Before English director Gareth Edwards was seduced to the dark side by Hollywood for films like Godzilla and Rogue One, he made his name with an ingenious, low-budget sci-fi film called Monsters about a road trip through alien-infested Mexico.
Now he’s returned to those roots with The Creator which dives into the topic-du-jour this year, AI.
The Creator opens with a potted history of robots as they become more and more sophisticated – not just useful, but increasingly human.
Photo: Screenshot
Until one day, predictably, they declare war on us. Goodness knows machines have been attacking us in movies for decades – most famously in The Terminator films.
Our hero Josh Taylor – John David Washington – has been sent undercover to investigate the enemy in New Asia.
Unlike the noble heroes of the West, determined to defeat robots and human look-alikes called “simulants”, perfidious New Asian humans are actually in league with them.
Josh is about to uncover the rogue architect of simulants. To that end he’s even married the Creator’s daughter Maya, played by Gemma Chan. But after a botched invasion, the AI robots and Maya get away before Josh can discover The Creator’s new secret weapon.
So an anti-AI squad led by a hard-nosed Allison Janney is set up to capture the secret weapon, and Josh goes along with them to try and find his wife Maya.
And as we watch the patrol cross the paddy-fields of New Asia, we’re reminded of every Vietnam War movie ever made - particularly Apocalypse Now.
But as the Western squad blasts the enemy – not just robots and simulants but peasants, old and young - we’re given uncomfortable reminders of some real-life, questionable invasions.
It’s like the old Mitchell and Webb sketch of the two SS officers wondering “Are we the baddies?”
Nowhere is this underlined more than when Josh discovers that the secret weapon devised by The Creator is in the shape of a child.
But is it just “in the shape of” a young human? How human has AI become? Is this still handy equipment or evolution? As far as Josh’s troops are concerned, Alphie the super-robot must be captured, or destroyed.
Josh succeeds in getting Alphie out of the simulants’ camp, but then starts to have more doubts. This is shadowy territory. Who’s a human, who’s a robot, and what’s the difference now?
It’s Apocalypse Now meets Blade Runner, as the deeply conflicted Josh finds himself protecting the so-called weapon he’s meant to destroy.
The Creator is old-school sci-fi, in other words. And what I liked about it - more than many films that tread the same territory by the likes of Christopher Nolan, say - is that it doesn’t seem to be going out of its way to make me feel stupid.
Once we’ve established the world of the film, the mission at its heart becomes a very straight-forward one – or at least a simple one to grasp. To save the adorable kid or to save the human race.
The film also benefits from the fact that much of it is shot in real locations – mostly in Thailand – with digital effects tastefully added later, rather than swamping every scene.
This is after all a story about humans and simulants co-existing side-by-side. It’s like The Terminator, with the robots being given the right of reply.
John David Washington is better than usual too – I’ve tended to find him a bit bland in the past. He’s particularly good with young Madeleine Yuna Voyles as the enigmatic Alphie.
OK, it’s about 20 minutes too long, but the well-worn theme of “what’s a human?” is given an ingenious twist here, straight out of another sci-fi classic, Planet of the Apes. What happens when machines get more and more intelligent while humans get less and less so?
In an age of self-consciously clever sci-fi movies, The Creator is something else – an intelligent one.
