The Creator (2023)
Directed by Gareth Edwards
Amid a future war between the human race and the forces of artificial intelligence, a hardened ex-special forces agent grieving the disappearance of his wife, is recruited to hunt down and kill the Creator, the elusive architect of advanced AI who has developed a mysterious weapon with the power to end the war—and mankind itself.
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6 films that influenced The Creator
What critics say influenced The Creator
To compare Edwards’ work in The Creator to one of the greats, he achieves the same level of world-building that James Cameron managed with Avatar.
Much as in James Cameron’s Avatar films, the U.S. military is presented as fearsome, ruthless, and largely immoral; it creates a terrifying orbital platform named NOMAD that circles the skies, dropping gigantic bombs on targets near and far.
As in James Cameron's “Avatar,” the villains here are the growling warmongers who can't see that their adversaries have souls.
…the problem is that the script (by Edwards and Chris Weitz, who also worked on "Rogue One") never follows through on the deeper or more complex ideas it brings up, and overly simplifies its conflict and the people involved. This results in a predictable and dumbed-down story that feels like Edwards doing James Cameron's "Avatar" in terms of presenting bold worldbuilding and sci-fi ideas, but without the emotional resonance of that giant film.
Where the lush planet Pandora of James Cameron’s Avatar felt distant and fantastical, like a Roger Dean painting, The Creator’s patinated vision feels like a place you could reach out and touch.
In terms of addressing contemporary geopolitics, the film falls into exactly the same trap as James Cameron’s Avatar (2009): the USA are depicted as aggressive colonial invaders, while the blended civilisation of humans and robots in the so-named “New Asia” are blurred into an anonymous and actively colonialist “other”.
Edwards has said that the reluctant-father-figure narrative was inspired by the 1970s Lone Wolf And Cub manga novels and films, but The Creator wears many influences on its sleeves, drawing from Vietnam classics as well as obvious touchpoints: Apocalypse Now and Platoon are as much a part of the fabric as District 9, Blade Runner and Akira, while its lived-in environments teeming with battered, beaten-up vehicles are indebted to 1977’s Star Wars.
Edwards repurposes ideas from that movie with an assortment of elements and iconography pieced together from several others, among them Blade Runner, Aliens, District 9, Akira, War of the Worlds and Apocalypse Now.
So yes, grab-bag sci-fi movie sensibilities— including “The Terminator” and little “District 9,” in its cultural commentary, social construct, and sympathetic affinities for the enemy— pervades Edwards' movie.
The special effects and general cinematography exhibit that “worn & weary” look captured so well by District 9, albeit with MUCH better fidelity.
Evangelion aside, a number of obvious sources are consistently referenced – the nuking of a major city, the underground military bases and a superintelligent child from Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo, 1988), the robot populated streets of Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), the soldier on a quest within the war-torn Vietnam of Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979), the vistas of Baraka (Ron Fricke, 1992).
Blade Runner and Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, as well as the Vietnam movie canon, are all obvious touchstones. (During the battle scenes, people actually die: there’s no prissiness about collateral damage.)
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The central concept, as written by Edwards and Chris Weitz, certainly owes a significant amount of its inspiration to past sci-fi hits like The Terminator, Blade Runner, Avatar and Ex Machina, but remarkably the film never feels redundant in its storytelling, and works well around some of the familiar beats to give it a bold sense of originality in its execution.
She’s Baby Yoda. She’s Ellie from “The Last of Us.” She’s John Connor. She’s the kid in Jeff Nichols’ “Midnight Special.” Stick her in the middle of a bunch of stuffed animals, and she could even be E.T.