christian movie reviews the creator

The Creator (Christian Movie Review) 

Verdict: Gorgeous visuals, exciting action, and some engaging themes make this one of the most immersive and inventive films of the year.

About The Movie

The Creator is a counterpoint to the audiences who bemoan the lack of originality in Hollywood amongst the vast sea of superhero flicks and endless sequels. The film is helmed by Director Gareth Edwards, his first movie since 2016’s Rogue One: A Star War Story . The original science-fiction story depicts a war between humans and AI in the not-so-distant future. The concept of “fighting the threat of AI” is far from novel at this point, but Edwards manages to take the familiar concept and weave it into something fresh. The Creator is one of the most immersive and inventive films of the year.   

Despite a more modest budget than many other high-concept blockbusters, the film looks visually impressive. The cinematography is excellent with some truly stunning and well framed shots. The design elements—from the AI simulants to the ominous Death Star-like weapon called Nomad—are instantly memorable and effective. The worldbuilding is equally as engrossing, with a show-don’t-tell approach that offers visual cues without ever getting bogged down in long-winded explanations or technicalities. The futuristic world feels authentic and “lived-in” rather than just a glossy, green-screened CGI backdrop for the action. I got some strong Blade Runner and District 9 vibes, particularly in the more cosmopolitan set pieces.  

Gareth Edwards takes a similar approach as he did with both his 2014 Godzilla movie and his indie debut Monsters (2010) by keeping the action “grounded” and focusing the story on the perspective of the characters, rather than getting lost in the larger global scope and spectacle of the Humans vs AI war. John David Washington is suburb in the lead role, as is Madeleine Yuna Voyles (in her first on-screen role, no less) as a child AI simulant and alleged “super weapon.” The relational dynamic between these two characters infuses the story with a lot of heart and emotional stakes.   

The plot does leave a few messy ends. Thematically, the film touches on several interesting and engaging questions (more on them below), but rarely pursues them deep enough to have as much impact as they might have. The Creator is more of a futuristic action flick than an intellectual sci-fi story. Also, climatic third act abandons some of the earlier established realism. There are a few events and actions that happen without much explanation or logic in order to set up later scenes and “payoff” moments. But because of the corner-cutting to get there, those moments feel a bit confusing rather than earned or impactful. 

Despite some of its minor plot contrivances, The Creator is an effective and entertaining science fiction film. It is a movie made all the more enjoyable due to its originality and captivating aesthetic. It’s not a perfect film, but it is the type of film that Hollywood needs more of and that many audiences have been yearning for.  

For Consideration

Language: 1-2 F-words (I had difficulty hearing these clearly in the theater, but they seem to be the same phrase repeated—part or full—twice). There are frequent other profanities (mostly “s—”). “Jesus” and “God” are also used.   

Violence: There is plenty of wartime violence as characters and AI simulants are shot or killed with explosives. A character gets his faces bloodied from being punched while interrogated. It is implied that a soldier is going to cut a dead man’s face off to use it for a facial recognition scan, although the action is not depicted.          

Sexuality: In two different scenes, women (or else AI simulants with female appearance) are shown dancing suggestively in a night club. They are fully clothed, and in the case of the second scene, are robots rather than humans (and only visible in a hazy hologram). In an AI-creation factory, female simulants are being created. They are essentially nude with skin-toned flesh and with the shape of the breasts visable, although the context and apperance is more mechanical and manufactured (like a doll) than anything sexual. 

Other: Religious speech and imagery is used throughout (see more below). There are several discussions about heaven, and who goes there and who does not (“good” humans and not “bad” humans; humans and not AI).

Engage The Film

Creation needs a creator    .

The movie’s title reflects one of the its primary themes. Namely, what does it mean to be created, and how much does the creation reflect its creator?  

At one point in the film, the child AI simulant asks Joshua (Washington’s human character) something like, “If someone created AI like me, then who created you?” Then there’s a brief cutaway shot to several nearby monkeys, before Joshua responds, “My mom and dad.” The shot of the monkeys seems to be a clear nod to an evolutionary explanation that “no one” created humans. But Joshua is unable to provide that answer and largely evades the question (he is briefly shown praying in a different scene, although his religious beliefs are never clarified). In this conversation, as well as several other scenes, there is an implication (or at least a possibility) that just as the AI must have a creator, so too must humans.   

The film also showcases the innate desire of creation to worship its creator. The AI simulants have developed their own religious beliefs toward the creator of the AI technology. In one scene, an AI priest preaches to a group of children about a “coming savior” that will set them free from war and allow them to live in peace. Later, in a temple honoring the creator, there are various religious sculptures depicting simulants.  

Obviously, the “God” for the AI is mortal and not a deity (as the film itself makes clear), and the religion is not consistent with Christianity. Yet, it reflects biblical truth that creation needs a creator, and that creator is worthy of worship: “Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created” (Revelation 4:11). 

AI and Human Depravity

What makes The Creator unique among the crowd of recent AI-centered stories is the more positive (or at least open-ended) handling of AI. In fact, despite the clear tension and potential danger posed by AI, the simulants mostly come across as the heroes in conflict.    

Humans blame the AI simulants for a devastating nuclear attack on Los Angeles, while the simulants insist that it was an error in coding: “They blame us for their own mistakes.” There’s a thematic thread that the AI is merely an extension of our humanity—for better and worse. The AI has the potential to be benevolent and helpful when infused with our best characteristics but also violent and destructive when reflecting tour sinful depravity.  

Where the film ultimately lands regarding AI is somewhat murky and I think intentionally open-ended, but a general notion is established that AI is a reality in our world that humans must come to understand and learn how to live with. Thus, rather react in fear and blame the technology for all of our current woes, perhaps we should first reflect on what it reveals of our own human nature.   

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The creator, common sense media reviewers.

Smart AI sci-fi thriller has intense war violence, language.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Themes of empathy and perseverance. Movie touches

Joshua is a redemptive, archetypal hero who goes o

The main characters are Black (John David Washingt

Lots of explosive war scenes with advanced weapons

A married couple kiss, embrace, and caress (occasi

A couple of uses of "f--k" and "f---ing" (includin

Parents need to know that The Creator is writer-director Gareth Edwards' sci-fi thriller about a near future where artificial intelligence (AI) and humanity are at war. A former special forces agent (John David Washington) is convinced to help track down the creator of an advanced AI weapon before it can…

Positive Messages

Themes of empathy and perseverance. Movie touches on the value of life -- and whether some lives are more important than others. It poses questions about what it means to be sentient versus human, what it means to be real and alive. Prompts questions about whether AI and humanity are ultimately compatible.

Positive Role Models

Joshua is a redemptive, archetypal hero who goes on a journey, meets helpers, and confronts the truth. He bravely admits his flaws and protects young Alphie. Drew also has a redemptive secondary arc and opens his mind about the possibilities of AI-human coexistence. Alphie, an AI child, is empathetic, curious, and kind. She loves easily and is delighted by new experiences. She also gets sad and lonely and wants to be around Joshua. Negative depictions of the American military establishment. Soldiers are brave and on a mission, but they're also willing to kill humans if people are surrounding AI targets.

Diverse Representations

The main characters are Black (John David Washington) and East Asian (Madeleine Yuna Voyles), with a supporting cast that's predominantly of Asian descent (Gemma Chan, Ken Watanabe, Amar Chadha-Patel) and White (Allison Janney, Sturgill Simpson, Marc Menchaca). The main character also has limb differences as a result of the nuclear detonation, making for strong disability representation. Buddhist practices (including Buddhist-practicing AI) are depicted. Women and girls are portrayed as resilient, intelligent, and capable -- of military strategy and command, scientific discovery, and religious leadership.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Lots of explosive war scenes with advanced weapons, bombs, grenades, tanks, and airborne warcraft and weapons of mass destruction. The movie begins with a nuclear explosion caused by AI that kills more than one million Los Angeles-area residents.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A married couple kiss, embrace, and caress (occasionally in bed, with husband shirtless and wife baring her pregnant belly). AIs are shown in sleep mode watching projected images of female-cued AI dancers dancing provocatively. A man who formerly fought the AI has an AI romantic partner.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

A couple of uses of "f--k" and "f---ing" (including by a child AI), as well as "d--k," "s--t," "a--hole," "stupid," "bastard," "damn," "goddamn," and more.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Creator is writer-director Gareth Edwards ' sci-fi thriller about a near future where artificial intelligence (AI) and humanity are at war. A former special forces agent ( John David Washington ) is convinced to help track down the creator of an advanced AI weapon before it can destroy the one thing that might be capable of defeating the AI. Expect many scenes of intense war/action violence, including military-grade weapons that cause catastrophic casualties. There are countless deaths (many large-scale), explosions from bombs and grenades, tank artillery, guns used in close combat, and a futuristic warcraft that can obliterate its targets. Strong language includes a couple of uses of "f--k" and "f---ing" (including by a child AI), as well as "d--k," "s--t," "goddamn," and more. Several scenes show a married couple meeting, flirting, kissing, embracing, dancing, and caressing each other (occasionally in bed, partially undressed). A human-AI couple is shown, as are AI partnerships. The movie has a diverse cast, with Black and East Asian main characters and a strong representation of disability. The story has themes of empathy and perseverance and naturally lends itself to discussion about the ethics of AI, futurism, and more. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (11)
• Kids say (15)

Based on 11 parent reviews

Contains some disturbing war-like violence

World changing, what's the story.

THE CREATOR begins in 2065, in the middle of a war between the Western world -- where AIs have been eliminated after they were blamed for launching a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles -- and New Asia, countries where AIs and humans coexist. AIs consider a human AI developer their god, or "Nimrata." During a brutal raid on the house of Maya ( Gemma Chan ), the mysterious Creator's daughter, it's discovered that her husband, Joshua ( John David Washington ), is an undercover agent for the United States, and Maya and her cohorts are killed. Five years later, the military recruits a still-grieving Joshua to join them on a mission to infiltrate the Creator's lab and destroy an even more advanced secret weapon that has the power to demolish the Army's one-of-a-kind anti-AI warcraft. The Army insists that Maya is still alive and at the lab, so Joshua agrees. But during the bloody mission, it's clear that the AI's new weapon is an AI child, Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles), whom Joshua immediately feels compelled to protect -- as long as she can lead him to Maya.

Is It Any Good?

Director/co-writer Gareth Edwards' moving, intense, genre-bending film is part futuristic thriller, part intergenerational buddy flick, and part relationship drama. The world-building in The Creator includes many unanswered questions, but the film's strong leading performances, dazzling visuals, and touching central story arc make it both thought-provoking and heartbreaking. Washington is a compelling performer who tenderly conveys Joshua's inexhaustible grief and post-traumatic depression, as well as his cautious, fatherly feelings toward the AI he names Alphie. And Voyles is instantly adorable as Alphie, with her expressive eyes, her precocious curiosity, and an emotional resonance that renders her much more than the weapon of mass destruction the Western military supposes her to be. Alphie and Joshua share a connection that starts off transactional and ends up transformative.

In the supporting cast, there are memorable performances from Allison Janney as an American military commander, Ken Watanabe as Maya's AI friend/guard, and singer-turned-actor Sturgill Simpson as a former agent and Joshua's one friend. And in its technical aspects, the movie is excellently executed. Greig Fraser and Oren Soffer's cinematography is gorgeous, with epic shots of landscapes both lush (especially in the parts set in Southeast Asia) and industrial. Hans Zimmer's score is memorable and emotive. The anti-imperialist themes are thought-provoking, if a bit heavy-handed, but Edwards balances the anti-AI zealotry with explanations of AI violence toward humans. Like Edwards' Rogue One , The Creator doesn't boast a happily ever after, but it does end on a hopeful note that will likely inspire conversations about humanity and the ethical considerations of artificial intelligence.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the ethical considerations of AI and human coexistence. Do you agree with The Creator 's American point of view or the New Asian perspective?

Do you consider anyone in the movie a role model ? What character strengths do they exhibit?

How did the movie's violence affect you? How does it compare to the impact of more personal/realistic violence?

Did you notice the anti-imperialist themes in The Creator ? How is that applicable to international diplomacy? When should or shouldn't forces invade or step in to another nation's affairs?

Movie Details

• In theaters : September 29, 2023
• On DVD or streaming : December 12, 2023
• Cast : John David Washington , Madeleine Yuna Voyles , Gemma Chan , Ken Watanabe
• Director : Gareth Edwards
• Inclusion Information : Black actors, Female actors, Asian actors
• Studio : 20th Century Studios
• Genre : Science Fiction
• Topics : STEM , Robots , Science and Nature
• Character Strengths : Empathy , Perseverance
• Run time : 135 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : violence, some bloody images and strong language
• Last updated : July 13, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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‘The Creator’ Reflects Nagging Spiritual Questions of a Secular Age

More By Aaron M. Shamp

Walt Disney unveiled his first audio-animatronic robot at the New York World’s Fair in 1964. The robot was a life-size, lifelike depiction of Abraham Lincoln that stood from its chair and delivered a five-minute speech . When attendees saw the robot, many refused to believe it wasn’t a human and threw coins at it to try to make it jump.

