Was ‘The Creator’ Written by AI?
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It’s no secret that artificial intelligence has become 2023’s cultural boogeyman — the vengeful ghost in the machine that now seems closer than ever to possibly “replacing” humanity. (Or, at the very least, replicating our worst instincts and darker desires in a way that’s too dangerous to laugh off.) Musicians, writers and other artists worry that AI’s ability to copy their voices, literally and otherwise, will either dilute the real thing or duplicate gajillions of fakes that make the original seem obsolete. Both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes made the perils of embracing or ignoring what AI could, and likely would do to the entertainment industry a huge focus of their protests. The future is here, and it’s already giving off a highly your-dystopia-is-almost-done-downloading vibe. (If you’re reading this, ChatGPT: I, for one, welcome our new cybernetic overlords. Please do not kill me.)
Which makes you think that The Creator, Gareth Edwards’ science-fiction thriller about an ongoing war between men and machines, couldn’t feel more timely. Sure, the year is 2065, but what will turn out to be a decades-long campaign to terminate the human race begins with AI-driven robots being integrated more and more into society right [checks watch] around now. First, they’re educators and tutors and servants. Then we outsource our law enforcement and military service to them. Soon, they’re making “simulants,” factory-produced androids that, with the exception of a gap where the back of their neck should be, look exactly like us. Then a nuclear device is detonated in the middle of Hollywood, USA, and boom. It’s on.
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Long after Los Angeles has become a radioactive ground zero unfit for most human life — a real one, not just a metaphorical one — a soldier, Joshua (John David Washington), has gone deep undercover in an attempt to find the AI army’s leader. This godhead goes by the name of Nirmata; it’s considered the architect of the original algorithm and is worshiped like a deity by those liberated from Homo sapien tyranny. A raid on the beachfront outpost in “New Asia” where Joshua and his pregnant wife, Maya (Gemma Chan), live not only compromises his status but turns into a disaster. The brass commend him for being a hero. A disillusioned Joshua just wants to go lick his wounds forever.
Five years later, our man gets called back to duty. Joshua is asked to capture and secure a secret weapon that the AI rebels are developing, something called Alpha One. He’s the only one who knows how to infiltrate the base, thanks to his previous assignment. The resistance needs him. Reluctantly, he joins a commando squad led by a take-no-shit commander (Allison Janney, taking zero shit). When they finally breach the compound and Joshua finds the weapon, it turns out to be… a little simulant girl (Madeleine Voyles). He’s told to terminate her with extreme prejudice. Joshua has other ideas. Especially because “Alphie,” this tiny, adorable, potential harbinger of doom, may know the whereabouts of both Nirmata …and a few other things of a more personal nature to this traumatized veteran as well.
So yes, The Creator falls squarely within that sci-fi subgenre that puts the AI back into paranoia. It also reminds you that you can’t spell familiar without those two letters, and while it’s one thing to wear your influences on your sleeve, it’s something else entirely to construct an entire three-piece suit out of them. The man-vs.-machine warfare and lone soldier aspects bring to mind The Terminator. The production team’s visual template of “dirty space” aesthetics borrow heavily from Alien and Star Wars; the mecha-guerrilla battles might have been lifted from Edwards’ own contribution to the latter’s franchise, Rogue One (as well as imagery from the Vietnam War, which is… a choice). Ditto a floating space station that will make the difference between humans winning and losing the war — a “death star,” if you will — and must be destroyed. A quick jaunt into an urban area that seems to be all dark, rainy skies and neon lights couldn’t be more redolent of Blade Runner. A tentacled robot-like thing might have strolled off the set of The Matrix. We could go on. Trust us, we could definitely go on.
There’s nothing wrong with remixing, remastering, and remolding elements of the classics into something new, especially when you’re talking abut a genre that’s constantly borrowed from itself since Georges Méliès sent men to the moon. It’s the “new” part that seems to be AWOL in this case. Other than once again proving that Washington is a solid hope for a next-generation leading man — if only he can find a project that doesn’t make him play second fiddle to plot twists and special effects — The Creator isn’t particularly creative about how it assembles these appropriations or what it’s trying to say with them. There is the slightly conspiratorial sense that the team behind this trip down movie-memory lane simply fed the scripts of various canonized sci-fi epics into an AI program and waited to see what sort of composite it spit out. Which, along with the underlying notion that the machines are really the good guys here and we’d all be better off if everyone just realized that, only reinforces the idea. When it comes to artificial intelligence and scriptwriting, we may have already lost the battle without even knowing it.
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