The Creator Review: All the Heart of a Robot
The Creator fails at delivering unique sci-fi, which while still watchable, is by no means the return to original blockbusters we’ve been hoping for.
Like the rest of starved Star Wars fans and other dismally hopeful sci-fi enjoyers, I was ecstatic upon learning about The Creator. Promising a unique story tackling complex issues that are still evolving in our present moment regarding AI, The Creator was a return to big, original sci-fi. “Finally!” we cried, “hope for the creative! Opportunity for something new!” It’s sad that finished CGI and an original story is all that’s required to convince modern audiences to buy a ticket, but I have to admit, I was salivating as I sat in my theater seat open to whatever The Creator wanted to be. And then the opening credits rolled.
Not even five minutes into The Creator I was struck with disappointment. The film announces itself with a comical lack of nuance that persists for the entirety of its runtime, and sadly, reflects how formulaic and safe it truly is. I am baffled reading reviews claiming this film, to quote the incredibly misaligned BBC, “a jaw-droppingly distinct” sci-fi. It takes no longer than two minutes for the film to prove this quote dishonest, as the audience is told that AI is invented, has become increasingly involved in human life, can adopt the likeliness of people, and, oh yeah, dropped a nuke killing millions of innocent Americans for no explainable reason. Cut to a nameless American general puppeteering the speech of a determinist dictator: “we will stop at nothing until all AI is exterminated.”
At least we know which side he’s on.
This setup is followed by an introduction to our protagonist. Meet white bread personified Josh Taylor, an amputee undercover agent for America trying to locate the creator of all AI, Nirmata. Taylor is positioned in East Asia, a global super power who unexplainably fights to preserve the very AI that has proven to be capable of random mass genocide. This is where the illogical worldbuilding contradictions begin, to which there is no end, resulting in more than a couple scenes where audience intrigue is superseded by confusion.
It seems while deployed, Taylor made the grave mistake of falling in love. Maya, a human AI sympathizer, is also the soon to be mother to Taylor’s child. However, tragedy strikes when America preemptively launches a missile from their AI hunting death ship, NOMAD, seemingly killing Maya and sending Taylor down a road of disillusionment. Five years later, he is recruited by the army to continue the hunt for Nirmata’s newest AI weapon, with Taylor only agreeing after learning Maya may still be alive. On the hunt, Taylor learns the weapon is an AI child, one that just might lead him to Maya, and was seemingly designed with the intention of bringing down NOMAD via the power to control technology.
While the premise sounds interesting, it is in execution where the film deflated before even taking a breath. Maya and Taylor’s relationship, the sole driver for Taylor and, by extension, the plot, is established ineffectively with cliche prose and surface level dialogue lacking any semblance of subtext. “I love you, Maya,” “I am nothing without you,” “this is real, that child is real.” I can only remember these lines because of how unexpectedly formulaic they were, and by extension, because I’ve heard them a thousand times before in both worse films, and better ones that would use Taylor’s cliche declarations as set up for subversion. Right off the bat, characters say exactly what they mean. It does not help that this dialogue is played over vague imagery of the two lovers running aimlessly on a beach; the universal presentational trope to depict ideal love.
Forgive my long-winded analysis, but I believe it’s crucial to communicating how quickly the film fails at everything it promised. Within its prologue and opening scene, The Creator went from an exciting, unique endless world of possibilities, to a watered down mess of cliches that fails to develop the emotional investment needed to have the audience engaged with Taylor, his desire for Maya, his journey, and as a result, the movie as a whole.
Most interestingly, the film’s lacking thematic depth reveals another way in which The Creator deceives its audience with marketing: this is not a movie about AI. Let me explain. The plot centers around AI, the world is inhabited by AI robots living amongst humans, but there is nothing new said about AI and its unique place in our modern day. Instead, The Creator reaches into decades of sci-fi stories to tell another allegorical tale of oppression. I am by no means arguing that those themes are not worth tackling, some of the greatest and most impactful movies ever made have been sci-fi films that reflect society's issues back onto its population. However, the reason those themes worked in other sci-fi films was because they were 1) fully developed and 2) absolutely relevant to their time and place in history. The world is still rampant with sickening oppression, but that is also a concept understood by near everyone in the audience. What isn’t, however, is AI, also known as the designing principle of the film, one that somehow manages to have nothing new or unique to say on its own subject matter teeming with thematic potential. Humans are entering an equally terrifying and exciting era of technology with AI. There are questions we can only hope to ponder regarding the potential for this advanced tech, questions that could have been explored through the very human medium of film. Instead, The Creator is only timely because of its repetition, and thus, fails to deliver anything new, exciting, or nuanced in its themes or plot. The Creator is the opposite of what it promised in nearly every way by being a painfully formulaic sci-fi bore with all the heart of a mechanized AI.
Lack of nuance and a formulaic nature poisons the film’s core and corrodes the rest of its elements like a disease. This primarily manifests, as I’ve already discussed, in its themes, but also in character, dialogue, and overall tone placed alongside narrative beats. This film's cast is one of caricatures, a hodge-podge of diametrically opposed humans and AI that are defined simply by the side they fight for and archetype they’re based on. I remember Taylor’s name, but don’t let that bare minimum fool you, as Taylor is not an exception to the seeming demand that all characters remain static impersonations of tired tropes. His desires rarely change, as he is only driven by the relentless pursuit for Maya. While the narrative may alter his story’s context, Taylor is rarely pushed or pulled into any interesting direction for his arc, instead being told that he has to accept what the movie wants him to become. Beginning the film as an AI cynic, Taylor’s arc is one of acceptance. However, he learns this lesson not from seeing the life within the technology he claims soulless via an impassioned journey with an innocent AI child showing him the light, but by instead being directly related to his child companion. That’s right, Nirmata is Maya (gasp!) and she modeled her super weapon child after her and Taylor’s own. While this moment may read as profound, in reality, its effect in the narrative is the reducation of Taylor’s potential for change. Now, he can’t not be an AI favorist, lest he be the worst father ever to his as-close-to-literal child as possible.