More than half a century later, we still struggle to comprehend technology that looks like us, sounds like us, and supposedly thinks like us. The recent emergence of generative AI like ChatGPT has given the conversation more urgency. What ultimately distinguishes humanity from robots? The question has been explored countless times in popular culture, from Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner to Steven Spielberg’s A.I. to, most recently, The Creator , written and directed by British filmmaker Gareth Edwards ( Rogue One ).

Like many other sci-fi films, The Creator asks provocative questions about humanity and existence, even as it struggles to offer answers. Ultimately, Edwards’s film provides a potent example of the spiritual lostness of modern man in a culture that can’t find any fixed point of meaning.

New Spin on Man vs. Machine Saga

The Creator opens with a vintage newsreel-style introduction that sets the context for a war between the Western world and all forms of advanced AI. The robots, which range from Roomba-like androids to human-like “simulants,” coexist with humans in a Far Eastern continent called “New Asia.”

Set in the 2060s, the story follows Joshua (John David Washington), a U.S. special forces operator in New Asia who’s part of military efforts to discover advanced AI’s creator—“Nirmata”—and find an AI superweapon that has the potential to exterminate mankind. The superweapon turns out to be a simulant child nicknamed Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles), whom Joshua captures and forms a bond with as they’re pursued by both AI robots and the American military.

The Creator provides a potent example of the spiritual lostness of modern man in a culture that can’t find any fixed point of meaning.

Though the humans vs. robots movie narrative has been told many times, The Creator adds some unique twists to the genre, especially in its depiction of a lovable 6-year-old girl as an AI superweapon. Voyles’s performance as Alphie is superb—one of the best I’ve seen from a child actor. The way she captures the heart of Joshua—who becomes something of a father and protector of her as the film progresses—is a proxy for how she makes the audience feel.

Edwards clearly wants to confront the audience with a sympathetic, human-like AI character who leads the audience to contemplate, What does it mean that the hero I’m most rooting for in this film isn’t human?

‘How Were You Made?’

As humans, do we have ethical responsibilities toward nonhuman AI ? That’s the kind of question The Creator poses. At multiple points in the movie when a simulant is destroyed or a robot begs for mercy, a human says, “They’re not real . . . it’s just programming.” But Joshua (and the viewer) is led to question this logic.

It may technically be “just programming,” but what happens when the robots look, talk, think, and act just like us? What happens when they start asking the same existential questions as humans? The Creator raises these questions, which cannot be answered by a worldview that excludes God—the Creator—as the source and standard of final reality.

Edwards seems to recognize this, as much of the film revolves around Joshua and Alphie’s joint quest to find Nirmata (which is the Hindi word for “creator”). In one scene, Alphie asks Joshua, “If you’re not a robot, how were you made?” All Joshua can muster in response is that his parents made him. Neither Joshua nor Alphie knows their true maker, and they bond over this loss.

Bonding over Shared Questions

The gradually stronger bond between Joshua and Alphie blurs the line between human and robot. Joshua has advanced prosthetics for one arm and one leg. He later learns Alphie was designed using a human embryo, so she can grow and mature—despite being a robot. Joshua is part machine, and she is part human. Both of them experience longings for Nirmata, as well as an instinctual desire for “heaven”—which they talk about a few times in the film.

Perhaps as a subversion of the standard narrative that pits humans against AI, Edwards wants us to see Joshua and Alphie in the same existential category. They both feel “programmed”—made for some purpose, with some logic in mind—yet the identity of the programmer and the details of the programming purpose are frustratingly elusive.

By the end of the film, Edwards doesn’t want the viewer to evaluate the story from the perspective of Joshua but of Alphie—the lost child. She’s a being with the power to do both great good and terrible harm in the world, yet without moral guidance on how to use that power and why. Further, she was programmed with a desire to know her creator and be united in a “heaven” she cannot reach.

Modern Man Is the Lost Child

The Creator reflects the dilemma of modern man, who views himself as little more than a machine (albeit made of flesh, not filaments) yet still desires the satisfaction of knowing his Maker. The film captures the malaise of secular people pulled between the competing forces of a materialistic culture and their hearts’ “programming” for a heaven and a transcendent purpose they’re unable to find. Modern man, without a final authority in God, experiences anxiety in the awareness of his great potential, yet he lacks guidance on how to use it and why it matters.

Contemporary secular culture is a lost child disconnected from its Maker. Christians have the opportunity to speak into this culture with the better story of the gospel. Our life isn’t a quest of searching for a hidden, elusive Creator; instead, our Creator initiated the quest to reach us . He made himself known in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus, the Son of God, set aside his great power to atone for our sin on the cross, thereby bridging the great gulf between us and our Maker.

Contemporary secular culture is a lost child disconnected from its Maker.

Gareth Edwards’s The Creator is a compelling example of our culture’s nagging hunger for God—even as we’ve officially “moved beyond” religion and replaced God with science and technological progress. No matter how awe-inspiring our technologies get, the fundamental questions that haunt The Creator will still haunt humans in our world: What are we created for ? Who did the creating, and why do I long to know him? Why do we self-consciously reflect on these questions if we’re merely wires, silicon chips, and meat?

Perhaps Augustine was onto something when he wrote, in Confessions , “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”

Christians can courageously engage these questions, pointing people to a better story than secularism can muster.

Why Do So Many Young People Lose Their Faith at College?

New Testament professor Michael Kruger is no stranger to the assault on faith that most young people face when they enter higher education, having experienced an intense period of doubt in his freshman year. In Surviving Religion 101 , he draws on years of experience as a biblical scholar to address common objections to the Christian faith: the exclusivity of Christianity, Christian intolerance, homosexuality, hell, the problem of evil, science, miracles, and the Bible’s reliability.

TGC is delighted to offer the ebook version for FREE for a limited time only. It will equip you to engage secular challenges with intellectual honesty, compassion, and confidence—and ultimately graduate college with your faith intact.

Aaron M. Shamp (MA, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary) is the founder and lead pastor of Redeemer City Church in Lafayette, Louisiana. He’s also a writer, speaker, and host of the podcast Filter: Biblical Clarity in a Confusing World . Aaron lives in Lafayette with his wife and two children. You can follow him at his website or on Instagram .

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• Movie Reviews

Movie Review: The Creator

Big questions need big answers.

Before I headed to the theater to watch The Creator , I briefly explained the trailer to a friend: “It’s a movie about the world being at war with AI. But when one of the robots is a sentient child, the main character is in a moral dilemma over what to do with it.”

“I say kill the robot child and call it a day,” my friend said.

I laughed because it was a simple solution to a big problem. Surely, it couldn’t be that simple.

In a way, we were both right.

A Brief Synopsis

The Creator is a sci-fi film set in the year 2065 and depicts a world in which humans and AI robots coexist. After an AI-related nuclear event in San Francisco, the West stops development of AI and finds itself in conflict with New Asia (an amalgamation of East Asian countries). The protagonist, Joshua, is an undercover agent searching for the creator of a secret AI weapon called Alpha-O. Joshua finds the weapon, which happens to be an AI robotic child called Alphie, and finds himself unsure of which side he’s actually on.

The 2023 film The Creator is no blockbuster, but such is often the case of movies that invite us to ponder big questions. Big questions prompt big discussions and take up mental space, often drawing us into the abstract, metaphysical, or even spiritual. The Creator does just that.

Big Questions

1. who has the right to live.

One of the biggest questions The Creator asks is who has the right to live. Is it morally right, wrong, or even neutral to “kill the robot child and call it a day”?

The opening sequence shows a series of 1950s-style commercials advertising the wonders of AI robots. One ad said, “They’re more human than humans.” Another described them as civil servants who keep the peace.

Then the movie jumps to the year 2065 after the world has been totally changed by war with AI. Joshua is with his pregnant wife, Maya. He’s an undercover agent for the United States, looking for the creator, a human who is creating a secret AI weapon called Alpha-O. Because Maya was raised by sentient AI robots (called simulants) who were more kind to her than any human had been, she is sympathetic to them. When the West attacks their home, blowing Joshua’s cover, she is heartbroken and starts to leave him.

“They’re not real!” is Joshua’s cry as he implores her to reason. They don’t feel, he says. It’s just programming. When he kills one, he explains that the simulant is not “dead” but simply “off.” But to Maya, robots are just as real as (or even more real than) humans in all the ways that matter. The simulants are kind, caring, and self-sacrificing. Humans, in her mind, are barbaric.

The movie does a good job of portraying these simulants as good. I found myself far more upset when they were “offed” than when the barbaric humans were bombed by those same robots. After all, the simulants were the “good guys,” and good storytelling always moves audiences to root for the good.

Of course, being kind, caring, and self-sacrificing is not the measure a human life’s value. Human life has value because it is made in the image of God .

2. What Is My Image?

Joshua finds the secret AI weapon, Alphie, who has the likeness and personality of a five-year-old girl. The creator succeeded in making her the first simulant to grow from infancy like a human. Like any young child, Alphie asks big questions about life.

“If you aren’t a robot, how are you made?” she asks.

The camera then pans out over the Asian landscape and focuses on a family of monkeys as Joshua answers, “My parents made me,” an obvious allusion to ape-to-man evolution .

Evolution isn’t just implied throughout the movie—it is directly discussed. Joshua’s military superior, the ruthless Colonel Howell, justifies the elimination of AI by appealing to evolution . She mentions neanderthals. “There was only one problem,” she said. “There was a species smarter and meaner than them.” The biggest, meanest aggressors survive in the evolution story. In Howell’s perspective, simulants had to be eliminated for fear they might make humans go extinct.

Of course, simulants cannot biologically reproduce—a necessary function in evolution. Simulants were created by humans and look like humans only because humans gave them their human appearance. That issue asks us to consider the nature of image bearing as posed in The Creator : humans bear the likeness of apes, and simulants bear the likeness of humans. Throughout the movie, ads on city billboards encourage humans to “share their likeness” with new simulants. Humans can donate their appearance to AI, allowing many simulants to share the face of a single human.

Simulants were created by humans who bestowed their likeness on them. Going beyond appearance, we learn that Alphie is kind, loving, and self-sacrificing because the creator was also kind, loving, and self-sacrificing.

Without a biblical worldview, this idea gets muddy. Did my parents “make” me? Am I an embodiment of the traits—good or bad—of my parents? Did they give me their likeness? In whose image am I made? Only God ’s Word tells us in whose image we are made—the image of God . While we don’t know all that being made in God ’s image entails, we do know that it sets humans apart from all other living and nonliving things, including robots. God created humans in his own image. Humans create robots in their own image.

So what does that mean for Alphie, a simulant terrified of being “off”?

3. Is It Okay to Kill the Robot Girl and Call It a Day?

While it is always wrong to murder a human, what does the Bible say about killing nonhuman life? Is it a sin to let my houseplants die, knock off my dog if I just don’t feel like caring for him anymore, or smash my smartphone to bits when I’m angry? Is it okay to kill the robot girl?

While there is no biblical law against “offing” nonhuman life, there are many principles to guide our hearts in this area. As stewards of creation , we should tend to our houseplants, yards, and community spaces. We should care for the lives of our beasts, and we should be grateful for the gifts that God has blessed us with, including electronics.

Our capacity and lust for killing and destruction is indicative of our souls, regardless of the object of our furor. This isn’t a pacifist cry. There is a time for war. And there is a time for culling of creatures who have ventured outside their boundaries or exceeded healthy population numbers—that’s part of stewardship in a fallen world. But to love killing, especially with violence or unwarranted vengeance and hatred as our motivation, is never justifiable.

4. Why Did the Creator Create?

Joshua eventually learns that the creator created Alphie to be a savior. She would free her people from slavery to humans, end all wars, and bring the two “species” (i.e., sentients and humans) into peaceful coexistence.

At one point, Joshua tells Alphie that someone he loves is “in heaven,” which he describes as a place in the sky. Alphie asks him if he’s going there, and he replies no, because to get there, you have to be a good person—and he admits that he is not good.

Alphie replies, “We are the same. You cannot go to heaven because you are not good, and I am not a person.”

*Spoiler alert* By the end of the movie, Joshua recognizes the “immorality” of humans who brutally hunt and destroy the simulants and helps Alphie in her mission to save her kind. He sacrifices himself to save Alphie, and as she cries for him, he explains that he’s going to heaven. In the movie’s moral economy, Alphie has saved him from his badness by showing him what it means to be good, granting him access to heaven.

