This weekend I did a double feature at the nearby Cineplex. We started off with The Exorcist: Believer, which you can read my thoughts on here. Next up though was Gareth Edwards latest film The Creator.
If you’re not immediately familiar with the name, Edwards has directed the 2014 Godzilla movie and 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. The Creator was also an original movie, not based on some previous IP and got a decent budget of around $100 million which is increasingly rare for original movies. I’ve enjoyed much of his previous work though and I’m always excited to see some original ideas come out of Hollywood, so I was fairly excited for this one!
To provide you with the basic setup of this movie, humans create an AI that they also use to create sentient robots and “simulants” which are robots with human faces. The opening scene of the movie sets up the larger conflict where the AI apparently went rogue and detonated a nuclear missile in Los Angeles. This causes the western world to outlaw AI, but in “New Asia” they embrace this AI and choose to live alongside them. The US declares war on AI and thus we have our main conflict of the movie.
With that setup out of the way now, I’m a bit disappointed to report that I thought this movie was only okay. Before I get into what I didn’t like though, I want to start with some positive thoughts.
First, the performances were great. John David Washington stars as Joshua Taylor, a military sergeant and undercover operative for the US Army. I first remember seeing Washington in BlacKkKlansman and I thought he was fantastic but then I saw him in Tenet and I was less enthusiastic about that performance. Luckily though, he gets a little bit more to do in this movie with some more emotional beats and even a sprinkle of some comedic moments to mix it in.
The real standout though in the cast for me was the nine year old Madeleine Yuna Voyles who played Alphie. Child acting has often felt like a bit of a coin toss, but luckily Voyles absoutely nails this role. Alphie’s role in the story is an important one with some good emotional beats that will absolutely pull at your heartstrings if only because of the great perfomance by Voyles.
Another brightspot of this movie is the craft on display. First, they filmed this movie using a camera that costs around $5000 that you can get on Amazon which is a cool little note and something you don’t often see for $100 million dollar movies. The on location sets also payoff here giving a more realistic feel to this scifi world. The VFX also look fantastic, particularly the simulants. Typically movies where you have these humanoid androids they appear just completely as humans. In this movie though, the heads are still clearly robotic but have human faces and it blends seemlessly throughout the entire movie. This wasn’t a guarantee as VFX work in movies and TV have taken a bit of a hit in quality in recent years due to overwhelming demand, crunch, limited resources, and underwhelming pay for VFX artists.
Unfortunately, my biggest issues with this movie lies in the themes and story. I explained at the start of this review how this was an original movie not based in an existing IP and while that is true, this movie in terms of themes and plot sorely lacked in originality.
For example, the movie has this Vietnam War vibe of gureilla fighters up against the might and technologically advanced enemy, but it does very little to explore the finer details of that. The whole human vs android and what it means to be human concept is sort of in this as well. I say “sort of” because this movie does shockingly little with these concepts that are admittedly a little overdone in the year 2023. Washington’s character does grapple with the theme of whether or not these AI are “human” but they strip the moral complexity out of this issue for his character.
Overall, there is not much new here and for the themes that they recycle, they don’t take a particularly deep or interesting direction with any of them.
As a result I left this movie feeling a little underwhelmed. I wanted to like this more than I did but it felt more like a surface level studio movie without a name people would recognize to sell it.
Verdict
Overall, I still want to give this movie a positive review because there is enough here to justify a watch but also because this is the kind of direction that I hope we can return to soon. I’m tired of studios only financing movies that are based on existing IP or as part of a big franchise and relegating everything else to super limited theatrical runs or streaming.
Edwards and the team clearly have a passion for the craft that is on full display in this movie and the cast take advantage of everything they are given to ensure you enjoy the ride as you watch. I only wish that this movie engaged more deeply with the themes it flirts with and drew from our emerging real world experience with AI to explore that.
If you go check out The Creator let me know what you think and please share your thoughts about my review as well! Thanks for reading and being part of my Screen Love Affair!
Adriana Wiszniewska