In the sci-fi action extravaganza THE CREATOR, a mash-up of hero-quest movies from STAR WARS to BLADE RUNNER, the hero played by John David Washington battles a host of daunting foes and powerful weapons to save a little girl. Only she isn’t a little girl – but a human-like AI android that was built with a massive power, to neutralize any weapon humans might possess in a AI-versus-human war. Which means the human hero in this big, splashy special effects movie is helping an AI robot that looks like a child defeat humankind. Yet audiences cheer at the end of this sci-fi action adventure, seemingly unconscious of what they are cheering. What?
It’s a disturbing experience. I am not the only critic to note that THE CREATOR is pretty much a propaganda film, manipulating its audience with classic mythic hero tropes to tell a tale of AI triumphing over humanity. Sure, some will argue it’s just entertainment and close their eyes to the subtext, and even cheer at the end (as the audience I saw it with did) without thinking about what that end means. But you have to wonder who financed this opus, and what they intend by calling the androids “AI” and portraying them as harmless things, even though labeling these robots that way is both inaccurate and misleading. The false connection between harmless robots and AI is a message that will sink into the subconscious unbidden. With real-world IT industry leaders warning real-world leaders about the dangers of AI, and even the possibility of an existential threat to humankind, maybe that message and a heroic yarn about “good” AI defeating “bad” people isn’t want we need. Add in that this story casts Americans as the “bad guys” who want to get rid of AI versus a fictional nation called “New Asia” who defends AI, and it’s really stirring up the proverbial hornet’s nest.
Directed by Gareth Edwards, and written by Edwards and Chris Weitz, the story almost sounds like it was written by AI. It recycles tropes and story-lines from a plethora of sources, including familiar heroic movies and series like STAR WARS and BLADE RUNNER, as mentioned above, but also METROPOLIS, CHILDREN OF MEN, THE MANDOLORIAN, THE LAST OF US, EX MACHINA and even APOCALPSE NOW, among others. It is a messy mishmash but all that mess draws on the classic roots of all hero myths which speaks deeply to the human psyche. Throw in a child (or what looks like a child) for the hero to protect and save, and you have really powerful stuff. Except this isn’t a child – it’s an artificial bio machine with incredible power, a power that grows as it grows, and something to be used defeated humanity.
After a run of sci-fi movies like EX MACHINA, HER, THE MATRIX and THE TERMINATOR that pitted mankind against some kind of intelligent robot-like adversary, this movie turns things around to cast the humans as the villains and the machines as the good guys. And then encourages audiences to cheer that.
THE CREATOR starts out in a more conventional hero-tale way, which is what you see in the movie trailer.
In an old newsreel style prelude, we see a world where human-like robots (called sometimes call simulants but mostly called AI) are fully integrated into human society. That suddenly changes when a newly deployed military AI, intended for defense, decides people are the threat and drops a nuclear bomb on Los Angeles. Flash forward to years later, and the U.S. has outlawed AI (again, meaning the androids) and they have been nearly eliminated. The last remaining AI have taken shelter in a country called New Asia. But the American military has built a super weapon, a big airship, to defeat these last AI, and finally end the threat to mankind’s existence.
John David Washington plays Joshua, an uncover American operative embedded in the new country of New Asia trying to find a brilliant scientist who is developing a new kind of AI robot that can destroy the U.S.’s most powerful weapon in the war against AI. But a clumsy attempt at an invasion blows Joshua’s cover and, worse, separates him from his pregnant wife, Maya (Gemma Chan), a robotist, and maybe kills her.
Years later, the U.S. tries a second invasion (there is supposed to be a coalition of nations but we only see American forces), and Joshua is sent in again, under the command of Colonel Howell (Allison Janney), to find and destroy a new AI weapon with the power to destroy all human weapons.
But soon after, THE CREATOR flips the script, and makes the humans the bad guys and the androids into the good guys. We go from a movie that echoes disaster films about people defending Earth from alien or robot attack, to APOCALYPSE NOW with American soldiers from this futuristic world now threatening unarmed women and children in what looks like a village in 1960s Vietnam, even threatening to shoot a puppy. Throwing in an American versus Asia thing makes it extra unsettling, but especially given current real-world tensions. Nothing like stirring the pot.
At this point, Joshua is now in a pretty dark place personally, still mourning his lost wife and unborn child and even borderline suicidal. He takes the mission to defend humankind against the new threat but his heart isn’t in it. He’s really more interested getting back to New Asia to try to find his wife, whom is he hopes may still be alive, than in finding the weapon he is supposed to destroy, his assigned mission.
