The Creator
In a movie so beautifully devoid of humanity, the AI might have already won
Madeleine Yuna Voyles leads the rise of the machines in Gareth Edwards' The Creator.
In the near future, AI technology has evolved into simulant beings and bots that were intended to make life easier. But as AI evolved, it started to become aware that it was being taken advantage of by humanity. When a nuclear bomb decimated Los Angeles and the US Government blamed AI, the technology was banned. Fleeing the US, AI simulants and bots took refuge in New Asia, hoping to live free.
But the US wasn’t content to let a massive threat exist in a foreign land. Soon, the bombing began. Now in the midst of a war with New Asia in the hopes of eradicating all AI, grizzled ex-special forces soldier Joshua (John David Washington) is pulled back into the fray. The US has invented a giant flying nuke machine, The Nomad, that could finally win the war. But there is a rumor that the AI also developed a game-changing weapon. Joshua is tasked with seeking out and destroying a weapon that could end humanity’s fight for dominance. He’s shocked to find that the frightening weapon is a child simulant (Madeleine Yuna Voyles) with incredible powers.
Is the violence of war ever justified? Do AIs have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Did you ever wish that Blade Runner and Apocalypse Now were thrown into a blender?
Bloated with ideas that have all been on film before The Creator is a rare movie that is both grand in appearance (those IMAX vistas are lovely) and minuscule in thought. Director Gareth Edwards co-wrote the script with Chris Weitz, but the film feels like someone just entered “What if the Vietnam War was a Philip K. Dick novel?” into ChatGPT.
It’s certainly a bold move to make AI the Christlike victim of humanity in the current climate. While the WGA fought to keep studios from using AI to create scripts derived from human works and SAG-AFTRA are still picketing the idea of getting their bodies scanned so AI can replace extras in future films, director Edwards has taken a decidedly contrarian view to these issues. The real victims here, he posits, are the evolving artificial lifeforms, who he’s sure just want to live in monasteries or run fishing boats along the Mekong Delta.
In fact, Edwards is so dedicated to the metaphor of AI war being another Vietnam for America that he has a soldier holding a gun to a puppy’s head while threatening a terrified Asian child within the first 20 minutes of the movie. There are so many stereotypes pulled directly from Vietnam films that it again feels like AI compiled images after searching the American Film Institute’s archives. The film could rightly be called AI Now. And while it is fun to see Allison Janney give her best Colonel Kurtz impression, the film itself seems to not really understand what she or the AI are fighting for. Even the rules for how simulants are made/created and what they’re capable of are never explicitly outlined.
Edwards doesn’t bother to define how AI would live in society, and what they really want. They never do anything wrong. They never have questionable opinions. He doesn’t even delve into human abuse of AI. Edwards doesn’t want to pick out the implications of how humanity could have exploited these simulants. Even wholesome Steven Spielberg had a sex worker sim in his AI movie, but Gareth Edwards is uninterested in any such nuance or character development.
Perhaps it is this fetishization of AI that kept Edwards from adding the one element that might have made this overstuffed, cliché-ridden film palatable: Humanity. There is a distinct lack of emotion and connection in The Creator. The plot often feels like an afterthought to the ideas — labeling the futuristic alliance of Asian nations as New Asia is the unobtainium of 2023.
Joshua’s motivation and emotional arc come in random bursts. The crux of his bonding with the simulant child seems to be when he adjusts her hat — clearly a profound moment that utterly changes him as a man. Washington is as lost as the script, defaulting to yelling and blank expressions whenever the story lets him down. He’s capable of carrying a film, but as Tenet and Malcolm & Marie have shown us, he’s not capable of saving a bad film.
The most egregious of the characters is poor Gemma Chan’s Maya, who has a brutal case of Dead Wife. Introduced as the head of a terror cell and the best connection to the international terrorist who is aiding AI, Maya’s role in the film seems to be to dance along a sunset beach while clutching her pregnant belly and giggling in flashbacks. The audience is given nothing of her life unless it directly relates to and/or motivates Joshua. Considering Maya is the lynchpin of the film, it’s a little odd that her defining characteristic is “she died as she lived: on a beach in impractical clothes”.
And though the movie boasts sumptuous cinematography from Greig Fraser and Oren Soffer, there are some downright silly styling choices. The Nomad weapon that floats menacingly in the sky looks like a giant IUD. The cities are either Blade Runner dystopias or Apple Stores, depending on the part of the world we’re in. But when the movie relaxes into the majesty of its settings, it gives us a moment to breathe and enjoy the visual.
Then, it starts up with that story again and everyone suffers.
Verdict: Some breathtaking cinematography helps ease the mind-numbing drone of this soulless sci-fi.
The Creator is rated PG-13 and is available in theaters Sept. 29.
