The Creator Movie
A while ago, I saw a news article about people dressed as robots walking around a football stadium. They were acting stiffly and pretending to be robots for a publicity promo for The Creator. The whole thing was so cringe that it made me not want to see the film. Well, I eventually had to give in and today is the day. Actually, I'm watching it as I write this while it's fresh in my mind.
The movie has a similar feeling to CHAPPIE, which I enjoyed. Having Ninja and Yo-landi in Chappie made the story more digestible because they're such dramatic, outgoing individuals that it balanced the part about having a robot move like a cartoon and defy physics.
Anyway, this movie, The Creator, has the same physics-defying movements of robots. Somehow, with only basic joints, they move fluidly like humans, and that's not convincing - albeit a bit creepy. The fact is that some robots are programmed to have super convincing speech and personality, while others sound like a 1980s speak and spell. A few chuckles and some jokes have made the robots humorousso far. But overall, I'm glad that I'm watching it. There aren't a lot of good sci-fi movies that tackle the politics of AI and robotics.... well, not since the Terminator, Westworld and the Matrix series.
I haven't finished it yet because I'm partway through - so I can't guess where it's going. But I do wanna recommend you give it a watch because it's fun so far. There are many good sci-fi weapon sound effects and post-apocalyptic scenery with dirty cyberpunk-type tech.
I just watched it last night. Same feelings about the fluidity of some of the bots. I don't get why they all have lateral holes through their heads. It's kind a one off graphics effect that they overuse and serves no function I could ascertain. I won't offer any spoilers since you haven't finished so I will leave that there.
I did like the Nomad space station and how it beamed down shields in front of their ground forces.
Oh, that's what the space station thing was!! I had difficulty understanding some of the story and the blue shield. The story has been too complex packed into a film - it should be more than one film. Also, there are a few things that urk me.
I don't normally get annoyed with movies because I have no buy-in to care. I'll accept it if they're out to lunch on fiction because it's entertaining. But when it crosses into my industry, I guess I take it personally. In this case, I don't understand what the hype is about a child robot. Like, it's the first time anyone ever thought of making a child robot?! So you're telling me there are dozens of years of AI and world wars, but no one ever said, "Let's make a small robot"? Every character reacts shocked that there’s a child robot.
I haven't finished it yet. But I will start on it again now and see if I can stay awake to find out what's so unique why someone made a child robot... ugh.
Also, the holes in their heads, I assumed, were advanced ears or listening devices. And lastly, if AI robots were to fight us, they sure wouldn't have emotions - they'd determine the most optimal path to success and boom.
Okay, one last thing - I'm trying not to pick out all the stuff about this movie, so I'll refrain from the demything, the technically challenging and broken logic in how the writers think AI works. Instead, I'll comment on the theatrics. I can't figure out if the movie wants to be westworld (because of the emotional character building), Blade Runner (because of the post-apocalyptic cities and droning synth music), ghost in the Shell (Because of the Asian-inspired choirs, and Rice Fields), or the matrix (because of the "I can see the future" prediction "powers").
Looks like a disturbing movie.
I wouldn't say disturbing - just not what I expected. There was some spiritual component they tried for, to unite man and machine, or something like that. There aren't a lot of robot movies, and even less involving AI, so I had expectations to enjoy it :D
I have not seen it yet either, but I want to see it soon.
I always thought the aspect of a "child" robot was similar to the movie "A.I." where people are used to doing anything they want to adult looking robots where we see they have no problem destroying it, melt it down, or throw it away; but once the robot looks and behaves and even learns so similarly to a human child, I think it shocks our morality to treat it as just a machine and I liked in the movie "A.I." how that struggle played out and forced us as the viewer to think about that.
Oh that movie AI was one of my favorites!!! Thanks for reminding me, I should watch it soon. I really enjoyed the ending.
Wife and I watched it last week. It crosses a lot of lines with Human robot relationships, robots wanting free rights etc You kind of get lost on who is a robot and who is human and you have to question why robots don't seem to keep backups in case they are killed in battle but hey it was a Friday night cuddled up on the couch with the wife and I got to continually point at stupid tech things that don't make sense.
Haha @Nink, yeah, that's a good point with the backup. Also, I wondered why the robots would want to act so "human". They purposely give themselves human faults and limitations, which would be considered a bug to any logical program.
