The Creator
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M, 133 minutes
Three stars
Robots, androids, artificial intelligence - this stuff is prime sci-fi fodder.
Movies which have made huge impacts on the pop cultural sphere deal with these ideas, from 2001: A Space Odyssey back in the day, to Blade Runner, the Terminator franchise, I, Robot, and, of course, Steven Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence.
There are shades of all these films in the highly publicised The Creator, Rogue One director Gareth Edwards' latest offering.
The film is set in 2065, and the world looks vastly different to now. After embracing the "more human than human" AI simulants - who have human faces, capable of expressing all emotion and seemingly having their own feelings, despite being very clearly robots due to the machinery visible on the back half of their heads - the world has devolved into war.
The Americans are leading the charge against AI after a missile strike killed scores of people in LA. But people in "New Asia" have embraced the simulants, and they live harmoniously side by side.
Our story kicks into gear with former soldier Joshua (John David Washington, Tenet) brought back in the field to destroy the "alpha one" weapon created by Nirmata, the godlike figure who created AI in New Asia. As the opening prologue tells us, Joshua used to be undercover in the community around Nirmata, and was married to one of their closest figures, Maya (Gemma Chan, Eternals, seemingly sporting an Australian accent for unexplained reasons) before a raid goes all wrong. He agrees to go on the mission in the hopes of finding Maya again, but instead he finds the weapon - an unassuming AI child.
This on-the-run-with-a-special-child thing is well worn territory on screen, from Stranger Things to Firestarter to The Mandalorian to Terminator 2. So of course we get all the culture clash-type bonding moments between Joshua and the child, now named Alphie (and played well by the young Madeleine Yuna Voyles). Wherever they go, they are pursued by either the Americans (hellbent on destroying the "weapon" and all AI) or the AI themselves (determined to bring Alphie back into the fold). Allison Janney's Colonel Howell leads the American contingent in a markedly different role for the Oscar winner, while Ken Watanabe leads the simulants.
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The movie is being sold as a rumination on AI, something Edwards has touched on as the acting and writing unions strike for protections against AI taking over aspects of their jobs. But there's no real clear message in The Creator about AI. We don't delve into the finer details of the robots enough to really know what we're dealing with. Perhaps somewhere along the line in the development of this script (which was co-written with About a Boy writer-director Chris Weitz) there was more exposition on the rules of this AI world, but it was pared down in favour of an action-heavy adventure.
Which is great if you go into this movie looking for pure entertainment and explosions. Edwards has a great eye for crafting beautifully cinematic action moments. The Creator is very visually reminiscent of Rogue One. Every moment is a visual feast, and the cinematography by Greig Fraser and Oren Soffer is truly stunning. At the very least, The Creator is a beautiful movie. This is aided by the moving score from living legend Hans Zimmer.