Explosive Action Rollercoaster On Netflix Is Here To Save Sci-Fi

By Jonathan Klotz
| Published 19 seconds ago

Original sci-fi is nearly extinct in movie theaters. Dune and Project Hail Mary are adapting best-selling novels, Avatar: Fire and Ash and Predator: Badlands are franchise films, which is why back in 2023, sci-fi fans were excited over visionary director Gareth Edwards bringing The Creator to the big screen. From the moment it was announced, the film was heralded as the savior of cinematic sci-fi. Weeks after release, it was largely forgotten, but now it’s available on Netflix waiting to be discovered by sci-fi fans craving another tale about sympathetic artificial intelligence and evil humans. Wait, what? 

Don’t Watch The Creator For The Plot

In the near-future of The Creator, the world is divided between those who want to exterminate A.I. following the nuclear devastation of Los Angeles (the majority of the planet), and those who choose to embrace it (a unified New Asia). Sergeant Joshua Taylor (John David Washington) is sent into New Asia to steal the latest superweapon, Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles, in her first movie role), a supercomputer simulant in the form of a young girl. With a hole in the side of her head that marks her immediately as an A.I., one of many examples of how the film looks amazing, but the plot falls apart with the slightest bit of critical thinking. 

Sergeant Taylot finds himself at the center of a new battleground between New Asia and the United States that goes from a coastal village to space, and his dead wife, Maya (Gemma Chan, star of the British A.I.-centric series Humans), was entangled in the origins of the latest conflict. It’s best if you don’t think too hard about who’s fighting and why when watching The Creator. Instead, let the amazing visuals and unique robotic designs wash over you. 

The Creator Is Visually Stunning But Hollow

Shot for a reported $80 million, The Creator is the rare film where it doesn’t look like every cent can be seen on the screen; it looks better than the budget would make you think. Edwards unique style is a perfect fit for science fiction. There are simulants that have amazing moving parts to them, and then there are the American bomb robots, which look like running trash cans. The careful thought and design that went into the aesthetics of the world, combined with the excellent acting from both Washington and Voyles, is let down by the flimsy plot. 

It’s a running joke at this point that the majority of the plot holes complained about online are from viewers playing on their phones while watching a movie, but if you watch The Creator, you can’t help but notice the logical fallacies. Soldiers using huge suit-mounted lights for a nighttime operation, a weapon system that scans the entire target area so far in advance it might as well send a warning via snail mail, advanced hover boats that only move at boat speeds even though they are, again, hovering over the water, and somehow, advanced A.I. robots have an airplane mode. 

The Creator may not be the savior of original sci-fi that it was marketed as, but that doesn’t make it a bad movie. It’s a throwback sci-fi of the early 2000’s. Gorgeous visuals, beautifully shot, but hollow. It’s sci-fi junk food in the best way possible. If you missed it in theaters, you can do worse than immersing yourself in the near-future A.I. apocalypse. 

The Creator is currently streaming on Netflix.