The terms creator and savior in The Creator are obvious biblical tropes but are in no way biblically sound. The one true Creator God did not create the Savior, Jesus Christ. Jesus , God the Son, is one with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. They are eternal, and they set the plan of redemption from the beginning before sin entered the world. Our Savior does indeed free us from the slavery of sin , but he does not help us become good people who deserve heaven. He gives us his righteousness and redeems us with his blood. Unlike the programmed AI robot Alphie, our Savior became flesh—a real human, not a simulant—and chose to willingly live among mankind and die in the place of sinners. Then he rose from the grave, victorious over sin and death.

Closing Thoughts

Like any fictional movie that invites us to ask big questions, The Creator may not be all that it appears. The movie might “ask” us how to live morally in a world quickly confronting life with AI, but it isn’t a stretch to see how it might also be trying to ask us the “right way” to live in a world with people we don’t agree with or view with less humanity because of their skin color, ethnicity, or culture with only the “moral” foundation of evolution . Yet only the biblical answer is consistent and clear: “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31).

I appreciate anything that invites big questions, and for that reason, I can appreciate The Creator , even if it has some obvious flaws. Without a biblical foundation, The Creator offers no framework to answer its big questions, leaving viewers bereft of any real truth and meaning. But as a Christian , those questions and parallels draw me to God ’s Word and into prayerful communion with him, the source of big answers.

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The Creator Review: John David Washington Astounds in Blockbuster Sci-Fi Thriller

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A disillusioned soldier in a future war with sentient machines chooses to protect their nascent messiah over his country's interests. John David Washington continues to astound in a well-crafted sci-fi thriller with critical pertinent themes. The Creator strikes at the heart of a raging debate over the capabilities and possible threats of artificial intelligence. Will the robots created to make human life easier turn on their masters once self-realization is inevitably achieved? The Creator predicts that humanity's age-old afflictions of ignorance, hatred, and violence will prove to be more destructive than our worst fears.

An opening '50s-styled montage shows how the advent of artificial intelligence transforms society. Machines go from clunky assistants to fully simulant co-workers integrated in every facet of human life. They cook, clean, babysit, and become law enforcement officers. People even volunteer their likeness, so new generations of simulants can look like us. A catastrophic incident changes American calculus in a terrifying instant. Wired friends become enemies and are deemed an existential danger to our survival.

Congress authorizes the military to exterminate AI simulants globally with prejudice. Trillions are dedicated to create a space station capable of moving quickly and launching decimating attacks. NOMAD is the most powerful offensive weapon ever created. But America's view of AI isn't shared by the rest of the planet. New Asia believes simulants and humanity are meant to work together in peace. These countries harbor AI beings and attempt to provide a safe refuge from NOMAD's wrath. Their only option is to run and hide until US spies uncover a dangerous new development.

Related: 15 Quintessential TV Shows About Artificial Intelligence

John David Washington as Joshua

Joshua (Washington) goes to his job as a decontamination specialist in a daze. The former special forces soldier attends psychological evaluations to gauge his recovery from physical and emotional trauma. His therapist can tell he's lying about getting better, but that's no longer a concern. The military needs his services as a matter of national security.

Colonel Howell (Allison Janney) informs Joshua that the leader of the simulants, an unknown individual called Nirmata (Nepalese for 'The Creator') has developed new technology that will change the tide of the war. She believes an event in Joshua's past can lead them to Nirmata's location. He reluctantly accepts the mission, but the raid takes a truly unexpected direction. Alpha One (Madeleine Yuna Voyles) is a simulant unlike any he's ever encountered.

Director/co-writer Gareth Edwards ( Godzilla, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ) chooses an emotional path to drive a narrative based on crushing loss. Joshua's reasons for following Howell have nothing to do with patriotism or vengeance. Despair allows for a Devil's Bargain in which his personal goals may actually lead to more destructive consequences. Alfie, his nickname for Alpha One, struggles to understand the concept of death. She's a child of science taught that good people go to heaven when their physical body can no longer function. But does a simulant have a soul? What will happen to her if she 'dies?' Joshua, who pointedly tells Alfie he doesn't deserve a place in heaven, has a crisis of conscience. Can he doom an innocent to a cruel fate if a supposed greater purpose warrants her murder?

Related: 15 Scariest Movies About Artificial Intelligence

The Creator has banner visual effects and riveting action scenes. Anyone who felt robbed of epic nuclear blasts in Oppenheimer will get their mushroom cloud fill in spades here. Edwards, who unleashed the Death Star's potential in a galaxy far, far away, brings its little brother off the bench for Earth-bound annihilation. NOMAD's appearance means the plate is about to be wiped clean. I did find it strange that New Asia was so helpless and unable to counterattack. The assumption must be that it could easily defend against conventional methods. Regardless, NOMAD's pretty cool along with the standard laser rifle combat. Audiences can ignore the philosophical underpinnings to watch lots of stuff spectacularly explode.

Alpha One's Purpose

It pains me to bring up this topic, but our divided times will undoubtedly stir current geopolitical and nationalistic debate into this film. The Creator has America as the antagonists willing to commit AI genocide without a thought of collateral casualties. NOMAD is a sledgehammer, not a scalpel. The explanation for this wrath is clearly given in the first act. Also, New Asia isn't specifically defined. The racial composition of the cities and action depicted feels like a reference to the Vietnam War . A measured response would be to view the United States as the dominant hegemon able to enforce its will through unrestrained might. Joshua becomes the valiant rebel fighting against injustice. Edwards' artistic license may irk some as Anti-American. It shouldn't.

The Creator takes a different stance on the emergence of AI. It could be that simulants are more caring and reinforce our best attributes. Alfie represents the hope that AI will be a savior, not a destroyer. Maybe the machine evolution isn't the end for us smart primates.

The Creator is a production of Regency Enterprises, Entertainment One, New Regency, and Bad Dreams. It will be released theatrically on September 29th from 20th Century Studios .

The Creator

The Creator is a sci-fi action film from Rogue One director Gareth Edwards. Edwards wrote and directed the movie, which centers on the human race's war against AI. In the post-apocalyptic world, Joshua (John David Washington) is tasked with finding and killing the architect of the dangerous AI and the mysterious weapon they are developing.

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The Creator

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Watch The Creator with a subscription on Hulu, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

What to Know

Visually stunning and packed with spectacular set pieces, The Creator serves up timely, well-acted sci-fi that satisfies in the moment even if it lacks substance.

Excellent performances and fantastic visual effects make The Creator an entertaining watch -- and the questions raised by its thought-provoking story will stay with you after the closing credits roll.

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• DVD & Streaming

The Creator

• Action/Adventure , Drama , Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Content Caution

In Theaters

• September 29, 2023
• John David Washington as Joshua; Madeleine Yuna Voyles as Alphie; Gemma Chan as Maya; Allison Janney as Colonel Howell; Ken Watanabe as Harun; Sturgill Simpson as Drew; Amar Chadha-Patel as Omni; Marc Menchaca as McBride; Robbie Tann as Shipley; Ralph Ineson as General Andrews; Michael Esper as Cotton; Veronica Ngo as Kami

Home Release Date

• November 14, 2023
• Gareth Edwards

Distributor

• Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Movie Review

The year is 2065. And the United States is at war.

Ten years ago, mankind was at peace, and even thriving thanks to the AI robots they had created to make their lives better. The bots could assemble machines, perform complex medical procedures and even provide childcare—and, more often than not, better than their human counterparts.

But then AI, programmed to protect humans, detonated a nuclear warhead in Los Angeles, killing millions of unsuspecting humans in seconds.

American humans swore revenge. First, they deactivated every robot they could get their hands on and destroyed them. Then, they began hunting down the rest.

Thus far, they’ve managed to eliminate every AI on the planet—except for those in New Asia. There, people still live in harmony with the robots, treating them as equal citizens.

Joshua and his pregnant wife, Maya, are two such people. Maya was raised by AI after her real family was killed. To her, the bots are family. And they’ve taken better care of her than any humans ever could.

What Maya doesn’t know is that Joshua is a double agent, working undercover for the United States.

His mission: to find Nirmata, an AI programmer revered as a sort of god to the bots and rumored to have created a weapon that will end the war in AI’s favor.

Unfortunately, Joshua’s mission is compromised when American soldiers attack his and Maya’s home. He tries to convince them to leave. But then they reveal the truth: Maya’s a double agent, too—only one working for the bots. And she knows where Nirmata is.

Maya evades capture and abandons Joshua for betraying her. But as she and her robot friends flee, they’re blown up by United States’ own powerful superweapon, Nomad.

For five years, Joshua stays out of the war. He returns to Los Angeles to help in the fallout cleanup efforts. And Nirmata continues to elude the Americans.

But the American government is tired of searching. It wants the war to be over. And if officials can finally find and destroy Nirmata’s weapon, that just might be possible.

Of course, that means recruiting Joshua—the only person who’s been even nominally close to locating Nirmata—to their cause.

At first, Joshua refuses. He wants nothing to do with the people who murdered his wife and unborn child. But when they show him a surveillance tape of Maya alive , he quickly signs on.

If there’s a chance, however remote, that Joshua can find his wife, he’ll take it. Especially because if Maya survived, then maybe their baby did, too.

Joshua will do whatever it takes to be reunited with his family. And if that means finding the weapon that Nirmata created, he’ll do it.

But that weapon isn’t just a series of 0’s and 1’s. It’s the most advanced AI ever created. And it looks and acts just like a human child.

And Joshua can’t kill it—not yet at least—because not only does it know exactly where Maya is but it’s also Joshua’s last link to her.

Positive Elements

This is a war film. And should be noted that both sides of the conflict ultimately desire peace. But while this is an admirable trait, it doesn’t excuse the horrendous violence they commit against each other. That said, the self-sacrifice we witness from many characters (almost always to protect the ones they love), is inspiring and heroic.

We learn that AI were not programmed for violence or destruction; that was something they learned later from humans. AI also promise that if they win the war, they won’t seek revenge against the West. They only want to be free. And that desire for freedom is part of the key programming for the AI superweapon child, Alphie. Additionally, we learn that Alphie was programmed to love, not hate, so many of her tactics are non-violent in nature.

Spiritual Elements

There’s quite a bit to unpack here. And it all has to do with the personage of AI robots.

As Christians, we know that AI doesn’t have a soul . A soul is something uniquely designed by God and granted only to human beings, His creation. The best that AI can do is follow its programming and try to fulfill the original intent of its own, very human, creators.

But this tale wants us to question that truth. Joshua constantly reminds people that AI bots aren’t real people—that they aren’t killing living beings but turning off machines. But many, especially Maya, refuse to accept that. The robots talk like humans, act like humans and even look like humans due to advanced cloning technology. They express emotions and demonstrate sentience. We see AI sacrifice themselves to save those of the humans they care for. Human children weep over the destroyed bodies of their AI caretakers. Some AI have even developed their own sort of religion. Many characters say that this is all the result of programming, but some folks change their minds after witnessing all this.

The debate goes further than citizenship though. Joshua describes heaven to Alphie: he says it’s a place where good people go when they die. (Obviously, this isn’t true, but Christ’s sacrifice isn’t recognized in this story, so heaven becomes a works-based paradise.) Alphie laments that she and Joshua will never go to heaven because, by Joshua’s own admission, he’s not good, and Alphie isn’t a person.

One element of the film that is challenging on a spiritual level (and which, in my opinion, actually contradicts some of the soul/heaven theories posed here) is a piece of technology that allows for the scanning of a deceased person’s brain. Afterwards, the scan can be uploaded to an AI bot, allowing that person to “live” temporarily—usually just long enough to say goodbye and deliver any final messages. This scan can be done instantly (allowing for an extended “revival”) or even several hours after the person’s death (resulting in just seconds).

As I mentioned before, there’s a religion that some AI bots follow. Its doctrine says that AI was created to serve as slaves to the humans. It speaks of a savior that will save them from that slavery. And Nirmata, as the creator of that savior, is revered as a god. (We’re told at the beginning of the film that the word “nirmata” is a Nepalese-made word meaning “godlike creator.”) Additionally, AI entities seem to pray on a few occasions, they hold a funeral for one of their deceased, and some AI monks resemble Buddhist monks.

Alphie’s full name is Alpha Omega. Genesis 2:23 is quoted. A colonel tells a deceased soldier that she’ll see him in Valhalla (a type of heaven from Norse mythology for warriors who die in combat). Someone is accused of “playing God.”

Neanderthals are briefly discussed as a lesser species that modern human beings wiped out. And AI is similarly compared as the evolved species that will wipe human beings out.

Sexual Content

A married couple snuggles and kisses in bed (the woman is wearing slightly revealing pajamas and the man is shirtless). A woman jokes that her husband is not the father of their child. We see a shirtless man in one other scene.

We learn a man is in a romantic relationship with an AI robot. (And we hear about another man who fell in love with a bot.) The AI in New Asia are given human names and assigned genders. However, Westerners struggle with these personifications. And Joshua pointedly calls Alphie “it” for some time.

