The Creator might be a sci-fi film on the outside, but take away the post apocalyptic hardware and you are left with very little to geek out on. I get it. It was easy to create sci-fi in the 70s and 80s. Just talk into your phone and you were out of this world. The world we live in now is literal science non-fiction. So the result has films steeped in doom and gloom and call it the future.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story may be one of the best origin films made in that universe. A film Gareth Edwards directed. This is his follow up to that movie, and one he didn’t plan on making. It wasn’t until a random road trip put the idea in his head and birthed THE CREATOR. I say that so you know that I am a fan of Edwards work. This one actually has a similar look and feel to it that Rogue One had.
Great war ships and mammoth implements of destruction permeate this film as well It is set in a not so distant future – 40 plus years from now – and the same AI that was built to aid humanity has attempted to destroy it. Now the US military does what it does best – hunt down and destroy the enemy. Their main objective is to find and eradicate a new AI weapon.
The US military enlists the aid of a war torn soldier named Joshua (John David Washington) who has lost much to this human AI conflict. He is reluctant to join until he learns that it might help bring some closure to his greatest loss. When he discovers that the weapon in question is actually an AI “child” he is torn as to which to save and why.
Here is where the story plummets south for me. The plot tries very hard to get you to feel for this robot in a way you might a puppy or even a human. It is not preachy – I hope – but more a careless mistake on the writer to think we would immediately picket for robot rights. As an audience we have grown to love C-3PO and R2D2 to the point where we are expected to save the androids at all cost! But we are also the ones who understood that the droid army needed deactivated and shut down. This is nothing more than a droid army that we are supposed to now rally behind.
AI, electronics, machines; they are there to make our life easier. Not become on eof the family. Trust me, if my roomba starts to get out of line it is going in the trash. The film makers put a sweet child’s face and voice to this AI weapon and so we are expected to root for it. So, as wonderful as the film looked, it gave me no reason to engage. I sort of felt for Joshua and his past, but not a lot. Having a movie where there are really no “good people” makes for a boring journey.
There are attempts to stir up conversations about creation, the afterlife, is man no better thatn amchine since we too are a creation. But that falls flat too. No intellectual dialogue will spend more than 5 minutes debunking all those arguments in the face of human casualties.
I saw this film in IMAX to give it the best possible platform to wow. As I mentioned it looks wonderful and oozes apocalyptic imagery. It is the story and assumption we will buy into it that is the ultimate downfall.
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