When Joshua does locate this powerful AI weapon, it turns out to be in the form of an adorable little girl. Well, not a girl but a girl-like android – a pretty clever form of “protective coloring” if you think about it. Almost as soon as Joshua sees the adorable little girl robot (Madeleine Yuna Voyles), who appears to be about the same age his own child would have been, he’s pretty much a goner. Instead of destroying the cute android as instructed, he takes along the AI he dubs Alphie, protecting and hiding her/it, maybe intending to keep others from capturing her/it and maybe intending to take her/it back to his team. Maybe.
The little girl AI is irresistibly cute and we fall under her spell as quickly as Joshua does. But this is not like EX MACHINA where the creation’s true nature is eventually revealed. Here Alphie remains sweetly charming, even as she disables any weapon aimed at her (by adopting a Buddhist prayer pose), clearing the path for her and Joshua.
That the movie’s androids are always called “AI” instead of robots or androids is significant, indicating the movie has a message about AI rather than being just an ordinary robot movie, There has to be an intention behind that. The usually-gentle human-like robots in this movie harken back to classic science fiction novels (including Isaac Asimov’s), where loyal servant robots, which had programming that prevents them from harming humans, are mistreated by people and have fight for their rights.
In the real world, AI do not have programming to prevent them from harming people – that is science fiction. These fictional androids are following fictional Asimov’s Rules of Robots – something real-world experts in the AI field say is not possible to “program” into real AI. Nor are real AI being “mistreated” (although misused may be another matter, but that is misuse is aimed at people, not AI). So the peaceful “AI” robots in this movie are something far different from actual AI that people are concerned about in the real world. Clearly the makers of this film want you to forget that detail.
So why would you want to mislead people by suggesting that real AI is or could be programmed to be harmless? It’s a question you might want to ask yourself if you choose watch this movie.
Once we get to New Asia, we hear a recurring refrain from humans there, one repeated several times in the movie, that the AI robots have “never been anything but kind to me” – unlike other people. We are clearly supposed to see the AI as better, kinder, than humans.
In fact, there is a kind of “diversity” theme here, with the AI robots presented as just another form of people. We see them as police and soldiers, but also as subsistence fisherman and even Buddhist monks.
Why robots would be monks? It makes no sense, but the whole thing is designed as a distraction from why people in the real world might be worried (and should be) about AI – and it’s not because they might replace monks.
Oddly, although you see more people than androids in New Asia when the film starts, as the film progresses we see fewer people. By it’s end, we see mostly AI, with only an occasional human if any at all. Dialog about how modern human replaced Neanderthals seems a chilling commentary on that, although the movie completely misrepresents how that happened. A character in the film states that modern humans replaced Neanderthals because people were “meaner,” but was more likely because of a more advanced culture and more creative, adaptive brains (not bigger ones). This was perhaps due to a genetic difference that gave modern humans more neurons in the frontal lobe of the brain, which would give an advantage in cognition, as recent research suggests. (Yeah, OK, I know, let’s not have real science in the science fiction.) Instead, that remark about people being mean sends the audience a message about who to root for, and it isn’t us.
Still, there are a couple of good points to this disturbing, manipulative movie, although not enough to rescue it from its mashup script or creepy message. The actors do a good job in this unfortunate film, with John David Washington playing his mournful, nearly suicidal hero well, and young Madeleine Yuna Voyles being very appealing as the child android. Alison Janney is impressive playing a relentless and ruthless American commander, who is supposed to be Washington’s despondent character Joshua’s boss although Joshua often ignores her or thwarts her in his sad, unstoppable quest for his lost wife. Washington’s performances are strong enough that one could even see how this broken man might ignore what is he is really doing to humanity, to embrace a child-like creation that makes him think of his lost child and grasp at straws to see his beloved wife again.
The other bright spot is that the movie has big-budget polish and impressive visual effects, despite a relatively modest budget (by the standards for this kind of FX movie) of $8 million, compared to other special effects adventure or superhero movies with budgets more like the annual budgets of small nations. How these film-makers did that is something that others might look into.
Still those few points are not enough to redeem this coldly manipulative propaganda film, with its chilling message for mankind. Yes, there will be audiences determined to see this sci-fi drama as mere entertainment, and resent any suggestions to the contrary. But the subtext is there, and subtext seeps into brains. Adding that East-West conflict theme is even more troubling, as this film will surely be seen by Asian audiences too, which might whip up a hostility that is good for no one.
THE CREATOR opens Friday, Sept 29, in theaters.
RATING: 1.5 out of 4 stars
