The Creator
Director: Gareth Edwards
Writer: Gareth Edwards, Chris Weitz
Cast: John David Washington, Madeleine Yuna Voyles, Gemma Chan, Allison Janney, Ken Watanabe, Sturgill Simpson
Seen on: 3.8.2026

Plot:
After an AI set off a nuclear bomb, the Western World decided that all AI and the robots that run it needs to be eradicated. Joshua (John David Washington) in an undercover operative trying to track down Nirmata, the almost mythical creator of AI. But his undercover life becomes very real when he meets Maya (Gemma Chan), supposedly Nirmata’s daughter, and falls in love with her. But after a military intervention destroys their life and a pregnant Maya with it, Joshua is adrift. Years later, he accepts a new assignment to track down the Creator and a new weapon he created, but his past quickly catches up with him. Especially when he discovers that the weapon is a child (Madeleine Yuna Voyles).

The Creator is okay, but it had all the possibilities of being more than just okay. Unfortunately, the script didn’t really allow for that, leaving us stranded with the flimsiest of plots and the emptiest of metaphors.

The Creator is obivously a Science Fiction film, set in the future and revolving all around this groundbreaking new technology. Only, it isn’t really interested in the technology, it is only interested in what it stands for, and what it stands for is race. So, we have these very obviously racialized robots/AI humanoids/possibly cyborgs (the movie never really goes into the different categories here) who live in harmony with nature. Nature, in this case, refers to New Asia, a kind of amalgamation of South-East-Asia that is flattened into “Oriental”, and its human people, and I put it like this because it reminded me somewhat of the harmonious relationship between Native Americans and the animals around them, and if that makes you feel uncomfortable because it likens Asian humans to bison, trust me, I felt the exact same way.

In any case, this peaceful coexistence is threatened by the Western, mostly USAmerican, attempt to remove all AI from Earth because of bigotry and blaming all AI for the (admittedly spectacular) failing of one. That a Black man is manipulated by white superiors in this fight maybe the most interesting point in a film that otherwise quickly loses sight of its own metaphors, and then resorts to stereotypes to keep up appearances of an actual story and a meaningful message.

The story doesn’t seem to like to think much about what it is saying or doing beneath the most superficial level, and neither do the visuals. They are often pretty great, I will say, capturing wallpaper moments quite often. But when you try to think about the meaning behind the aesthetics of crumbling techno palaces or robot monks, it very quickly falls apart.

And in all that mess, a good cast valiantly fights for purchase and finds very little. Washington and Chan are almost too beautiful to be real which fits the film nicely, Watanabe is wasted and Janney has fun and is probably the most engaging character. But overall, the film just doesn’t really get anywhere, making it pretty damn forgetable.

Summarizing: watchable, but as quickly forgotten as watched.