The Creator
The cinema release of Gareth Edwards’s surprisingly tender science fiction film The Creator, marks the arrival of one of the few wholly original sci-fi pictures of recent years. With existing intellectual property dominating the broad end of mainstream film releases, original big budget cinema can be tricky to come by. Sci-fi films in particular are knowingly littered with nods to past triumphs, yet homage can fall into imitation, leading to regular accusations of the genre being stale and derivative.
Following a big screen summer dominated by the success of #Barbenheimer, new instalments of established franchises and a brace of key Hollywood strike actions, writer/director Gareth Edwards’s The Creator snuck in under the radar at the close of September. Edwards’s fourth film, an allegorical epic set 50 years from now in which the West has declared war on artificial intelligence, arrived quietly on a raft of strong reviews into a slow, post-summer marketplace. Whilst its box office was respectable, the film managed to find only a small percentage of its predicted audience.
Post-pandemic film markets are largely on the up, some within touching distance of pre-COVID glories, yet there remain multiple contributing factors to why films fall short of financial expectations but manage to connect with and even delight audiences who do see them. In the case of The Creator, there’s much that works well in and around its orbit including Edwards’s commitment to guerrilla style filmmaking, rallying the best of sci-fi cinema as inspiration and the film’s all too contemporary storyline. Could this seemingly stuffed bag of bonuses somehow have made the film less appealing?
Strike Action in the USA
The Creator follows ex-special forces agent Joshua (John David Washington) on his mission to kill both the architect of advanced AI and their world ending weapon. AI has been front and centre in countless modern sci-fi movies from the big budget dystopias of the Alien, Blade Runner, The Matrix and The Terminator franchises; through mid-tier cerebral takes such as Steven Spielberg’s Artificial Intelligence (2001) and Neill Blomkamp’s Chappie (2015); to relative parlour pieces like Spike Jonze’s Her (2013), Alex Garland’s Ex-Machina (2015) and Gerard Johnstone’s M3GAN (2022).
The increasing ubiquity of AI in everyday life, whether in practical terms or wherever you choose to source your news, is undeniable. Hollywood headlines of recent months have been no different, dominated by ongoing industrial action by the WGA (Writers Guild of America) and SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists). These unions represent adjacent clientele, screenwriters and performers respectively, yet both have recently cited contractual demands for safeguarding against AI fuelled redundancy for their members.
Could appetite for AI centric stories be dampened by the real world coverage of the topic? The latest Mission: Impossible instalment (whose big bad is an AI) appeared unaffected, although that film’s key marketing focused chiefly on its stars and action set pieces. The SAG member embargo on talent supporting any studio pictures during industrial action cannot have helped The Creator, given its lack of a ready built world or known characters to lean on. As an original concept, the film would need any marketing or press to do the heavy lifting with third-party promotions likely in short supply.
Edwards Has Form
Film tends to feel the collision of art and commerce more keenly than its cultural neighbours, in part due to its hefty production costs and the high-profile nature of its releases. Technically, you can write a book with just a laptop or paint a masterpiece in your bedroom, technically. Whilst The Creator achieved modest box office, its reported production budget of $80m is slight when compared with recent sci-fi films such as Tenet ($200m) and The Matrix: Resurrections ($190m), or any number of IP driven franchises, with Edwards keeping costs closer to something like Nope ($68m).
For a film with such lushly ambitious visuals to manage on such a meagre production budget appears miraculous. With the help of cinematographers Greig Fraser (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Dune: Part II) and Oren Soffer (on his first feature), Edwards used a small crew and fleet of foot guerrilla filming to capture real locations across Southeast Asia on which to overlay CGI. Despite its fantasy elements, The Creator exudes an organic realism from every frame that can be laid at the door of this technique, keeping the use of green screen technology to an absolute minimum.
Edwards employed a similar approach to shooting his debut feature Monsters (2010), on which he also served as DOP and visual effects/production designer. Filming across South America with a tight crew and non-professional equipment, Edwards was able to bring the picture in for less than $0.5m with the visual effects created on basic equipment at his home. Monsters was well received and led to a big budget, atmospheric instalment of Godzilla (2014) followed by a reportedly rougher time on Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), to which The Creator owes a significant stylistic debt.
Muse on its Sleeve
Edwards has been open about the films which inspired the look and mood of The Creator, many of which grapple with the often opposing notions of technology and spirituality. The spectre of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), arguably an influence on just about all sci-fi cinema since, looms large in the rain slicked, neon drenched New Asia cityscapes of Edwards’s picture, recalling the bustling, dystopian streets of Scott’s 80s take on at the time a future Los Angeles. Both films offer up consummate visual artistry alongside discussions on what it is to not just be human but also to be good.
Katsuhiro Otomo’s seminal anime Akira (1988) holds arguably as much cult sway as Scott’s android epic. Otomo’s startling Neo-Tokyo set animation lends its post-apocalyptic fear and paranoia, corporation run law enforcement and uncannily gifted children to The Creator. In a similar vein to Neill Blomkamp’s efforts on District 9 (2009), Otomo and Edwards achieve believable, visually impressive world building way beyond not just their budget but in excess of films running on more than twice the expenditure. The sheer breadth of their chosen canvas belies the resources at their disposal.
The Creator nods to several sci-fi cult classics, yet Edwards drew from a wider cinematic pool to ground his picture. The film’s warfare recalls the bloody disorder of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) with industrial military might brought to bear on less well equipped adversaries. Edwards also spoke of the influence of the Lone Wolf and Cub films (Shogun Assassin in the UK), evidenced in the pairing of Joshua with the child robot Alphie (Madeliene Yuna Voiles), a strong nod to Tony Scott’s Man on Fire (2004) which starred Washington’s father Denzel in the protector role.
Smaller Stories
Away from the limelight of Hollywood, lower budgets and films in languages other than English have provided some of the most compelling sci-fi cinema of the last few years. Quentin Dupieux’s stylistic French language portmanteau satire Smoking Causes Coughing (2023) effortlessly lampoons the superhero genre. Whilst Daniels’ award winning, multilingual Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) takes an eclectically sideways yet heartfelt glance at the multiverse and what identity means to several generations of a Chinese immigrant family living in an alternative America.
In stark contrast, Chie Hayakawa’s Plan 75 (2023) examines Japan’s isolationist politics and ageing population through a quietly disturbing mood. Reminiscent of the mass cover ups in sci-fi classics Soylent Green (1973) and Logan’s Run (1976), Hayakawa’s matter of fact, near documentary approach to the subject of voluntary euthanasia is frighteningly compelling. Shifting more toward horror is Eskil Vogt’s supsenseful Norwegian language The Innocents (2021), a terse study of friendship, bullying and violence between children with telekinetic powers set in a sterile high rise,
Whatever a film’s scale, budget or reach, if it resonates effectively with a sizeable enough audience, it will earn its place in the cinema pantheon. The Creator appears to have the building blocks of longevity and may well go onto have a healthy life on the small screen. Similar to lauded sci-fi gems such as Rian Johnson’s ambitious Looper (2012), Jonathan Glazer’s esoteric Under the Skin (2013) or Doug Liman’s frenetic Edge of Tomorrow (2014), the power of Edwards’s film will likely still be being talked about long after the next few cycles of bigger ticket properties have come and gone.
The Creator released in UK & Irish cinemas on 29 September through Walt Disney.
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