“The Creator” Review
A robotic child named Alfie (Madeline Yuna Voyles) may be the hope to ending a longstanding war between the United States and Artificial Intelligence in “The Creator,” a science fiction epic from Gareth Edwards.
It’s strange when a film is objectively good but you still find yourself detached from it. You know what you’re watching is excellent and you give kudos to the filmmakers but you personally can’t connect the film. For me, this was the case with “The Creator” which is a welcome return to both science fiction and original filmmaking from director and screenwriter Gareth Edwards.
Set in the not too distant future (cue the theme song from “Mystery Science Theater 3000”) in the year 2070, the United States of America has been at war with Artificial Intelligence and robotic beings called simulants ever since a nuclear warhead decimated Los Angeles 15 years prior. With the last of AI driven into a part of the world known as New Asia, the United States sends in a retired military sergeant named Joshua Taylor (John David Washington) to find the ultimate weapon of AI technology which could turn the tide of the war with the promise that finding this weapon could lead to Josh being reunited with his wife Maya (Gemma Chan), an AI freedom fighter who was thought to have died five years ago. When Joshua finds that the weapon is a simulant in the form of a child (Madeline Yuna Voyles), they go on a journey through the world of the AI liberation movement to figure out a way to end this war.
What makes Gareth Edwards, the director of 2014’s “Godzilla” and “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” so distinctive in the world of science fiction filmmaking is how immersive and gritty they are. Watching “Rogue One” made me feel like I was actually in this galactic conflict. While “The Creator” has a smaller environment, sticking to Earth as the main setting, it’s no less wondrous in this technologically advanced future that still has enough resemblance to our present to make it interesting.
In this world, John David Washington gives a remarkable performance as this jaded man who struggles with his own humanity in this war. With both sides taking so much from him, Joshua has become apathetic to the struggles of both America and the machines. When an opportunity to see his wife emerges, that’s when Joshua takes action. The connection that develops between Joshua and the child he finds, dubbed “Alphie,” is quite interesting because we know that Joshua doesn’t consider simulants people, referring to them as “it” rather than “he,” “she” or “they,” despite the fact that they appear to have just as complicated of an emotional and logical spectrum as humans. But you see this attitude slowly change and it is seamless.
Madeline Yuna Voyles is spectacular with a performance that truly makes you believe in these robotic beings. When we first meet Alfie, we see that she’s been isolated from most people. The more time she spends with both simulants and their human allies, the more she finds value in both races and seeks to end this war. Not only is she the first child simulant but she also is more advanced than any model ever seen before. While her existence certainly fulfills the “Messiah” role that is required in most science fiction stories, the humility and good nature that Alfie displays makes this cliché feel fresh enough.
Where “The Creator” really excels is in its world building and atmosphere. The film’s visual effects are remarkable and, with a production budget of just $80 million (compare that to “Avatar: The Way of Water’s” budget of over $400 million), “The Creator” has achieved something that bigger films have spent hundreds of millions to not accomplish. It’s truly remarkable that this much money has been used on a film that isn’t based on a book, television show, video game, comic book, manga or any other preexisting IP.
Not once do any of these effects look fake. Several simulants, who are designed to look like humans, have visible mechanical components on display and Joshua Taylor himself is missing an arm and must use a robotic prosthetic which he takes on and off a few times as a way for the film to show off. With overworked visual effects artists and lackluster CGI effects being an unfortunate element of many recent blockbusters, it’s great to see when a small, well-compensated crew pulls off some of the best effects of the year.
Furthering the atmosphere is how well everything is shot with two directors of photography, Oren Soffer and Greig Fraser, beautifully capturing this incredible imagery. Fraser, whose previous work has included “Rogue One,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Dune” and its upcoming sequel, and Soffer know that whenever anything incredible is on display, there should be humans and/or simulants on screen as well to give everything a sense of awe-inspiring scale.
In the film’s script, I love how AI isn’t the bad guy. Rather, it’s humanity’s unwillingness to coexist with our creation. While the idea of Artificial Intelligence being a force for good has been seen in films like “Blade Runner” and “A.I. Artificial Intelligence,” the vast majority of science fiction films centered on the technology haven’t been kind towards it. With the current debate around AI only growing and recent films like “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part One” continuing to depict it as a villain, this kind of film has a refreshing twist on the whole thing.
However, despite all of the praise that I can bring for “The Creator’s” aesthetic, visual effects, performances and originality in a cinematic landscape where everything is based on something else, I just didn’t have the connection that I craved. All the pieces are there for a grand science fiction epic but I found myself enjoying the characters from a distance, I wasn’t really immersed in their struggle nor the environment which is what science fiction is all about. Instead of being invested in this conflict, I was just watching the film pan out with little emotional consequence.
While some have derided “The Creator” for having many similarities to other science fiction films, I feel that there’s enough original ideas presented to justify its existence. But instead of getting the next big science fiction film that will define an era of filmmaking, I got a perfectly fine film that just didn’t register with me on the same level as films like “Arrival” or “Ad Astra.”
