My wife and I saw the early screening last night in IMAX. The visuals live up to the hype, but honestly we were both very disappointed with... everything else. The story was as generic as it seemed in the trailers, and it goes on way longer than it should. The acting was fine, I guess. The actors put in work, they just didn't have anything good to work with.

Everything that happens simply happens to serve the plot, not the characters. No one ever acts like a normal person, they are all just rote movie characters like it's paint-by-numbers. And the editing is atrocious. There's a lot of off-screen exposition, like they had to fill in story gaps. Similarly, scenes will just kinda end. Characters get into a predicament that seems impossible to escape? Cut away! Explain what happened? Nah, just keep moving cause we've got plot points we have to hit, and fast cause the audience certainly already knows where this is all heading anyway.

I love supporting original sci-fi in theaters, but this is just an unoriginal, bad movie imo.

I liked the movie a lot. It won't be a staple of the cinema or sci-fi, but it's a nice movie imo.

The visuals and techs are cool. The story was interesting IMO. The characters are not original, nor is the scenario, but the story is original in the theme it talks about and how it mixes that with sci-fi is interesting. It's not a common take on the fight against machines too.

Mild Spoiler : it's a parallel to 9/11 and how the US then go on a crusade against terrorism with dubious reasons.

Heavier spoiler (20min in the movie) : the movie is about racism and how a government can go on a crusade out of fear from racial replacement. It's interesting that it's also about robots, which brings the subjects of robots living with humans, transhumanism and the evolution of humans with technology.

Convoluted and a mess of a movie. Felt super disconnected from the characters. Amazing world, special and visual effects. Wanted more of that. An absolute treat for the eyes and imagination but just that everything else was generic, lackluster, disappointing, nonsensical, not properly explained or the movie just jumps around willy Nilly and can be confusing to say the least. I really wanted to like it because I love sci fi and we don't get enough of this sort of thing, but the end result isn't greater than the sum of its parts. Perhaps a director's cut is required/ necessary, as it really seemed like good chunks of the movie were missing.

I really hope this movie is good. We need original IPs like this to succeed.

Intrigued about this movie, I might go watch it the weekend, but not too sure.

Curious to see what other people think!

Wow. This was…bad. Visually stunning but that’s about it. Screenplay was trite and inept. John David Washington was awful. It’s quite frustrating because it could’ve been something more. The production design was so gorgeous and I generally enjoyed the world building. It’s the lack of any character development and the clunky screenplay that’s really dragging this down. What a disappointment.

Also, go home Hans Zimmer. That score was so heavy-handed, it drove me fucking crazy.

Seeing this tomorrow. Watched a YouTube review or two that got me kinda hyped but you guys brought me back down to ground level. Bummer if it really turns out to be that generic.

Not bad, the visuals were astounding, story wise it's Avatar/Pocahontas but with AI instead of blue dudes/natives, the Middle East and 9/11 parallel was very clear, maybe too clear (>!I'll save you from American!<),

What an awesome movie. I'm not on board with transhumanism but I must say they still make you feel for the robots to some degree. You don't have to buy into the ideology to enjoy this film.

Also, like, how the heck are child actors this good?? Like it should have been illegal for Madeleine Yuna Voyles to be as great as she was in this movie. Bravo.

Yeah I'll echo what everyone else is saying, the visuals and art direction are stellar, some of the best original sci-fi art in the last decade, rivaling Dune and Avatar - the story is as generic of an action movie as you can get. It's a fun movie tho, I enjoyed my watch, but it's not a "run out and see" kinda movie unless you're a VFX nerd like me.

looks like a mashup of call of duty, district 9, terminator, and misc super magical golden child stories

World ending weapon in the form of a child? Never seen that before

Why create the discussion thread before the movies even released?