Does art reflect life? Does life reflect art? Whatever it is, The Creator is hitting theaters at exactly the right time as discussions around AI are becoming bigger and bigger. Of course, the premise behind The Creator, which just dropped a new, official trailer, is as old as dirt: AI rebels and a war starts. The twist here, however, is that it’s mashed together with the “protecting a child from danger” genre for an action-packed, dystopian sci-fi film from Gareth Edwards, the guy who brought us Rogue One and Godzilla.
In The Creator John David Washington plays Joshua, who finds himself sent to destroy the Creator, the architect of the rebel AI system that’s at war with humanity, and the creator’s ultimate weapon. The problem is that the ultimate weapon is a new AI built in the form of a child. Joshua, struggling from the loss of his wife, clearly doesn’t kill the child, and what results is a cat-and-mouse game between him, the rest of humanity, and the robots themselves.
The film may sound like a collection of cliches, but director Gareth Edwards is very good at turning cliche into classic, especially in the sci-fi realm. If nothing else, the film looks visually impressive with creative takes on AI robots, especially for a movie with a relatively small budget of $86 million. Given the way the film is flying under the radar a bit, it’s almost feeling like a return to Edwards’ early independent days of filmmaking, just with bigger-name stars.
To that end, the film also stars Gemma Chan, Ken Watanabe, Sturgill Simpson, Madeleine Yuna Voyles, and Allison Janney. Edwards wrote the screenplay for the movie alongside Chris Weitz. The producers are Gareth Edwards, p.g.a., Kiri Hart, Jim Spencer, p.g.a., and Arnon Milchan. The executive producers are Yariv Milchan, Michael Schaefer, Natalie Lehmann, Nick Meyer, and Zev Foreman.
As the official trailer notes, The Creator opens in theaters on September 29.