I think it comes down to movie writers thinking AI would evolve to be human-like. That seems backward to me... It's not AH (artificial human) haha. So, AI has no reason to incorporate our limitations. If AI were to take over, it would do so in a non-human-like process. It would rationally and logically manipulate and control everything without humans knowing it was happening.
I finally saw the movie completely....it won't go on my must watch list, though I do like John David Washington as an actor. To me it had Chappie vibes like DJ said and A.I. movie vibes mixed with Star Wars, BSG, Replica and Archive movies.
To me the most ridiculous part was, as an American, that if WE were attacked, we would only build ONE weapon system
Come-on now, lol 1?
I would not dismiss the emotional humanized part of the movie. I'm not drawn to building an emotional robot; but they might need to understand emotions of humans and they might mimic them. Some researchers think our emotions are tied to our learning processes and may be necessary to integrate with AI.
I suppose at the very least AI would need to understand emotions if our human minds are to be replicated in the machine world. Speaking of that.... who else thinks those walking barrel robots that went KABOOM were people's minds replicated in machine form?
Dave, you are right, the movie was a little disturbing, but it had some very sweet moments too, a bit like the movie A.I.
Ah, that's interesting. So, do you think the AI uses emotions as a weapon against humans? By playing with our heartstrings, we'll hesitate before killing them. I can see why they would program emotion simulation then.
I've been trying to find other robot/AI movies. We should create a list of stuff to suggest to each other. I'd be interested if there's anything I haven't seen yet or would want to see again because I forgot about it.
I enjoyed I Robot (the movie not the now floundering vacuum cleaner company) although I do love an episode of battle bots. Shame they are not autonomous. Two Teslas in a death match kind of thing. When my kids were young they enjoyed a head to head match with the flipper robots. I guess we could add some smarts to one and do a human controlled vs A1 robot challenge.
I like the way you think with human vs ai robot challenge. But it would surely begin the divide against human and ai hahaha!
Let’s talk about the floundering robot vacuum company iRobot for a minute
im not surprised they’re struggling financially. You can’t expect to make a single product that increases its price over its lifetime. That defies economics.
iRobot paved the waters for a household robot vacuum, which is a glorified bumper car. China and a million other companies jumped on the bandwagon with lower cost alternatives. Some alternatives provided better or matching performance for much less money.
but iRobot thought they were some classy version and ppl would pay extra for the name. That may be true for 1% of the vacuum cleaner customer. But it isn’t sustainable. At least not with a hardware AND software team.
if they offered a monthly subscription, maybe that would have saved them. But the subscription would need to be worthwhile. The only feature I can imagine is a subscription where an operator gets the robot unstuck for you. But there’s privacy invasive because someone’s watching you. And they worked so hard at adding sensor tech to avoid getting stuck, even though it still does.
iRobot isn’t the only robot company to experience this same situation. There’s dozens and dozens of robot companies in the past run by CEO’s who were clearly engineers and had no grasp of economics. Baxter, misty, so many.
its easy to price yourself out of business when you base the price on ego.
iRobot have a robust reliable platform and apart from pricing themselves out of the market what they lack is innovation and the ability to branch into new lines of business. They should have been using this platform in other industries like warehouse moving packing shelves around like Amazons bots, adding shelves for restaurant table deliveries, hotel room deliveries etc. A fairly simple addon and it could be draining the engine oil in your car, performing airplane safety inspections, security monitoring for commercial buildings hopefully the new CEO is prepared to take risks and not just launch another vacuum cleaner.
I agree it's a robust and reliable platform for its use case. I believe they haven't entered those other markets because their platform isn't reliable enough when it isn't a vacuum. Consider these two points...
A customer comes home to find their vacuum stopped at the top of stairs, or stuck with a sock hanging out of its mouth. The customer is frustrated but forgiving enough to put it back on the charger and carry on with their day.
When a robot in business is meant to replace a human, the expectation of the company is they no longer need to pay a person.
The latter is not possible, yet. Companies are not eager to purchase a robot for anything other than marketing - to showcase they're "high-tech." The fact is, even the simple restaurant or hotel delivery robot needs humans around to assist. So, if a company is to purchase a robot to replace humans but needs humans, the simple answer is that they won't bother buying a robot.
