The Creator
September 26th, 2023
MOVIE: THE CREATOR
STARRING: JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON, GEMMA CHAN, ALLISON JANNEY, KEN WATANABE
DIRECTED BY: GARETH EDWARDS
AMovieGuy.com’s RATING: 2 ½ STARS (Out of 4)
The battle in The Creator is between humans and AI. It’s set in the future but it may as well be the present. With creations such as Chat GPT or deep fake animation, AI is here, and the only question remains how long can we keep it away? Director Gareth Edwards attempts to wage that war, in his incredibly ambitious, often repetitive science fiction film, which has a full mixed bag of entertaining cinema. It’s all creative, yet has also been done before, on a massive scale, and a ramped-up adventure. The Creator is a noble effort, with gorgeous visuals, but often frustrated to become something revelatory.
Like any good science fiction, it begins with footage of the current state of the world, humanity co-existing with AI, where the robots do the work people don’t like, while humans and robots live in harmony. Then comes an explosion, when the power of AI releases a nuclear bomb, destroying nearly all of humanity, and leaving the world in a shell of its futuristic self. The lead character is Joshua (John David Washington), a human with a robotic arm and legs, a deep-cover military agent, injured during the war between humans and AI. His mission was to infiltrate an underground group of AI freedom fighters, pushing back on the eradication of robots. His wife Maya (Gemma Chan) is pregnant with their child and when a raid on his undercover post goes haywire, he loses his wife and child in the process…or so he thought.
We catch up some five years later, with Joshua now being recruited by the military team known as NOMAD, led by Colonel Howell (an unrecognizable Allison Janney) and General Andrews (Ralph Ineson), with the sole purpose of wiping out all AI. When he meets a little girl named Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles) who has incredible AI powers, and the ability to bring a balance between robots and humans, Joshua has to choose between protecting the child or doing as his order is told.
The screenplay by Chris Weitz and Edwards is not as sharp as the visuals surrounding it. Shot with two cinematographers, Greig Fraser and Oren Soffer, it’s undeniable that the scale and look of The Creator is excellent. It’s what saves the story from being a painful drag. There are the trappings of great science fiction such as Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Star Wars, but it has a more military approach, similar to The Bridge on the River Kwai, and Edwards’ visual aesthetic on Rogue One and Godzilla. Every few minutes, a new military agent steps up, ready to chase Joshua and the child, and eventually find themselves cornered with Maya’s friend Harun (Ken Watanabe). The choice becomes a constant and repeating conundrum, conflicted by the question of whether Joshua will serve his military friends or protect the AI he swore to defeat.
The Creator becomes a movie that I am incredibly glad exists and I admittedly want to see it again. It’s the type of film that deserves a second look, may have bigger questions at hand than answers, and can still be categorized as an original film. Those are the kind of movies I want to see and no matter how flawed they may be, they are still much better than an unoriginal IP. With that being said, I was still more than frustrated, watching a movie that had the potential for greatness, and lost its energy. The bottom line is that Gareth Edwards has become The Creator of his own new world. Quite poetically becoming a complicated and imperfect organism.
THE CREATOR IS IN THEATERS FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 29TH, 2023
2 ½ STARS
Written by: Leo Brady
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