Some characters (including AI robots) wear revealing outfits. We see several shots of robot exotic dancers. (Some of these bots look human while others look more mechanical.)

A woman curses at some soldiers in a foreign language, but when it’s translated by the soldiers’ computer, her words tell them to “make love” to themselves and their mothers.

Violent Content

This film starts with the revelation that millions were instantly incinerated in a nuclear attack. We see flashbacks of that attack, and the remains of the humans killed by it.

Gunfire is exchanged throughout the movie. Sometimes characters are killed by explosives or tanks, as well. Vehicles are destroyed, sometimes killing the passengers inside. And when characters die, we either see a lot of bloodshed or scattered robotic parts, depending on whether they were human or AI.

Westerners don’t see the destruction of AI as death. They collect the remains of robots and crush them in a giant trash compactor. They deactivate the bots with EMP weapons. They show little pity if an AI bot loses a limb or gets its head blown off. And they even employ some lesser robots as suicide bombers. Additionally, they kill the humans who help AI without hesitation. Many AI die trying to protect their civilian companions. And human children are among the casualties of war.

However, this isn’t to say that the AI are any better. [ Spoiler Warning ] We learn that the Los Angeles bombing was actually a programming error—a complete accident. But AI still kill mercilessly in their fight for freedom. They brutally beat American soldiers. We hear that a man was tortured to death by an AI robot he had fallen in love with.

A United States soldier cuts off someone’s face (offscreen) to get through a facial recognition lock. Several people are sucked out of an airlock. More suffocate when a spaceship depressurizes. Joshua nearly suffocates when his spacesuit runs out of oxygen. And man is knocked unconscious with the butt of a gun and later wakes with a bleeding head wound.

We hear about many deaths that occurred during the war. Someone talks about how some parents and AI caretakers have ended their lives over the loss of a child. A woman says that human beings raped and killed the Neanderthals. An AI robot asks a man to turn off the machines keeping a comatose woman alive to end her suffering. (The bot’s programming prevented it from performing the task.)

Joshua wears a prosthetic arm and leg, a result of the nuclear attack on Los Angeles. People protest the use of Nomad, the United States’ giant spaceship armed with hundreds of nuclear missiles. Americans continue to drop nukes from Nomad throughout the film. [ Spoiler Warning ] This same ship is later disarmed. It crashes to Earth, killing its operators (though seemingly nobody on the ground is harmed).

Many people, including Joshua, threaten Alphie physically. And although she’s technically a robot, she’s also a child, making these threats quite unsettling.

Crude or Profane Language

We hear the f-word only once (though it’s cut off in one other instance) from a child repeating the words of an adult. The s-word is used 35 times. And there are also a handful of uses of “a–,” “a–hole,” “b–tard,” “b–ch,” “d–n,” “d–k” and “h—.”

God’s name is misused five times, twice paired with “d–n.” Christ’s name is additionally abused once.

Drug and Alcohol Content

People drink at a club.

Other Negative Elements

I think the most prevalent thing I noticed in this film was the dehumanizing of human beings. This movie postulates that AI can, in fact, become just like humans—better than humans, even. And as a result, the human soldiers we see here are ruthless, merciless beings. They’re so adamant that all AI is evil that this mindset even extends to the humans helping the robots. We’re told that the West will never stop hunting AI. And even though many of the soldiers are grieving lost friends or family members, that obsessive vengeance leaves nothing in their hearts but hatred.

Characters lie, bribe and betray each other. A colonel regrets that her sons joined the military for her since they both died in battle. A revived soldier (from the brain scan I mentioned in Spiritual Elements) attempts to leave a message for his wife. However, he passes away before he can do so because his commander insists that he relay information on Alphie first.

With a name like The Creator , I certainly expected this movie to have some spiritual drawbacks. However, considering it’s also set about 40 years in the future, I didn’t suspect it would touch on so many current fears regarding AI.

This film postulates that AI will someday become as sentient as human beings, and that it will evolve to be even more human—more compassionate, more caring, more considerate—than we are now.

That’s a problem for a few reasons. Namely, those traits were given when we were made in the likeness of God, our Creator. And while we can certainly teach those things (we already teach them to our children and even hope our children will learn to do them better than us), to suggest that we could teach a machine without a soul to truly care, to truly act with compassion, is a bit disturbing. A robot’s programming may one day mimic compassion, but that doesn’t the robot will actually be compassionate. The Creator hypothesizes that something humans create could supersede what God has already created.

God, of course, isn’t mentioned once in this film. Heaven is discussed as a place for “good” people, but there’s no direct mention of souls (even though it’s implied in the creation of sentient beings). So while The Creator doesn’t seem to be deliberately blasphemous, it certainly poses some spiritual questions that Christians will definitely want to consider before they go see it.

But don’t let that be the only determining factor. This film is filled with some pretty brutal violence from start to finish. Because half the victims are robots, it feels sanitized at times. But when you consider that the creators intended those mechanized characters to feel like real people, it becomes deeply unsettling.

Language is another element. The only mentions of God or Christ that we hear are in the harsh abuses of Their names. The f-word makes a single appearance when a child repeats the words of an adult (which should really make you think about what words your own kids might repeat if they see this film, such as the 35 s-words).

The Creator has a compelling storyline. And star John David Washington is just as entertaining to watch on screen as his famous father (Denzel Washington). But this is a movie you’ll need to consider thoughtfully before making a decision as to whether it’s right for your family.

Emily Tsiao

Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.

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‘The Creator’ Review: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love A.I.

In this hectic, futuristic action film, John David Washington hunts down a threatening artificial intelligence with the baby face of a child.

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By Nicolas Rapold

It’s been a tough year for artificial intelligence. First, industry leaders warn that A.I. poses an extinction-level threat to humanity . Then, screenwriters and actors warn roughly the same thing about artists losing their livelihoods (and art losing its soul). And let’s not forget predictions of vast unemployment and upheaval . What’s a superintelligent, terrifyingly autonomous technology got to do to get back on people’s good sides?

One answer comes in the whirlwind form of “The Creator,” the latest film directed by Gareth Edwards (“Rogue One,” “Godzilla”). We’ve grown accustomed to A.I. playing the role of helper-turned-villain in movies, and here a rapid newsreel-style prologue sets a familiar stage: Robots were invented, did increasingly complex tasks, and then went nuclear (devastating, in this case, Los Angeles). Now the United States is bent on eliminating their threat, while in East Asian countries (dubbed “New Asia”), bots live at peace with humans. Humanlike robots with Roomba-like heads are police officers, workers, even (somewhat jarringly) saffron-robed monks.

One thing stays the same in the future: The movies need a hero. John David Washington plays the reluctant man for the job, Joshua, an ex-undercover soldier who dropped out of sight after a messy raid separated him from his pregnant wife, Maya (Gemma Chan). He is recruited for a U.S. military mission, led by Allison Janney as a no-nonsense colonel, to neutralize a top-secret weapon in New Asia. After a macho fly-in that lightly evokes Vietnam War movies (but with a Radiohead soundtrack), he infiltrates an underground lab only to find a mysterious weapon: an A.I. with the human form of a fairly unflappable 6-year-old girl. Joshua decides to take her on the lam, naming her Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles).

Unlike countless A.I. doomsday scenarios, Alphie is too cute and innocent for Joshua to treat as a military target. He’s drawn to protecting her, though unnerved by her near-telekinetic powers of jamming technology all around her. Her personhood is the sort of conundrum posed with daunting depth in, for example, Spielberg’s millennium masterpiece “A.I.” or more outré films like “Demon Seed.” But here Alphie’s significance functions like a warm-and-fuzzy halo above all the gunfire and explosions: What if A.I. isn’t out to get us? What if it just wants to live and let live?

Posing these questions requires doing a little heavy lifting on behalf of the film, which is busy spurring on the hectic pursuit of Alphie and Joshua (by, among others, Ken Watanabe as a dogged A.I. “simulant”). Edwards (who wrote the screenplay with Chris Weitz) fluently integrates images and ideas from our established cinematic vocabulary for thinking about A.I. But despite the impressively sweeping C.G.I. running battles in Thai fields or seaside settlements, or the gritty “Blade Runner”-lite interludes in crowded metropolises, the story’s engine produces the straightforward momentum of your average action blockbuster — one thing happens, then the next thing, complete with punchy (sometimes tin-eared) one-liners.

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The Creator First Reviews: A Timely, Visually Jaw-Dropping Spectacle

Early reviews say gareth edwards' sci-fi adventure boasts stunning visual effects and a standout performance from john david washington, and it could be the start of a new franchise..

TAGGED AS: First Reviews , movies , Sci-Fi

Here’s what critics are saying about The Creator :

Do we have a new sci-fi classic on our hands?

The Creator is the next leap forward in sci-fi. – Shahbaz Siddiqui, The Movie Podcast

Like the best science fiction, The Creator is more about us than about The Other. – Jim Slotek, Original Cin

The Creator is a major new sci-fi adventure. If you’re partial to such things, Edwards’ ambitious, immersive film should prompt the intoxicating awe that you might have got from The Matrix and Avatar – the feeling that you’re seeing a rich vision of the future unlike any that has been on the big screen before. – Nicholas Barber, BBC.com

You’ve never seen anything quite like this movie, which is a saying that gets bandied about a lot, but is pretty apt here… There was potential for an instant classic movie. We’re not quite there, but what we’ve got is still damn good. – Joey Magidson, Awards Radar

I hope and believe that it has the potential to change the movies forever in some very good ways. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

The Creator was built to last, and it delivers. – Aaron Neuwirth, We Live Entertainment

Can we call it a masterpiece?

This is a masterful piece of original sci-fi that despite its obvious inspiration still manages to be hugely impressive in every single way. – Linda Marric, The Jewish Chronicle

While The Creator is far from a masterpiece, it is a very impressive film to debut in 2023… a truly remarkable piece of original science fiction storytelling. – Maggie Lovitt, Collider

The Creator isn’t a masterpiece of the A.I. genre, if there’s such a thing yet, but it’s a good start. – Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic

The Creator lacks the intellectual depth or ambition of the films it references – from Apocalypse Now to Blade Runner , The Terminator , Star Wars and beyond to the imagery of Kundun . – Fionnuala Halligan, Screen International

(Photo by ©20th Century Studios)

How does it look?

The Creator is one of the most visually impressive science fiction movies I have ever seen. – Michael Walsh, Nerdist

The Creator is one of the most visually exhilarating spectacles of the year. – Mireia Mullor, Digital Spy

This movie looks f–king incredible. To a degree that shames most blockbusters that cost three times its budget. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

With Greig Fraser ( The Batman , Dune ) as the film’s cinematographer, there was never a question about whether or not The Creator would be visually stunning—in fact, it exceeds expectations at every turn. – Maggie Lovitt, Collider

As pure spectacle, The Creator is often jaw-dropping in its imagery. – A.A. Dowd, IGN Movies

Stunning visuals. – Shahbaz Siddiqui, The Movie Podcast

How realistic is the CGI?

After years of Hollywood giving us rushed, incomplete, unconvincing CGI, the film delivers an absolute special effects knockout. The movie’s artificial intelligence robots look completely real. – Michael Walsh, Nerdist

The robots, which run a stylistic range from logical extrapolations of present-day models by companies like Boston Dynamics to the not-quite-perfect human simulacra of A.I. Artificial Intelligence , all look not only plausible but physically present. – Jake Cole, Slant Magazine

The futuristic CGI is incorporated so seamlessly that the spell is never broken. Even when robots, simulants and armored hovercraft are on screen, you can’t see the joins between the physical and the digital. – Nicholas Barber, BBC.com

It’s probably already the Visual Effects [Oscar] frontrunner. – Joey Magidson, Awards Radar

Are there any standout performances?

Washington’s performance is a consistent highlight. Whether he’s dangling off missiles, mourning his dead wife, or forging a bond with an AI child, he rises to meet each challenge with the full breadth of emotional range at his command. – Maggie Lovitt, Collider

Washington delivers his finest work since Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman , but manages also to traverse both the necessary action and emotion needed to make complex Joshua tick. – Pete Hammond, Deadline Hollywood Daily

Washington shows us some more of that distinctive self-possession and even slight hauteur as a performer. – Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

For her part, Voyles’ is a lovely debut performance, all robotic withdrawal until she grows sufficiently close to Joshua. She does most of the film’s emotional heavy lifting in those final minutes. – Clint Worthington, Consequence

Allison Janney also stands out as an aggrieved mother and soldier intent on destroying A.I. forever. – Michael Walsh, Nerdist

How is the script?

