Is artificial intelligence really our enemy or is our fear of it the real problem? That is one of the moral dilemmas that The Creator attempts to address as it unpacks the very real and present threat of AI, through a heightened sci-fi lens. Seven years after the release of the critically acclaimed Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, director Gareth Edwards has returned to the world of high-stakes sci-fi—and this time, it is entirely of his own design.

The film opens with a reel of old-fashioned commercials, eerily mimicking the homespun tone of Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress ride, which showcases all of the wonderful, innovative ways that AI technology can improve human life. AI and robotics seem to have merged together to create fully functioning machines that live and love alongside humanity. It seems like a perfect society—until it’s not. Directly inspired by films like Blade Runner and Apocalypse Now, with shades of A.I. Artificial Intelligence and the “Lone Wolf and Cub” narrative trope, The Creator is set in a near future where the United States is at war with artificial intelligence after a devastating attack in Los Angeles that left over a million humans dead. Once artificial intelligence was outlawed in the Western world, it seemingly found a sanctuary in “New Asia,” a largely undefined region in the film, which becomes the victim of unscrupulous United States overreach and eerily reminiscent militaristic brutality.

While AI is the overarching body of The Creator, there is a human heart at the center of the story in Joshua (John David Washington), a jaded ex-special ops guy who wears the scars of the LA bombing not just mentally, but physically too. Five years after a military assignment led to the death of his wife Maya (Gemma Chan) and unborn child, Joshua is pulled back into the war by Howell (​​Allison Janney), with the promise that his wife is still alive, and he is set on a collision course with Nirmata—the mysterious AI creator that has allegedly created a weapon that could exterminate humanity. However, that weapon isn’t something as ominous or terrifying as the US Army’s NOMAD weapon system, it’s just a little girl. Once Joshua realizes what’s really at stake, he goes rogue and flees with Alfie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles) on a mission to find Maya before it’s too late.

What the Creative Team Brings to ‘The Creator’
Image via 20th Century Studios

After being overshadowed as the lead by the supporting cast of BlacKkKlansman and lost in the mire of Tenet’s 2020 release, The Creator once again provides Washington with a vehicle to prove what a talented leading man he is. While the script has moments of cohesive discord, Washington’s performance is a consistent highlight. Whether he’s dangling off missiles, mourning his dead wife, or forging a bond with an AI child, he rises to meet each challenge with the full breadth of emotional range at his command. His scene chemistry with Voyles is what truly sells the film, as they take audiences along for a heart-wrenching ride into self-discovery while unpacking philosophical ideas about existence and what it means to be human—for better and for worse.

In cultural anthropology, there are several indicators used to identify if a society is “civilized” and Edwards neatly weaves in three of the key aspects into his portrayal of the society that artificial intelligence has made for itself. They care for their sick, mourn their dead, and have an organized religion of their own. This choice makes it nearly impossible for the audience to root against the AI of Edwards’ world because we can see our own society reflected back on us—only better. Care is coded into the AI, it is an inescapable part of them, which is something that cannot be said for humanity, as apathy and empathy are slowly fading from our ethos. Many of these moments are shown through short, intercut moments that expand upon the world of The Creator and their lingering effects are a testament to the team behind the camera. With Greig Fraser (The Batman, Dune) as the film’s cinematographer, there was never a question about whether or not The Creator would be visually stunning—in fact, it exceeds expectations at every turn. The combination of Edwards’ keen directorial eye and Fraser’s masterful skill for capturing subtle beauty in the moments in between the rise and fall of emotion, shapes a film into something far above the limitations of the script.

In the last act of the film, there is a Rogue One Easter Egg hidden in plain sight on an LAX departure sign that almost foretells The Creator’s final moments. There is a direct parallel between the two films in the way Edwards arrives at the conclusion, which manages to devastate as much as it inspires hope. In both, it is a race against the clock to bring an imperial government to its knees for the betterment of the “underdogs,” but The Creator takes a different route to a similar outcome. The issue that Edwards faces here, is that his film lacks the support of a franchise to help stabilize its inconsistent plot armor and expeditious finale. Edwards brings a lot of intriguing ideas to his script, but some of the best components are undermined by the rules that he establishes moments before they’re introduced. While Edwards may be concerned that AI could replace him in the real world, he makes a pretty compelling argument in his film that AI might be better off without us, not the other way around.

