“The Creator” is visually stunning, but is part of a shift in American films that seems to celebrate diversity in a perverse way. This isn’t something new, but it’s become more solidified in recent years. Outside of this diversity problem, Gareth Edwards’ (“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”) science fiction action film is too immersed in the visuals to focus on character development and leaves holes big enough to fly the impressive ship NOMAD through.

 

Ten years ago, Los Angeles was hit by a nuclear warhead. The war pits New Asia against the US and the West, but mostly we’re aware of the US military presence. The US has NOMAD, a spaceship that can scan and destroy whole cities. This isn’t an ideological war like the one fought against Communism, but one about the AI-friendly New Asia against the anti-AI forces of North America.

A military leader intones: “Ten years ago today, the artificial intelligence created to protect us detonated a nuclear warhead in Los Angeles. For as long as AI is a threat, we will never stop hunting them. This is a fight for our very existence.”

After the bombing of Los Angeles, the final production notes explains: “Governments of 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.”

A former special forces agent, Joshua (John David Washington) is lost in the fog of depression, grieving for his wife, Maya(Gemma Chan).  Five years ago, Joshua infiltrated into New Asia in search of the Creator. He met and married Maya. Maya embraces androids,  telling him: When the war started, they protected me. They took better care of me than humans would have.”

Joshua reminds her, “They’re not people, Maya. It’s programming.”

During an attack, Joshua’s cover is blown and he’s separated from his wife Maya. Believing her to be dead, Joshua has returned to the US. Now, Joshua has been called back into service by Colonel Jean Howell (Allison Janney) to hunt down  a scientist, the Creator (निर्माता or Nirmātā in Nepali), who has developed an advanced AI weapon, designated as Alpha O,  that has the power to end war and perhaps mankind itself. There’s also slim evidence that Maya survived which is enough for the guilt-ridden Joshua to sign on to this mission.

When Joshua enters a forbidden zone (ステイバック), he discovers the secret weapon is in the form of a six-year-old girl. Joshua believes this AI girl whom he calls “Alphie” (Madeleine Yuna Voyles) knows where Maya may be although that Maya may just be an android with Maya’s face. Joshua, at first hoping to reunite with his wife, goes on the run with Alphie and is pursued by forces under the command of Howell. Yet in New Asia, where one can sell one’s face to be used in new forms of AI, and androids seem too human, one wonders if Maya lives on only as an android.

Through Joshua, Alphie now learns about the world. Alphie asks Joshua what is heaven. Joshua tells her, “It’s a peaceful place in the sky.”

Of course, she wants to know, “Are you going to heaven?” Joshua doesn’t believe he will and explains, “You got to be a good person to go to heaven.”

Alphie then concludes, “Then we’re the same. We can’t go to heaven because you’re not good and I’m not a person.”

On the run, they search from somewhere that Alphie can be free and Joshua can be with Maya.

In the notes, writer/director explains: “While the film raises a lot of questions about technology and AI, at its core, ‘The Creator’ is also a fairy tale. A reluctant father figure must help a child through the metaphorical woods to find his wife. What he wants is love from his wife. But what he really needs is to love this child.”

If one really wanted to make AI more acceptable, why would their creators insist on leaving large holes through their heads and bared mechanical metals whirling exposed where the back of their necks should be? When I look at the spectacular spaceships in Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars films,  I wonder who and how do these massive things get cleaned. I feel the same way about NOMAD (which my friend described as a “mammoth flying boomerang”). On a smaller scale, cleaning is a still an issue. If you think keeping ears and the back of necks clean on humans is a struggle, especially in rugged rural areas, how much more so with machinery with open holes?

The director’s notes include this paragraph:

Edwards cites Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now,” as his “world-building” inspirations for “The Creator,” along with “Baraka,” “Blade Runner” and “Akira.” The central relationship between Joshua and Alphie drew upon some less-expected sources of inspiration, including “Rain Man,” “The Hit,” “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” and “Paper Moon.”

Yet the film I thought of was the 1986 Eddie Murphy film, “The Golden Child.” While that film was a comedy, it is also an example of the diversity shift of the White Savior trope to a Black African American savior trope. This isn’t the Magical Black person trope. If there is magic in the film, it’s  the spirituality of East and Southeast Asia that has been transformed into  a WiFi version of the Star Wars’ Force.

