Review: ‘The Creator’ is glorious but humanity takes a back seat

The movie evokes the feeling of something fresh, something novel,

The artificial intelligence in Gareth Edwards’ “The Creator,” a visually stunning if formulaic epic, is not the AI making headlines right now. This is classic sci-fi AI — the Roy Battys of “Blade Runner,” the Avas of “Ex Machina,” the ones whose sentience we endlessly question and debate. Will the machines exterminate us? Will you take our jobs? Or do something that no one has ever seen in a movie?

Joshua (John David Washington), the retired special forces guy cleaning up nuclear debris, tells a coworker flatly when she suggests that the AIs were after their jobs: “They can have this one.”

Regardless, for the time being, artificial intelligence is a metaphor for something other than aspiring screenwriters, filmmakers, or trash collectors. And, according to Edwards and his co-writer Chris Weitz, they may have a greater capacity for humanity and goodness than humans, which isn’t exactly part of the ChatGPT conversation, though it would be an interesting twist.

They are initially welcomed by society in the world of “The Creator” as an unambiguous good — a helpful servant class with the ability to improve our human lives. They turned on us, as they often do in sci-fi dystopias. Actually, they turned on the United States when they dropped a nuclear weapon on downtown Los Angeles. That, of course, means war.

Joshua from Washington lost his family in the attack, and when we meet him, he’s working undercover in New Asia to track down the creator of these advanced AIs, a shadowy, elusive figure known as Nimrata. Joshua, on the other hand, became preoccupied with other activities. He fell in love with, married, and is about to have a child with his on-the-ground source Maya (Gemma Chan), who was abducted by his peers in an unexpected raid — one of many truly sublime sequences in which a hovering death star-like aircraft called NOMAD scans the lush landscape with ominous blue lasers. Edwards, who had a difficult time making “Rogue One,” admits to enjoying riffing on “Star Wars” iconography.

Allison Janney’s hardened Colonel later tries to recruit him for one last shot at finding Nimrata and the ultimate weapon he’s suspected of developing, but a jaded Joshua refuses, saying, “I’ve got TV to watch.” Of course, he eventually says yes and ends up traveling with a Very Special Child, a wide-eyed AI named Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles), who may be able to assist him in his search. Voyles has an enthralling presence that is undeniably compelling. Unfortunately, the script deprives her of the edge and nuance that would make her more believable as both a person and a machine. Grogu, too, can be a little sassy at times.

However, this is a film in which the visuals overshadow the fairly predictable plot and even the actors, including Washington and Ken Watanabe. Edwards and co-cinematographers Greig Fraser (“Dune”) and Oren Soffer shot on location in eight countries with an unusually low-cost camera for a Hollywood studio film (the Sony FX3, which costs less than $4,000).

Speaking of cost, “The Creator” was made for around $80 million and looks a thousand times better than movies that cost three times as much (mostly superhero movies). This was part of Edwards’ plan, and it has the potential to revolutionize filmmaking. Instead of pre-determining the concept art and visual effects and forcing the actors to look at little silver balls or tracking markers, they added them in after the fact, using a camera any hobbyist could buy at a local store. It makes a significant difference.

“The Creator” is an original film as well, and even if it is a somewhat convoluted and silly mash-up of familiar tropes and sci-fi cliches, it still evokes the feeling of something new, novel, and exciting to experience and behold — which is much more than you can say about the vast majority of big budget films these days. And it’s worth checking out in the theaters.