Friday, 26 January 2024

VOD: The Creator (dir: Gareth Edwards, 2023)

"This is a fight for our very existence!"
 
In this near-future sci-fi action thriller, the West has banned AI after a nuke was exploded in Los Angeles, but it is still being developed in New Asia, the new battleground for mankind vs AI and the setting for the hunt for mysterious AI creator Nirmata and the ultimate AI weapon against humanity.  John David Washington gives another sincere performance in the lead role, with engaging support from Madeleine Yuna Voyles as the young robot-child accompanying him and the imperious and nuanced Alison Janney as a veteran Army Colonel.  It is always to be applauded when Hollywood delivers a proper original hard sci-fi epic with resources to match its needs - the SFX work is simply gorgeous here - even if it proves a hard sell to regular cinemagoers (as box-office showed); The Creator is perhaps a little too dark and dramatic for the popcorn crowd and too thin on new ideas for hardcore genre fans.  With inevitable debt shown to genre titans such as the Star Wars, Blade Runner, Terminator and Alien franchises, with Vietnam war movie tropes added to the mix, The Creator does take a current hot topic and extrapolate it interestingly in this big-scale generally entertaining movie. 

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