The Creator trailer reaction
New IP in Hollywood is a rarity, even more so in the highly competitive genre of science fiction. But a tease for The Creator, Gareth Edwards latest sci-fi epic looks promising, and comes at the right time.
The film is about a war between humans and AI, which is topical, given the rapid advancements in AI in the real world, and the fears that they conjure up. Of course this is taken to its logical extreme, in that AI is killing humans. AI failed in their world, it’s another warning it might fail in ours.
But the film will be more than mindless murder of robots. It poses a heavy philosophical question, can a self-aware AI go to heaven? This film looks like it might explore some of the philosophical questions that come up around AI, giving a unique twist. One day, we humans might have to grapple with the same question.
As the trailer goes on, audiences find out that there’s a little kid that the main character, Joshua, played by John David Washington, must keep safe. This plot is a little less original, as it;s been done in The Mandalorian, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Halo, and The Last Of Us, to varying degrees of success. Hopefully it lands near The Mandalorian rather than Halo.
Gareth Edwards is most well-known for Rogue One, a connection the film leans on. And it’s clear to see the film’s influences, the action, the machines, they all seem very Star Wars like. But hopefully Edwards takes what he’s learnt from Rogue One and applies it here, as of course the production didn’t go smoothly.
The scale of the film is something definitely from Dune. The music and the shots tease a sense of epicness, teasing at the grandiose scale. One in particular that stands out is the big space building with the blue light coming out of it, that’s hopefully something the film explains more about.
One interesting twist on the AI apocalypse is that the humans actually come back from the AI rebellion and start winning the war, as most films let the AI overrun the humans and simply follow a small band of them. But this movie promises to be different. Oh, and Los Angeles is nuked, not New York.
With a promising director, a new and unique take on the AI apocalypse formula instead of a script produced by ChatGPT, The Creator looks like an excellent original film. And it comes to cinemas September 29, 2023.