The Issue With ‘The Creator’s Flawed Messaging
Image via 20th Century Studios

In the same way that the Vietnam War and the United States military’s war crimes inspired George Lucas to create Star Wars and the villainous imperialistic Empire, there is no debate that The Creator’s main antagonist is the US Army. For Edwards, however, it’s less about painting broad-stroke allusions to the war and more about directly recreating the atrocities with jarring shock-value visuals. And they are shockingly gratuitous for a PG-13 film, as the film shows off bloodied, bullet hole-riddled scientists, innocent farmers blown to pieces by warheads, and women and children left crying and traumatized. Films shouldn’t be the arbiters of morality, but still, it feels callous to recreate one of the most violent military campaigns in US history, which has left deep scars in this country, in an era when anti-Asian hate crimes are at a 339% increase. Especially for a science-fiction film that could have easily crafted a mixing bowl nation as the “enemy” and still borrowed from those influences. After all, if we can imagine a world where AI are treated like family, we can imagine a world where borders are blurred and nations are not so isolated.

Months before The Creator arrived in theaters, Edwards cited Apocalypse Now as one of his biggest influences for the film, along with the locations where he penned most of the script: Thailand and Vietnam. Setting the film in a fictionalized “New Asia” isn’t necessarily a damning decision, but the careless way the film uses Asian bodies—particularly female bodies—as collateral is an issue, and it invokes thoughts of Christian Henriot’s academic works on the topic. The women of The Creator solely exist to live and die for the agony of the men within their orbit. Maya’s story is the most compelling whisper of a subplot in the film, but she is largely reduced to Joshua’s dreamy dead wife and a mother, while Kami’s (Veronica Ngo) short-lived role is used to humanize Drew (Sturgill Simpson) before being violently discarded while mothering Alfie. Perhaps it was an intentional choice to show how the female body might be commodified by the creeping expansion of artificial intelligence, but the message is entirely lost in the haste to reach the final act. Instead, it feels like it commends and normalizes the act, rather than clearly condemning it.

For the same reason that Francis Ford Coppola doesn’t believe Apocalypse Now can be truly considered an anti-war film, The Creator cannot be considered as such either. It may not glorify the violent acts it shows, but it never stands firm in its attempt to paint the US Army as the antagonist. The twist that unravels the established stakes comes a little too late to justify the unjust violence because it’s not just artificial intelligence they’re brutalizing—they terrorize children, threaten to murder dogs for show, and gun down unarmed civilians like it’s a game. By the time the credits roll, you’re almost too numb to care because the audience has sat through roughly sixty minutes of vivid and horrifying brutality against Asian people, out of a one-hundred-and-thirty-three-minute movie. Edwards attempts to use the imagery to drive home the film’s thesis and quickly establish the US Army as an enemy that we’re not supposed to root for, but the rationale is so nebulous it’s often hard to cling to. Especially with so many mixed messages about whether AI is good or bad or something we should even be concerned about when humans are so much worse. One thing is for certain: if AI does overtake humanity, it won’t be because they want to control us or kill us—it will be because the old white guys running the government finally met a creation they couldn’t corrupt.

Is ‘The Creator’ a Masterpiece?
Image via 20th Century Studios

While The Creator is far from a masterpiece, it is a very impressive film to debut in 2023, when vapid superhero films and franchise fodder fill the airways—especially when one considers its tidy $80 million budget, which seems unthinkable considering the intricate AI designs it features. The script might have glaring flaws and painfully ambiguous morals, but The Creator is a truly remarkable piece of original science fiction storytelling. Even when it borrows from ideas established in films that preceded it, Edwards manages to make it feel fresh and new. The Creator is a beautifully crafted, albeit imperfect, science-fiction thriller that tries to unravel what it means to be a good human in a bad world.

Grade: B-

The Big Picture

The Creator explores the moral dilemma of whether AI is a threat or if our fear of it is the real problem, using a sci-fi lens. The film portrays a near future where the US is at war with AI, and features a human protagonist on a mission to find his presumed-dead wife. While the film has impressive visuals and a talented lead performance, it suffers from a flawed plot and mixed messaging about AI and the US Army.

The Creator comes to theaters starting September 29.