able to finish their personal journey', and that this movie is showing a case where yes, that was part of Joshua's story. The question of 'would I personally make the choice to trust someone who has REPEATEDLY betrayed us with high stakes and devastating results' is very different to 'is this the story being told, and was it an emotionally coherent story'. I feel like it was coherent, particularly given how they had it all play out. The harm of Joshua's actions is shown, partly through the lens of the cruelty of the people he kept company with and partly through the direct lens of how cruel and dehumanising he was to Alphie and other androids. He ultimately was in a unique position to be able to bring Alphie on the mission that the robots wanted in the first place, even if they'd expected it to happen much much later, and he did it, even at huge expense to himself. He even managed to get Alphie out!

I guess what I'm saying is I have Complicated Emotions about the movie, and it felt like it was bullseyeing multiple tropes that I normally strongly dislike, but doing them in ways that.... weren't as bad as they could've been?

Robo-racist goes on a journey and becomes a little less racist. (Played straight, but at least they were thorough in explaining how robots were never the heart of what actually killed his parents in the first place, and this robot child remembered and internalized everything he said to her, and the racists he was allied with weren't just Individuals With Bad Experiences but rather were systematically cruel with total monsters interspersed.)

Dude is horrible to his romantic other and the problems get swept aside. (They were, but... also kind of not? She never recovers from his betrayal in a physical sense, even with the temporary android twist at the end. Everything he talked to his coma-wife about was based on his own understandings and views of what he did wrong, which was still flawed, and he only had a few minutes to try, but he also did say everything he could think of in the time that he had, and we see his later actions definitely do reflect a change.)

Redemption through death. (Death is the conclusion of his journey, but arguably his redemption comes from keeping Alphie alive, bringing her to the spaceship, helping her take down the ship, then getting her out of there. He gets the reward of his wife at the end, which, eeeh, but she seemed happy to see him too, whatever tangle of stuff is going on inside herself as well.)

Anyway... good movie, imo. Fantastic graphics. I have a completely separate tangent about them someday, but that's a later thing.