For inventively imagined movie worlds, there aren’t many directors doing it better these days than Gareth Edwards, who broke out with 2010’s Monsters. And this has remained the case even when he’s gone on to work within well-established cinematic milieus, such as 2014’s Godzilla and 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Yet two other crucial elements of sci-fi filmmaking—character and story—have remained the filmmaker’s bugaboo, including with The Creator. The original script, written by Edwards and his Rogue One collaborator Chris Weitz, stars John David Washington as Joshua, an elite American soldier on the frontlines of an ongoing war against artificial intelligence and the humanoid simulants who are seeking independence. When Joshua’s mission brings him into contact with a young simulant with unheard-of powers (Madeline Yuna Voyles), he begins to question his loyalties. Visually, The Creator is stunning, from the blue targeting lasers that beam down from a hovering American airship, like angelic assassins, to the simulants themselves, who have a metallic tube at the bottom of their skull that you can see straight through. (The special effects throughout are seamless.) Unfortunately, and despite Washington’s considerable charisma, Joshua remains a character of convenience, whose motivations are governed by thinly developed relationships (Gemma Chan appears in flashbacks as his wife) and the moral needs of the story. (It’s never any question that he’ll come around to the side of the simulants.) I had no trouble believing all of the fantastic imagery that The Creator puts up on the screen; it’s the story I couldn’t quite invest in.
(10/12/2023)
