The Creator

THE CREATOR (12)

D: Gareth Edwards

20th Century Studios / Regency / Entertainment One / New Regency / Bad Dreams (Gareth Edwards, Kiri Hart, Jim Spencer & Arnon Milchan)

US 🇺🇸 2023

133 mins

Science Fiction/Action

W: Gareth Edwards & Chris Weitz

DP: Greig Fraser & Oren Soffer

Ed: Hank Corwin, Joe Walker & Scott Morris

Mus: Hans Zimmer

John David Washington (Sgt. Joshua Taylor), Madeleine Yuna Voyles (Alphie), Gemma Chan (Maya Fey / Nirmata), Allison Janney (Col. Howell), Ken Watanabe (Harun), Sturgill Simpson (Drew)

The Creator is a visually impressive and conceptually creative science fiction offering from director & co-writer Gareth Edwards, unfortunately the writing doesn’t meet the same standard, ending up being incredibly derivative of many other obvious science fiction movies (A.I., I, Robot) and some not so obvious (Children Of Men, The Golden Child).

The film starts promisingly, giving needed backstory on a society that becomes increasingly dependent on artificial intelligence (AI) which set off a nuclear detonation that triggers a war between humans and cyborgs. The Western World seek to eradicate all existence of AI, but “New Asia” continue to embrace its uses.

15 years after the fallout, a former Special Forces sergeant, with knowledge of the New Asia hierarchy, is recruited to find “The Creator” who has created a new AI weapon with the potential to end the war.

This was one of the films I was really looking forward to after seeing the promotional trailer, but the plot, pacing and characterisation really lets this one down, especially in the middle act which verges on boring, before it does finally pick up for an exciting climactic showdown.

The Oscar nominations for visual effects & sound mixing were deserved, but I was expecting a lot more from this and I’m not at all surprised that it underperformed during its cinema run.

6/10