★★★

“Sweet Child in time,
You’ll see the line,
The line that’s drawn between,
The good and the bad.“

Seven years ago, Gareth Edwards was betrayed.  The Creator proves it.

Despite what the kids say, Rogue One is a desecration.  The twerps of cinema who insist that they love that movie have its virtues and vices precisely backwards.  The best scenes in Rogue One are in the first half.  They may be badly cut, badly spliced, and badly organized, but there were elements of a real movie in there that the second half promptly turned into an ADHD cartoon.

The best evidence of this was the Death Star’s test firing sequence.  A scene with some of the grandest beauty and terror that has ever been composed for a science fantasy picture; the scale and emotional contrast amongst characters all came together perfectly for it, and Gareth Edwards proved, just as he proved in 2014 with Godzilla, that he is not merely a capable filmmaker but a genuinely good one.  And then Disney trashed it and did everything it could throughout the rest of Rogue One to try and make you forget it. The Creator has few new ideas within it, but as a series of images it is the picture Gareth Edwards clearly wanted to make when he was toiling in Disney’s misery factory.  Ken Wantanabe doesn’t have a moment with the gravity of “Let them fight” in Godzilla, but he and Allison Janney here are far closer to the fully realized characters Disney prevented Donnie Yen and Director Krennic from being there.

The story envisions the United States well into its new anti-A.I. forever wars as though nothing changed after the Afghanistan withdrawal, and it breaks into four chapters: “The Creator,” “The Child,” “The Friend,” and “The Mother.”  If you have seen A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Blade Runner, Avatar, and District 9, you will recognize the sci-fi concepts and predictable plotting well enough.  Edwards cannot quite update them, but he grasps how Vietnam era cinema affects how we process images of terror today.  His ingenious cinematic conceit is in the fact that while the dramatic plotting in his script only proceeds in one direction, he can shift character perspectives on a dime and instantly evoke a sense of dread.  He has the skills to put you in the shoes of Asian villagers in fear of a precise napalm or drone strike, and then transport you into the shoes of an American counter-insurgent in fear of a suicide bomber.  And he has crafted this film, to the extent possible, with his mission in each scene to realize the greatest image.  Howard Hawks would be proud.

Even so, The Creator seems superficial as a thriller.  Despite its many references to Spielberg’s A.I., no moment in the film matches the power of the Flesh Fair.  The A.I. child (“Alfie” our protagonist calls her – short for Alpha Omega) is only given a suggested personality that never seems to be as important as her remote powers, and she never has a moment like when David attacks his own copy, or when he jumps from the skyscraper, or when he prays until his battery dies.  She is not a character with her own desires or interests you might relate to or find compelling.  But the world and war around her are so big and overwhelming, certain key moments stand out as their own kind of impressive.  Alfie puts her hands together in prayer to exert her powers.  When we first learn this, she is merely using her power to turn the TV back on.  The cartoon she is watching features a fictitious air battle against the big American leviathan vessel that is this film’s functional equivalent to the Death Star in Rogue One.  It’s a joke that recalls the moment in Godzilla where the child is watching the news showing the monster fight, and the mom, unaware that it’s real, tells her: “shut that off!”  The moment is recalled again at a traffic checkpoint where a vehicle full of young children escapes a firefight, the kids are asked: “everyone have fun?” and one smiles and raises his hand.

Our main protagonist Joshua (John David Washington) is pursuing closure.  His motivation is much clearer after he is sent back to the place where his cover was blown to find his dead wife, suddenly now believed to be alive.  Many of the technical details between A and B aren’t perfectly explained, but Edwards uses aerial shots of jungles and urban sprawl followed by claustrophobic traffic stops, apartment buildings, and high grass all within this hybrid “New Asia” country to connect the Vietnam War to the Iraq War and possibly to the next war to come with China, and what will be lost in them.  And while Joshua’s emotional pursuit isn’t exactly Inception or District 9, his character makes sense as a response to familial loss.  It helps that John David isn’t as sarcastic as he has been in other films, or as his father is on a regular basis (no disrespect to Denzel intended).  The other thing that helps is the clever use of the riff from multiple Deep Purple songs, including its Cold War classic Child in Time from 1970.  Children other than Alfie are never the centerpiece of The Creator, but the impression of war upon them (and animals – which is its own redemptive reward) comes through both visually and audibly in small details like these.

The Creator is punching into a heavier weight class than it may have any right to play in, but Edwards at least understands the resonance of great images.  Next time, let him make the suicide mission picture that interests him.  Machines, after all, cannot and should not do everything.

– Vivek