Review: “The Creator”

A global war between humans and artificial intelligence? The premise of The Creator couldn’t be more timely if Gareth Edwards’ tried, with even the film’s trailer premiering mere days after SAG-AFTRA followed the WGA on strike, better protections for actors and writers regarding the increasing use of A.I. in film production being one of their primary provisions. The Creator, which Edwards directed and co-wrote alongside Chris Weitz, is one of innumerable science fiction movies that centers its conflict around A.I., and yet it is one of the rare blockbusters in the genre nowadays that stems from an original story and an original vision.

The Creator is set somewhere around the year 2070, a war between A.I. and various Western countries having launched a decade earlier when artificial intelligence created and enslaved by the U.S. government detonated a nuclear warhead over Los Angeles in retaliation. The U.S. military makes it their special mission to locate and kill Nirmata, the creator behind the A.I. advancements. The Creator immediately sets itself up as distinctively stylish film, all of this information being conveyed through a montage of retro news reports. Years later, Army undercover operative Joshua Taylor (John David Washington) is married to and expecting a child with Maya (Gemma Chan), who is believed to be Nirmata’s daughter. A strike on their home committed by U.S. Army forces from the space station the USS NOMAD exposes Joshua’s cover and kills Maya, who, betrayed, chooses to go fight with her people instead of staying with him. The film then jumps ahead a few more years, and we find a still-grieving Joshua working a nondescript custodial job when he is approached by Army Colonel Howell (Allison Janney) and General Andrews (Ralph Ineson), who inform him that Maya is still alive and recruit him to find and destroy a new weapon Nirmata has engineered that’s powerful enough to destroy humanity. Joshua and his team find the weapon easily enough, but the mission is complicated by his realization of the form the weapon takes: a robotic child who Joshua dubs “Alphie” (played by Madeleine Yuna Voyles, effortlessly endearing in her film debut), who possesses a sort-of Force-like ability to manipulate technology.

The Creator boasts imaginative world-building and a distinct look driven by practical location shooting and a minimal use of green screen and computer effects. The technical elements across the board, in fact, nicely pull the film together, from Hans Zimmer’s score to the editing that cuts together moments past and present that convey Joshua’s emotional state in a way that Washington isn’t always able to (although his performance here is noticeably less stilted compared to his previous work). The original vision earns The Creator some extra points on its own, derivative of an amalgamation of other sci-fi works though it may be (Edwards cited such movies as Blade Runner as inspirations, but even the influence of Star Wars is evident, especially knowing that Edwards directed the series’ most grounded entry, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), but the impressiveness of the venture is undermined by the film’s numerous flaws.

The narrative is both too convoluted, and too simple; Edwards creates a conflict between humans and A.I., but doesn’t have much of substance to say about either the nature of humanity or the terrifying potential of technology, or what happens when those two things intersect. Or perhaps it is less that he doesn’t have anything substantive to say, and more that he doesn’t know what he wants to say at all. He opts instead for a more sentimental story—Joshua is driven first by the need to find his wife, then by his burgeoning affection for Alphie—which is fine, but that doesn’t compensate for its other shortcomings. When the A.I. first begins its uprisings, the world essentially becomes split in two: Western countries allying together to combat the technology, Asian countries breaking off into one big country known as New Asia, where the citizens continue to embrace the technology. This homogenization of Asian culture is common to sci-fi, but it’s particularly uncomfortable here, where it’s noticeable that Edwards is picking and choosing the elements from various separate Asian cultures he wants to represent both in his characters and setting and lumping them together into an aesthetic that can only broadly be described as “Asian.” The only Asian character of note besides Chan is Ken Watanabe as a New Asian soldier, but as neither a clear antagonist or good guy, he isn’t given much of interest to do. The rest of the characters are merely backdrop for the American characters to play against; there could be an intriguing racial angle to explore there, but Edwards clearly isn’t very interested in exploring that (nor is he necessarily the right person to do so). Despite all that, I wouldn’t be mad to see more movies like The Creator, which for all its fumbles at least has a modicum of ambition behind it, and visual splendor to boot.

The Creator is now playing in theaters. Runtime: 133 minutes. Rated PG-13.