Gareth Edwards directs John David Washington, Allison Janney and Madeleine Yuna Voyles in this sci-fi war movie where a conflicted man must escort an AI child through New Asia while pursued by the genocidal US military and the local robot police.

Went to a Greek mall multiplex to catch this on opening day. The experience was… itchy. Very good projection and sound though. Can’t think of many 20+year old multi screens in the U.K. that have preserved such decent technical specs.

The movie itself is right up my alley. An unabashed blend of early Cameron, mid-career Spielberg, Coppola, Ridley and even Marty’s Kundun. The characters might be a little 2D (though the villains are strong), the action comes in quite short beats and the third act rushes through plot developments a little too swiftly to be completely coherent. But it is exciting. A vision of AI and humanity living together violently that imagines tons of inspired visual wrinkles. As world building goes, The Creator is a gift that keeps on giving, on a par with Blade Runner or The Fifth Element for transporting you into a strange new futurism riddled with details. Calling back to his debut Monsters, here Edwards seamlessly integrates digital FX of a mammoth scale with human actors and real world environments. Nobody else is doing it like this.

Beyond being a CGI visionary, Edwards’ peerless brand of blockbuster cinema is starting to take real form. He seems to relish a dour pessimism giving way to an emotional connection at the moment of finality. He puts western faces in fantasy peril but the response and cataclysm often takes the form of what a foreign refugee or a survivor of a war torn disaster area might experience in the face of dispossession of their homeland and comforts. With its disabled protagonist and realistic geopolitics, The Creator effortlessly achieves more than most recent movies that wear their sops to diversity on their sleeves as a badge of honour. A suicide mission, a world crushed by fascistic imperialism and an unlikely band of brothers crossing different landscapes to achieve their begrudging goal… The Creator gives us a glimpse of what Edwards pure cut of Rogue One might have felt like. We see a walking humanoid bomb peacefully stopped by something only slightly more human, potentially more destructive in a moment of sheer sci-fi poetry. We see Apocalypse Now with mecha freedom fighters and anime tanks. We see fucking cinema.

8

Perfect Double Bill: District 9 (2009)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/