We’ve all considered the chance that artificial intelligence (AI) will take over the world, right? Well, this PG-13 movie tackles a new answer to that question. What if the AI weren’t the villains that they were made out to be? What if it were the humans? Released on September 29, 2023, and directed by Gareth Edwards, “The Creator” is a movie that takes place years after the creation of advanced, human-like artificial intelligence, when a complete war has erupted between the human race and AI. In the film’s setting, it was reported that AI had launched a nuke on a once prosperous country. Yet, not all is what it seems. The film follows Joshua (played by John David Williams) as he tackles his assignment of eliminating the Creator of artificial intelligence. “The Creator” transforms the basic sci-fi AI-take-over-the-world idea into something we’ve never seen before.
To provide some background, the movie starts with Joshua spending time with his pregnant wife, Maya (played by Gemma Chan), who he was assigned to spy on for an extended period of time due to her past close alignment to the Creator of AI. Over the course of his mission, he falls in love with her, but eventually his mission catches up to him, and he loses his wife in the crossfire. After this tragedy, he retires for five years, but returns to work for the government after learning there might be a chance his wife is still alive. Throughout the rest of the movie, he runs into a powerful AI child, Alphie, and brings her along in his missions to find Maya. Played by Madeleine Yuna Voyles, Alphie is the most capable AI ever created, making her powerful, dangerous, and a factor that completely changes the outcome of the war between humans and AI. Without spoiling too much, he learns the perspective of the AI, and that not everything is as it seems between the two sides of the war.
The plot is complex but easy enough to follow. It was a very interesting concept, and well written and executed. “The Creator” really focuses on character development as you learn an incredible amount of information about each person. On top of that, the acting takes the cake. Madeleine Yuna Voyles (Alphie) acted in a significant amount of the movie and fit their role incredibly well, perfectly portraying childhood innocence tinged with sorrow. Each character’s story, and ultimate fate, was wonderful throughout the film. It felt realistic which immensely improved the dialogue.
Even so, the movie was far longer than it needed to be. At two hours and 15 minutes, I found myself waiting for some insignificant conflict or development to be over. As I stated before, “The Creator” plot is complex but unambiguous, and the excess of irrelevant world building and unnecessarily detailed information about each character was a nice addition, but completely unnecessary. Most of the action happened in what felt like 30 minutes.
The ending of the movie is splendid though. But, not really worth waiting two hours for. To be a student in the age where AI is becoming ubiquitous, the movie was quite enjoyable, despite the length. Its exploration of the possibilities surrounding AI added twists that made the movie different from the generic idea around an AI uprising. You can watch this movie on Hulu, Apple TV, and Amazon Prime Video. Conclusively, I would rate “The Creator” 7 out of 10, and would recommend it to anyone into sci-fi and looking to fill up some time.
