THE CREATOR - Mark Reviews Movies

The Creator, 20th Century Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 28, 2023

The Creator imagines a world, 40 years into the future, in which humans and artificial intelligence live and work side by side. An opening prologue (envisioned as a news reel that hopefully suggests the future is aware enough of old-fashioned film formats to use or to imitate them) describes how A.I. revolutionized the world, made all sorts of industry and technology possible, and started to be used in police and military roles. Before we can even start to think that the last idea might not be the best one, the movie shows us a nuclear explosion in the heart of Los Angeles, apparently caused by some A.I. program.

The whole of co-writer/director Gareth Edwards' movie, a work of grand design ambition, plays a bit like that prologue. It teases us with great sights, tantalizing and frightening ideas, and the promise of some considered science-fiction, only to put a quick stop to all of that for action.

The movie's second prologue, which introduces our cynical hero Joshua (John David Washington), does the same thing, too. He's in New Asia, which the United States has declared war against for its continual manufacturing and usage of A.I., and about to start a family with wife Maya (Gemma Chan), as the two live among a colony of humans and simulants, human-looking A.I. with whirring hard drives impractically exposed, alike.

As it turns out, he's an undercover agent with the U.S. military, searching for the inventor and constant innovator of A.I. Sure enough, that's interrupted by a raid on the colony, a pregnant Maya running away from him and through a firefight toward a boat, and yet another, albeit less, massive explosion that puts an end to this. Joshua, by the way, is like a magnet for explosions, apparently, since he was there and lost an arm and a leg to the nuclear blast, is on the shore when this one hits off the coast, and ends up pretty close to a few others later on in the story. One could see this as awfully bad luck or just lazy, uncertain writing on Edwards and Chris Weitz's part.

This is mostly to describe what doesn't work in the movie. In spite of its big ideas about humanity and human beings' tenuous relationship with technology and the likelihood that any A.I. advanced enough would be akin to and have an inherent trust of humans, Edwards' narrative and filmmaking instincts inevitably lead him away from the realm of ideas. Instead, he constantly rushes toward the next action setpiece, the next tonally jarring one-liner, and some emotionally manipulative shortcut in lieu of developing characters.

There are times here when little of that matters. The core idea of this story, which has Joshua returning to New Asia to look for a Maya who apparently survived the explosion and befriending an A.I. superweapon with the look and mind of a young girl, is strong, while the appearance and mechanics of this futuristic world—with its Vietnam War-inspired fields and villages, bustling cities, and faraway communes in the mountains—are even stronger.

On a visual and world-building level, Edwards' movie is striking enough to occasionally fool us into thinking that there's much more going on here than there actually is. As soon as the mostly exposition-happy dialogue or another action sequence breaks out, though, it serves as a harsh reminder that this is little more than a chase movie, as hollow as it is visually stunning on occasion.

We know it's just a chase, because the plot has Joshua and Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles), an A.I. designed as a young girl with the power to shut down an electronic device and the ability to evolve in its programming, on the run from the U.S. military. They're represented by a couple of figures, namely Col. Howell (Allison Janney), a tough but grieving—but primarily tough for plot purposes—foe, and Gen. Andrews (Ralph Ineson), who oversees the operation of an orbiting space station that can fire missiles anywhere on the globe—mainly wherever Joshua is at any given moment, apparently.

That means Joshua and Alphie have to evade capture or being killed, find shelter and protection with various allies from Joshua's past and within communities that get the solider to start seeing A.I. as more than soulless programming, and flee from or defend themselves in various combat situations. The central relationship, mostly because of genuine performances from Washington and Voyles, is somewhat affecting, if a bit too obvious and routine, while coming across as if it's designed to arrive at a certain conclusion. It's not really about the characters, as the movie constantly reminds us by shortchanging all of them at every turn (For example, one haunting scene, in which a dead soldier's consciousness is transplanted into an A.I., is undercut by the fact that it exists to get information to characters who need it for the plot to keep moving).

That keeps the focus of The Creator on the world the filmmakers have imagined, and it consistently is something to behold. Just beneath the surface and occasionally rising above it, though, is a much more considered and ingenious story about what makes us human and what could make A.I. close to, match, or, in some regards, surpass those qualities. That seems to be the movie Edwards wants to make, but it's not, unfortunately, this one.

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