The Creator (Edwards, 2023)
I find minority reports one of the more difficult kinds of movie reviews to write.
On the one hand, I have scoffed at colleagues on social media who sometimes treat their unfavorable rating of a fan favorite as an act of moral courage or a stand for freedom of conscience. Conversely, I think we have all seen comment threads flooded with over-the-top ad hominem attacks for reviews that weren’t even that effusive in their praise or criticism.
Perhaps it is just the polarized nature of our culture, or perhaps there is something in the nature of the fresh/rotten; thumb up/thumb down binary that invites overstatement.
So, I’ll be clear. I didn’t much like or enjoy The Creator. And I am aware that I am in the minority in that opinion. My friend Russell Lucas once said that if there is acknowledged greatness in a film, it is the critic’s duty to at least try to find it. I know that 80% Fresh at Rotten Tomatoes is not the same thing as “Rotten Tomatoes” acknowledged greatness,” but I think the same principle applies. Someone who is evaluating in good faith should at least make an effort to understand and follow dissenting opinions rather than just perpetually shouting his own.
In that spirit, I agree with most early reviews that I’ve seen that claim The Creator can be visually stunning at times. There is some potent and powerful imagery here. And I agree that is ballsy (though I may disagree about how ballsy) for a major studio to release a big-budget film with America in general and the American military in particular as the genocidal evil empire. I co-sign every review that says it is refreshing to have new science fiction that is neither a Marvel nor a Star Wars movie.
You know there is a “but” coming, right?
So much of that imagery is in service of an underdeveloped story, a spectacle that awes in the moment but just as quickly fades. The art design is fantastic, but any world-building beyond the look of the AI is bare-bones. America in the not-too-distant future is at war with “New Asia” because AI has allegedly caused a nuclear detonation that killed thousands (wouldn’t it be millions?) of people in Los Angeles. Giant death-star-like planes dredge up associations with drone bombing. There is very little here that is new or original, whether narratively or visually. I noted invited associations with Aliens, Apocalypse Now, AI, War of the Worlds, Starship Troopers, Enders Game, Ex Machina, Blade Runner, Star Wars, Dr. Strangelove, and, most especially, Avatar. If it’s a sci-fi film or a war film it is likely referenced here. If it is a sci-fi/war mash-up, it is most definitely referenced here.
As a spectacle, The Creator is a series of climaxes in search of connective tissue or rising action. Absent some non-action character development, none of the most dramatic moments land as hard as they should. They are infused with generic feelings– seeing a loved one in peril, feeling betrayed — but little of the context that turns the generic personal. By way of example, for instance, I would say that the fate of Rocket in Guardians of the Galaxy 3 induced a much stronger emotional reaction than the fate of Alphie in this film. Neither of those characters is human, but one of them was a character that I cared about because I had seen him display qualities that made me care about him, while the other was simply a walking MacGuffin that I was told to care about because the protagonist did — and that for reasons that had less to do with his love for her than her connection to someone or something else he cared about.
The Creator isn’t a bad movie, and if it weren’t for the hype machines insisting that it is a masterpiece rivaling 2001: A Space Odyssey, I would expect it to be a modest success. But any time a studio spends this much money and effort insisting that something is fantastic, I tend to wonder if it sees what I see and is just trying to get out in front of mediocre reviews so that it can dismiss rather than rebut them.
