The Creator (2023)
Throughout the 2010s, Gareth Edwards has made a name for himself as director with a series of sci-fi outings that have carried a strong visual eye and promising ideas, only to ultimately disappoint when it comes to character and narrative. From Godzilla to Star Wars, Edwards has tested his skills with large budgets and established IP's without finding his true masterpiece. Returning to an original world, Edwards hopes to find this success in The Creator. Immediately growing hype with an original world brought to life by an $80 million budget, a shocking feat when compared to the $160 million budget of Godzilla and over $200 million budget of Rogue One; many thought The Creator could become a revolutionary text in the world of modern sci-fi cinema. While it is clear that these ambitious goals are not reached, The Creator is still an entertaining sci-fi adventure that has to be applauded for its technical craft.
From the first frames of the film, the visual eye The Creator holds is undeniable. While many will be quick to praise the visual effects throughout the film, all of which are accomplished at an incredibly talented level and embrace unique iconography, it is the cinematography by Greig Fraser and Oren Soffer that truly elevates the piece. Coming off a wildly strong decade of work including standout success like Foxcatcher, Dune, and The Batman, Fraser's influence is clearly felt when it comes to creating a visually dynamic and engaging world that is both able to embrace more grounded emotional beats while also elevating the feature to the grander and more epic heights it reaches for. The film prioritizes grounded and practical locations and visuals which is an incredibly refreshing break from the mainstream over-reliance on visual tricks such as StageCraft that often look awkward and fake.
This craft continues into the film's world-building which sets up an undeniably fresh and exciting playground of politics and social movement. Set in the year 2070, The Creator sees a world divided by the usage and acceptance of Artificial Intelligence. While originally embraced globally, the United States has waged war on AI following their supposed fault in detonating an atomic bomb on Los Angeles, killing millions. AI has been forced to retreat largely to Asia where the United States continues to hunt them down and try to destroy them. Science Fiction has long allowed for unique and poignant reflections on the audiences' real world with this set up seeming intriguing as it allows for conversations surrounding both AI and the war efforts of the United States. Sadly, the film fails to find much of worth to actually say regarding these conversations.
To say that The Creator is truly a feature about exploring the moral complexities of AI would be an utter lie. Unlike a film such as Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One that takes AI and really tries to explore what the moral complexities the force could have on the modern world, within the framework of the action genre, The Creator simply uses AI as an analogy to explore how the United States has villainized and waged war against various cultures in various conflicts. This angle has no interest in exploring AI under the modern interests of that discussion and instead wants to quickly use it as a catalyst for another conversation entirely. While frustrating, what is even more concerning about this choice is how limited the actual main focus is. The Creator offers nothing new or unique in terms of message or breakthrough when it comes to looking at the horrors of war within the United States and ends up falling into an extremely generic plot and structure.
The main plot of the film follows a man named Joshua (John David Washington) who gets sucked into helping a military effort in, the now renamed, New Asia due to the possibility of his wife, Maya (Gemma Chan), being there. This shocks Joshua as he thought she, and their unborn child, died 5 years earlier in a raid where she learned Joshua was undercover and was tasked with getting close to her in order to find the location to the mysterious Nirmata who is apparently responsible for designing the AI's newest weapon that could be powerful enough to win the war for the AI. On the mission, Joshua finds an AI child who he names Alphie, played by Madeleine Yuna Voyles. Together, they set off on a journey to find Maya. To an almost comical degree, they are consistently chased by the United States, specifically Colonel Howell (Allison Janney), who consider Joshua a traitor for not following his orders. This side plot is immediately dull and quickly becomes painfully repetitive as a forced conflict that consistently distracts from the rest of the feature. Similarly to a film such as Kong: Skull Island, The Creator has no sense of grace in how it weaves together its narrative and political aspirations leading to an off-putting relationship between the two sides of runtime.
Slowly but surely, this mess spills over to overtake nearly the entire feature as the film reaches its third act. Coming off a undoubtedly bloated 133-minute runtime that is often boring and overly repetitive, one will hope that the film will find purpose and direction as it reveals its cards but nearly every reveal disappoints and major emotional moments feel strangely goofy and forced. Just as the film needs to stick the landing, the entire project begins to blow up leaving a frustrating and weak final impression that fails to justify the journey to this supposedly grand climax.
At nearly every turn, the emotion that does land is due to the performances within the film which are easily the most impactful forces within the feature. While it shouldn't come as a surprise to see an emotionally aware and moving effort from John David Washington after his work in films like BlacKkKlansman and Malcolm & Marie, the young Madeleine Yuna Voyles immediately creates a name for herself as she holds her own against Washington and delivers some truly fantastic scenes of weight and passion. These two form a natural chemistry that builds alongside the relationship between their characters and gives the movie a needed emotional core.
