“The Creator” is a timely dystopia movie about Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the not-too-distant future. Drawing both visually and thematically (and heavily) from a long list are readily apparent borrowed elements from “Blade Runner,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Avatar,” “Star Wars,” “Star Trek,” and “The Terminator.” British filmmaker Gareth Edwards directed the not-bad Star Wars movie “Rogue One” (2016). “The Creator” is his first movie since then.
The premise of “The Creator” is current-events rich: In addition to being about AI, it’s possibly an allegory for the ongoing power struggle between the U.S. and China (it’s very much an East versus West affair), as well as the current Hollywood-centric SAG-AFTRA strike that has in part to do with studios such as Disney having performed body scans on actors so that they could use their likeness on future projects.
Ultimately the film would like to pose the following questions: Are AI-powered robots dangerous to humanity? Are they maybe oppressed slaves, deserving of freedom?
Kill the AIs
Sometime in the future, when AI has logically unfolded in predictable ways based on current trends, an “accidental” nuclear explosion in Los Angeles decimates millions. U.S. government officials blame AI for the disaster, outlaw the tech categorically, and attempt to eradicate it worldwide—a global AI genocide, if you will.
A pan-Asian entity now exists, called “New Asia,” which refuses to discard artificial intelligence, so there are lots of enclaves, villages, compounds, mountain strongholds, and the like, of AI bot-creatures with Asian features, up in them thar hills. “The Creator” was shot in many Asian countries—Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia among them—and there are many visual cultural suggestions of Tibet. (It was not shot in China, however) Anyway, this all leads to a U.S. invasion.
Denzel’s Son
Our guide is one Joshua Taylor (John David Washington, sounding quite a bit like dad), a former U.S. special forces soldier who reluctantly agrees to undertake a mission because it might help him find his lost love, Maya (Gemma Chan). Maya’s an Easterner Joshua met while working an undercover op five years prior. The current op is to join a spec-op group hoping to penetrate enemy lines, and destroy the East’s most deadly weapon.
And the lethal weapon turns out to be a “simulant,” a robotic child (Madeleine Yuna Voyles), a very cute, very appealing 6-year-old-looking “girl” who likes ice cream (just like a real child!), TV cartoons, and toys, and who is clueless to the fact that she’s been programmed as a future time-bomb. She’s presented, of course, as a Messiah figure who wants peace on earth and good will towards men.
Overall
Washington is fine in the lead, and young Voyles has as star-making role as the messianic bot-kid. “The Creator” seems like the start of an ambitious franchise, by a director with vision, backed by a very sizeable budget. The goings-on are timely for a variety of reasons.
There are some fascinating ideas, such as the fear-mongering by the U.S. government, regarding AI bots and that they’re being used as a version of the weapons of mass destructions of Iraq to start a war. However, the film allows these good starts to eventually fizzle out with no logical conclusion.
Visually, “The Creator” is rather arresting, but we’ve been here many times before. We’re very familiar with androids that think, feel and have grand plans. Rutger Hauer’s android’s “tears in rain” monologue in “Blade Runner” set the standard. If “The Creator” had come out in 1982, instead of “Blade Runner,” we’d be gobsmacked by the originality.
The far-reaching ethical dilemmas posed by the rise of AI are not really addressed. It’s been claimed that the level of artificially-created sentience depicted in this movie is impossible—nothing mechanistic and electronic can ever match the workings of the human brain. It’s complexity and quantum mechanics points to the presence of the hand of God.
