In 2010, Gareth Edwards made a masterful debut with Monsters, an indie road movie with a human love story at the center while giant CGI tentacled monsters (done by Edwards himself) lurked in the background. While Monsters was made under a half-million-dollar budget, it was exciting seeing Edwards’ subsequent features that were made on a studio budget, from 2014’s Godzilla to Rogue One, the latter of which made a billion and remains a high point during Disney’s Star Wars era. That said, due to the creative shifts during the making of Rogue One, it did put a pause of Edwards’ career.
Seven years have passed since his time at George Lucas’ space opera, and Edwards returns with the rarest of things: a big-budget original sci-fi movie. Originally titled True Love, The Creator takes place in the distant future where a war is declared between humans and the forces of artificial intelligence. When Joshua Taylor (John David Washington), an ex-special forces agent, is recruited to hunt down and kill the “Creator”, who has developed a mysterious weapon with the power to end the war by destroying mankind itself, he discovers the weapon is in the form of an innocent child (Madeleine Yuna Voyles).
As much as The Creator owes a debt to the many sci-fi films that have explored the positives and negatives of A.I., Edwards’ film seems more relevant through the coincidental similarities, between the film’s premise and SAG-AFTRA’s fears of the film studios using artificial intelligence to replicate the likenesses of actors without compensation. With the recent strikes in Hollywood, along with the ongoing discussion of the use of A.I. in today’s film industry, The Creator aims to present a future that may be consumed by war, but one force of people is fighting for peace.
From a writing standpoint, Edwards and co-writer Chris Weitz aren’t breaking new ground. If you are a sci-fi nerd who has watched the likes of Blade Runner, The Terminator and Akira, the influences are clearly obvious. As this film is about the U.S. Army infiltrating a New Asia that has learned to co-exist with A.I., Edwards even updates the Vietnam War allegory that the aforementioned George Lucas notably used in his creation. Honestly, it would not be unfair to compare it to James Cameron’s Avatar, where the human protagonist finds a new home with what he thought was the enemy, whilst facing off against the human military.
However, watching The Creator reminds you of the indie sensibilities that Edwards presented in Monsters, as like that movie, this is a road movie between the two people, who are both outsiders in their own way, and thus bond through the journey. While James Clyne’s stunning production design and the elaborate visual effects put a fresh look from the robotics to the cyberpunk landscapes, the naturalistic cinematography by Greig Fraser and Oren Soffer serves as a nice contrast in presenting New Asia’s peaceful co-existence between the biological and the sentient. Despite the intensity of the narrative, showing the consequences of war, you will be surprised by the few moments of humor, including the witty opening showing the beginnings of A.I.
Given the grandeur of the overall narrative where there are action sequences that could have served as a climax for a typical actioner, the film does overstay its welcome with a heavy-handed third act. And yet, the whole thing is held together by the central duo of John David Washington and newcomer Madeleine Yuna Voyles. It may be the reluctant parent-child dynamic that you have seen countless times, but seeing the raw emotion they develop throughout the course of the film pulls on the heartstrings.
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