The Creator, for better and for worse, is exactly what one should expect from a Gareth Edwards project at this point. While it is clear that Edwards has a unique cinematic eye for world building, visual storytelling, and crafting iconography, Edwards has once again proven to be flawed when it comes to character work and narrative. The Creator has all the technical elements needed to be a masterpiece, but lacks the voice and focus needed to actually do something worthwhile with its potential leading to a mixed effort that while passable, is far from revolutionary.
From the first frames of the film, the visual eye The Creator holds is undeniable. While many will be quick to praise the visual effects throughout the film, all of which are accomplished at an incredibly talented level and embrace unique iconography, it is the cinematography by Greig Fraser and Oren Soffer that truly elevates the piece. Coming off a wildly strong decade of work including standout success like Foxcatcher, Dune, and The Batman, Fraser's influence is clearly felt when it comes to creating a visually dynamic and engaging world that is both able to embrace more grounded emotional beats while also elevating the feature to the grander and more epic heights it reaches for. The film prioritizes grounded and practical locations and visuals which is an incredibly refreshing break from the mainstream over-reliance on visual tricks such as StageCraft that often look awkward and fake.
This craft continues into the film's world-building which sets up an undeniably fresh and exciting playground of politics and social movement. Set in the year 2070, The Creator sees a world divided by the usage and acceptance of Artificial Intelligence. While originally embraced globally, the United States has waged war on AI following their supposed fault in detonating an atomic bomb on Los Angeles, killing millions. AI has been forced to retreat largely to Asia where the United States continues to hunt them down and try to destroy them. Science Fiction has long allowed for unique and poignant reflections on the audiences' real world with this set up seeming intriguing as it allows for conversations surrounding both AI and the war efforts of the United States. Sadly, the film fails to find much of worth to actually say regarding these conversations.
To say that The Creator is truly a feature about exploring the moral complexities of AI would be an utter lie. Unlike a film such as Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One that takes AI and really tries to explore what the moral complexities the force could have on the modern world, within the framework of the action genre, The Creator simply uses AI as an analogy to explore how the United States has villainized and waged war against various cultures in various conflicts. This angle has no interest in exploring AI under the modern interests of that discussion and instead wants to quickly use it as a catalyst for another conversation entirely. While frustrating, what is even more concerning about this choice is how limited the actual main focus is. The Creator offers nothing new or unique in terms of message or breakthrough when it comes to looking at the horrors of war within the United States and ends up falling into an extremely generic plot and structure.
The main plot of the film follows a man named Joshua (John David Washington) who gets sucked into helping a military effort in, the now renamed, New Asia due to the possibility of his wife, Maya (Gemma Chan), being there. This shocks Joshua as he thought she, and their unborn child, died 5 years earlier in a raid where she learned Joshua was undercover and was tasked with getting close to her in order to find the location to the mysterious Nirmata who is apparently responsible for designing the AI's newest weapon that could be powerful enough to win the war for the AI. On the mission, Joshua finds an AI child who he names Alphie, played by Madeleine Yuna Voyles. Together, they set off on a journey to find Maya. To an almost comical degree, they are consistently chased by the United States, specifically Colonel Howell (Allison Janney), who consider Joshua a traitor for not following his orders. This side plot is immediately dull and quickly becomes painfully repetitive as a forced conflict that consistently distracts from the rest of the feature. Similarly to a film such as Kong: Skull Island, The Creator has no sense of grace in how it weaves together its narrative and political aspirations leading to an off-putting relationship between the two sides of runtime.
Slowly but surely, this mess spills over to overtake nearly the entire feature as the film reaches its third act. Coming off a undoubtedly bloated 133-minute runtime that is often boring and overly repetitive, one will hope that the film will find purpose and direction as it reveals its cards but nearly every reveal disappoints and major emotional moments feel strangely goofy and forced. Just as the film needs to stick the landing, the entire project begins to blow up leaving a frustrating and weak final impression that fails to justify the journey to this supposedly grand climax.
At nearly every turn, the emotion that does land is due to the performances within the film which are easily the most impactful forces within the feature. While it shouldn't come as a surprise to see an emotionally aware and moving effort from John David Washington after his work in films like BlacKkKlansman and Malcolm & Marie, the young Madeleine Yuna Voyles immediately creates a name for herself as she holds her own against Washington and delivers some truly fantastic scenes of weight and passion. These two form a natural chemistry that builds alongside the relationship between their characters and gives the movie a needed emotional core.
The Creator, for better and for worse, is exactly what one should expect from a Gareth Edwards project at this point. While it is clear that Edwards has a unique cinematic eye for world building, visual storytelling, and crafting iconography, Edwards has once again proven to be flawed when it comes to character work and narrative. The Creator has all the technical elements needed to be a masterpiece, but lacks the voice and focus needed to actually do something worthwhile with its potential leading to a mixed effort that while passable, is far from revolutionary.