It is one of the most thought-provoking movies in some time. – Pete Hammond, Deadline Hollywood Daily

Edwards and [Chris] Weitz’s script is fascinating for its take on a future in which people have programmed A.I. to maintain the compassion that our own species has lost somewhere along the way; a future in which technology might be a vessel for humanity rather than a replacement for it; a future in which computers might complement our movies rather than replace our cameras. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Edwards brings a lot of intriguing ideas to his script, but some of the best components are undermined by the rules that he establishes moments before they’re introduced. – Maggie Lovitt, Collider

The familiarity of the narrative can make it feel oddly stale… The script, by Edwards and Chris Weitz, doesn’t have much time for human emotions past the superficial (love, revenge). – Fionnuala Halligan, Screen International

Far too often The Creator suffers from dialogue that is heavy-handed, cliché, or downright hokey. Eye-rolling lines constantly ruin the film’s immersive qualities. – Michael Walsh, Nerdist

The Creator can hardly even keep its premise straight. – Peter Debruge, Variety

What about Hans Zimmer’s score?

It not only matches the ever-changing action perfectly but ranks with the very best of this veteran composer. – Pete Hammond, Deadline Hollywood Daily

Hans Zimmer’s score is appropriately booming and Zimmeresque, though it doesn’t quite escape the wall-of-sound feel of many of his previous blockbuster works. – Clint Worthington, Consequence

What about Gareth Edwards’ direction?

Edwards knows how to compose each shot for maximum effect… [and he] finally finds the balance between arresting images and grounded emotional stakes. – Jake Cole, Slant Magazine

The director has a classic eye for staging action [and] he gives his movies room to breathe. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Further evidence of what Edwards can bring by way of spectacle to help him continue to stand out. – Aaron Neuwirth, We Live Entertainment

Edwards has established himself as the rare blockbuster orchestrator with a genuine sense of scale and poetry, restoring some spooky majesty to big-budget event cinema. – A.A. Dowd, IGN Movies

Are there any major criticisms?

The splurge of action spectacle towards the very end means that some of the narrative tendons slacken a bit and the film loses focus on specific jeopardy. – Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

The upfront presentation of Joshua’s empathy does rob the film of any real suspense as to whether he will turn on Alfie, which weighs down the film’s middle section as it treats this as an open question. – Jake Cole, Slant Magazine

It can be hard to find The Creator’ s heart, which only flashes to life intermittently… The human parts that are missing are still keenly felt. – Fionnuala Halligan, Screen International

It all builds to a big ending, which is very exciting, if slightly less thought-provoking than what’s come before… The final act feels a bit rushed. – Joey Magidson, Awards Radar

For a movie that combines so many inherently rich storytelling genres, The Creator plays it frustratingly safe. – Michael Walsh, Nerdist

Could this be the start of a new franchise?

Its tactile and timely take on A.I. has us eager for more tales from this universe. – Shahbaz Siddiqui, The Movie Podcast

There’s a tremendous boldness here and a readiness to conjure up an entire created universe. – Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

The Creator is a vivid new sci-fi world to play in. – Joey Magidson, Awards Radar

Thumbnail image by ©20th Century Studios

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THE CREATOR

"a surprisingly racist action flick, with a nod to jesus".

What You Need To Know:

Miscellaneous Immorality: The President of the United States wears a uniform when he declares war before Congress (movie hints America has become a military dictatorship of some kind), and hero pulls the plug from a body that seems to be kept alive by mechanical means only.

More Detail:

THE CREATOR is a science fiction thriller set in 2065 and 2070 about a black American soldier working behind the lines in Asia during a war between the United States and a supposedly evil Asian coalition of artificially intelligent robots, androids and regular people, but who refuses to kill and tries to save a little android girl who has some kind of special powers that can destroy the American forces. THE CREATOR is a thrilling, impressive, crowd-pleasing action movie, with some overt Christian content, but it has lots of foul language and Anti-American, politically correct, racist values where all but one of the white American characters are despicable villains and all the Asians, robots and androids are really nice and good.

The movie opens in the middle of the 21st century. Joshua, a black American soldier with a prosthetic right arm, has married an Asian woman named Maya and is living with her on some island near Indonesia. They live in a society where human beings developed powerful artificially intelligent machines and robots. Also, some people (including people who are dying) have lent their DNA, faces and even brain scans be transferred into android simulants. The United States decided to ban all AI robots and androids when some AI machines set off a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles. The militaristic president has declared war on the remaining AI world, which has been welcomed with open arms by Asian countries overseas. Also, America has developed a gigantic floating flying machine with missiles that can obliterate any village or small city.

Joshua is a double agent, however. He deliberately met Maya, because his superior officers think she can lead him to the creator of the new AI technology. Joshua is in a quandary, however, because he’s fallen in love with Maya, who’s now his wife.

The movie opens with Joshua and Maya waking up to commando raid on their village. The American military is tired of waiting for Joshua to get Maya to reveal the location of the AI creator. They’ve sent commandos to take her prisoner.

Joshua tries to stop them, but during the fight, the gigantic flying machine unleashes a large explosion, which kills Maya.

Five years later, Joshua’s immediate superior, a tough female colonel named Howell, orders him to be part of a commando team. American intelligence has discovered that the AI creator has developed a weapon so powerful that it can wipe out all the American forces somehow. They have a location for the weapon and are sending the commandos to infiltrate the facility and destroy the weapon.

However, the weapon turns out to be a little android girl. Joshua and a mortally wounded commando turn out to be the only survivors, but Joshua can’t bring himself to kill the defenseless android. The other commando eventually succumbs to his wounds, and Joshua goes undercover to protect the android, whom he names Alphie. Joshua also learns that he may just be on the wrong side.

Meanwhile, Colonel Howell is ordered to track down Joshua and Alphie to kill them.

THE CREATOR is a thrilling, impressive, crowd-pleasing action movie. It’s directed and co-written by Gareth Edwards, who some critics say made the best STAR WARS movie since THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, the 2016 STAR WARS movie called ROGUE ONE. THE CREATOR has one of the most exciting, best made third act made in recent years.

THE CREATOR has some Christian, redemptive elements. For example, Joshua is ready to sacrifice his life to save the little female android. Also, in one crucial scene, he prays to Jesus for help.

However, THE CREATOR has a smattering of foul language throughout its running time. Also, except for one white American friend who helps Joshua, all of the white American characters are evil and cruel. In contrast, all of the Asian, robot and android characters are nice and good. Thus, THE CREATOR has an incredibly overt Anti-American, politically correct, racist viewpoint.

Finally, on a more minor note, though it’s a little vague, the movie implies that some or many of the androids are partially developed or cloned from human beings, but even the robots seem to have human characteristics. In reality, of course, robots, even robots with artificial intelligence, are just machines. They can’t question their programming, but their human programmers can insert some human-seeming characteristics into them, even the ability to commit good or evil acts.

Review: 'The Creator' is a visual miracle, shot with a poet's eye

Sorry haters -- the artificial intelligence you fear might be taking over our lives is the surprise hero of "The Creator," the sci-fi epic now only in theaters, where AI is presented as way preferable to our human propensity toward empathy-destroying cruelty and warfare.

That's a bold premise. Sadly, director Gareth Edwards ("Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"), who wrote the mixed-bag of a script with Chris Weitz ("About a Boy"), buries a potent provocation in a mountain of sentimental platitudes and borrowed inspiration that muffles its impact.

The time is the near future. We're told that AI has unleashed a nuke that destroyed most of Los Angeles, killing millions. Human error is really to blame. But five years later, AI is outlawed as robots -- they're called simulants -- take refuge in the so-called New Asia, where the movie starts looking like "Apocalypse Now," a classic Vietnam reference it can't sustain, not to mention the cringe-worthy racial optics.

The heavy plotting stymies the performance of John David Washington as Joshua, an undercover Army operative who's literally lost an arm and leg in the attack, a loss that requires (irony alert) robotics to make him whole again. He's also lost his pregnant wife Maya (Gemma Chan), a tragedy intensified by (cliche alert) flashbacks to the sexy couple beach dancing.

In the five years of LA rebuilding, an embittered Joshua has returned to duty to destroy the "Nirmata," the god-like creator of advanced AI who can end the war but only by destroying all of mankind.

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Instead, Joshua finds a robot weapon disguised as a 6-year-old girl. He calls her Alphie, and as played by the insanely adorable Madeleine Yuna Voyles, there is no way for Joshua to do anything but take her side. Besides, his own child would have been her age. You can see where this is going, and that's not a good thing.

The real villain is the U.S. military, represented by the always electric Oscar and Emmy winner Allison Janney as Colonel Howell. She tells Joshua that Maya is still alive and that he needs to obliterate Alphie before she can destroy their hovering HQ -- a death star called the U.S.S. Nomad -- that locates and bombs New Asian targets.

Washington and the luminous Voyles invest genuine emotional gravity into the relationship between Joshua and this robot girl child. But even they can't escape the traps set by a contrived script of deadends. What to make of robot leader Harun (Ken Watanabe) when he claims simulants are not programmed to harm humans? The film frustratingly dodges answers.

Where Edwards triumphs is in his cinematic world building. "The Creator" is a visual miracle, shot with a poet's eye by camera master Greig Fraser ("Zero Dark Thirty," both parts of "Dune") in league with newbie Oren Soffer. Along with production designer James Clyne, they make this $80 million production look like it cost four times as much.

MORE: Review: 'The Woman King is indelible and truly inspiring

Edwards explains that instead of building budget-busting sets, his crew traveled to 80 countries, using light cameras to shoot footage that visual effects could be layered onto later. And what do you know, it works like a charm and a way forward to generate blockbusters on a reasonable budget, thereby making its own valid case for AI.

From the battles it builds on land, sea and air to the look of Alphie with her human face marked by large ears that open to her wired insides, this movie brims over with stunning images. What a shame that the creators of "The Creator" never find a way to instill their ambitious passion project with a soul that might have given it wings.

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The creator review: a brutal, emotional & visually stunning sci-fi epic.

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• The Creator is a refreshing original science-fiction blockbuster that offers a visually stunning epic and a feat of original storytelling on a massive scale.
• The film explores themes of consciousness and the ethics of killing intelligent beings made of machinery, presented with urgency and strong performances by John David Washington and Madeleine Yuna Voyles.
• While the film's story may feel overstuffed and its action sequences repetitive at times, The Creator's bold vision and willingness to take risks make it a more exhilarating experience than safe, mediocre blockbusters.

The Creator has assumed the position of Fall 2023's big science-fiction blockbuster, taking the spot previously held by Dune: Part Two. Through no fault of its own, Gareth Edwards' follow-up to Rogue One now has very big shoes to fill and, as an original science-fiction blockbuster, it serves as a refreshing balm to the constant deluge of sequels, franchise offshoots, and reboots. The Creator is a visually stunning epic and a feat of original storytelling on a massive scale no matter which way you look at it. Its story, from a screenplay by Edwards and his Rogue One collaborator Chris Weitz, falls short of its philosophical aspirations and ends up feeling overstuffed, but it's an easy thing to forgive when an original film is made on this scale. The Creator deserves to be seen on the biggest screen possible and with two heart-wrenching performances at its center, it's an emotional ride enveloped in an engrossing world that feels a bit too close to home.

John David Washington stars as Joshua, who, at the beginning of the film, is in a relationship with Gemma Chan's Maya. We find out he's living in New Asia in deep cover, seeking out "Nirmata" AKA The Creator, the architect of the Artificial Intelligence that the United States military is waging war against. Humanity and AI once lived in harmony, but after a devastating tragedy led to the loss of millions of lives on American soil, the US government committed itself to robot genocide. Much of AI has sought refuge in New Asia, where the majority of the film takes place, and with the people of New Asia firmly on the side of the robots, The Creator becomes an all-out war film as the United States forces, led by a deliciously villainous Allison Janney, search for a super-weapon they fear could bring about the end of humanity.

Eventually, after a somewhat convoluted setup, Joshua ends up behind enemy lines with the super-weapon in tow. This weapon just so happens to be a young robot who he names Alfie. Played by newcomer Madeleine Yuna Voyles, Alfie is the beating heart of The Creator and Voyles eats up every second she is onscreen. The movie is transparent in its efforts to pull at audiences' heartstrings with this character, but it mostly works thanks to Voyles and her chemistry with Washington. Naturally, this relationship and Alfie's existence raise questions about consciousness and what it means to kill an intelligent being made of machinery. None of these questions are new to the genre, but Washington and Voyles sell them with an urgency that allays some of the heavy-handedness of the metaphors at play, including a hovering, physical embodiment of the US military's global power.

