Gareth Edwards signs a beautiful, intelligent science fiction film about AI

A supporter of thematic and visual science fiction with refined realism, Gareth Edwards has for more than ten years been one of the filmmakers we can count on to stage science fiction that is both demanding and family-friendly. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is its most beautiful flagship, but dates back to 2016. A long gestation therefore precedes The Creatoron screens Wednesday September 27, but the wait is worth it.

Beautiful and intelligent

In the near future, Joshua leads a merciless war with his wife Maya against artificial intelligences (AI) in Asia, where she loses her life. Devastated, five years later, the soldier is asked to be sent back into the field, in order to get his hands on a powerful weapon on which the outcome of the war may depend. When Joshua learns the nature of this weapon, his convictions towards his enemies weaken. Where are the truth and lies, reality and virtuality, humanity and inhumanity in a world populated by avatars?

Not a day goes by without AI occupying the news. One day ChatGPT threatens the entire global writing chain (even film criticism!), and at the moment the hiding of actors and actresses by their digital avatars is part of the strike which is paralyzing Hollywood. SF authors have been talking about it for a long time in their novels and films, with robotics being one of their main subjects since the 1920s. The Creator is its final version in the cinema, with a well-crafted scenario, with endearing characters, action and well-sustained emotion, coupled with one of the most careful staging of recent years, in terms of science fiction .

Open equation

If certain scenes seem phoned in at the start in the scenario of The Creator, others must not be revealed, to preserve the element of surprise. This wouldn’t take away from the dilemma faced by Joshua, the hero of the film, but it’s better to say less than spoil. From this point of view, the subject of artificial intelligence that it raises remains curiously open in its conclusion, and encourages us to rewatch the film. A sensation that is always vibrant, when, upon leaving the room, the work still haunts you.

This is the effect produced The Creatornot to mention its extreme sense of image in total continuity with Gareth Edwards’ previous films, Monsters And Rogue One, Godzilla being less successful. This attachment to realistic science fiction, which Christopher Nolan also has, is embodied here in particular in a planetary surveillance system, visually very impressive, and central to the story. Emotion is not left out in the picture, far from it, in what turns out to be the best science fiction film in a long time.

The sheet

Gender : Science fiction
Director : Gareth Edwards
Actors: John David Washington, Gemma Chan, Ken Watanabe
Country : Great Britain / United States
Duration : 2h13
Exit : September 27, 2023
Distributer : The Walt Disney Company France

Synopsis: In the near future, humans and artificial intelligence (AI) are waging a merciless war. An American soldier infiltrated in Asia, Joshua is separated from his wife Maya during an assault. Assuming that she has died, he returns to the United States, completely devastated. Five years later, the army asks him to return to the field, fearing that a powerful artificial intelligence has created a weapon that will allow the East to win the war it is waging against the West. Sensing its near use, she wishes he would find it and destroy it.
When Colonel Jean Howell tells Joshua that Maya may be alive and in the combat zone, he suddenly finds a new challenge in this mission that he had initially reluctantly accepted. . However, shortly after his arrival in Asia, he discovers that the weapon in question is none other than a 6-year-old girl named Alphie. From then on, Joshua begins to question his beliefs about AI: Where is the truth? What have we hidden from him?