In contemporary Hollywood, with the propensity for inflated budgets leading to entire sets made of green or blue screen and an over-reliance on digital effects, it is difficult to come away from a movie asking, “How did they do that?” Gareth Edwards’s sci-fi action opus The Creator—ironically—instead merits the question, “How did they do that with so little money?” The film’s budget has been an intriguing point of marketing efforts in the days leading up to its release, highlighting the ingenuity of the Godzilla (2014) and Rogue One director’s visual approach, crafting a magnetic blockbuster with shockingly little give compared to some of the industry’s most immense projects. But despite the film’s impressive style, compositing, and incredible influences, its story falls just short of backing up the gloriously constructed future world.
In The Creator, John David Washington plays Joshua, a U.S. military sergeant who lives in New Asia during an undercover assignment to locate “Nirmata,” the mysterious progenitor of the artificial intelligence that nuked Los Angeles not long before the film’s events occur. He marries and subsequently loses Maya (Gemma Chan), who the military believes to be the daughter of Nirmata, in an unexpected strike on his shelter; five years later, the military recruits Joshua to procure an AI weapon meant to take down the U.S.’s orbital weapon, NOMAD, which Joshua discovers is a simulant child. Throughout his journey of delivering the affectionally named “Alphie” to U.S. forces, he naturally becomes morally conflicted by the thought of killing a sentient, innocent being with the mind and appearance of a child. The prospect of finding a seemingly living Maya also drives Joshua, turning Alphie into a means to an end—at least initially.
While this desire to reconnect with his partner and the moral ambiguity of AI propels The Creator’s narrative and leads to some touching and exciting moments, the script often pales compared to similar films in the sci-fi and AI space. The aforementioned visual scope usually takes precedence, and while the scenes drawn from classics like Blade Runner and Apocalypse Now are breathtaking to look at, they don’t usually add anything significant to the plot or even the world-building. Many of the transitional scenes showcase the vision of Edwards, cinematographers Oren Seffer and Greig Fraser, production designer James Clyne, and the skills of Industrial Light & Magic, but they are shockingly devoid of much emotion or meaning, existing to look grand and futuristic.
Meanwhile, the filmmakers capture Joshua and Alphie’s relationship through far more intimate personal scenes. Still, even those interactions lack the emotional depth of something like Blade Runner or Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence, movies that better blur the lines between human and AI psychology and our interpersonal connections and dependencies. Instead, The Creator paints a relatively standard picture of family and community coming under the threat of an overly ambitious and aggressive regime, which does get better as the film rolls along and the audience becomes invested in Joshua and Alphie. However, most other characters, which see very little development, fade into the background.
Whether it is the fact that AI is practically omnipresent in today’s society that tampers the movie’s impact (as opposed to James Cameron’s The Terminator, which effectively instilled the fear of AI into an unknowing audience), or that the messaging is just too shallow, The Creator’s sci-fi story structure is lacking something substantial. On the other hand, I would be remiss to exclude the charming debut performance of Madeleine Yuna Voyles, which is endearing and authentic. The visual efforts, to reiterate, are a remarkable achievement for the film’s “small” budget, combined with some thrilling action elements that Edwards borrows from his Rogue One and other iconic movies. Sci-fi fans will find plenty to enjoy in The Creator, which impresses even with a lackluster narrative and uninteresting characters.
The Creator is out now in theaters.
A person I was talking to recently said it was good enough but really only made them want to watch Blade Runner instead.
Can’t wait for this
Pretty much sums up.my thoughts. I saw an advance screening last week..I really liked the film but the plot seemed to be fairly predictable.. however I thought the world building was excellent. I would happily recommend the film while acknowledging its flaws.