By Elias Savada.
With all the talk of artificial intelligence taking over our lives, this technically proficient film may be timely, but its futuristic concept – mankind vs. an enemy of its own making – flails about as a misguided, muddled search for (non-)human salvation.”
I can’t accept the overblown and cliched premise that is The Creator, an $80 million “original” high-tech action thriller from director Gareth Edwards, who helmed Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and the 2014 version of Godzilla. With all the talk of artificial intelligence taking over our lives, this technically proficient film may be timely, but its futuristic concept – mankind vs. an enemy of its own making – flails about as a misguided, muddled search for (non-)human salvation.
Its moral compass spins about without much direction, as an apparently civilization-ending weapon befriends an ex-special forces agent. We’re supposed to believe that this deterrent, disguised as a six-year-old child (Madeleine Yuna Voyles) and the war-torn soldier, Joshua (John David Washington), with orders to capture and destroy, will have a revelatory war-ending, father-daughter falling in. Maybe the writers (Edwards and Chris Weitz) were watching the 1986 Eddie Murphy film The Golden Child, and they switched a few things around in that “buddy” fantasy comedy to arrive at the current effort. Viewers may wonder, if we are to survive as a species, friendly or not, should we expect that The Creator’s violent epithet should be something to cheer about?
I think not.
Sure, it’s supposedly a visually stunning triumph, but I could not get much of that at the IMAX preview screening I attended. There was something slightly (i.e., annoyingly) out of alignment. They didn’t stop the film to fix this, so every time I tried to focus on something in the background, I couldn’t. Maybe it was the fact this is the first time an IMAX film was shot on a prosumer camera, the compact Sony FX3. No matter. I didn’t like the film enough to take it in at a second preview.
Its moral compass spins about without much direction….”
The ebb and flow of allegiances as this cautionary tale begins about 40 years in our future, with an atomic blast destroying Los Angeles, dropped by the A.I. entities, who (that?) are very human-looking robots called simulants. They have a well-engineered horizonal hole in their skulls, so you can see through the heads. The back of their skulls are gone.
The Western nations ban AI, but the East continues to further develop the technology. For American Joshua, the war has taken a personal toll with the supposed death of his wife, Maya (Gemma Chan), who he met doing undercover work in Asia. The writers shoehorn in a subplot surrounding her, but it is merely a distraction from the constant shootings, blastings, bombings, running, chasing, etc. that is going on in the foreground.
Five years later, Joshua is part of a mission in New Asia, hunting for “the weapon” on orders and jingoistic banter from his stern superior, Colonel Jean Howell (Allison Janney!). He gets confused and goes AWOL, sort of, with you know who.
There are bits of Apocalypse Now (also filmed in Southeast Asia) and Blade Runner in here, but the vibe is nowhere close to either of those classics.
Problems abound in this scenario. This “weapon” is hidden deep in a large military facility, behind huge security. Why not a hide-in-plain-site approach for such a small “device”?. Why keep it locked up at all? If this is the mammoth world war the film lets us believe, who is footing the bill to build such a vast military complex AND Nomad, an always airborne huge flying fortress the U.S. uses to stalk the enemy with lasers and weapons. Of course, I’ve always wondered who footed the bill for the Death Star.
Newcomer Voyles channels the innocent child fairly well, considering she is a weapon of mass destruction. Weird is that she uses her hands cupped in prayer formation to control electronics, with capabilities “beyond anything I’ve seen” mouths one of the cast members. Yeah, it’s a pretty lame on-off switch.
So, The Creator is a bust. A plodding one, too. I wasn’t really rooting for anyone – or anything – and the film doesn’t offer many peaceful moments in its dash to this and that. Of course, being the Far East, the production team decided to add in some simulant monks in robes. AI’s got religion!
The Creator is a battle of good vs. bad, but you end up not caring who wins or loses. We’re doomed if we keep getting offered films like this.
Elias Savada is a movie copyright researcher, critic, craft beer geek, and avid genealogist based in Bethesda, Maryland. He helps program the Spooky Movie International Movie Film Festival, and previously reviewed for Film Threat and Nitrate Online. He is an executive producer of the horror film German Angst and the documentary Nuts! He co-authored, with David J. Skal, Dark Carnival: the Secret World of Tod Browning (a revised edition will be published by Centipede Press).