In the near future, a schism has arisen between part of the population and its former ally, artificial intelligence. Accused of fomenting the annihilation of humanity, the robots are hunted down. Ex-double agent having fallen in love with his target before tragically losing it, Joshua finds himself caught in the crossfire when his superiors task him with destroying a mysterious technology developed by AI. However, it is faced with a child of a new type that a torn Joshua finds himself. With The Creator (The creator), Gareth Edwards offers a science fiction drama with rich existential questions.
Star of Tenet, by Christopher Nolan, John David Washington is very inhabited in the main role. Former marine, former spy, new crippled and disenchanted veteran, Joshua only agrees to plunge back into the war against AI to better cling to his painful past. This is a beautiful character, tormented and full of contradictions.
A good part of the action consists of an epic bringing together Joshua and Alfie (the revelation Madeleine Yuna Voyles), a robot with the appearance of a little girl with singular abilities to say the least. Filmed mainly in Thailand, the film openly summons, during numerous war scenes, Apocalypse Now (It’s the apocalypse), by Francis Ford Coppola. In the same way, during urban passages, the tributes to Blade Runnerby Ridley Scott (and subsequently signed Denis Villeneuve), are assumed.
In this regard, the director and co-writer admitted to being among the influences of The Creator a variety of films like Akiraby Katsuhiro Otomo, ANDby Steven Spielberg, and Paper Moon (Daddy’s beard), by Peter Bogdanovich. We will allow ourselves to add that the less presentable, but very pleasing Golden Child (The sacred child of Tibet), cult film with Eddie Murphy, is obviously part of the referential field. As HAVE (AI Intelligence artificial), by Spielberg again.
A powerful metaphor
Nevertheless, the mixture of all this proves not only convincing, but fascinating. The film also has an important subtext. Thus, the leaders of the human army (and specifically American, in conflict with the entire Asian continent, which lives in peace with AI) repeat in every tone that robots, despite their appearance, do not There is nothing human about them, and we can therefore dispose of them without being moved.
The metaphor is powerful since, historically, isolating a group, gradually dehumanizing its members in the eyes of the rest of the population and, finally, “justifying” its annihilation is pure genocidal logic.
We fear what is different from us, often wrongly, the film reminds us. But what would happen if the machine began to show more humanism than humans?
Serious, these considerations never prevent The Creator to entertain. Benefiting from the right balance between exciting action sequences and intimate scenes, the film is captivating throughout. That, in addition to being visually grandiose.
Faced with the quantity and especially the quality of the special effects, and considering the scale of the canvas, it is difficult to believe that The Creator only cost 80 million US dollars. We would happily imagine three times this budget (and we would still be below that of an average Marvel production).
Soul Supplement
It must be said that Gareth Edwards first got noticed with the ingenious and inexpensive Monsters (Monsters), another science fiction film, this one minimalist in style. More recently, the director was a hit with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Rogue One. A Star Wars story), an opulent ante-episode to the intergalactic saga.
Combining the intimate and the epic, The Creator brings together the qualities of these two films. All of this, enhanced by an extra bit of soul (but weighed down by an excess of sentimentality towards the end).
Moreover, another question raised by the film concerns the absence of emotions in artificial intelligence. There comes a moment in the film where, like Joshua, we wonder if this is really the case. What if, after imitation then incarnation, came feeling? Isn’t that also evolution?