These days, if you want original science fiction films, you usually have to turn to the on demand market. Low budget sci-fi with no name stars is happening all the time. But big budget sci-fi, in theaters, with famous actors? It just doesn’t happen that much anymore without.
But it’s happening on September 29 with The Creator. Gareth Edwards (Rogue One, Godzilla) has crafted what looks like a massive sci-fi epic about a war between humans and AI and the one man (John David Washington) who befriends the being at the centre of it all, a robot child, played by Madeleine Yuna Voyles.
We’ve seen a few trailers for the film but Edwards joined fellow directors Justin Simien and Louis Letterier for a panel at Comic-Con, and told us a whole bunch more. First of all, The Creator was filmed entirely on a Sony FX3, a commercial camera you can buy at Best Buy. Which is wild considering, well… read about this footage we saw from the movie.
John David Washington’s character and the young robot child at the heart of Creator’s story are escaping a village. They run down a dock and jump into a small row boat. Once they arrive though, several smoky charges fire up into the sky—they realize they’ve been found out. The sky gets smokier and smokie,r and finally, the tree line starts moving as if something is crunching it from below. It’s revealed to be massive vehicles with the words “US Army” on them, as American military forces begin invading this village of primarily android occupants.
The man and child watch from a distance. He says there’s nothing they can do and they should leave. The child says that they have to help and starts running back toward the village while the man follows, begrudgingly. As the tanks continue to roll in, a robot throws a remote bomb onto one of them. However, the soldiers see him and shoot him down. That’s when a small monkey walks over to the dead robot, picks up the remote and detonates it. The vehicle explodes.
Other robots are running away from the invasion, and they suddenly see blue circles around them. They’re being targeted and start to run to lose the tracking. One robot starts to run into a hut only to see a human family in there with several small children. The robot pauses and in that moment, the target catches up with it and it blows up.
Another vehicle with several humans in it fires up some little robots that look like almost garbage cans. A timer that starts at 60 seconds starts to count down on them as the robot stands up, revealing legs, and tells its commander it’s an honor to serve them. It then starts running toward the village—a barricade of other robot villagers begin firing at it but to no avail. This thing can’t be stopped: it runs past the barricades, hails of gunfire, past the robot villagers and and right into the middle of the village as the clock clicks down to zero. Boom. It’s a suicide bomber. The human leader, played by Allison Janney, sends in another one. It also runs past the barricades and through all the firing but then it stops. The robot child is there, in its way. It stops, pauses, and then slowly kneels down in front of the child as the child puts its hand on the bomber’s head.
That then cut into a fun sizzle of new footage cover to brand new Hans Zimmer music. What we mainly took from The Creator footage is that Edwards and his team have really come up with some fun, inventive new stories and ideas here. It looks amazing, and we can’t wait to see more.
This was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of writers and actors currently on strike, the films and TV covered during SDCC 2023 wouldn’t exist.
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