From the start of his big screen career, Gareth Edwards has displayed a propensity for delivering eye-popping sci-fi worlds. There was the gritty realism of his handheld debut Monsters, where kaiju creatures were a fact of life in an indie drama that happened to also feature giant beasties. Then there was Godzilla, where he took that idea to a blockbuster scale, bringing a fresh spin to what it would be like living in a world forever changed by the advent of gigantic subterranean titans re-emerging once more. And in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, he broadened the galaxy far, far away in a new direction, fully digging into the ‘war’ side of, well, Star Wars. (Oh, and we still think Scarif looks like a lovely holiday destination, sans all the Imperials.)
Now, Edwards is back after seven years away with The Creator – a major new original sci-fi film, that looks very much a Gareth Edwards movie in every frame. Envisaging a future where humanity is divided over the impact of A.I. (and, specifically, intelligent humanoid robots), he’s about to bring an entirely new world to the cinema once more. Here’s a featurette digging into exactly that:
There are some interesting tidbits here, not just with gorgeous shots from the film and intriguing glimpses of behind-the-scenes footage – but with Edwards teasing it as “a Vietnam movie mixed wth robotic sci-fi”, and lead John David Washington promising a sense of “magical realism”. That certainly chimes with the grounded feel of the film, and the way in which it seems to treat its more fantastical elements (though for how long A.I. seems fantastical remains to be seen) as matter-of-fact. The director is promising “an insane, rich, visual journey”, he says here – and from what we see in this latest promo, signs are indicating that he’ll deliver on that. It’s good to have him back.
We’ll see whether The Creator lives up to everything we’ve seen so far when it hits cinemas on 29 September.