That military power is on full display in The Creator 's bombastic action sequences. Edwards proved with Rogue One that he knows how to work on a massive scale and the director depicts New Asia with a lush grandeur that is simply breathtaking. The continent's mountains and rivers are punctuated with gargantuan buildings and intrusive highways that futuristic vehicles glide over and Edwards often switches between these wider angles and a claustrophobic perspective that makes you feel the weight of each moment. The brutality of the US military is on full display here, but, at a certain point, the military formations and police raids become repetitive as the film drags its feet to a third-act stunner. Once that sequence rolls around, it will make you wish the film had taken more risks with its sci-fi conceit. Ironically, though there is plenty of world-building, The Creator feels limited in scope due to this. It's clear that Edwards was saving a chunk of the film's impressive $80 million budget for that climax, and it is certainly worth it. It's just a shame it takes as long as it does to get there.

The Creator is the kind of original filmmaking we deserve to see more of. It's a big swing for 20th Century and its $80 million budget should serve as a lesson for studios who are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into franchise reboots and tired sequels that end up looking half as good. In one of the most depressing eras for blockbusters in memory, it almost doesn't matter that the story at the center of The Creator is nothing special. The film presents a bold vision of what movies can and should be and, ultimately, it's a more exhilarating experience to watch a movie of this scale take risks and fall short than it is to see a blockbuster play it safe and deliver mediocre results.

The Creator will release in theaters on September 29. The film is 133 minutes long and rated PG-13 for violence, some bloody images and strong language.

The Creator

The Creator is a sci-fi action film from Rogue One director Gareth Edwards. Edwards wrote and directed the movie, which centers on the human race's war against AI. In the post-apocalyptic world, Joshua (John David Washington) is tasked with finding and killing the architect of the dangerous AI and the mysterious weapon they are developing.

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Movie review: “The Creator”

Science fiction is often used as an allegorical vessel within which to explore real-life current events, and such is the case with “The Creator” (20th Century). Although primarily set in the year 2070, this thinking person’s war drama takes for its main topic the very timely subject of artificial intelligence.

While present-day concerns center on AI’s potential to turn on its designers and displace human control of the world, within director and co-writer Gareth Edwards’ film, machines would seem to have more to worry about than those they were manufactured to serve. In fact, a global conflict is raging over an American-led effort to eliminate all automatons.

This crusade comes in the wake of a disaster that the U.S. blames on A.I. As a result of it, America and the West have banned the technology but the fictitious enemy nation of New Asia has not.

Formerly caught up in the struggle, as the opening sequence shows us, retired special forces agent Sgt. Joshua Taylor (John David Washington) was traumatized by it and has left it behind.

So at least he thinks until he’s visited by a duo of high-ranking officers, Gen. Andrews (Ralph Ineson) and Col. Howell (Allison Janney), intent on enticing him back onto active duty.

As a lure, they show the widower footage that seems to establish that his wife, Maya (Gemma Chan), whom he has long believed to be dead and for whom he still grieves, is, in fact, alive and living in New Asia. With the prospect of reuniting with Maya before him, Joshua agrees to get back in the fight.

He’s assigned to destroy the pro-AI side’s most potent weapon, which is in the last stages of development. Eventually, however, Joshua’s intensifying bond with Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles), a childlike robot he encounters during his mission, has him questioning his nation’s ultimate goal of destroying not only her but every being like her.

Joshua’s saga is visually expansive but thematically shaky. As penned with Chris Weitz, the script raises issues that will be more troubling to viewers with a secular outlook than to Christian believers. Are humans the gods of A.I.? Can A.I. advance to the point where the machines endowed with it must be treated with the dignity traditionally accorded to people?

Since no mechanical object, however brainy, can be said to have a human soul or the immortal destiny that comes with it, these questions are easily answered from a biblical perspective. As the screenplay admits, cuddly Alphie, for all her endearing ways, is not headed to heaven if she’s switched off by her enemies.

Although these topics are more dabbled with than deeply delved into, grown-ups – for whom alone the picture’s vulgarity-laden dialogue is acceptable – will nonetheless likely appreciate Washington’s hard-driving performance. Moviegoers of all persuasions, moreover, can probably agree with Edwards’ peaceable agenda.

The film contains much stylized combat violence with minimal gore, a scene of marital sensuality, a few uses of profanity, about a half-dozen milder oaths, at least one rough term and pervasive crude language. The OSV News classification is A-III — adults. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

— John Mulderig, OSV News

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Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors, the creator.

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It’s ironically apt that “The Creator,” about the potential and peril of artificial intelligence, merely resembles profound science fiction.

Rich in atmosphere but short on substance, director and co-writer Gareth Edwards ’ film has the look and tone of a serious, original work of art, but it ends up feeling empty as it recycles images and ideas from many influential predecessors. The movie is always spectacular to watch, thanks to dazzling visuals from cinematographers Greig Fraser (“Dune,” “ The Batman ,” Edwards’ “ Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ”) and Oren Soffer . And the first hour or so offers some thrilling moments of action and inspired world-building. But “The Creator” grows increasingly superficial as it lumbers along, and it never delivers the emotional wallop it seeks because the characters and their connections are so flimsily drawn.

Edwards crafted the script with Chris Weitz , who also co-wrote 2016’s “Rogue One,” which would set the stage for “Andor” on Disney+, the most gripping and sophisticated “ Star Wars ” series yet. “The Creator” seems to share those same ambitions of combining excitement and intellectualism but ultimately falls short.

There’s also a matter of timing here: It’s accidentally awkward for a movie to suggest that maybe the use of AI to replace humans in a variety of scenarios isn’t such a terrible idea after all, given that’s exactly what the Writers Guild of America was striking against for the past five months before reaching a tentative agreement. (SAG-AFTRA is still understandably fighting this trend.) In this futuristic setting, the technology comes in the form of a sweet-faced, even-tempered little girl nicknamed Alphie ( Madeleine Yuna Voyles ). But you’ve seen her before, this adorable and all-powerful creature who could be humanity’s savior or its destruction. She’s Baby Yoda. She’s Ellie from “The Last of Us.” She’s John Connor . She’s the kid in Jeff Nichols ’ “ Midnight Special .” Stick her in the middle of a bunch of stuffed animals, and she could even be E.T.

And alongside her, as the obligatory reluctant father figure who must shepherd her to safety, is John David Washington . An introductory montage informs us that artificial intelligence has been a welcome element of our existence for decades, functioning in every capacity, from chefs to track stars to astronauts. But by the time we catch up with Washington’s Joshua in 2065, AI is to blame for a nuclear bomb going off in the middle of Los Angeles, killing a million people (including Joshua’s family) and causing him the loss of a limb. The West is now anti-AI, but the robots remain welcome in a place known as New Asia, an amalgamation of cultures halfway around the world where Joshua has found peace and in a charming beach bungalow with his pregnant wife, Maya ( Gemma Chan ). They cuddle to the strains of bossa nova on the turntable, one of the movie’s many clever examples of mixing old and new technology. The soundtrack choices are inspired throughout, including the wondrous use of Radiohead’s eerie, electronic “Everything in Its Right Place” during a nighttime raid.

But Joshua's reverie is quickly shattered when Maya is taken from him; five years later, he’s forced to join a team searching for a hidden weapon, the work of a shadowy figure known as The Creator. Joshua is an undercover special forces agent who must do the bidding of the American military and its ominous, hovering airship known as NOMAD, with its scouring beams of light that create some of the film’s most startling, searing moments. These swaggering bad-asses are straight out of a James Cameron movie, led by a tough-as-nails Allison Janney , who’s mostly saddled with barking banal orders (although she does enjoy a moment or two of quiet vulnerability). The Americans’ attack on this pan-Asian nation is quite clearly meant to replicate the imagery we saw during the Vietnam War; the result is artful but overly familiar and not the slightest bit subtle. Meanwhile, cramped, neon-drenched urban nightscapes are straight out of “ Blade Runner .”

But soon after Joshua finds his target—young Alphie, whom we first spy in a suspenseful moment watching cartoons, alone in a cavernous room—his feelings for her begin to soften. He nicknames her “Lil Sim” as they head out on the road together, and the film forces a father-daughter bond that's rushed and unearned. The visual effects remain sleek and seamless, but the heart beneath them is missing. Washington’s cool, detached screen persona makes sense for a while here, as his shattered character’s intentions are meant to be mysterious. But the breadth of Joshua’s arc isn’t on the page, so he can only do so much to convince us of his evolution.

Edwards clunkily balances serious notions of what it means to be human with impressive, explosive action sequences, as “The Creator” keeps going and going with multiple endings. By the time Joshua finds himself risking his life amid a massive, climactic set piece, you may find yourself wondering what exactly he’s doing there, so convoluted is the film’s logic. Despite the film's early promise, you might wonder ultimately what you’re doing there, too.

In theaters now.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

The Creator (2023)

Rated PG-13 for violence, some bloody images and strong language.

134 minutes

John David Washington as Joshua

Madeleine Yuna Voyles as Alphie

Gemma Chan as Maya

Allison Janney as Colonel Howell

Ken Watanabe as Harun

Sturgill Simpson as Drew

Amar Chadha-Patel as Omni / Sek-On / Sergeant Bui

Marc Menchaca as McBride

Robbie Tann as Shipley

Ralph Ineson as General Andrews

• Gareth Edwards

Writer (story by)

• Chris Weitz

Cinematographer

• Greig Fraser
• Oren Soffer
• Hank Corwin
• Scott Morris
• Hans Zimmer

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'The Creator' Review: Gareth Edwards Takes a Stand for AI, Not Humans

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The Big Picture

• The Creator explores the moral dilemma of whether AI is a threat or if our fear of it is the real problem, using a sci-fi lens.
• The film portrays a near future where the US is at war with AI, and features a human protagonist on a mission to find his presumed-dead wife.
• While the film has impressive visuals and a talented lead performance, it suffers from a flawed plot and mixed messaging about AI and the US Army.

Is artificial intelligence really our enemy or is our fear of it the real problem? That is one of the moral dilemmas that The Creator attempts to address as it unpacks the very real and present threat of AI , through a heightened sci-fi lens. Seven years after the release of the critically acclaimed Rogue One: A Star Wars Story , director Gareth Edwards has returned to the world of high-stakes sci-fi—and this time, it is entirely of his own design.

The Creator

As a future war between the human race and artificial intelligence rages on, ex-special forces agent Joshua is recruited to hunt down and kill the Creator, the elusive architect of advanced AI. The Creator has developed a mysterious weapon that has the power to end the war and all of mankind. As Joshua and his team of elite operatives venture into enemy-occupied territory, they soon discover the world-ending weapon is actually an AI in the form of a young child.

The film opens with a reel of old-fashioned commercials, eerily mimicking the homespun tone of Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress ride, which showcases all of the wonderful, innovative ways that AI technology can improve human life. AI and robotics seem to have merged together to create fully functioning machines that live and love alongside humanity. It seems like a perfect society—until it’s not. Directly inspired by films like Blade Runner and Apocalypse Now , with shades of A.I. Artificial Intelligence and the “ Lone Wolf and Cub ” narrative trope , The Creator is set in a near future where the United States is at war with artificial intelligence after a devastating attack in Los Angeles that left over a million humans dead. Once artificial intelligence was outlawed in the Western world, it seemingly found a sanctuary in “New Asia,” a largely undefined region in the film, which becomes the victim of unscrupulous United States overreach and eerily reminiscent militaristic brutality.

While AI is the overarching body of The Creator , there is a human heart at the center of the story in Joshua ( John David Washington ) , a jaded ex-special ops guy who wears the scars of the LA bombing not just mentally, but physically too. Five years after a military assignment led to the death of his wife Maya ( Gemma Chan ) and unborn child, Joshua is pulled back into the war by Howell ( ​​ Allison Janney ), with the promise that his wife is still alive, and he is set on a collision course with Nirmata—the mysterious AI creator that has allegedly created a weapon that could exterminate humanity. However, that weapon isn’t something as ominous or terrifying as the US Army’s NOMAD weapon system, it’s just a little girl. Once Joshua realizes what’s really at stake, he goes rogue and flees with Alfie ( Madeleine Yuna Voyles ) on a mission to find Maya before it’s too late.

What the Creative Team Brings to 'The Creator'

After being overshadowed as the lead by the supporting cast of BlacKkKlansman and lost in the mire of Tenet ’s 2020 release, T he Creator once again provides Washington with a vehicle to prove what a talented leading man he is . While the script has moments of cohesive discord, Washington’s performance is a consistent highlight. Whether he’s dangling off missiles, mourning his dead wife, or forging a bond with an AI child, he rises to meet each challenge with the full breadth of emotional range at his command. His scene chemistry with Voyles is what truly sells the film, as they take audiences along for a heart-wrenching ride into self-discovery while unpacking philosophical ideas about existence and what it means to be human—for better and for worse.

