The Creator
Technological advance is incremental but its progress is inevitable, the introduction of androids possessed of an adaptive artificial intelligence called Simulants to perform household chores efficiently and without fuss the first step; soon they were on the streets walking the dog, undertaking construction work, boosting the ranks of the police and the army, and then in 2055 when Los Angeles disintegrated in a burst of nuclear fire the Simulants were blamed and all AI was banned in the western world.
Ten years later, a cold war of attrition between the two most powerful sentient races on the planet is ongoing, the slowly evolving Homo sapiens and their newly arrived but vastly accelerated synthetic cousins which are protected and still thrive in New Asia, Sergeant Joshua Taylor of the US Military sent deep undercover to find and destroy the AI “god” known as Nirmata; instead he lost everything, his wife Maya and their unborn child vanishing in another flash of fire when the airstrike came too early.
Now working as a cleanup operator in the irradiated crater which was once Los Angeles, Taylor is given another chance: military intelligence believe they may have a lead on Nirmata, “the Creator,” who has developed a weapon which can end the war with victory for the AI, and his insight into its homeland is needed, the bargaining chip offered the information that Maya may have survived the blast; once again, Taylor is promised his wife will be protected when the military action begins if he cooperates.
The fourth film from director Gareth Edwards which reunites him with Chris Weitz, the co-writer of Rogue One, The Creator is closer in many ways to his first film, Monsters than either that or Godzilla, set in a world both familiar and alien and looking up at impossible things from the perspective of those below, shot largely in Thailand and enhanced in post-production with vast and elaborate constructions sat atop mountains and integrated into the lives of the indigenous communities to the point where they are a part of the fabric of their lives.
Touching on many of the themes and questions explored in Battlestar Galactica of the divide between organic and artificial life, self-determination and free will versus programming and the point at which it becomes indistinguishable from sentience, with the Simulants forming close family bonds with each other and the humans they live alongside in their enclaves as well as a complex belief system, The Creator is in many ways the next step of the story beyond Caprica, and adds more to the conversation than the clinically detached disappointment of Blade Runner 2049.
Starring Tenet‘s John David Washington as Joshua Taylor, he is a man compromised from the outset, a covert military operative reliant on his employer to return him to a mission he finds he is unwilling to complete, the “secret weapon” Alpha-O embodied as a child played by the brilliant newcomer Madeleine Yuna Voyles whom he is suddenly responsible for, his only link back to Maya (Captain Marvel‘s Gemma Chan) who, even if she is found, is unlikely to forgive him for his betrayal.
The military deploying colossal mechanisms which dwarf and crush resistance, the US forces are led by The Witch’s Ralph Ineson and I, Tonya’s Alison Janney as General Andrews and Colonel Howell, the latter a duplicitous zealot whose only objective is the completion of the mission, the humans who kill indiscriminately more unambiguously monsters than those they seek to eliminate, a bush war of superior technological forces against farmers an unexpected position for a Hollywood movie to present.
And yet in this world of neon and rain where an absent god has been replaced by a vengeful angel called the USS NOMAD which sweeps the skies and hurls down fire on the paddy fields and villages there is hope and kindness demonstrated by a lone soldier and an innocent child, The Creator not only one of the most beautiful science fiction films in recent years but one of the most deeply moving as it takes its characters on a journey through a war they cannot win but which they cannot abandon.
The Creator is on general release and also screening in IMAX
