2023, Sang-ho Yeon (Train to Busan) -- Netflix
Anywayz, I did end up watching yet another middling treatise on AI and fancy robotics AI, this time from South Korea. I had originally assumed it would take the typically American path, in that a movie about a combat AI based on a legendary soldier would be all about the combat. Interestingly enough, and boring AF to a lot of the public reviewers, it was more about the utilization of AI, and incipient rights. In this world's future, the environment has gone awry (as expected) and the waters risen, flooding most of the cities. Instead of fixing things locally, most people escape to orbiting rings, some of which almost immediately try to secede from their Earth bound leaders. The goals of the two factions are a bit washed over, pun intended, but there is a war, using hyper capable soldiers and robots... so many robots.
The movie picks up as an Earth based AI company attempts to perfect the combat soldier via a AI driven simulation of the last battle fought by super soldier Yun Jung-yi. This simulation, is trying to push past whatever caused her to fail to win the battle, and will apply that success to The Best Combat AI Ever. The program is led by her adult daughter, under the auspices of an exuberant and annoying Director. Its been a long time since that battle took her mom from her, and this affords her opportunity to feel like there is still a connection.
Interestingly enough, the movie never actually has any true battles between the factions. Its entirely set in the facility where they experiment on Jung_E. You see, in this world, AI is not so much as fabricated from scratch, but cloned from dead people. When someone dies, they have a number of choices - be digitally cloned and housed in a robot shell with full human rights, or down the spectrum to digital copy with no rights, and they can do with your mind as they see fit, BUT their loved ones get a stipend -- basically sell your relatives to the corporation. Jung_E's family did that, because being a super mercenary paid well but all the money went to fighting her daughter's illness. Said daughter obviously recovered, and is now stuck in a terrible dilemma, forced to watch her mother's likeness tortured day in and day out.
So, while the movie was not as much about the war as an American copy would have been, there is not much weight behind the emotional impact or philosophical impacts it wants to make. Like many Korean movies, families torn apart by terrible circumstances are depicted through long crying jags and terrible choices. There are some interesting ideas presented but they are more supplanted by emotional reactions that get a bit tiresome. And the whole exploitation of digitally cloned humans is barely touched upon, and really only culminates in a sex bot joke.
That said, the action scenes are spectacular. The robot designs, the factory layout (all those impractical angles and jagged metal bits jutting out everywhere) and the water logged PA world is wonderfully depicted. But the competing choices of Robot Philosophy vs Pew Pew Pew was a loss.
The world building sounds much more involved than the trailers led me to believe. I'll stick this on the list for a Sunday afternoon watch.
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