Still, the essential question one is left with in “The Creator” is, as my friend put it, “Why is Asia so wimpy?” New Asia has AI androids and so does North America. That mechanical boomerang known as NOMAD seems to have a lot of new androids so just how does that anti-AI philosophy work? Moreover, New Asia supposedly set off a nuclear warhead on Los Angeles, but seems defenseless against the American NOMAD destroyer spaceship and the special ops forces. How in the yoga and mantra-making machinery does this make sense?

By New Asia, my friend thought it was China, but I understood it to mean East Asia, predominately Japan, with Southeast Asia included. Some of the bombing sequences made me think of the Vietnam war. Checking the credits and production notes, this is verified. On-site filming locations included Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nepal, Japan and Indonesia.  While linguistic barriers are explained away using AI in the film, that doesn’t pass inspection everywhere because I do read Japanese (very slowly). I thought there was something weirdly and laughably quaint that a forbidden zone uses Japanese katakana (ステイバック or “stay back”) instead of something more international like the Chinese characters read “kiken” (危険)  in Japanese which translates easily into Chinese (危險 Wéixiǎn). Korean (hanja) and Vietnamese (chữ Hán) also have some usage of Chinese characters. But that won’t necessarily work for all of New Asia. The Thai language uses an alphabet (unlike Chinese, Japanese or Korean). Vietnamese use Latin script.  Nepali has a different writing system, based on ancient Brāhmī script. This all means the problem is really defining New Asia. One wonders what happened to Korea (North and South) and South Asia (India and Pakistan). The areas chosen aren’t unified by a written language or one culture.

In terms of world warfare, one also wonders what about sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa? These areas and the Koreas and South Asia are totally left out of this world war, as if none of them was involved in World War I or II.

On the screen, New Asia is represented by the British-born Gemma Chan who is of Chinese descent; San Diego-born and raised, Voyles, who is Thai, Laotian, Cambodian and German; and Japanese actor Ken Watanabe, who plays Harun, Maya’s father. Yet the script (credited as story by Edwards with the screenplay by Edwards and Chris Weitz (Disney’s live-action “Pinocchio”)) doesn’t provide us with more than two attractive human beings, Chan’s Maya and Washington’s Joshua looking good together. We don’t get the essentials of how they work as a couple and just what does Chan’s Maya do, something that becomes essential to the plot. Further, we don’t really know Watanabe’s Harun either.

And, let’s be a realistic here. Would one really send an African American man into East or Southeast Asia as an undercover agent? Wouldn’t an East, Southeast or even South Asian American person be a better choice? If the setting of the special operation infiltration mission was Los Angeles or Atlanta or sub-Saharan Africa, an African American undercover agent of either sex would be fine. The parts of Asia covered here makes the decision-making of the special ops force questionable.

Lastly, because some of the destruction of rice paddies reminded me of the Vietnam War, I wondered that there were no protests in North America against this survival policy of the US. I wondered that with the growing affluence and influence of East and Southeast Asians Americans, not all of whom live in Los Angeles, wouldn’t their voices be raised against the wholesale destruction of cities in the land of their ancestors? Or were they all under FBI surveillance like Chinese Americans during the 1950s or where they all confined in internment camps like the Japanese Americans in the 1940s or were they simply run out of towns and cities like in the 1870s?  Or were they simply targets of growing anti-Asian hate like this COVID-19 world of today?

The script isn’t really interested in Asians or Asian Americans. This is a story of an American, in this case, an African American in Asia.  Asia is a background and Asians are incidental players in the larger drama. Having a kid at the center doesn’t help but seems to further infantilize this part of Asia, defenseless before a North American force but because the damsel-in-distress has a spirituality that must be protected and a faith that could possibly save the world, our hero changes his mission and learns to love and hope again.

“The Creator” is a beautiful film about the ugliness of war but also carries forward the American Black Savior trope and Asia as a background for American adventures. At least they didn’t kill the dog. “The Creator” premiered at the Fantastic Fest in Austin, TX on 26 September 2023. It will be released in the US on 29 September 2023 (20th Century Studios).