The Creator: at long last, a great sci-fi movie!

Let me start off by saying that my review contains no spoilers. Any information stated here is featured in trailers that have already been released.

It’s been a while since we last heard from director Gareth Edwards. In 2010, he made a name for himself with the visually stunning Monsters. In 2014, he took things to the next level with the Hollywood remake of Godzilla. And two years after that, he made Rogue One: A Star Wars Story – quite possibly the best Star Wars movie of the Disney era. There was nothing standing in the way of a great directing career. But then, the English director disappeared from the limelight.

For far too long.

But finally, he’s back. And The Creator is so much more than just Edward’s long-awaited return to world of cinema. This is not a soulless remake, nor a sequel, prequel, or the umpteenth comic adaption. Instead, Edward’s latest film is nothing less than one of the greatest sci-fi spectacles of recent years. One that tells its very own story. Without using a template. Not only does this feel fresh, but it’s also sorely needed. Especially in today’s idea-starved cinema scene.

What’s The Creator about?

Machines. Set in the future, humans create AI-equipped machines so advanced that they’re almost indistinguishable from real people. They’re tasked with doing the everyday jobs we can’t be bothered doing. All goes well until Los Angeles is almost completely wiped out by a nuclear attack instigated by the machines. Revenge is not long in coming, as humanity sets out to punish the machines with a devastating global war.

Joshua (John David Washington), an ex-special agent still grieving the death of his wife, is assigned to go to New Asia. The place where the machines have built their last bastion and where «the Creator» – the leader of the machines – is said to have built a secret weapon. One powerful enough for the machines to not only strike back, but wipe out humanity altogether.

Joshua’s on a mission to seek out and take down the Creator – and to destroy his new weapon. Not a task that could diminish Joshua’s determination, you’d think. But it turns out the secret weapon is «only» an AI in the form of a small child (Madeleine Yuna Voyles). One that hides a dangerous secret.

The spectacle in breathtaking images

When I say spectacle, I’m mainly referring to the spectacle of the big pictures. Director Edwards has always had a good feel for that. Especially in Rogue One, where Edwards got renowned cinematographer Greig Fraser on board. He’s the architect behind cinematographic stunners Dune and The Batman. Films with images viewers can hardly take their eyes off.

And The Creator is no exception. At times I feel like I’m in a Blade Runner-type dystopian nightmare. But when the futuristic machine guns are firing their deadly ammunition into rice paddies of Asia, helicopters roaring thunderously over the heads of our heroes, it feels more like Apocalypse Now. Edwards and Fraser don’t lose my attention for a second. The visual power they deliver in every single shot is simply too captivating.

They really look amazing in the film. And I don’t just mean the panoramic shots that set the scene. They often pop up mid-action, too. Take a scene featuring the Nomad – a drone almost the size of a city and humanity’s most important weapon in the fight against the machines. It’s menacingly orbiting the planet like a falcon calmly flying circles around its doomed prey.

Next, a bluish laser shines down from the orbit and locks onto the target on the ground. This alerts not only the prey of the deadly disaster that’s about to strike, but also all the human fighters within a kilometre. Fighters who, as a result, are often reduced to collateral damage. This makes little sense from a military or tactical perspective. Unless the humans are, in fact, pursuing some sort of intimidation tactic. Visually, however, these scenes are among the most impressive to come out of sci-fi action cinema in recent years.

I guess this is partly down to the fact that the computer effects in the film actually look finished. While this observation might sound banal, anyone who’s watched Marvel and DC overdose on CGI in recent years will know what I mean. However, I don’t want to lay the blame at the door of the CGI artists for that. It’s no secret that Hollywood studio bosses are happy to cut costs by giving special effects companies more and more shots to work on, all while tightening editing deadlines and slashing pay packets. A calculation that stopped paying off a long time ago.

The Creator, however, seems not to have been affected by it. At least, that’s what the quality of the special effects suggests. Especially during the impressively seamless transitions between the mechanical and human sides of machines who’ve been given human features and organic faces. It knocks me for six time and time again. Man, I could go raving on and on about this forever.

Little depth, plenty of heart

The story, which director Gareth Edwards co-wrote with Chris Weitz, falls a little short of the film’s visual brilliance. It offers little in the way of depth or grey areas – something Edwards isn’t really interested in at any point in his film. Instead, he pretty quickly establishes who the good guys and who the bad guys are. Though this spares us the work of deciding which side gets our sympathy, it wouldn’t have hurt to include a few more inner conflicts.

Especially since the leitmotif of The Creator – machines rebelling against the self-aggrandising humans who created them, with war as a result – isn’t new. Not since Terminator and The Matrix came on the scene. What’s more, the question of where an AI’s programming ends and its sentience begins – or if it’s even capable of that at all – has been explored much more impressively in films such as Blade Runner and A.I. Artificial Intelligence.

Despite this, The Creator never leaves me cold. Edwards steers clear of Matrix-styleSimulacra and Simulation references, which wouldn’t bring any eye-opening new perspectives on the human-versus-AI question to the the table. But he’s damn good at humanising the conflicts we’re already familiar with; at exposing the emotional core behind them and expressing it simply. Why do we fight? Why do we love? And what does it do to us when we cast our humanity aside in a bid to fight machines, almost becoming machines ourselves in the very process?

As I said, the approaches Edwards uses to inject a little gravitas into his story aren’t entirely new. What Edwards does do is rely on his characters, demonstrating the savvy of trusting an ensemble of actors who don’t need much in order to get the maximum substance out of a script. This is especially true of the two lead actors, John David Washington and newcomer Madeleine Yuna Voyles, who plays the child. They shoulder the emotional burden with a sense of ease. Just as Jean Reno and Natalie Portman once did in Léon: The Professional.

«Then...we’re the same. We can’t go to heaven. Cos you’re not good, and I’m not a person,» says the child, with sadness in their logic. That’s exactly what I mean when I say that the film puts a human spin on long-established genre clichés.

Verdict: a cinematic triumph for sci-fi

Okay, the Creator by no means reinvents the sci-fi genre. However, it’s no coincidence that the film was showered with praise in the run-up to its release. Perhaps precisely because it doesn’t get into any overly challenging philosophical shenanigans. Instead, Edwards has told a deeply human story with a simple good/evil structure, set against the highly topical issue of AI’s ever-increasing involvement in our society.

The fact Edwards was evidently inspired by numerous films (I won’t say he «copied from» them) doesn’t bother me. The future he’s created feels too fresh not to be appreciated. Too much love has gone into it, too much attention to detail. Moving most of the action to Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh or even Tibet (the film is never quite given an exact geographical setting) isn’t just a welcome change from the usual Western settings – there’s also a subtle political message in it.

Plus, there’s the simply breathtaking images created by cinematography genius Greig Fraser. Working with director Gareth Edwards, he’s casually conjured up some of the most dazzling sci-fi cinema has seen in years. If you don’t go to the cinema to see it – preferably booking an IMAX screening – you’re missing out.

The Creator hits theatres on 28 September 2023. Runtime: 133 minutes. Age rating: 12.