Original sci-fi on a big budget is rare these days. But one such film is only a matter of weeks away. Rogue One director Gareth Edwards’ first feature since Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor managed to nab those Death Star plans is a sci-fi adventure called The Creator – and a new featurette has landed to sketch out what to expect from its near-future dystopia where humans, including John David Washington’s Joshua, and a kind of advanced artificial intelligence are at war with each other. Watch it exclusively here:
As the director points out, releasing a film that so heavily involves debates around artificial intelligence feels particularly prescient in 2023 – though the project has been in the works for years. “As we’re making The Creator, A.I. is getting better and better,” Edwards says in the featurette. “It feels like we’re at that tipping point now and this movie questions what does that look like 50 years from now, when A.I. is more embedded as part of society.”
Plot details for The Creator have been kept largely under wraps, but as a military-looking guy makes clear in some grainy archive, this is “a fight for our very existence”. Caught in the middle is Washington’s Joshua, one of a team tasked with tracking down a particularly dangerous piece of A.I. for the good of humanity. As it turns out, this bit of A.I. comes in the form of a very cute young kid. “This film will challenge what you believe,” Washington says in the clip. “It’s hard to know whose side to be on.” Add Edwards: “The way we wanted to approach A.I. in this film was as naturalistic as possible.”
Beyond Washington, the rest of the cast is absolutely stacked too: Alison Janney is another human working with Washington’s Joshua called Howell, while Gemma Chan, Ken Watanabe and everyone’s favourite gravelly Yorkshireman Ralph Ineson are all involved too. “It deals with what does it mean to be human, what does it mean to be alive, and can love transcend those divides?” Chan explains.
The Creator will premiere at Fantastic Fest in Texas this September, before its cinema release on 28 September. That’s as long as A.I. doesn’t, you know… do us all in first.