The creative behind The Creator – a sci-fi action film about AI and a rare original with no franchise ties – is director Gareth Edwards.
He’s a guy with a gift for visual effects-driven, gritty-looking genre films dating back to his remarkable 2010 DIY debut feature Monsters. The Englishman’s 2014 Godzilla revival was surprisingly good, as was his Star Wars one-off Rogue One.
His latest movie arrives as the conversation about AI has escaped into the real world from the labs and digital effects houses. It figured in the dispute between studios and striking writers and actors. So, prescient.
Ironically, perhaps, The Creator is a film where those playing the humans aren’t as convincing as real people as those playing the human-faced, AI-powered “simulants”. That’s especially so of hero John David Washington, who, in 2020, was the equally dull centre of Christopher Nolan’s tedious sci-fi action film Tenet.
And it’s a movie about AI which can feel like it’s been created by AI, as if many other movies have been data-scraped into this.
Yes, it can look spectacular. It’s just that its story is such a weirdly wonky one, as if someone spent an afternoon bashing prompts into ChatGPT.
We now interrupt this review to reveal what those instructions might have been:
“We want a script that is about AI and robots and in between human-like robots, like Blade Runner.
“We also want it to be about the Vietnam War, only in the future. But still Apocalypse Now kind of vibe. But fudge the Asian geopolitics, please, and don’t mention China.
“We need a nuclear strike on American soil to kick it off. Not the full Terminator but more a 9/11 kind of deal. America blames AI and eradicates it in the West. But because they make all the phones there, or something, AI is hiding out in Asia.
“So, a US killer space station is the response, kind of a Death Star, Avengers hover-base deal. The lead guy must find a robo-kid because the kid is the next big AI weapon. Only, it’s a kid, so the guy decides to protect it. Why? Please insert a twist. Anything will do. Maybe a woman?
“Let’s call Vietnam and everywhere around it New Asia! Think zen, tech, rice paddy kind of place. Think Buddhist monk simulants in the Himalayas? That’s not far from Vietnam, right? And this is New Asia, right? It’s not like there are separate countries or cultures or anything. Again, Google it if you need to.
“We need serious chapter headings throughout, with some Asian writing. Please add elements of that post-apocalyptic thing – Matt Damon with the space station – that nobody watched. Oh, and Blade Runner and Avatar (the first one), too, and some of those Japanese anime things.
“Chuck in hints of Dr Strangelove and 2001, so reviewers can feel a bit smug. If you could harvest the designs that Wētā Workshop has done for sci-fi stuff before, cool. Dialogue? Whatever you think, really. Dude, you’re the AI. You must know how people talk.”
Rating out of 5: ★★★
The Creator directed by Gareth Edwards is in cinemas now