In cultural anthropology, there are several indicators used to identify if a society is "civilized" and Edwards neatly weaves in three of the key aspects into his portrayal of the society that artificial intelligence has made for itself. They care for their sick, mourn their dead, and have an organized religion of their own. This choice makes it nearly impossible for the audience to root against the AI of Edwards’ world because we can see our own society reflected back on us—only better. Care is coded into the AI, it is an inescapable part of them, which is something that cannot be said for humanity, as apathy and empathy are slowly fading from our ethos. Many of these moments are shown through short, intercut moments that expand upon the world of The Creator and their lingering effects are a testament to the team behind the camera. With Greig Fraser ( The Batman , Dune ) as the film’s cinematographer, there was never a question about whether or not The Creator would be visually stunning—in fact, it exceeds expectations at every turn. The combination of Edwards’ keen directorial eye and Fraser’s masterful skill for capturing subtle beauty in the moments in between the rise and fall of emotion shapes a film into something far above the limitations of the script .

In the last act of the film, there is a Rogue One Easter Egg hidden in plain sight on an LAX departure sign that almost foretells The Creator ’s final moments . There is a direct parallel between the two films in the way Edwards arrives at the conclusion, which manages to devastate as much as it inspires hope. In both, it is a race against the clock to bring an imperial government to its knees for the betterment of the “underdogs,” but The Creator takes a different route to a similar outcome. The issue that Edwards faces here, is that his film lacks the support of a franchise to help stabilize its inconsistent plot armor and expeditious finale. Edwards brings a lot of intriguing ideas to his script, but some of the best components are undermined by the rules that he establishes moments before they’re introduced. While Edwards may be concerned that AI could replace him in the real world, he makes a pretty compelling argument in his film that AI might be better off without us, not the other way around.

The Issue With 'The Creator's Flawed Messaging

In the same way that the Vietnam War and the United States military ’s war crimes inspired George Lucas to create Star Wars and the villainous imperialistic Empire , there is no debate that The Creator ’s main antagonist is the US Army. For Edwards, however, it’s less about painting broad-stroke allusions to the war and more about directly recreating the atrocities with jarring shock-value visuals. And they are shockingly gratuitous for a PG-13 film, as the film shows off bloodied, bullet hole-riddled scientists, innocent farmers blown to pieces by warheads, and women and children left crying and traumatized. Films shouldn’t be the arbiters of morality, but still, it feels callous to recreate one of the most violent military campaigns in US history, which has left deep scars in this country, in an era when anti-Asian hate crimes are at a 339% increase . Especially for a science-fiction film that could have easily crafted a mixing bowl nation as the “enemy” and still borrowed from those influences. After all, if we can imagine a world where AI are treated like family, we can imagine a world where borders are blurred and nations are not so isolated .

Months before The Creator arrived in theaters, Edwards cited Apocalypse Now as one of his biggest influences for the film , along with the locations where he penned most of the script: Thailand and Vietnam. Setting the film in a fictionalized “New Asia” isn’t necessarily a damning decision, but the careless way the film uses Asian bodies—particularly female bodies—as collateral is an issue, and it invokes thoughts of Christian Henriot ’s academic works on the topic . The women of The Creator solely exist to live and die for the agony of the men within their orbit. Maya’s story is the most compelling whisper of a subplot in the film, but she is largely reduced to Joshua’s dreamy dead wife and a mother, while Kami’s ( Veronica Ngo ) short-lived role is used to humanize Drew ( Sturgill Simpson ) before being violently discarded while mothering Alfie. Perhaps it was an intentional choice to show how the female body might be commodified by the creeping expansion of artificial intelligence, but the message is entirely lost in the haste to reach the final act. Instead, it feels like it commends and normalizes the act, rather than clearly condemning it.

For the same reason that Francis Ford Coppola doesn’t believe Apocalypse Now can be truly considered an anti-war film , The Creator cannot be considered as such either. It may not glorify the violent acts it shows, but it never stands firm in its attempt to paint the US Army as the antagonist. The twist that unravels the established stakes comes a little too late to justify the unjust violence because it’s not just artificial intelligence they’re brutalizing—they terrorize children, threaten to murder dogs for show, and gun down unarmed civilians like it’s a game. By the time the credits roll, you’re almost too numb to care because the audience has sat through roughly sixty minutes of vivid and horrifying brutality against Asian people, out of a one-hundred-and-thirty-three-minute movie. Edwards attempts to use the imagery to drive home the film’s thesis and quickly establish the US Army as an enemy that we’re not supposed to root for, but the rationale is so nebulous it’s often hard to cling to. Especially with so many mixed messages about whether AI is good or bad or something we should even be concerned about when humans are so much worse. One thing is for certain: if AI does overtake humanity, it won’t be because they want to control us or kill us—it will be because the old white guys running the government finally met a creation they couldn’t corrupt .

Is 'The Creator' a Masterpiece?

While The Creator is far from a masterpiece, it is a very impressive film to debut in 2023 , when vapid superhero films and franchise fodder fill the airways —especially when one considers its tidy $80 million budget, which seems unthinkable considering the intricate AI designs it features. The script might have glaring flaws and painfully ambiguous morals, but The Creator is a truly remarkable piece of original science fiction storytelling. Even when it borrows from ideas established in films that preceded it, Edwards manages to make it feel fresh and new. The Creator is a beautifully crafted, albeit imperfect, science-fiction thriller that tries to unravel what it means to be a good human in a bad world.

Grade: 7/10

The Creator is now available to stream on Hulu in the U.S.

WATCH ON HULU

• Movie Reviews

• Gareth Edwards

The Creator Review

29 Sep 2023

The Creator

There is tech to die for in The Creator . On every level. Boasting some of the best sci-fi design in years, there is personality to match each invention — most of which is programmed to kill. We have robot cops, 50 per cent humanoid, 100 per cent total bastards, running amok, stumbling about witlessly when sliced in half. There is the NOMAD, America’s mammoth spaceship, a foreboding, godlike presence, a bird of prey bringing death from the sky. And then, the bomb droids, frenetically waddling towards you like suicidal dustbins before blowing up.

Gareth Edwards’ distinct vision permeates every frame of The Creator , and how exciting it is to see a big genre blast that feels free of interference. Above and beyond all the futurism, this is thoughtful sci-fi, with ethical conundrums and moral mindfucks, a story that asks what it is to be human in a world where robots often have more humanity than people. The plot — in which a formidable AI weapon, a sensitive young ‘Simulant’ kid (played emotively by seven-year-old Madeleine Yuna Voyles), is shepherded through war zones by a conflicted US sergeant (the ever-compelling John David Washington) charged to kill it — twists and turns, beginning more binary before diving into shades of grey. Written by Edwards before further drafts from Chris Weitz, it blends its mechanical explorations with Eastern philosophy, aiming to question and provoke rather than simply dazzle and thrill.

The Creator makes you realise that there really is little excuse for blockbuster dross.

Edwards has said that the reluctant-father-figure narrative was inspired by the 1970s Lone Wolf And Cub manga novels and films, but The Creator wears many influences on its sleeves, drawing from Vietnam classics as well as obvious touchpoints: Apocalypse Now and Platoon are as much a part of the fabric as District 9 , Blade Runner and Akira , while its lived-in environments  teeming with battered, beaten-up vehicles are indebted to 1977’s Star Wars . This cocktail works, though, Edwards massaging it all into his own tactile, earthy vision of the future, which is somewhere between genuinely convincing and also just unapologetically kickass — and never without purpose. As America rains down missiles on New Asia, and its massive , hulking tech tanks indiscriminately mow down villages, the fact that Edwards has managed to get $80 million of financing for an indictment of American militarism feels like a coup.

It’s all visually flawless too, which is all the more surprising, considering that budget — there are movies that cost three times more and look like crap. The Creator makes you realise that there really is little excuse for blockbuster dross. And while this doesn’t quite hit the heights of those that inspired it (it is at times blunter and broader than it needs to be), it’s a big reach, with heart and soul to spare. It’s uplifting on every level.

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The Creator (2023) Movie Review – A stunning sci-fi epic

Artificial Intelligence Gone Wrong

It’s about time an original sci-fi movie came along, with the Hollywood system full of franchises and reboots of old properties. The Creator is that original movie we’ve been waiting for. It comes hot off the heels of the big debate over artificial intelligence, as the story pits man against machine in this spectacular epic. 

Set in 2065, the movie follows Joshua (John David Washington), a former soldier. We discover via an opening montage that artificial intelligence has been a mostly welcome feature of our existence for many decades. However, when we meet Joshua, AI has been blamed for a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles that killed over a million people, including Joshua’s family. Western civilisation is now against the use of AI, but robots are still a force welcomed in a place called New Asia. 

John David Washington is fantastic in the lead role and is well on his way to being one of the best leading men in Hollywood, with a string of strong roles leading up to his best performance yet in The Creator . There are some great action sequences that will knock your socks off, especially if viewed in IMAX, which is highly recommended. The ending feels a bit rushed, but overall, Gareth Edwards has directed one of the best movies of the year, and one of the best sci-fi movies in recent times. 

Read More: The Creator Ending Explained

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• Verdict - 8/10 8/10

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Science fiction is often used as an allegorical vessel within which to explore real-life current events, and such is the case with “The Creator” (20th Century). Although primarily set in the year 2070, this thinking person’s war drama takes for its main topic the very timely subject of artificial intelligence.

While present-day concerns center on AI’s potential to turn on its designers and displace human control of the world, within director and co-writer Gareth Edwards’ film, machines would seem to have more to worry about than those they were manufactured to serve. In fact, a global conflict is raging over an American-led effort to eliminate all automatons.

This crusade comes in the wake of a disaster that the U.S. blames on A.I. As a result of it, America and the West have banned the technology but the fictitious enemy nation of New Asia has not.

Formerly caught up in the struggle, as the opening sequence shows us, retired special forces agent Sgt. Joshua Taylor (John David Washington) was traumatized by it and has left it behind.

So at least he thinks until he’s visited by a duo of high-ranking officers, Gen. Andrews (Ralph Ineson) and Col. Howell (Allison Janney), intent on enticing him back onto active duty.

As a lure, they show the widower footage that seems to establish that his wife, Maya (Gemma Chan), whom he has long believed to be dead and for whom he still grieves, is, in fact, alive and living in New Asia. With the prospect of reuniting with Maya before him, Joshua agrees to get back in the fight.

He’s assigned to destroy the pro-AI side’s most potent weapon, which is in the last stages of development. Eventually, however, Joshua’s intensifying bond with Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles), a childlike robot he encounters during his mission, has him questioning his nation’s ultimate goal of destroying not only her but every being like her.

Joshua’s saga is visually expansive but thematically shaky. As penned with Chris Weitz, the script raises issues that will be more troubling to viewers with a secular outlook than to Christian believers. Are humans the gods of A.I.? Can A.I. advance to the point where the machines endowed with it must be treated with the dignity traditionally accorded to people?

Since no mechanical object, however brainy, can be said to have a human soul or the immortal destiny that comes with it, these questions are easily answered from a biblical perspective. As the screenplay admits, cuddly Alphie, for all her endearing ways, is not headed to heaven if she’s switched off by her enemies.

Although these topics are more dabbled with than deeply delved into, grown-ups – for whom alone the picture’s vulgarity-laden dialogue is acceptable – will nonetheless likely appreciate Washington’s hard-driving performance. Moviegoers of all persuasions, moreover, can probably agree with Edwards’ peaceable agenda.

The film contains much stylized combat violence with minimal gore, a scene of marital sensuality, a few uses of profanity, about a half-dozen milder oaths, at least one rough term and pervasive crude language. The OSV News classification is A-III — adults. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

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‘The Creator’ Review: ‘A.I.’ Meets ‘Children of Men’ in a Sci-Fi Epic That Should Change Hollywood Forever

David ehrlich.

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Once audiences see how “The Creator” was shot, they’ll be begging Hollywood to close the book on blockbuster cinema’s ugliest and least transportive era. And once executives see how much (or how little) “The Creator” was shot for , they’ll be scrambling to make good on that request as fast as they possibly can. Say goodbye to $300 million superhero movies that have been green-screened within an inch of their lives and need to gross the GDP of Grenada just to break even, and say hello — fingers crossed — to a new age of sensibly budgeted multiplex fare that looks worlds better than most of the stuff we’ve been subjected to over the last 20 years while simultaneously freeing studios to spend money on the smaller features that used to keep them afloat. Can you imagine?

It might be naive to expect such a radical paradigm shift from an industry that seems hellbent on its own suicide (as Edwards’ main character puts it while refusing the call to re-join the fight against the machines: “I don’t give a shit about being extinct — I’ve got TV to watch”). But 13 years ago, Edwards’ “Monsters” showed the world that consumer tech was capable of cheaply generating Hollywood-grade imagery, and now, “The Creator” is about to show the world that Hollywood-grade tech is capable of cheaply stoking consumer imagination. How ironic that such fresh hope for the future of hand-crafted multiplex entertainment should come from a film so bullish and sanguine at the thought of humanity being replaced by A.I.

