Movie Review: "The Creator"; A Visually Beautiful Yet Narratively Deficient Sci-Fi Film
7/12 ForReel Score | 3 Stars
If there has been an inescapable topic of 2023, it has been Artificial Intelligence (AI). We've seen large language models grow by leaps and bounds in the last year, and Hollywood writers and performers striking - at least in part - over the idea of using AI in creating film and television. AI has always permeated the landscape of science fiction, and it feels only fitting that this year, we'd get a movie heavily invested in the topic.
Gareth Edwards’ The Creator is a movie with many ideas about AI and where it might go. It wants to ask questions about the nature of the self and the soul, our creations and how we treat them. Unfortunately, the film falls flat on almost all fronts regarding these questions.
Image courtesy of 20th Century Studios
It's a shame, too, since The Creator is easily one of the best-looking movies of the year, and the world it creates is deep in the details and feels both lived in and plausible. It's not an exaggeration to say that the film is a triumph of world-building and effects (even if it falls into some orientalist tropes, but more on that in a moment).
Set some 40 years in the future, AI is out in the world, but the world is sundered. Created to help humanity, it is revealed that some ten years before the story, AI attacked the United States with a nuclear weapon, obliterating the city of Los Angeles and resulting in the US outlawing their very existence, building an orbital space station capable of launching devastating missile attacks – North American Orbital Mobile Aerospace Defense, or NOMAD – and these beings fleeing to Asia.
Joshua Taylor (John David Washington, Tenet) is a former special forces soldier and undercover operative for the United States who spent years on the ground infiltrating the AI's resistance organization and is sent back in to find his supposedly deceased wife Maya (Gemma Chan, The Eternals), and the mysterious Nirmata, the creator of AI. When he gets there, he doesn't find either; he finds a young child AI (Madeleine Yuna Voyles) with the power to connect to electronic devices around her. Desperate to find Maya, he becomes this child's protector, and they set out on a quest across Asia to find her.
Image courtesy of 20th Century Studios
Here is where we run into one of the film's fundamental issues: its treatment of Asia and Asian cultures in general. Edwards does an excellent job of setting up the United States as the bad guys, breaching Asian territory and killing its citizens – much like they do in certain parts of the natural world – but while there's one brief glimpse of Vietnam on a map, the film never defines where they are in Asia and offers a mish-mash of cultural touch points and characters. Ultimately, it feels like Edwards is trying to be reverent of these various cultures but takes such a shallow approach that it feels fetishistic and accidentally turns an entire region of the world into something monolithic.
Similarly, the story is a mish-mash of influences, notably Star Wars. There's a character with techno-kinetic powers, a hero trying to redeem himself thanks to a familial relationship, and an orbital space station capable of destroying the world they must destroy by the film's end. Even casting the United States as the bad guys harkens back to George Lucas using Star Wars as an allegory for the Vietnam War. There's also a tropical island set battle between the rebel forces and the United States that involves giant mechanized tanks that feels a lot like Edwards remaking his Battle of Scarif from Rogue One, a film that was "fixed" by other filmmakers before its release.
Still, it's difficult not to recommend the film. Edwards has a particular gift for visuals, and The Creator is no exception. It's even more impressive when you consider the film's budget of only around $80 million, far less than the going average of $300 million or more from the likes of Marvel and DC, and that the effects are all far more effective than many (or most?) of the films those studios have made. The Creator is a well-intentioned misfire, but it's one worth seeing not only to decide for yourself, but to support filmmaking with purpose, and that isn't already connected to a major franchise.
Acting and Casting - 1 | Visual Effects and Editing - 2 | Story and Message - 1 | Entertainment Value - 1 | Music Score and Soundtrack - 1 | Reviewer's Preference - 1 | What does this mean?