Returning to moviemaking for the first time since 2016’s triumphant Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, director/co-writer Gareth Edwards brings us his first non-franchise film since his debut, Monsters (which earned him the job directing 2014’s Godzilla). His visual effects background is on full display with The Creator, a universe-building, epic science-fiction action piece set only a few decades in the future—a future when humans and advanced robots (generically referred to as AI) are at war. To be more precise, humans are at war with robots because of an incident in Los Angeles a few years earlier, in which a nuclear weapon was detonated (allegedly by AI), killing millions. In reasponse, America and its allies decide the world doesn't need AI any longer and sets out to destroy every last robot. But on the Asian continent, many nations defend the use of AI, and so a full-scale war is brewing between nations over the technology, in what is clearly the early days of World War III.
Against this backdrop, former special forces agent Joshua (John David Washington) has embedded himself with AI somewhere in Asia, along with his loving, pregnant wife Maya (Gemma Chan), when American forces known as Nomad begin approaching the area, using what appears to be planet-scanning technology to locate AI. Before long, a full-scale attack begins with Joshua barely surviving while his wife and many others, both humans and AI, are wiped out. Years later, a high-ranking general (Ralph Ineson) shows up at Joshua’s isolated home asking if he wants to go back into Asia to track down a supposedly war-ending weapon. Joshua wants nothing to do with it until the general reveals footage that shows that Maya is still alive and working with the so-called advanced AI creator of this weapon. Before long, Joshua and a team of elite operatives (led by a kick-ass Allison Janney as Col. Howell) journey into enemy territory, where he finds that the weapon in question is an AI that has taken the form of a young child he names Alpha (newcomer Madeleine Yuna Voyles).
As an immersive and technically perfect science-fiction work, The Creator is a remarkable achievement. Yes, it pays homage or borrows from established sci-fi stories—everything does these days—but more importantly, it digs deeper into areas of social criticism and the intersection between technology and faith in ways that are rarely touched upon outside of literature. Co-written by Edwards and his Rogue One co-writer Chris Weitz, the movie is especially tough on America’s foreign affairs policy, the one that we have no issues moving into and demolishing lands if they don’t agree with our policies or if they have a resource we need. There are moments in this film that seem pulled right out of a Vietnam War story, with soldiers putting guns to the heads of Asian children in order to extract information out if their parents.
But perhaps more fascinating are the ways Edwards touches upon religion. Outside of the title, whenever Alpha uses her powers to control anything electronic, she motions like she’s praying (kind of like she’s using The Force). And it soon becomes clear that the way she could end this war isn’t by eliminating humans from the planet some some bomb; she’d end it by shutting down everything that could make war, forcing humans to see that AI isn’t a threat to them. Edwards understand that Americans have always seemed to operate best, most efficiently and in a unified way when we have a common enemy that surpasses politics, and AI fits that bill perfectly. The film’s real weapon is young Voyles, who is just the right blend of adorable, helpless and wise to get Joshua to forget his mission when he finds her, immediately wanting to protect her in the hope that she’ll lead him to his wife. She immediately owns our hearts, and I knew there was a good chance that at some point in The Creator, I was going to cry because of her. Her journey reminded me of that age-old question about Jesus appearing to us today: would we even recognize him, or would we just call him a dirty hippie and kick him down the sidewalk?
The film is mostly bold spectacle and intimate drama. The scope of both the visuals and the vast storytelling is not just ambitious, but it also works completely, and will see the film compared to movies like i or Terminator, but I’ll throw in a more accurate and worthy comparison with Apocalypse Now. The one thing The Creator doesn’t do much of is address the AI question with any real depth, and that’s simply because a philosophical discussion about AI isn’t what this movie is about. The Creator is very much about human behavior, and how it hasn’t changed much in hundreds of years—it’s selfish by design and destructive in its execution. And yet, this story of the journey that Joshua and Alpha take is compelling, hopeful, and stunningly realized. Time will tell if it enters the lexicon as one of the greatest films of its kind, but it’s certainly one of my favorite of the year.
The film is now playing in theaters.
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