THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
We never know what life truly is until we see it emerge for ourselves. No film tells it any bolder than The Creator.
PLOT
The 2023 film takes place in a fictional 21st century where humans went to war with artificial intelligence after a nuclear warhead was detonated over Los Angeles. The only human allies that aligned with the machines were those of New Asia who embraced them. In 2055, US army sergeant Joshua Taylor went undercover to infiltrate the AI’s chief architect Nirmata. During his tenure, he married a woman named Maya Fey and assumed that her adoptive father, simulating soldier Harun, was the mastermind. He never got a clear answer when she would be presumably killed in a strike caused by the USS’ NOMAD (North American Orbital Mobile Aerospace Defense), designed to launch destructive attacks from orbit. Five years after this incident, Taylor would take part of a ground zero cleanup crew in LA. One night, he would be approached by Colonel Howell and General Andrews to destroy Nirmata’s newest weapon ‘Alpha-O’. The humans are desperate to destroy this weapon as they believe it could be strong enough to destroy NOMAD and the shift the war’s balance in favor of AI. He agrees to do it when believing Maya to still be alive. When he goes to New Asia with a strike team, he ends up getting separated but finds the weapon to be the form of a child that can remotely control technology. Rather than kill Alpha-O, he chooses to name her ‘Alphie’ and take her to his former commanding officer Drew (Sturgill Simpson), with the intent to examine her and narrow down Maya’s whereabouts. When Howell finds out he didn’t kill the weapon, she hunts him down with the company of remaining strike force member McBride (Marc Menchaca). When Taylor reaches Drew, his examination helps him discover Alphie will become the planet’s most powerful weapon as her powers will grow exponentially. They would eventually be spotted by New Asian officers, with Howell & McBride right behind, which would lead to the death of Drew’s simulant girlfriend Kami (Veronica Ngo). Drew is however able to escape with Taylor and Alphie to head to Maya’s latest location. Based on the tracker planted on her wedding ring, they track it to be the home she used to live with Taylor before the NOMAD strike. They don’t find here there, but Drew would be fatally wounded by Harun’s forces. In his dying breath, he would tell Taylor that Maya was Nirmata all along and was ordered not to tell him before the strike. When Harun takes the two to his village, he reveals the detonation in LA was caused by a human coding an error and the humans chose to blame AI ever since, when they always wanted to coexist. Taylor would escape the captor with Alphie, but their escape would be delayed when Howell leads an attack on the village. When Alphie tries to intervene with her abilities, she would be wounded by McBride. Taylor would retaliate by shooting down the other officer. Harun would take them to a monastery of simulant monks to recover from the wounds. And it’s there where Maya is found in a coma since the strike on her home and the monks have been taking care of her since due to simulants being unable to harm Nirmata. Not only that, but one of the monks would also tell Taylor Alphie is based on their unborn child that was scanned in utero. Wanting to put his wife out of misery, he takes her off life support before Howell catches up to him. She would scan her brain with a memory chip to extract information that would change the tide. She wouldn’t be able to use it to an advantage due to Harun killing her. Protecting Taylor and Alphie in the process, he would warn NOMAD has to be destroyed to end the war. Just as Taylor would leave with Maya’s chip, he and would be captured by US forces. When returning to LA, Andrews would order him to kill Alpha-O with an electromagnetic pulse gun, whereas her body would be incinerated. Taylor would instead go against this and protect her. The two would then board a shuttle that’ll take them to NOMAD before Andrews’ recent order to attack every AI base around the globe goes in full effect. There, Taylor plants a timed explosive while Alphie disables the ship’s power. In the midst of the commotion, Alphie would spot a simulant resembling her mother and would boot her up with the same memory chip Taylor took. She would then try to take her to her escape pod, but struggles to drag her. Taylor would slowly lose his oxygen due to blowing the shuttle's airlock. He gets able to put Alphie in a pod but gets held back by mechanical tentacles. Despite overcoming that obstacle, he is unable to board Alphie's pod in time and must let her return to Earth without him as the bombs go off. As NOMAD gets destroyed, he finds a moment of peace when finding the Maya simulant with her memories, until dying with the ship. The destruction of NOMAD would end the war and the film would end with Alphie being celebrated by people around her as the new Nirmata. THOUGHTS
Gareth Edwards made one hell of an impact with the previous sci fi films he directed during the 2010s (Monsters, Rogue One and Godzilla), which alone had me very anticipated on what he would do next. This one was quite the experience because he made a whole other spectacle I didn't think I was prepared for. The whole time, I was stunned of what was another epic adventure to go through. You know you're in for something intense when it comes to a story revolving around a man vs. machine war, only for the roles to switch where we root for the latter instead. Hans Zimmer gives another compelling score to have us aware how high the stakes are. Oren Soffer's cinematography was so deafening to depict how worn out the war has made both sides feel. Like any modern sci fi film, the visual effects are always make a break and here, it is a make because the motion capture done to make most of the actors appear as simulants was incredible. To me, the reason this film differs from past films is how it points out the repetitive justification of war and how we always find excuses to keep fighting until there's nothing left to fight about. The humans depicted here are at their lowest because they choose to fight rather than own up to a mistake that should've not happened. What truly matters in our lives is finding the alternative before doing what you