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Movie Review: THE CREATOR

Sprawling, overly-ambitious drama somehow becomes part of its human appeal.

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20TH CENTURY STUDIOS
  • 20th Century Studios
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In an early scene from co-writer/director Gareth Edwards' The Creator, ex-soldier Joshua Taylor (John David Washington) and a co-worker clean up the "ground zero" zone of a nuclear weapon detonated in Los Angeles 15 years earlier by artificial intelligence, the 9/11-esque event that launched a war between the United States and the "New Asia" still developing AI technology. The co-worker offhandedly suggests that "the AI nuked us to take our jobs"—and in the context of the (at press time) still-ongoing Hollywood creative strikes, in which the use of AI is one of the key sticking points, it's hard for that moment not to carry a particular prescient resonance.

The Creator exists at an odd intersection between the kind of movie generative AI threatens us with—lots of big genre spectacle—and the kind of movie AI could never duplicate. This is a narrative that's ambitious, sprawling, messy, sentimental and often leaves things unfinished. In short, it's human—and somehow that makes it feel more effective than its shortcomings suggest it should be.

Edwards and co-screenwriter Chris Weitz have a lot of backstory ground to cover, including Joshua's history as a deep-cover U.S. Army operative trying to find the fabled AI creator known as Nirmata, but while doing so falls in love with Nirmata's daughter, Maya (Gemma Chan), only to watch her die during a military raid. Years later, Joshua is recruited to lead an operation targeting a rumored super-weapon that could threaten the Americans' military space station—a weapon that turns out to be in the form of a child that Joshua comes to call Alfie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles)—with information that suggests Maya is actually still alive.

Much of the rest of the narrative is cat-and-mouse chase, with Joshua protecting Alfie because he believes she can lead him to Maya, while the Americans led by Col. Howell (Allison Janney) pursue them. Edwards doesn't excel at taut action set pieces, but he does a lot of impressive world-building here, including the visual design of the AI "Simulants" that leaves a portion of their skulls open, the literal spinning of visible gears contributing to the notion that there's actual thought going on. The screenplay also demonstrates a welcome and surprising subtlety, refusing to underline some of the revelations that make it clear the military is serving up plenty of propaganda; only late in the film does it become clear that the story Howell tells about the event that radicalized her hatred of the AI is one that almost certainly didn't happen.

That notion of militarized xenophobia permeates The Creator, but its creators sometimes seem a bit unsure about what their allegory is actually meant to convey. On the one hand, it's clear that there's a District 9-like science-fiction exploration of prejudice bubbling below the surface, incorporating the kind of "Great Replacement" ideas suggested by that aforementioned co-worker's quote.

At the same time, Edwards pointedly makes Joshua a double-amputee with cybernetic limbs, and introduces a technology that allows for the uploading of human memories into Simulant bodies. It's an interesting ship-of-Theseus concept of identity, but it also mixes the metaphors by introducing the question of what makes us different from our personal "others," as opposed to learning that maybe they're not the threat that official sources are suggesting that they are.

A similarly awkward notion affects the central relationship between Joshua and Alfie, which wisely isn't built on a trite dynamic of personal animosity-turned-grudging respect that could have felt like Who Framed Roger Rabbit's "a toon killed my brother." As effective as the two leads are at suggesting their surrogate parent/child chemistry, they're working within a screenplay that suggests Alfie has been programmed to love Joshua—and as a result, it messes with the notion of the AI as having the same kind of emotional lives as humans.

All of this might have sunk The Creator, except that it's also pretty effective as ... well, big genre spectacle. Virtually every visual choice Edwards makes hits the mark, mixing his nods to everything from Star Wars to Blade Runner into its own distinctive concoction.

And however jumbled his messaging might get, it's clear that he wants to emphasize the power of love over the power of hate in times of anxiety and crisis. That's the kind of story it's hard to imagine AI ever matching—the kind that's as imperfectly told as it is deeply felt.