*/****
starring John David Washington, Gemma Chan, Ken Watanabe, Allison Janney
screenplay by Gareth Edwards and Chris Weitz
directed by Gareth Edwards

by Walter Chaw Fifty-three minutes into Gareth Edwards’s The Creator, there is a “What is Heaven?” talk between a hardened American soldier broken by grief and regret and a little Asian kid who happens to be a potentially world-destroying cyborg. The cyborg asks the question, and the G.I. says it’s where people go when they’re turned off, then clarifies that he won’t be going there because only good people get into Heaven. The A.I. then observes they have something in common, as it, too, will be denied entrance to Heaven as a non-person and, it goes without saying, non-Christian. I think this is maybe a critique of Christianity, which believes that the 69% of people on this planet who do not share their beliefs will literally burn for an eternity in a lake of fire. Or perhaps it’s a critique of American exceptionalism that believes we have the corner on morality, even as the country’s engaged in vicious dynastic colonialism and has been since its conception. Mostly, and accidentally, it’s a meta-critique of how whenever white creators seek to get all dewy-eyed about trans-humanism (see: Cloud Atlas), they tend to use Asian bodies as the battleground for their philosophical evolution, thus exposing a bias that should probably be examined with the help of non-white creators involved in the decision-making process. Why is it, they might ask these science-fictional advisors and creators, that when you talk about spiritual thought-leaders who transcend this mortal plane, the first thing you think of is a magical, mystical Oriental? Think hard.

*/****
starring Adam Driver, Ariana Greenblatt, Chloe Coleman, Nika King
written and directed by Scott Beck & Bryan Woods

by Walter Chaw Bryan Woods and Scott Beck’s 65 is a straight-line exercise: You are familiar with where it begins, you are familiar with where it ends, and you are familiar with the line it travels. It starts with a man of action mourning a lost child. He has an opportunity to become a surrogate father to a kid who has lost her parents. Their time in our company ends with them jetting off to further adventures. If it’s true there are only one or two stories in the Western canon, then it’s not about the what but the how. The how of 65 is piew piew piew lasers and rrrrraaaawr rwar rwaaar! dinosaurs. When I was in elementary school, my best friend and I decided the greatest movie ever would involve aliens fighting dinosaurs, because, as children, we were undemanding of our entertainment to do anything beyond satisfy the most simplistic desires of our pea-sized lizard brains. We kept spending eighty 1980s dollars on Atari 2600 games because we could imagine they looked good. It was during this period that I saw most of the terrible movies I still love unconditionally for their ability to remind me of how much more promise the world seemed to hold back then. I even have an Atari 2600 connected and in working order. I’ve been grateful to have grown out of being that easy to please, though now I can’t think of a single reason why.