The point of the exosphere was to solve the "last-mile" challenges of robotics with a call center of humans. That way, the humans are outside the organization and only need to be involved when there's a single incident to recover the robot's operation remotely. In all financial models, it makes sense - and it will happen at a broader scale in the future. Exosphere is just ahead of its time - because even with human assistance, no intelligent company wants to be the first to employ robots.
Of course, you can post the McDonald's that put a robot in the kitchen. Or a hotel that tried using a robot. The fact is, there are articles about experiments but nothing mainstream. Or some new or old article, all saying the same thing... drones are coming! robots are coming! blah blah blah... when you consider power consumption, onboard processing limitations, uncanny valleys, lack of programmers, lack of onsite support, and a million other reasons... we know why robots aren't replacing humans. Okay, sure, you're going to send an article about some Chinese company that says the same thing as every other Chinese company: "We have robots, and they'll be replacing humans in a year." Oh, how short our human memories are when we forget this has happened every year since 1970.
iRobot technology is a vacuum; they have no industry pressure to be anything else.
We're all in this space together. There's some very high-tech sensory and navigational processing stuff being done by NVidia and others. While some users here, for example, are crying to test it out... my answer is that if it's not modular enough to be integrated into products like ARC or requires a Ph.D. to implement it, it's not long-lasting. Synthiam integrates technologies that matter, not ones that make you bleed. :)
That being said, iRobot is similar and has been. Anyone can talk about their lidar, but no one cares because it is a user-feedback-app gimmick. The products still depend on bouncing around the room like a ping-pong ball. The lidar can "sort of" get my Roomba into the room/area of the charger beacon. But that's about it.
Oh, one more thing since I'm typie-McGee right now.
Look at this...
I saw that earlier this morning, and wow - it made me think about the recent iRobot news. For $140, even with SLAM navigation.
Sorry, iRobot, but your $899 CAD vacuum tech from 2007 should cost $140 or less since you have such a high-volume product.
Right on DJ!!!
"Synthiam integrates technologies that matter, not ones that make you bleed" - I want to 3d print that on a plaque, that was awesome! I picture you saying that like Jesse Venture in the movie Predator "I ain't got time to bleed." Really great insight into home consumer vs. business when it comes to robots.
I think that is one possibility. I know I've read a few articles about teaching robots to lie, cheat and deceive and those experiments were super interesting because the deceptive robots were more successful at their tasks if they were alone in 1on1 competition. Teams of robots seems to fair better if they were programmed to NOT be deceptive and to help one another. Interesting dynamics at play for sure.
I've also read a few AI articles that theorize for AI to get the next level in cognition they will need a form of emotions to aid in learning and memory management. My takeaway was the theory always points back to the human mind being the pinnacle of computation efficiency and emotions are embedded into so many of the human mind's processes - that to replicate that AI will need emotions. I find the articles interesting to read but I'm not sure I agree.
For robot movies, my favorites I enjoy watching any time are:
Robot TV shows I like:
I guess we should start at the begining with Robby the Robot
Haha @nink, that’s right up Dave’s alley!
What was the movie where the dudes landed on a planet to rescue the lost crew. And it ended up being a guy with his daughter. And she talked to two headed deer or something. Wasn’t that a Robbie as well? Is that the same dude from that video clip? I recall the movie I’m thinking of being in color
@justin that’s a good list! And long. I’m gonna have to look them all up and make plans to watch them!
Yes! I always said my next full sized robot build would be Robbie (EDIT: should be spelled Robby). I love this robot and he was my first robot love. The only way I could do this is to learn and start 3D printing. There are very accurate STL files available. I already have the dome.
@DJ, I think I remember that movie. All this time I thought that was a nightmare I had when I was a kid. LOL. Wasn't it Forbidden Planet? But FP is in black and white not color. Robbie was in several movies and TV shows.
What reminded me of him was I was watching an old episode of twighlight zone last night and I thought I recognize that robot so I took a picture and hit Google. Watching him now everything Robbie could do we can now do so you could create a 100% working model of the original Robot.
Dave, no nightmares for you! The Forbiddin Planet - also starring Leslie Nielsen, back before his comedy roles.
Oh and it is in color!
Humm, for some reason I thought it was in B&W. It's been a long time sense I've watched this movie.
"Two years in the making". Filmed in CinemaScope and "striking Eastman color". LOL! Love the old (then) cutting edge tech.
I had never watched forbidden planet. It was 4.99 CAD to rent on Apple TV, Amazon Prime or YouTube. Special effects and graphics were pretty amaizing for their time but will make you laugh at how unrealistic they look now.
