From Godzilla and Rogue One director Gareth Edwards comes a brand-new sci-fi thriller that looks to be one of the most exciting films of the year. Get ready for the robot revolution as The Creator hits cinemas on September 28.
Edwards’ first feature film since 2016 and formerly titled True Love, The Creator is set in a desolate near future ravaged by all-out war between hard-scrabble humans and the formerly benevolent AI who has turned against us by, among other things, nuking Los Angeles (honestly, it’s like nobody even watched The Terminator).
Our protagonist is John David Washington’s Joshua, a hardened commando still grieving his slain wife who is ordered to track down and eliminate out artificial enemy’s secret weaponl. But it turns out it’s a little robot kid, Alphie, played by Madeline Voyles, who he can’t bring himself to summarily execute. And so we proceed from there.
You could make the argument that this is an extraordinarily timely film given recent anxieties about the rise of AI language models but really, we have been making movies about evil computers for decades now. This one does look the business, though. The robot designs, as modelled by Voyles and co-star Ken Watanabe in the trailer, remind us of some of the mechanical characters in Stephen Spielberg’s A.I. And given Edwards’ stupendous sense of scale, we’re sure to see some widescreen spectacle before the final credits roll.
Of course, what it’s all really about is anyone’s guess. The plot is being kept under wraps, but it feels allegorical, right? It’s got that high-minded vibe. But we’ll always turn up for a cast that includes Gemma Chan, Sturgill Simpson, Alison Janney, Veronica Ngo, and Ralph Ineson and besides, it’s a high concept sci-fi action movie that isn’t a sequel or a remake. We don’t get too many of those these days.
