The Creator 2023 Directed by: Gareth Edwards Writers: Gareth Edwards and Chris Weitz, Stars: John David Washington, Madeleine Yuna Voyles, Gemma Chan, Allison Janney, Ken Watanabe, Amar Chadha-Patel, Marc Menchaca, Ralph Ineson, Runtime: 143min, Rated: PG (Canada) PG-13 (MPAA) or violence, some bloody images and strong language.

Listen here for audio of radio interviews about films from a Christian perspective with Pastors Ted Giese and Todd Wilken on IssuesEtc.org where Christianity meets culture. (This review contains spoilers).

Sympathy for Synthetics

In a future where the western world is at war with AI and the eastern world harbours them—seeking to live in harmony—growing fears of an advanced secret weapon prompts the American military to attempt to neutralize the artificial intelligence threat. Roped into this mission is Joshua (John David Washington) an ex-special forces soldier and former undercover operative who ends up on a journey of personal discovery revealing his unexpected intimate relationship with the enemy.

The skilful and ambitious writer/director Gareth Edwards is no stranger to sci-fi starting with his shoestring-budgeted yet striking début film Monsters (2010), and sophomore feature film Godzilla (2014). With these he positioned himself as a promising figure in the genre leading to his infamous involvement with Rogue One: a Star Wars Story (2016) a film for which he retains a directing credit even though the project was taken from him and handed over to Tony Gilroy for completion. Edwards’ strengths largely lay in the areas of world building and atmosphere with a particular eye for scale. Whether it’s massive movie monster aliens or Godzilla, a Star Destroyer or the Death Star, Edwards knows how to make these things believably feel part of the landscape. Where his films tend to bog down is in the storytelling. His latest film is no exception. Lacking internal cohesion, the plot wavers between needlessly complicated (especially at the beginning) and overly predictable. The Creator is a film where a good script editor could have saved the production millions upon millions of dollars and still told a compelling story. That said it was produced for less money than might be expected with an estimated budget of $80 million and looks better than many $250+ million films.

Overall, Edwards seems more interested in the emotions evoked by certain moments than he is with whether those moments make sense. Viewers should take particular note of this as one of the central themes is the intersection between the compassion and love of humanity versus the synthetic mimicry of artificial intelligence and advanced robotics. The film asks many interesting questions: Is human love and compassion reserved for what is real? Are the AI creations of mankind displaying real emotions which become the building blocks of true relationships? Or is it all just sophisticated programming meant to illicit emotional attachments from humans? What becomes of reality under these circumstances? These are some of the questions and concerns at the heart of The Creator. When Ridley Scott made his seminal Blade Runner (1982), which is one of the inspirations for this film, these sci-fi questions were more academic. Today they find considerable traction with the continued growth of AI in everything from the common place internet search engines, to auto-correction and predictive text functions on mobile phones, to the new chatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) and interactive AI platforms, to the experimental robotics produced by Boston Dynamics research labs.

While still “futuristic,” the future presented in The Creator seems both familiar and, in some ways, imminent. Here Edwards is digging more into the emotional response than rational, critical thinking. In fact, viewers will notice those who are fighting against and warning of the critical dangers posed by an uncritical adoption of AI are painted as the story’s villains while those who let their emotions guide their actions are the heroes. If emotional feelings trump concrete biology, then who’s to say whether romantic, familial love, or friendship between a human and AI is legitimate and who can say that the “artificial” is artificial at all; could they not be just as deserving of all the rights and freedoms enjoyed by humanity? Any response that doesn’t affirm this line of thinking and favours a tempered or critical response is implicitly heartless and cruel.

