Director Gareth Edwards’ career is fascinating: In thirteen years, he’s directed only four movies, but the arc of those movies goes small indie (Monsters); big familiar franchise (Godzilla); even bigger franchise (Star Wars: Rogue One); and now, an original science fiction story that seems to have put a whole pile of SF tropes into a blender.
The Creator looks to be a story about humanity vs. artificial intelligence that is maybe also a story about freedom and personhood—though it’s hard to tell from the heavy-handed trailer, which reuses a ton of footage (and an Aerosmith song that feels like overkill) from the first teaser.
Here’s the synopsis:
Amidst a future war between the human race and the forces of artificial intelligence, Joshua (John David Washington), a hardened ex-special forces agent grieving the disappearance of his wife (Gemma Chan), 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. Joshua and his team of elite operatives journey across enemy lines, into the dark heart of AI-occupied territory… only to discover the world-ending weapon he’s been instructed to destroy is an AI in the form of a young child.
Things are not quite as cut-and-dried as they were when humanity faced off against Skynet, it seems.
The visuals in this trailer are striking, which is no surprise given that Edwards directed the most beautiful space battle in all of Star Wars. But the dialogue is a bit on the nose, especially the exchange about how neither Joshua nor the AI child (Madeleine Yuna Voyles) can go to heaven.
Still, the repeating scenes in this trailer and the first teaser might give a person hope that there’s still more than meets the eye to this film—more that’s being held back for the full viewing experience. The Creator is co-written by Edwards and Chris Weitz (the two also worked together on Rogue One), and co-stars two greats: Ken Watanabe (Godzilla) and Allison Janney (The West Wing).
Watch the robot—or it is human?—uprising in theaters on September 29th.
