Tuesday, September 26, 2023
The Creator
The film begins with the aftermath of a nuclear bomb explosion in Los Angeles. The US government concludes that it is the work of advanced AI. As a result, the US banned AI development, while Asian countries continue the endeavor and the AI powered robots become residents living side by side with humans and taking up tasks such as policing. The difference between the east and the west, both in ideology and reality, cannot be more evident. They live in two separate worlds.
The US government believes that an even more deadly weapon created by AI is an existential threat, and declares war against the AI-powered Asian countries by building a gigantic battle-ship called Nomad to destroy AI and its supporters, once for all.
Living in one of those Asian countries with his pregnant wife Maya (Gemma Chan), an American undercover special force agent Joshua (John David Washington) is trying to locate the mastermind of the AI force, a.k.a., the Creator. During an attack from Nomad, not only does Joshua lose Maya, but he is also gravely injured and loses one arm and a leg.
Five years later, still grieving for Maya, Joshua is recruited by the ruthless Colonel Howell (Allison Janney) to go back to look for and destroy the Creator. But Joshua has another motive for going back to Asia because he is told that Maya may still be alive, and he is determined to find her.
When Joshua finds out that the US Army's target is actually a robot that looks like a little girl who likes to watch cartoons on TV, he ends up bonding with the girl and he gives her a name Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles). Joshua also gets to know other resistance allies such as an AI robot named Harun (Ken Watanabe), and realizes who is the real enemy to humanity—the US government and its army, including that battleship Nomad.
There have been many sci-fi movies which created fascinating visuals of hardware in the future. Yet, the director Gareth Edwards brings us some striking visuals both for robots and aircraft, except when it comes to small gadgets such as the clumsy looking device for opening a door which has a 1980s look.
Despite all the excessive gun fires just like any other sci-fi movie, this movie is completely captivating due to its story and the emotional dynamics among the characters, especially between Joshua and Alphie. It's clever for the filmmaker to evoke our empathy by creating the character Alphie in the appearance of an adorable child. If you were Joshua, no matter what you were told about Alphie being a threat to your country or even humankind, you probably would not be able to pull the trigger on her. It would be a different story if Alphie had the same appearance as other faceless robots in the film, which are getting shot and killed all the time.
The director Gareth Edwards is ambiguous, perhaps on purpose, about the exact locations of these Asian countries in the movie, even though some of the images remarkably resemble those from the Vietnam War. It's also perplexing that all the on-screen texts are in both English and Japanese, while the film has nothing to do with Japan or anything that is specifically Japanese.
It's interesting for the film to lump Asia with AI together as the adversary to the US and characterize them as evil. That hostile attitude toward Asian countries and AI in the film exhibited by the US government is startlingly similar to the anti-China rhetoric by the politicians in Washington right now. The film terrifically presents that the perception of good and evil is all relevant, so are the true threats to humanity.
"The Creator" opens on Friday, September 29, 2023.
