Jen R

If you want to turn off your brain for some pretty views, visual effects, and action, this will do the job. Also I think John David Washington did some decent acting. But that aside, I was underwhelmed. Mainly because I was really hoping for better story building from the people behind Rogue One, and I came into it with higher expectations. The pacing never felt right. Character background was superficial, which left me uninvested in what was happening. They barely paint the background of the anti-AI movement/sentiment; they rely entirely on a nuke for that plot point and it NEVER goes deeper than that (when there is SO MUCH you could explore about AI issues and prejudice conflicting with humanity in a film like this). It’s weird to say this, in a movie where you’re given a lot of literal aerial views, but it’s strangely hard to see the scope of this world: What was regular life with AI like? How did the robots even fit into society? What the hell united all of Asia? Why did the army commander say “I’ll see you in Valhala” out of nowhere?? The whole movie brings up more questions than it ever answered, and not in a good or thoughtful way. TL;DR In summary, no meat to the story, and I felt like a horse with blinders on: you can only see a small picture, but you know there should be more depth to what’s going on around you. If you’re looking for commentary on AI and humanity, this isn’t it. At least it was pretty to look at.