The Creator

CAUTION: SPOILERS AHEAD.

The Creator is what every good movie ought to be. Thought-provoking, grounded, visually stunning, and heartfelt. This is especially important when it comes to science fiction movies in the twentieth century, where the film industry has become hyper-focused on creating things that can be turned into franchises, AKA cash cows they can milk until the cow collapses.

This has led to many visually stunning films that have mass appeal, and are full of potential opportunities to make more money on the backend with merchandise. This has become especially true in the era that has followed since Disney bought Star Wars. Now every studio is attempting to create or revive something that will have a cult following. And in the meantime, Disney has been pumping out more Star Wars content than can be consumed. Not to mention that they have increased their targeting of younger and younger audiences. We see this with the release of Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures. We have now reached the point in the cult cycle where the young are born into the cult, and are wholly unaware of anything outside of it.

Thus steps in The Creator. A film that is enjoyable for the casual viewer and audiences that want a deeper meaning to a film. The Creator explores the uncomfortable reality that homo-sapiens are a race of humans born in genocide. We are the last remaining species of Homo sapiens because we destroyed all others. And we will continue to destroy all other contenders, whether they be other humans, aliens, or in the case of The Creator, artificial intelligence.

The film focuses on Sergeant Joshua Taylor, an ex-Special Forces soldier played by John David Washington. In the movie, the U.S. Army sends Taylor to infiltrate the artificial intelligence resistance. In the process, he falls in love with one of the A.I. operatives, Maya Fey. But the romance between Maya and Taylor is cut short when Taylor when a botched raid on the A.I. camp exposes him as an undercover operative. During the ensuing battle, Maya attempts to escape before being presumably killed. This leads Taylor to leave his occupation, and we next see him five years later, helping to clean up ground zero of where the war against A.I. began.

While cleaning up ground zero, the U.S. government recruits Taylor to track down the being known only as Nirmata. In the process of tracking down Nirmata, Taylor finds a young A.I. girl, whom he later names Alphie. By watching Taylor’s struggle to keep Alphie and himself alive and out of the clutches of the authorities, both the Western nations and those of New Asia, we are forced to question what is the nature of intelligence, and what it means to be alive. Along their journey, Taylor comes to accept Alphie as a living being. This is due both to him recognizing that she is a new kind of simulant. One that can grow and adapt as she gets older, but also due to her being based on Maya and his unborn daughter.

What ties the overall storyline into Taylor and Alphie’s battles with the two warring factions is the reality that they are both victims of the prevailing order. We see this in the background references to the United States’s wars in both Vietnam and Afghanistan. In this, The Creator ties itself to another great film that just so happened to be science fiction as well, District 9. Both films use non-human characters to question how we treat others, and how we can overcome prejudices to make the world a better place.

In the end, I would highly recommend The Creator to anyone, whether they just want an action-packed joy ride. Or a film that will make them think a little harder about how our world is governed, and the struggles we will face as artificial intelligence becomes more integrated into our lives.

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