know best because if we don't adapt, future generations will struggle to strive. This message would've not been so loud had it not been for such a diverse ensemble the genre could give us. Ralph Ineson sold it in making Andrews a ruthless authoritative figure trained to destroy all who are different, while Allison Janney shows Howell one who lost her compassion due to the loss of her sons who were casualties of war. Losing them mentally broke her to the belief that everything different is bad, making it easy for her to have been on the same page as Andrews. With these villains being too far gone from having second thoughts, it is enough reason to be completely against them and root for someone willing to change for the greater good. Actor John David Washington gives another crack at sci fi after Tenet and delivers in having us root for Joshua Taylor. He is a guy who made his decisions because he deeply believed they were right at first, until proven wrong in tragic fashion. There was no doubt he and Maya had genuine affection for one another because they believed the war had to end and related to personal loss since the war cost them their parents. Despite this, he still sided with his race because he didn't know the whole story of why the war happened. Had things been different, he would've fought for the opposite side and NOMAD would've been dealt with sooner. Losing Maya broke him the way Howell was broken because he didn't see a future without her, especially when she was pregnant with his child before the raid. He felt like he had nothing to fight for after that, hence wanting to left alone in peace from then on. Once he discovered she was still alive, he regained his motivation on what to fight for. He did use Alphie to find Maya, but he still kept her originally because he saw how innocent she was in the scenario she was in. Gemma Chan definitely goes for enigmatic presence as she makes Maya more than a damsel. She was a rebel who had a stronger compassion on wanting the violence to end once and for all. She designed Alphie based on her unborn child because with her and Joshua sharing similar beliefs, she knew she would bring evolution in the right direction. That is where we fall for the child because breakout Madeleine Yuna Voyles expresses zero animosity and 100% curiosity. She barely discovers what she's capable of with singular thoughts and doesn't overuse them because she doesn't see the point of going past the needs to use them. She does grow attached to Taylor by the end of it because she admires how protective he is of her, never seeing her as a threat or an object. That is where his death is sad to watch him die because her life will be extremely different without him and it's up to her to make it for the better. In the end, I think he earned his reunion with Maya because she was the heaven he was looking for, making his quest not in vain. Another character I admired was Harun because Ken Watanabe does a great job making him a stoic figure quite easy to understand. He's someone who wants the war to end like everyone else does, but has to take it all one step at a time to do it right. Little would he expect making amends with a former brother in arms and encounter the weapon to change the tide. He chose to take Josh to Nirmata because he saw how much Alphie started to mean to him, giving him the newfound motivation to make the needed change. Seeing him have his back at the end would only solidify what was bound to happen. And if he is by Alphie's side, there's no doubt the future will be in good hands. This film was generally impressive, but it doesn’t excuse some issues I picked up on. For starters, why isn't there an explanation for robots to wear pressure suits as an astronaut as shown in the opening montage? If you're not gonna explain it despite the cool visual, don't show it. The same goes with not explaining why the stimulant wasn't beyond faster in that track race. Moving on, Drew should’ve tipped Josh off that a raid was gonna happen sooner than later. Even if he wasn’t able to tell him Maya was Nirmata, one simple warning would’ve been enough. Josh is a smart character for the most part, but there were things he could’ve done differently. Like I don’t understand why he didn’t know Dian Dang was New Asian slang for Heaven. If he spent so long being in New Asia undercover, he should’ve picked up on it much sooner. The same can be said with how he never caught Maya working on Alphie during the said tenure. Of course the government messes up bringing him along towards the mission on destroying Alpha-O because he’s an instant liability over what happened to Maya, but I personally gotta take it further when I say they should’ve negotiated with New Asia to ban AI from the US. The same can be said on how Howell being a liability when she lost her sons. I know they’re so ashamed of their mistake they would wipe them out to the point they want to act like it didn’t happen, but negotiations would’ve been easier than wasting so many lives. Also, why the hell didn’t Howell take off her vest after Harun shot her with the grenade? It was one thing for strike force member Bradbury to ignore this because she was desperate to get off the land, but Howell should’ve acted faster since she didn’t want to leave without having an upper hand in the war. Of all the things the simulants don’t have, how come they can’t scan for nearby threats? Harun could’ve used that to pursue Josh. That design flaw is worse than not finding a fix around their own standby buttons which Josh uses on Harun. It even gets out of containment when Andrews doesn't even notice Josh used the standby switch when it was too late. And I did laugh when Alphie touches the checkpoint bot to get on the plane, but imagine how awkward it would’ve been for the humans around her and Josh to try because it’s odd they don’t pay attention of that exchange. Lastly, it was a bold sacrifice from Josh to stay in NOMAD when it crashes, but why does Alphie allow this? If she is supposed to be a new messiah as Nirmata, she should've opened the door from the thought alone or they could've explained why she wasn't able to override Josh's override. Ignore this, then you'll still have a blast like I did. In short, The Creator is a great sci fi flick that has more depth at first glance. If sci fi is your favorite genre, see this now.
Comments