Artifical Intelligence (AI) and its potential benefits and dangers to mankind, one of today’s most hotly debated
topics, is at the epicenter of The Creator, a science fiction thriller set in the near future.
The Creator took years to develop and wrestles with pressing issues and questions including what it means to be human, whether AI can be conscious, questions of good and evil among AI and among people.
AI also acts as a metaphor for other people unlike us whom we view as the enemy. If there were AI that felt 100% real to interact with, what would happen if you didn’t like what it was doing? Can you turn it off? Is it wrong to turn it off? What would happen if it didn’t want to be turned off?
While The Creator is set into the future, news stories about whistleblowers at big tech companies are currently warning us about how advanced the AI had become and how it was being developed for questionable purposes, and how it could replace human labor. Issues even affectijg the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strike. The Pandora’s box has been opened. How real is AI? Does it matter? Should we embrace it? Should we destroy it? Those ideas are at the heart of The Creator.
“The Creator” begins in the aftermath of a cataclysmic disaster, the decimation of Los Angeles by artificial
intelligence. Governments in the West respond with a complete ban on AI, while Eastern nations continue to
develop the technology to the point where robots have become human-like, embraced as equals. This sets into
motion a war between the West and the East, America against Asia – the backdrop of our story.
At the start of our story, Joshua (John David Washington), an American soldier operating undercover in Asia,
is separated from his wife, Maya (Gemma Chan) during an attack. Presuming Maya is dead, Joshua returns to
the U.S. and falls apart. Five years later, he is asked by the military to return to the war zone because they’re
worried that an AI mastermind has created a weapon that will win the war for the East, and that it is about to be
deployed. They want Joshua to fi nd this weapon and destroy it.
Joshua reluctantly agrees to join the mission after Colonel Jean Howell (Allison Janney) reveals that Maya may
still be alive and living in the war zone. Shortly after he arrives in Asia, he discovers that this weapon is a six-year-
old girl named Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles). From that point on, Joshua begins to question everything he
thought about AI and what’s real and what isn’t.
To learn more about The Creator, The Koalition spoke to VFX Supervision Andrew Roberts who brought Gareth Edwards’ vision to the screen, as the production traveled over 10,000 miles to 80 diffeent locations in eight different countries, including Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nepal, Japan, Indonesia, the U.K. (at Pinewood Studios outside of London), and the U.S. (in Los Angeles).
Chek out our interview in the link above.
