The Creator

5 outta 5

The Creator is an excellent sci-fi film that has epic scope, emotionally and visually. Director and co-writer Gareth Edwards is remixing some thematic moments from his previous film, Rogue One, but that’s fine. It is sort of a Rogue One 2.0 war film combined with a different version of his first film, Monsters, the doomed romance walkabout sci-fi character piece. It seems like it’ll be killer robots versus humans but, like the sci-fi classic Blade Runner, that versus perspective flips as the audience learns more about Artificial Intelligence as the experience goes on. There are lots of elaborate set pieces with heartfelt payoffs for a great sci-fi experience.

In a world where AI have become its own species and are at war with humanity is special forces agent Joshua (John David Washington) and his wife, Maya (Gemma Chan). The US government is attacking the territory where the AI are hiding with their giant mobile weapons platform, NOMAD. Joshua is undercover and searching for the creator of AI which comes as a shock to his wife. Things get even more tragic when the NOMAD platform kills her and a bunch of AI. Years later, Joshua is working a job cleaning up from an AI nuclear terrorist attack, but he is called upon by two military commanders, Howell (Allison Janney) and Andrews (Ralph Ineson). They reveal that Maya is still alive and working with an AI leader and Joshua’s former friend, Harun (Ken Watanabe), on a weapon that could destroy NOMAD and seal the fate of humanity. Joshua enters enemy territory to find this weapon and hopefully his former love but only finds an AI child, Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles), that can control other machines. But the world of AI is complicated, and the advancement of the human armies may wipe out an entire species that only wishes to co-exist in peace.

This film has some distinct Rogue One feel, mostly with the look of the lived in military and robot technology. Also, the big floating weapons platform looks like the big floating shield platform from Rogue One. One common stylistic bit in Edwards’ work is the sense of scale and here it is the epic size of the NOMAD platform. There’s an intimidating visual of the weapons platform tracking lasers focusing on their target before a big boom. The first time it is unleashed Joshua is on the ground and he’s just completely flattened. Worldbuilding and history are revealed in unique ways, like how the nuclear exploded remains of Los Angeles are just a crater where the city used to be. Joshua’s job of digging through the rubble has him wearing a protective suit which is a nifty design of a big bubble anti-radiation mask which feels like a sci-fi movie throwback.

The designs of the AI are neat, with some looking very human except for the holes in the back of their heads, and then there’s some that look more like robots. There’re some interesting intersections of humanity and robots, like when the brain patterns of a dead human can be scanned and imposed upon a synthetic body. There’s an incredibly freaky scene where Howell scans the brain of a dead soldier and puts it in a robot body and it wakes up, screaming and freaked out but Howell only has seconds to pump it for information. The brief moment of resurrection is very weird and very intense. Edwards uses the rare 2.7 aspect ratio which was used for widescreen historical epics like Ben Hur. Apparently, the image had to be trimmed to fit so the only format to see the film properly would be Screen X, the theatres with the screens on the side, to get the truly ultra-wide screen. The action scenes are great, like when walking bombs run down a bridge. There are cool aides too, like when a dog confuses a grenade for a game of fetch to explosive results.

Like the direction, the performances are very real in an extravagant sci-fi setting. Washington’s Joshua starts off in a very happy place with his wife until it literally all explodes in front of him, leading to an extremely bitter character years later. Interestingly, he has some cybernetic limb replacements which shows how integrated technology is in this society. Chan is used sparsely throughout, but her scenes have emotional resonance, especially near the end. His snarky relationship with Alphie is entertaining but their connection becomes deeper. Even though Alphie is a superintelligent AI, they still act like a kid and Voyles shows that dichotomy of real and unnatural. Joshua tries to explain things simply for the kid, like when he shoots a robot, he says he just “switched it off.” Ineson and Janey as the two military commanders have some good moments, like when Janey’s Howell talks about losing her kids to the machines, and Ineson’s commander gets more devious as the film goes on. Watanabe starts as a menacing bad robot leader, but he reveals truth about the relationship between humans and AI.

The Creator offers stunning visuals and emotional payoffs in a sci-fi war epic, and the switch of who is the “bad guy” makes for a compelling watch. The AI may be robots, but they ultimately are more human than humans.