Amid a future war between the human race and the forces of artificial intelligence, a hardened ex-special forces agent grieving the disappearance of his wife, is recruited to hunt down and kill the...
WHAT I LIKED: Gareth Edwards' 'The Creator,' is another sci-fi film about an A.I future. But unlike most, it never questions the humanity of its "Simulant," people, and is instead about their fight for equality in the face of oppression and persecution.
Appropriately, the people doing the oppressing and persecuting are the US army; waging a war in "New Asia," to eradicate the world's remaining A.I. You're against them from the attack that opens the film, not least because of the obvious Vietnam War imagery, but because the sequence ends in the death of the native, A.I-sympathetic wife (Gemma Chan) of US Army Sergeant Joshua (John David Washington). Years later, when Joshua is forced to return on a mission to track down A.I's original Creator and their newest brainchild (Madelaine Yuna Vovles), you know it's just a matter of time before he goes rogue and helps the Simulants to victory against the US.
After he finds the child, he ends up on the run with it to track down The Creator on his own terms, and so the 'Apocalypse Now,' parallels continue. It's a film buoyed mostly by tension, with brilliantly edge-of-your-seat escape sequences where Joshua has to find his way out of being captured by both the US army and the A.I who are hunting for the child. Plus there are the burning mysteries about The Creator and The Child themselves that keep you guessing like in all great sci-fi. But it's also the world-building that brings the tension life so effectively.
Shot largely on location in Thailand, from the cities to the paddy fields, Edwards and his production designer James Clyde manage to build a tangible futuristic world that looks like it's been evolved by A.I alongside humans. The smallest details are thought through to show how the Simulants work with the Natives, and then the architecture is rendered to look robotic and futuristic but more grubby, lived in and Star Wars-like than anything in, say, Blade Runner. It's then captured beautifully by cinematographers Greig Fraser and Oren Soffer who favour mid-to-wide shots so characters are always placed in their surroundings with natural-looking lighting, and the visual effects are layered over expertly to give everything - from the Simulant's heads to the US missile ship that looms in the sky - genuine weight on the screen.
Together that makes for a brilliantly gritty, on-the-ground sci-fi film buoyed by a tension which explodes in the inevitable, spectacular final battle between the invaders and the invaded.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: It's an interesting idea to treat the A.I as an oppressed species fighting for their freedom against Western invaders, but it's hard to root for them in quite the same way because - aside from the innocent Child who we're told is "different from the rest," - we don't actually get to spend much time with any Simulants, so your investment in the themes of the film rely mostly on the imagery. It doesn't help either that some of the technicalities of the plot are glibly explained away, and that most of the characters are fairly thinly drawn.
VERDICT: Gareth Edwards' 'The Creator,' treats A.I as an opposed, hunted species, but in the absence of engaging characters, it's mostly the tension and incredible world-building that keeps your eyes on the screen.
