Gareth Edwards’ original sci-fi actioner The Creator is a visually stunning blitzkrieg of a film with something to say about America’s post-truth military-industrial complex. Set in the near future of the 2050s, America is at war with artificial intelligence that detonated a nuclear warhead over Los Angeles. The country of New Asia has fully embraced AI and humans, robots, and simulants are fully integrated into family, work, and even religious communities. To stop New Asia’s AI development, America launches covert operations and deadly missile strikes from the USS NOMAD, a near-orbit space station that circles the globe like an omniscient, omnipotent bird of prey.
NOMAD is terrifying, the shadow of America’s fascist hand hovering across the globe, shafts of blue light target entire villages, signalling death from above with its deadly ordinance. The sound design when it scans for victims is more sinister as it emanates from human thought and reason, not the supposed evil of AI it is designed to eradicate. The shock and awe attacks are reminiscent of B52s bombing the caves at Tora Bora in Afghanistan, concussive shockwaves sucking the oxygen from the lungs of anyone within range. NOMAD is the US military given free rein by a Presidential dictator, presumably free from the shackles of its obligations to NATO, and a Russia stripped of its military assets after a protracted war in Ukraine.
One survivor of a NOMAD strike is special forces sergeant, Joshua Taylor who watches the annihilation at close range during a compromised mission. Five years later he is helping clear ground zero in Los Angeles when he is offered an assignment he can’t refuse: destroy a new AI weapon that could herald the extinction of the human race. Things get complicated when the weapon is revealed in an Akiraesque vault as an AI child called Alphie that makes Taylor question his motives. The casting of John David Washington as Taylor seems especially pointed as the Southeast Asian setting harks back to Vietnam and Taylor’s Damascene conversion to the other side echoes Muhammad Ali’s stance on the Vietnam War.
Throughout The Creator, the working-class grunts, be they human, robot or simulant, are sacrificed by the generals to further the hegemony of American exceptionalism. One can only assume that evangelical Republicans wanted to ban AI in the same way as they overturned Roe Vs Wade making abortion illegal in fourteen states. The nuclear explosion furthered their cause, no doubt American weapon tech firms like Lockheed Martin making billions from the subsequent arms race after Chinese tech has been outlawed to help make America great again. Could it even be proved that AI was responsible for the detonation or, like all nuclear disasters and very near misses, be put down to human error?
What makes The Creator such an intriguing prospect is the attention to detail Edwards crams into every frame. The verisimilitude is breathtakingly realised, take for example the gargantuan US Army tanks that bulldoze their way across the landscape, picking off soldiers and civilians alike. The fact that US Army is stencilled in lowercase on the tank’s armour to make these killing machines seem somehow less belligerent, shows a perverse attention to detail. These blue and white behemoths, straight from the pages of Rogue Trooper in 2000AD, need no camouflage as their sheer scale renders the guise of subterfuge obsolete in much the same way Trump abandoned any sense of decency on the world stage. Why should America be afraid of throwing its might around? That being said, in his earnest attempt to redress the balance of America’s quiet empire, has Edwards inadvertently othered his Asian characters as magical entities?
Like in his first film, Monsters, Edwards decided to film guerrilla style across dozens of locations, adding special effects in post-production. Not only did this save the production millions in costs but it has a tactile, solid quality in common with District 9 and his own incredible Rogue One. This is a world where you believe the unbelievable, the smack of bullets into AI armour, the helicopter whirl of American gunships, or junks that hover miraculously just over the water. Look at how the robots learn to become human, leaning casually with their weapons like they are starring in a 21st Century version of Apocalypse Now or thanking their human masters before embarking on a suicide mission. The Creator maybe a sci-fi epic but those singular touches are what makes it great.