Critics’ first reactions to The Creator are in, and they’re full of praise for Gareth Edwards’ upcoming sci-fi action-thriller.
Several professional pundits shared their initial impressions of The Creator on X after attending a press screening of the film on Sept. 17. The Hollywood Reporter’s Brian Davids described The Creator as “a massive feat for the sci-fi genre and the all-too-rare original blockbuster,” while Screen Rant’s Joseph Deckelmeier branded the movie a “masterpiece [and] one of the year’s best movies.” Gizmodo’s Germain Lussier echoed these sentiments, although he criticized the film for failing to make him cry. Lussier was nevertheless impressed by The Creator‘s “gorgeous” visuals, which Collider’s Perri Nemiroff likewise categorized as “stunning.”
The Creator is Edwards’ first movie since 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and he addressed the lengthy gap between projects in a recent interview. According to Edwards, his decision to step back from filmmaking after Rogue One‘s release was his way of ensuring his career didn’t progress on autopilot. “I needed to get off the merry-go-round, do you know what I mean?” he said. “In Hollywood, you can get stuck on the hamster wheel, or whatever analogy you want to use. I just wanted to get off and have a break to take some time thinking about the next thing.”
Gareth Edwards Unpacks The Creator’s Take on AI
The upshot of this was that Edwards had plenty of time to refine The Creator‘s screenplay, which he co-wrote with Rogue One‘s Chris Weitz. The duo overhauled several aspects of the sci-fi blockbuster’s story during this period, including how it portrayed artificial intelligence. “[A]t the very beginning, it was like, ‘But why would you ban [AI]?’ Genuinely every single reaction to the screenplay was, ‘Why would anyone ban AI? It’s this amazing thing.’ And so then I had to kind of invent a scenario where you might reject it, right? And weirdly now, the way things are going, it’s like the default setting is ban it,” Edwards recalled in a recent interview.
Edwards later elaborated on the depiction of AI in The Creator, drawing parallels between the person responsible for creating the movie’s AI technology and the polarizing protagonist of Christopher Nolan’s biopic Oppenheimer. “On one side of the world, they’re an Osama Bin Laden figure — public enemy number one. On the other, they’re a god, a messiah, and people will fight to the death to defend them,” the filmmaker explained.
The Creator premieres in cinemas on Sept. 29, 2023.
Source: X, via THR