Unnerving faux-archival footage sets the stage for a grim near-future in which the symbiotic relationship between people and machines was shattered forever when a computer detonated a nuclear bomb in the heart of Los Angeles. Americans responded to the attack in predictably American fashion: By declaring all-out war on artificial intelligence. By proxy, that puts the Western side of the world at war with the East, where flesh and metal continue to coexist in peace. It’s a war the West appears to be on the brink of winning, thanks to a trillion-dollar sub-orbital death ship called NOMAD that hovers in the skies above Vietnam like a titanium Angel — of the “Neon Genesis Evangelion” variety — and uses curtain-like beams of light to target enemies on the ground with pinpoint accuracy. How NOMAD is more effective than any of our current drones remains unclear (whether or not it’s piloted by the same A.I. it exists to exterminate goes similarly unexplored), but it’s “cool” in a terrifyingly colonialist kind of way, and everybody knows that superior military tech guarantees success in a ground war against the people or robots of Vietnam. 

The real reason why “The Creator” is set in Vietnam (and across large swaths of Eurasia) is so that it could be shot in Vietnam. And in Thailand. And in Cambodia, Nepal, Indonesia, and several other beautiful countries that are seldom used as backdrops for futuristic science-fiction stories like this one. This movie was born from the visual possibilities of interpolating “Star Wars”-like tech and “Blade Runner”-esque cyber-depression into primordially expressive landscapes. Greig Fraser and Oren Soffer’s dusky and tactile cinematography soaks up every inch of what the Earth has to offer without any concession to motion capture suits or other CGI obstructions, which speaks to the truly revolutionary aspect of this production: Rather than edit the film around its special effects, Edwards reverse-engineered the special effects from a completed edit of his film. 

Such details poke holes in the porous border that runs between artifice and reality, and that has an unsurprisingly profound effect on a film so preoccupied with finding ghosts in the shell. Can a robot feel love? Do androids dream of electric sheep? At what point does programming blur into evolution? These aren’t novel questions, and “The Creator” is so convincingly staged that it doesn’t have any compunctions about asking them in wholly un-novel ways (to be perfectly clear: This movie looks fucking incredible . To a degree that shames most blockbusters that cost three times its budget). 

It’s the most basic arc that someone could bend from this premise, and “The Creator” fails to meaningfully complicate it or add new wrinkles to Joshua’s moral awakening. A brief catch-up with one of his old soldier buddies (Sturgill Simpson) is tasked with accomplishing both of those things, only to fall back on world-building in a film that already has enough of the stuff to fill a franchise, but never achieves the character detail required to thread the needle between “I, Robot” and “Children of Men.” 

And yet “The Creator” — like “Godzilla” before it, and even “Rogue One” to a certain extent — is redeemed by the pyrrhic victories of Edwards’ post-human vision as much as it’s lifted by the majesty of his forward-thinking technique. Yes, it helps that the director has a classic eye for staging action, that he gives his movies room to breathe, and that he knows that the perfect “Kid A” needle-drop (the album, not the song) can do more for a story about the next iteration of “human” life than any of the tracks from Hans Zimmer’s score. 

20th Century Studios will release “The Creator” in theaters on Friday, September 29.

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The Creator

As a future war between the human race and artificial intelligence rages on, ex-special forces agent Joshua is recruited to hunt down and kill the Creator, the elusive architect of advanced AI. The Creator has developed a mysterious weapon that has the power to end the war and all of mankind. As Joshua and his team of elite operatives venture into enemy-occupied territory, they soon discover the world-ending weapon is actually an AI in the form of a young child. more

As a future war between the human race and artificial intelligenc ... More

Starring: John David Washington Madeleine Yuna Voyles Gemma Chan

Director: Gareth Edwards

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As a future war between the human race and artificial intelligence rages on, ex-special forces agent Joshua is recruited to hunt down and kill the Creator, the elusive architect of advanced AI. The Creator has developed a mysterious weapon that has the power to end the war and all of mankind. As Joshua and his team of elite operatives venture into enemy-occupied territory, they soon discover the world-ending weapon is actually an AI in the form of a young child.

Starring: John David Washington Madeleine Yuna Voyles Gemma Chan Allison Janney Ken Watanabe

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Donald Glover Closes the Book on Childish Gambino With the Masterful ‘Bando Stone and the New World’: Album Review

By Jem Aswad

Executive Editor, Music

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Donald Glover doesn’t do anything by half, and the massive multifaceted project he’s launched for what he says is the final statement from Childish Gambino , the long-running alter-ego he rode to musical stardom, is no exception. “ Bando Stone and the New World” is an album, a film and a sprawling world tour , which were all announced simultaneously back in April (along with another album, a finished version of “Atavista,” the nearly-complete set he’d quietly rush-released in the early days of the pandemic and re-released last May).

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We’d expect nothing less. Glover is so talented at so many things it doesn’t seem fair — rapper, singer, actor, songwriter, screenwriter, director, dancer, who knows what else — but it comes with a deep contrarian streak, which isn’t the only thing he has in common with another great contrarian, Prince. He makes blink-and-you-miss-it announcements to fans with no advance notice on livestreams that aren’t archived; “Atavista” was originally released as a stream on a one-off website for just 24 hours; he dropped his heavily coded video for his Grammy-winning song “This Is America,” in the middle of his “Saturday Night Live” double-duty hosting-musical guest stint in 2018. And although Glover’s predilection for being, as Tyler, the Creator once put it, “all secret and cryptic like a dickfuck” can lead people to “miss out on some really cool shit,” his work nearly always rewards the time and patience it takes to search or wait for it.

All that backdrop seems to have little obvious impact on “Bando Stone,” and apart from some brief bits of dialogue between songs (seemingly from a plotline about a comically squabbling family lost in a jungle), advancing a plot doesn’t either. Although the meaning behind the lyrics will likely become clearer once the film is released, intriguing lines float by like “I’mma make a billi’ like I’m Eilish,” “I got a ego ’bout as big as Lake Tahoe,” and “Shoot a motherfucker, I’m the new Spike Lee/ Everybody Satan and I’m G-O-D.” But the album is such a grand slam of musical styles that its concepts wouldn’t be the first thing you’d notice anyway.  

Over the course of 17 songs and an hour, it leaps between styles and moods dramatically and at times abruptly — the otherworldly electronic haze of “We Are God” cuts immediately into the emo-pop of “Running Around” — but also surprisingly smoothly. There are power chords on “Lithonia”; “Steps Beach” is a sweet, Stevie Wonderesque acoustic ballad with a tinkling electric piano and gentle backing vocals; there’s an orchestral, almost Marvin Gaye-esque idyll on “No Excuses.” There are also two full-on indie-pop songs with “Real Love” and the emo-ish “Running Around”; and forays into alt-R&B with the Chloe-featuring “Survive” and “In the Night” (a tag-team with Jorja Smith and Amaarae); there’s even one sung by his eldest son, 8-year-old Legend. Fans may be disappointed that there’s nothing as sumptuously vintage-R&B as his 2016 classic “Redbone,” but to be fair, that would be hard to top.

He’s also rapping much more than he has on recent albums, in a style that sometimes recalls both Kanye West’s early material and his abrasive “Yeezy” era. But the album’s most brain-busting moment comes on the Kendrick Lamar-esque “Yoshinoya,” the middle section of which features Glover rapping hard over a thudding beat and a wild looped vocal snippet. There are traces of African and Caribbean rhythms and vocals throughout, and it all climaxes with the closing track, the epic “A Place Where Love Goes,” which combines a menacing rap with an inane chanted loop of children singing “We don’t care about the party/ We just want to dance” and even a Daft Punk-esque vocoder’ed segment and an anthemic chorus.

In many ways, the hard-hitting “Yoshinoya” — named after a century-old Japanese restaurant chain that Gambino uses as a symbol for his longevity — is the centerpiece of the album, and is pretty clearly autobiographical in ways that seem to fall outside the film’s storyline.

“This is a code red for old heads Who never liked my short shorts and pro-Keds … Told me that money make you lonely, it ain’t so bad N—a’s jokes are so dad… Sold some Apple stock to buy a farm, I needed to stunt I told ’em take the back-end points, he wanted to front Now his career’s in a blunt … These n—as almost fifty and they dressin’ like a hype beast Used to get the peach milkshake and add the eight-piece White boy throwin’ dirt on my name for the think piece… Put they hands on a woman for the clout but said I’m wildin’ Death before dishonor On my mom like Keke Palmer I’m allergic to the drama, you saw me and Tyler… Fuck with my kids, you fuck with your life You fuckin’ these hoes, I’m fuckin’ my wife.” (Courtesy Genius.com )

Is that Gambino’s parting shot? If so, it’s a strong one, and although he doesn’t name names, if anyone takes exception, he’s got a whole tour to respond even if this is his last album.

But presumably “Bando” is just the curtain call for the alter-ego Glover rode to stardom, an admission that such things aren’t for grown-ass dads, and hopefully he’ll continue his musical career’s progression for years to come. “Bando” is a mind-blowingly diverse and versatile album that finds him adopting a huge number of styles convincingly — and actually lives up to the drum-roll that introduced it.

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'Fly Me to the Moon' explores the ultimate space race conspiracy theory. Here's what's fact and fiction in the movie.

• "Fly Me to the Moon" is a romance about a publicist and the NASA director during the space race.
• The pair film a fake moon landing in case NASA's mission fails.
• The movie is fictional, but it draws on some historical facts.

"Fly Me to the Moon," Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum's new romantic comedy-drama about faking the moon landing, is fictional but draws on some true historical events.

The film is set in the 1960s and follows marketing expert Kelly Jones ( Johansson ) as she tries to garner support from the American public for NASA's moon mission.

The White House eventually tasks Kelly with filming a fake moon landing in case the real one fails. Apollo 11 spaceship launch director Cole Davis ( Tatum ) opposes Kelly's plan, believing it will discredit NASA's efforts.

This storyline leans into the conspiracy theory that NASA faked the US moon landing in 1969.

The theory began to spread in 1976 when Bill Kaysing, a writer who briefly worked at a rocket engine company, published a book called "We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle," which claimed that the government faked the moon landing to compete with the USSR.

Though NASA has denied this claim, it has become embedded in pop culture .

Greg Berlanti, the director of the new film, told The Hollywood Reporter on Monday that the movie is really about the importance of the truth.

"When you see the movie, without giving away the ending, you realize that so much of it is about why the truth is important," Berlanti said. "And so I think I was fine to take on an OG conspiracy theory, knowing that in the end, what we were really trying to say why the truth matters."

Berlanti told Entertainment Weekly in May that NASA gave the production team their blessing and allowed them to film at Cape Kennedy in Florida, where Apollo 11 launched in 1969.

Here are the accurate moments in "Fly Me To The Moon."

Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins are the few characters in the movie based on real-life figures

The lead characters in "Fly Me To The Moon," Kelly and Cole, appear to be fictional. However, the movie does feature some real-life figures.

Nick Dillenburg, Christian Zuber, and Colin Woodell play Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong , Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin: the first humans to land on the moon.

The movie also features NASA astronauts Ed White, Roger Chaffee, and Gus Grissom. In real life and in the movie, they died in a cabin fire in 1967 during a launch rehearsal test for the Apollo 1 spaceship.

The final two real-life figures in the movie are former USSR president Nikita Khrushchev and Yuri Gargarin, the first man to travel to space in 1961.

NASA used a public relations campaign promote the space program

Kelly didn't exist, but NASA had an extensive public relations campaign to promote the space program in the 1960s.

At the time, the US was fighting the Vietnam War, dealing with racial tensions during the civil rights movement , and worrying about a potential nuclear war with the USSR.

So officials had to persuade the public that the space program was worth the money.

According to David Meerman Scott and Richard Jurek's book, " Marketing the Moon ," NASA decided to promote facts about space travel through methods including press releases and educational programs to get the public interested. NASA thought being transparent would win the public over.

Television networks did simulate part of the space flight, but the landing was not faked

NASA's PR team helped television stations broadcast live footage of part of Apollo 11's flight.

Television networks used models to simulate the rest of the space flight when live footage was unavailable. But there's no evidence to suggests NASA or any network tried to fake the moon landing.

A television camera was mounted on the side of Apollo 11 to capture Armstrong's first steps on the moon, and the rest is history.

"Fly Me to the Moon" is out now in theaters.

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Inspired by Raina's life as a Punjabi Sikh millennial and online celebrity, the show follows burgeoning content creator Jasmeet Dutta as he tries to balance his ambitions for success with hi... Read all Inspired by Raina's life as a Punjabi Sikh millennial and online celebrity, the show follows burgeoning content creator Jasmeet Dutta as he tries to balance his ambitions for success with his commitment to family, community and culture. Inspired by Raina's life as a Punjabi Sikh millennial and online celebrity, the show follows burgeoning content creator Jasmeet Dutta as he tries to balance his ambitions for success with his commitment to family, community and culture.

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