Since I’ve finished speaking on Taylor’s staticness, I can finally look up the names of the side characters. The child’s name is Alphie, and while the actor certainly performed, their character failed to do so. Alphie and Taylor share a connection formed exclusively through exchanges every reluctant parent character has had with their surrogate child. “Let’s play a game, it’s called get in the fucking car!” Reading like a line from the MCU’s most dismal comic efforts, these forced comical insertions make for tonal whiplash and repetitive conversations between the relationship that drives the entire film. When the two aren’t rehashing the same dynamic we’ve seen in popular media dozens of times in recent years, they attempt to have conversations that develop the film’s themes with equal, missing grace. When the two are in line and a robot asks Alphie what he wants, the child states “robots to be free” with puppy dog eyes trying to use their cuteness to mask the comical overtness of this thematic declaration that only reinforces the film’s lacking subtlety. “You won’t go to heaven because you’re not a good person. I won’t go because I’m not a person.” The line promising a story of complex morality advertised in every trailer actually comes at an awkward bus ride where the writer’s must’ve realized Taylor has such little depth that someone needed to speak a layer of complexity into existence. Rarely, if ever, are Taylor’s actions critiqued or commented on by others, and yet the film proclaims he is an anti-hero stuck between sides of gray and gray. This couldn’t be further from the truth, as The Creator doesn’t exist in a liminal space of questionable morality, but a world blanketed by black and white.
On America’s side, we have the legendary, no nonsense Colonel Howell, who is a colonel, hates AI, and is haunted by the atrocities she’s seen in the AI-Human conflict. Then there’s McBride, the no-nonsense soldier who hates AI and is haunted by the atrocities he’s seen in the AI-Human conflict. Ok, I’ll admit they have marginal differences, like McBride has fewer lines than Howell, but add on a couple nameless extras, and you’ve got yourself a faceless crew of AI hating humans perfectly fit for this middle of the road sci-fi adventure. Of course, the character’s are all business except when cracking poorly timed wise-ones that, again, only reminded me of the forced MCU comedy in their recent outputs.
Comedy supersedes logic and tone more than once in the film’s runtime, as if the film’s “logic” was consistent enough to even deserve attention. Both in structure and worldbuilding, the film fails to define itself. Beginning with break-neck pace and refusing to halt until a climax that drags, The Creator has a structure that seems almost the opposite of what any viewer wants. Yes, an interesting hook is necessary, but the ebbs and flows of tension are as well. Instead, The Creator prioritizes admittedly impressive visual effects and spectacle over sensible pacing or internal story logic. For example, in the film’s climax Taylor and Alphie board the NOMAD in an attempt to free AI. However, the film’s consistently abhorrent and confused editing paired with a countdown has the three foot Alphie traveling across an entire military ship in a matter of minutes, whereas Taylor scrounges the same tunnels in a handful seconds. This is indicative of the many ways the film forces its characters into plot points not because it makes sense for the narrative, characters, themes, pacing, etc, but because the movie necessitates it. “Oh yeah, we need the AI to not be bad guys…how about the nuke that caused the entire film was just a coding error?” Crucial lines that are required to understand the world’s internal logic are tossed around like candy with little emphasis, only adding to the confusion as I double take, “did they just gloss over the fact that humans colonized the moon?”
And because these showcases of spectacle are so lacking in narrative depth, subtext, or emotional weight, they ironically come off as hollow and repetitive instead of exciting, thereby having the adverse effect of actually slowing the film’s pace. The result? An explosive journey that was hard to stay awake through.
The world itself is as disappointing as the pacing, because what is given to the audience is admittedly impressive, when it makes sense. While The Creator is built on the weak support of fallacies and poorly developed worldbuilding, its one truth is that the film does have an original universe. Sure, it’s Earth, but there’s technology advanced enough to warrant at least a conversation to their thought-provoking implications. Taking a human’s dying consciousness and sticking it into an AI, allowing a man to see his body from the outside, invites a plethora of interesting thematic questions. As does a world where lying is made impossible due to mind-scanning technology, or where clones essentially exist with humans able to “donate their likeness” for AI identities, or where AI are conscious while being born. However, The Creator ignores the meaning behind its impressive imagery, just as it opts for spectacle over both logic and heart.
Which brings me back to why this film left me as upset as it did. I don’t pick apart movies because it’s fun to hate things I wanted to enjoy. While I love criticizing, it’s not for the pleasure gained by vocalizing hatred. I desperately wanted The Creator to be everything it promised. I have spent the past few years pleading for originality in Star Wars, revisiting “Destiny 2” just for the atmosphere, and rewatching Blade Runner 2049 because, well, it’s literally me. Instead of a fresh reiteration on iconic aesthetics for the presentation of thematically unique and relevant subject matter, instead of a return to the “big original sci-fi” of yesteryear, The Creator retread paths worn tired by its inspirations and contemporaries. For all of its failures, the film’s greatest sin is unoriginality.