Our world is full of technology. It is part of our everyday life from transport and machines for manufacturing to the complexity of the zinternet. We are now living in a time where artificial intelligence(AI) is becoming more of a reality and not just an antagonistic force that we see in movies. All of this commotion with AI makes “The Creator” a movie that has some plausibility to it, despite being an entirely fictional story.
“The Creator” takes place decades in the future starting in 2055 when Los Angeles is wiped out by a nuclear explosion believed to have been caused by AI.The trailer for this movie sets up the humans to be the good guys while the AI and robots are the bad guys. However, as the movie goes on, fast forward to the year 2070 with America at war with AI. The line drawn between good guys and bad guys becomes blurred as the American military infiltrates an AI base where the robots are being housed by human villagers who have sided with them. Sergeant Joshua Taylor, the movie’s lead, played by John David Washington, is among the American soldiers sent into the village to terminate the “weapon” that can end America’s war with AI only to find out that the weapon is an innocent, robot child, newcomer actor Madeleine Yuna Voyles, who is later named Alphie.
From the child’s discovery comes the usual storyline where the heavily flawed protagonist, Joshua, finds a younger character, Alphie, and reluctantly takes her in. This storyline has now become one that we have seen many times before. However, unlike other films that have been released this year, “The Creator” still finds a way to stand out amongst its fellow science-fiction productions.
For one, the movie is beautifully shot and its visual effects are actually quite good. The crazier thing is that in a year where movies that are made with hefty visual effects are released, “The Creator” looks far better than the likes of “The Flash,” “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” and “Fast X” to name a few.
Another positive is that it succeeds as a war film since there are high stakes for the characters. Again, in a year where multiple action films are released, most, if not all ,the characters in most of these films get out of their conflicts unscathed. “The Creator” manages to prove that no one is truly safe amongst this war between humans and robots as the first couple of battles see characters in Joshua’s squad get blown up or gunned down left and right. Coming from Gareth Edwards, who is coming off of “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” mass character deaths might become a reoccurring story beat with his movies moving forward.
The big thing to come out of “The Creator” is the attempt at sympathy towards the robots. The movie explains that AI has grown so much from its creation by humans that they have developed emotions and have taken on human actions. We see robots as a part of the police force, robots acting in several shows and dancing in night clubs. There is even a mention that humans can “donate” their likeness to robots who want to wear human faces. Yet, we also see them partake in human religion through funeral ceremonies and mourning their own losses or visiting temples to see robot monks. There is a scene where Alphie is reading the Bible, specifically from Genesis 2:22 where Eve is created from Adam’s ribs and is brought to him in the Garden of Eden.
A great scene from the movie is when Joshua and Alphie talk about what Heaven is. During this conversation, there is an eerie parallel in which Joshua says that Heaven is a “peaceful place in the sky” before the screen shows the massive satellite weapon that America is using to rain fire down on AI refugee camps. Joshua then says to Alphie that “You have to be a good person to go to Heaven.” Alphie makes an observation that she and Joshua are the same. She says Joshua can’t go to Heaven because he’s “not good” and she can’t go because “she’s not a person.”
Overall, “The Creator” is a standout addition to the 2023 film slate. Gareth Edwards and his creative team along with a cast delivered an astonishing movie with aspiring visuals, unexpectedly great parallels to scripture, and a storyline that is made richer and even more eerie with AI’s current state in our society. While the humans in the movie deem robots as nothing “real,” just “programming,” we can’t deny that AI has made the events in this movie eerily plausible with some decades left to go. Leaving this writer to wonder how long could it potentially take if the “programming” displayed on the movie screen becomes grim and truly “real.”