The central relationship in the film is between Joshua and Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles) an advanced AI in the form of a child. Alphie is the secret weapon the American military is seeking to eliminate but may also help lead Joshua to his wife Maya (Gemma Chan) whom he’d presumed was dead after a botched military raid that blew his undercover mission to find Nirmata (the creator). Maya was believed to be the daughter of Nirmata the preeminent new Asian AI scientist and engineer. While undercover Joshua had fallen in love with Maya, and married her, at her presumed death she was pregnant with his child. At first Alphie is a means to an end for Joshua, as the AI could help in the possible rescue of his wife, but as the story progresses Alphie becomes a kind of surrogate “daughter” for Joshua. By the end of the film, it is revealed that Maya is Nirmata and that she made Alphie as a synthetic “twin” to their unborn child making Joshua her “father.” The emotional entanglement quickly becomes apparent and Joshua struggles with whether any of it is real or if it’s only his reaction to programming.

With The Creator Edwards presents three classes of AI: 1) Robots often used as police and infantry units; 2) Simulants which look life-like but are recognizably not human and are fabricated as adults and 3) Alphie—an AI that can grow from the artificial womb into adulthood aging, adapting, and advancing like a human life. With each class of AI Edwards ups the ante attempting to draw out more and more sympathetic feelings toward the synthetic. Alphie is the apex of this approach pushing parental protective buttons in the viewers. This makes the film into a kind of transhumanist apologetic defending the validity of a kind of merging of the human with the artificial and technological. In a key moment Alphie endearingly asks Joshua what heaven is like and if they could go there to which he responds, “It’s a place in the sky,” but that he isn’t going there because it’s for “good people.” Alphie reasons that they are the same: Joshua can’t go to heaven because he’s not good and Alphie can’t go because as AI it isn’t a person. This and other moments are meant to garner sympathy for the plight of the AI.

Alphie is short for the AI’s codename “Alpha-O” which Christian audiences will pick up on as a reference to Jesus who says of Himself “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Revelation 22:13). As the AI super weapon Alphie’s intended goal is somewhat unclear: is it meant to be the end of humanity and the beginning of an AI age without humans or the end of the warfare and the beginning of a time of peace? Is Alphie supposed to be a Jesus figure, a kind of AI incarnation? Likely not. If anything, Alphie is more of a Buddha figure. For evidence consider how Alphie’s “mother” is named Maya which is the name of Gautama Buddha’s birth mother within Buddhism. So, while the film seems to be made primarily for a Western audience the overall spiritual underpinnings are Eastern. The film eventually shows AI Buddhist monks in saffron robes! Mentions of heaven and being a “good person” might sound vaguely religious from a Western perspective however the film’s worldview is more focused on Eastern notions of Karma and even gives examples of a kind of digital reincarnation.

What might Christian viewers make of The Creator? In the face of the kind of war, suffering, and death presented in Edwards’ film the Christian’s hope doesn’t hinge on the individual’s goodness or on the promise of a digital download into a synthetic body, or on the guidance and example of an AI Buddha but rather on Christ Jesus who is the true and only Alpha and Omega. For Christians Christ “was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made,” (John 1:2–3). AI cannot take the place of Christ any more than a claimed reincarnation of a Buddha or anything else for that matter. Ultimately, The Creator presents a story designed to appeal to the viewer’s emotions in such a way that it would soften their hearts toward transhumanist ideals and the notion of equal “human rights” for AI. Whether intentional or not Edwards’ The Creator is deeply anti-Christian. Filmmakers are of course free to make the films they desire to make, and studios are free to produce and distribute them but that doesn’t guarantee success. If audiences sense they are being manipulated towards ideas they don’t hold and not entertained, they can quickly turn on a film regardless of how well it is made technically, or how well it is acted which in turn can impact word of mouth and hamper the possibility of repeat viewings. The Creator is a well-crafted but flawed film brimming with creativity that, while a cut above much of what has recently been released in the sci-fi genre, falls short of its full potential.

Rev. Ted Giese is pastor of Mount Olive Lutheran Church, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada; an award-winning contributor to The Canadian Lutheran and movie reviewer for the “Issues, etc.” radio program. Follow Pastor Giese on Twitter @RevTedGiese. Check out our Movie Review Index!