The Creator is a spectacular science fiction film starring John David Washington about the devastating confrontation between humanity and artificial intelligence. Read on in the review to find out how the new film from the director of the blockbusters Godzilla and Rogue One, Gareth Edwards, turned out.
What the new movie is about
The movie is set in the near future. Once upon a time, robots with advanced artificial intelligence were reliable assistants to humans, but 15 years before the main events of the film, a nuclear bomb was dropped on Los Angeles and blamed on AI. Since then, the world, divided into the West and New Asia, has been torn apart by a brutal, destructive war of extermination between humanity and artificial intelligence.
The film centers on Joshua, a former special forces agent who lost his wife five years ago and hasn’t been able to recover from it. He is recruited to hunt down and kill the so-called Creator, an elusive architect of advanced artificial intelligence who has allegedly developed a mysterious weapon that can end the war and simultaneously destroy humanity. Joshua and a team of elite operatives infiltrate the heart of an AI-occupied territory, only to discover that the doomsday weapon they’ve been tasked with destroying is an AI in the form of a child. Now Jojua has to make a difficult choice.
About the director
The Creator was directed and written by Gareth Edwards, a Briton who began his career as a visual effects artist, so it’s no surprise that the film is heavily weighted toward visuals.
As a director, Edwards gained recognition in 2010 with the independent sci-fi thriller Monsters, where he also served as cinematographer. The film received very favorable reviews from critics and a number of prestigious awards and nominations. This opened the way for Edwards to get into “big movies”.
In January 2011, it became known that Edwards would direct the sci-fi action movie Godzilla, which was the first film in the updated MonsterVerse. The spectacular film was released in 2014 and was warmly received by both critics and audiences, grossing $529 million at the box office against a budget of $160 million.
The next film in Edwards’ career was Rogue One (2016), part of the legendary Star Wars space saga. The film also received positive reviews and grossed more than $1 billion at the box office (with a budget of $200 million), as well as two Oscar nominations for Best Sound and Visual Effects.
Edwards’ next project was to be the movie Godzilla: King of the Monsters, but in the end he decided to leave it for something else. It was only in February 2020 that it became known that Edwards would produce, direct and write a film with the working title True Love, which later transformed into The Creator (however, after watching the movie, the first title seems more apt).
Edwards invited Greg Fraser, who had previously worked with him on Rogue One, to become the cinematographer for the new film. He has also worked on such major projects as Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Lion (2016), Dune (2021), and Batman (2022), as well as three episodes of The Mandalorian (2019). He won an Oscar for Dune.
The music for the film was composed by the legendary Hans Zimmer (The Lion King, Gladiator, Pearl Harbor, Inception, Interstellar, Dune). This is his first collaboration with Edwards.
Who’s in the lead roles
The main role in the film was played by John David Washington, the son of the legendary American actor Denzel Washington, who was rather reluctant to follow in his famous father’s footsteps. In 1992, 8-year-old John made his film debut, playing a cameo role in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X, starring his father. Three years later, he had another small role in the movie Devil in a Blue Dress, also starring his father, but after that he decided to devote himself to sports. From 2006 to 2012, he built a professional career in American football, and then decided to return to movies. The comedy-sports series Ballers (2015-2019) became a breakthrough for Washington Jr. and he made his mark in the world of big movies with his leading role in Spike Lee’s comedy thriller BlacKkKlansman (2017), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination. Since then, John David Washington has also played leading roles in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet and Sam Levinson’s Malcolm & Marie.
John David Washington did a great job as Joshua, both a strong warrior and a loving husband, because his excellent athleticism was perfectly complemented by the great dramatic talent he had shown long before this role. You really believe him and sympathize with him, rooting for his character’s fate until the last frame.
Gemma Chan (Eternals, Crazy Rich Asians, Captain Marvel) played Joshua’s missing wife Maya, whose role in the whole plot is actually much bigger than it seems at first. Meanwhile, Oscar-winning Allison Janney (American Beauty, Juno, The Help) plays the role of a tough US Army colonel Howell, who also has personal motives for destroying the AI.
The film also stars Ken Watanabe (Inception, Godzilla, Memoirs of a Geisha), Sturgill Simpson (The Dead Don’t Die, The Hunt), Ralph Ineson (The Office, Game of Thrones, Chernobyl) and others.
The acting of 9-year-old Madelyn Yuna Voyles, who played the role of Ivy, the child with artificial intelligence around whom the whole plot unfolds, is worth highlighting. This is her debut work on the big screen.
Reaction to the movie
The official premiere of the film took place on September 26, 2023 at Fantastic Fest in Texas. It was decided to release the film despite the large-scale strike of actors and screenwriters in the United States, which effectively deprived the studio of the opportunity to conduct a full-fledged promotional campaign for large projects.
The first reviews of the movie are rather positive. Critics praise it for its visual effects, direction, acting and complex moral component, but criticize it for some of its script decisions.
Currently, it has a score of 7.3 out of 10 on IMDb based on the first 325 reviews, while on Rotten Tomatoes it has an 81% approval rating from critics. Meanwhile, on Metacritic, the average score of the film from film experts was 65 points out of 100, which corresponds to the characteristic of “generally positive reviews”.
Our verdict
The Creator is an incredibly beautiful movie, created by true professionals in this field for a relatively “modest” $80 million for a movie of this scale. At the same time, it is a film rich in emotions and complex moral dilemmas, focusing on the comparison of the humanity of living people and creatures created with the help of artificial intelligence. You may even want to shed a tear while watching it. At the same time, watching the acting of John David Washington and Co. is a pleasure.
Perhaps some viewers will be disappointed by the ending for various reasons, but the whole film, apparently, has many controversial moments that push the viewer to look at the situation from different angles. In general, unlike most films and TV series about the conflict between humanity and artificial intelligence, The Creator approaches the issue from a different angle, considering the future in terms of harmonious coexistence of both species, rather than extermination or domination of one over the other.
The overall score is 7.5 out of 10 points.