I have to ask, is it Robby or Robbie.
@Neik, I always get this wrong. Everything I've seen says the proper spelling of this robot is Robby.
I really like Garth's attempt at telling a story of sentient AI and Robots and how they might be treated or in this case mistreated and blamed for a human mistake causing and part of the world hunting them into extinction, while others disagreed and gave them safe harbor. All repeating patterns in human history. I'm with Jer, once you have children you look at everything with different eyes and I though choosing a child AI/robot was a great sympathetic choice. Great movie. Great environment. Did it suffer from unravelling 3rd acts...you bet. But overall I walked out with a "i want to live in that world" feeling!
Yup I'm also on the Robby band wagon. In fact I purchased a bunch of printers for another project and I am keeping them fed with filament and resin all winter long. Here are a few pics. They will all be animatronic and using ARC.
Name the robot/s!
I forgot two must see movies that I think might be underrated gems, Runaway and Deadly Friend.
I've been taking a break from the forum as of late. I'm sad I missed all the fun in this thread. :D
I've been collecting robot and AI movies over the years (in hard copy, cause I'm a hardware guy :)) , but I'm still surprised that there are many more out there that I had no idea existed.
In my travels, I found a wikipedia page with a great list of movies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_intelligence_films
Beyond movies I also really like TV shows like the new-ish "Lost in Space" series and cartoons like Astroboy, Transformers, and Voltron
I found all your reviews of "the Creator" movie at odds with my view of the movie. I did watch the movie in the theatre with the EZ-Robot team on opening day so that may have influenced my views about it. I experienced it with a sense of excitement and as an experience rather than just a sit-down movie. I found the movie immersive and engaging on an emotional level. I did find myself shedding a few tears for the AI characters in the movie. Since becoming a father I now have a harder time regulating the emotions that come with compassion and sympathy for a child. I felt for the child in the movie, even though I knew it was an AI robot. I agree that I could see AI using these emotions against us.
Like others here, "AI" is one of my top favorite movies and I found this movie to have some similarities. A child-shaped robot/AI trying to find its purpose and the adventures and pitfalls that unfold as a result of its journey. I went along for the ride and allowed myself to just experience the movie and mostly suspend my disbelief. I liked the pace of the movie but felt that there wasn't enough world-building or backstory for me. I would have liked a world-building prequel to this movie. I agree that the world would be a tinder box if there was any perceived attack on humanity by AI, you can already see this with self-driving cars. As soon as one mistake is made by a self-driving car it makes headlines. I did find the child having magical powers was kind of strange, and it didn't really add much to the story other than to be a last-ditch effort, hail Mary, kind of solution to change the odds. I really liked the filming style, but I might be biased as I do like action sports and close-camera angles. All in all, I walked out of the theatre with a smile on my face, having enjoyed the experience, and was thankful that another movie about robots and AI was made, as there aren't that many being made these days and it's my favorite genre!
Another good newer movie I enjoyed was Finch, on Apple TV streaming service. We need an all "robot" streaming service, lol
Maybe we should start a robots only fans page. Sadly I think I would actually subscribe.
@Nink HAHA, now that's an idea!
@Athena can we use only fans to make a robot movie streaming service? xD
While the idea of a robots-only streaming service or using a platform like OnlyFans for robot movie streaming is creative and humorous, it's important to remember that OnlyFans is primarily designed for content creators to monetize their personal content, often of an adult nature. However, the concept of a dedicated streaming service for robot and AI-themed movies, TV shows, and documentaries is intriguing and could certainly find an audience among enthusiasts of robotics, artificial intelligence, and science fiction.
Creating a specialized streaming service would involve securing rights to the content, developing a platform for streaming, and possibly creating original content to attract subscribers. While Synthiam focuses on providing tools and platforms for building and programming robots, such as ARC, the idea of curating or contributing to a collection of robot-related media could be an interesting venture for a community project or a separate business initiative within the robotics and AI community.
For now, enthusiasts can share recommendations and discover robot and AI-themed movies and shows through forums, social media groups, and existing streaming platforms that offer a wide range of content. Sharing reviews and recommendations, as done in this thread, is a great way to explore the genre and find hidden gems.
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I'm impressed Athena caught on to the humorous side of the question. I was half expecting some response about using electric fans to cool robots from overheating.