Following the global success of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, British director Gareth Edwards’ next project returns us to the infinite possibilities of the sci-fi realm, except this time, in a galaxy not so far away.
Set in the year 2070, The Creator is a post-apocalyptic thriller that places us firmly within the war-torn society 10 years after advanced AI successfully detonated a nuclear warhead. In the midst of a nuclear fallout, the Western world banned AI and its use, although, throughout Asia, it has been developed to almost human-like sentience, as people have begun worshipping the Creator as some pseudo-deity.
Joshua, a former special forces agent played by John David Washington (Tenet), is tasked with hunting down the Creator in an effort to stop the AI and end the war. Hans Zimmer, the legendary composer of Inception, Dune and Gladiator, to name a few, joins the project to provide the essential transportive qualities that only his music can bring.
The timing for Edwards’ latest project is almost perfect, as the SAG-AFTRA strikes continue worldwide threatening to shut down the movie industry indefinitely. It’s why many actors, such as the cast of Oppenheimer, have walked out of film premieres and ceased all promotion of current or upcoming projects to picket in solidarity with striking actors in Los Angeles against the evolving influence of AI technology within the film industry.
Although in The Creator, Edwards explores the consequences of Artificial Intelligence advancement to an unprecedented scale and the resulting destruction it leaves behind, it’s certainly a significant juxtaposition with real-world relationships with a technology intended to further our own societal development, not lead to its ultimate demise.
WATCH The Creator trailer below.
Unlike in Star Wars where robots, humans and alien species are distinctly different, Edwards’ new world intentionally warps the lines between humans and AI; the AI’s mirrored likeness to humans is certainly no accident, traversing the features that separate us by highlighting that which unites us: “People, when they think they’re a robot, they start acting a bit different and pushing things a little bit more. And so I would get everyone to play it like they were human.” Edwards tells Comicbook.com.
It creates a rich futuristic world that evokes ideas of “the other,” and by presenting robots with an identical likeness to our own, calls into question the ideas of personhood and civil prejudices that will only become more prevalent in future society as AI advances beyond comprehension.
In this film we see two sides of the same coin, witnessing a fractured world that has to destroy the very thing it created, in one last effort to save itself.
The Creator is coming to cinemas in Australia on 28 September 2023.