The Doctor’s Diagnosis: B-
The Creator is a movie that I wanted to love, but I only managed to like it. From director Gareth Edwards, who brought us Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and the 2014 Godzilla, The Creator is a unicorn in modern Hollywood: a major sci-fi release that isn’t a remake, adaptation, sequel, reboot, prequel, requel or whatever. It is an actual stand-alone movie not connected to a franchise. For that reason alone, I wanted to throw the movie a parade. However, despite the fact that it isn’t linked to a franchise, there isn’t an original thought in this entire movie. The Creator is a patchwork of ideas that have been done better in other movies, most notably Blade Runner and Terminator 2, and presents those ideas without the slightest whiff of subtlety or ingenuity. That being said, the movie is still pretty entertaining.
Taking place a few decades into the future, western countries have declared war on artificial intelligence after A.I. detonated a nuclear weapon in Los Angeles. The robots are aided by eastern countries (collectively known as New Asia) and our lead is Joshua Taylor, a U.S. operative tasked with finding the mastermind behind the advances in A.I. and killing them. Taylor infiltrates a pro-A.I. militia and marries Maya, who he believes to be the daughter of the mastermind. The group is attacked by the U.S. and Maya, along with their unborn child, is seemingly killed.
Several years later, the west has launched a superweapon called NOMAD to destroy A.I. and the robots have countered with their own superweapon, a child robot that can control technology with its mind. Taylor is tasked with destroying the weapon, but can’t do it when he sees that it is a child and instead takes her on the run from authorities. Come to think of it, this also rips off Firestarter quite a bit.
Before getting into my main points, I want to mention the absurdity of the human “superweapon” NOMAD. The thing is just an enormous flying ship that moves like a glacier and fires giant laser beams from the sky like the alien ships in Independence Day. Forget the future, a modern-day military would shoot this thing to the ground in about five minutes. It’s ridiculous that the robots have not thought that perhaps they should start firing missiles at this goddamn thing.
Anyway, I have two major issues with The Creator. First, my own moral compass prevents me from having any sympathy or understanding for most of the events in this movie. It is established that the humans are most likely the actual villains here, but I simply don’t care. If I may reveal a personal detail about myself, I’m a human. Therefore, I’m on Team Humanity. If faced with an existential threat from technology or another species or whatever, I am a proponent of a two-step process: 1. Eradicate the threat and then 2. Contemplate my own errors that may have led to the threat and make necessary adjustments for the future. I am, therefore, not sympathetic with our hero for the majority of the film because when you can save humanity by shooting a robot kid, then you shoot the fucking robot kid. When the threat is neutralized, then it is time for philosophical reflection on the events that led you to that point.
Second, this is what I like to call a smart movie for dumb people. All of this has been done before, and done much better, but it can seem profound if you have a limited perspective or just little to contextualize it with (i.e., other science fiction movies and literature). The Creator is essentially the thematic content of Blade Runner stripped of all nuance and infused with a lot of explosions and lasers. If you show Blade Runner to someone and they don’t get it, then show them The Creator. They will definitely get it because the movie spells out its message like a 9th grade teacher desperately trying to get the slowest kid in class to understand that Animal Farm isn’t really about a farm. Throw in the “does humanity deserve its own fate?” questions of Terminator 2 and the “where is the line between man and machine?” of Robocop and you have everything that The Creator is saying.
I would say to just watch those movies instead, but you could also do far worse than The Creator. The film looks remarkable despite being made for only $80 million, which is amazingly considered a low budget nowadays. With that level of funding, the filmmakers had to use CGI sparingly and rely heavily on practical effects and (huzzah!) it turns out that the practical effects are both cheaper and better looking than their computer-generated counterparts (which is kind of ironic for this movie). The result is one of the best-looking science fiction worlds on the big screen in recent memory.
Unlike the ponderous Blade Runner 2049, the film moves at a brisk pace and is never boring. While a couple of plot twists can be seen coming from outer space, it is an action-packed time waiting for our characters to figure things out. As shown by the underappreciated Rogue One (which I still say is easily the best Star Wars movie since the original trilogy), Gareth Edwards has an excellent eye for shooting battle scenes and it is easy to forgive the film’s shortcomings at moments when the lasers and bullets are flying. His films may struggle with character and originality, but Edwards knows how to keep things going and keep an audience distracted enough not to think too much. That sounds like a backhanded compliment, and maybe it is, but I do find his work entertaining more often than not.
The Creator presents itself as a profound film. It isn’t. If you want a smarter version of this, then just watch Blade Runner again. However, if you want an entertaining science fiction movie that treads familiar ground, this is a fun enough way to spend two hours.
Image by: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Creator_(2023_film)#/media/File:The_Creator_2023_poster.jpg
