Mashing Solarpunk and Cyberpunk to Wage War Against War in The Creator

I saw the movie The Creator last night, which turned out to be a brooding love child of cyberpunk and solarpunk. I think we need a name for that genre mashup because there’s some interesting threads there to mine. The Creator also made me wonder, when did films get so beautiful. Every last frame of this film is a work of art of exceptional composition and clarity. And the sound... just wow, from the stirring yet perfectly integrated musical score to the map of sounds happening around you as the action progresses. If nothing else (and yet much more), The Creator is exactly why we should be fighting for the lives of our movie theaters. It breaks my heart to think of all the young’uns out there who are going to watch this film on their phone and will never have any idea what they’re missing by not having seen it on a big screen with a top–notch sound system. Even watching a film like this on the best HD TV you could hang on your living room wall would be like looking at a print of a Picasso instead of seeing its power in person.

The Creator takes place in an alternate timeline where we dove into AI and robotics with such gusto so early on, there were AI robots in spacesuits in space missions on NASA’s Space Shuttles (circa early 80s to early 2010s), not to mention acting as mother’s little helpers in the kitchens of the 1950s (if my memory is accurate of the “news reel” that rolled for the rocket ride that is the film’s opening montage). In short, The Terminator films clearly not existing in this timeline, humanity made the mistake of leaving the AIs in charge of defense systems and Los Angeles got nuked. And that’s just the first 75 seconds of the film (more or less).

Despite the fact that hardly anyone one who doesn’t live in Los Angeles cares a whit about the place—in fact,lots of folks actively fantasize about its demise (I’m thinking, most recently, of Kim Stanley Robinson's meanly gleeful and scientifically inaccurate drowning of the LA basin within about the space of a day via atmospheric river storms in The Ministry for the Future)—the USA goes full post-9/11 and declares war on AI. This means hunting down and mercilessly exterminating hotbeds of AI development in “New Asia.” Cue violent raids into New Asian countries by squads of American commandos with mind–bogglingly mighty tanks; a permanently airborne war station that locates targets, coordinates attacks, and launches savage missile attacks; and the most arrogant, single-minded, and cruel military characters imaginable.

That is, except for the protagonist. Sure, he’s an elite commando, but (SLEDGEHAMMER OF A METAPHOR) he’s a little bit robot himself, with all those bionics to replace limbs lost (in combat, presumably, given that his more innocent explanation sounds like an evasive lie). He fell in love with and married a New Asian woman while infiltrating her “terrorist” troupe of AI developers. This splits his sympathies. Considerably. Still, the top brass puts him in charge of re–infiltrating New Asia to seek and destroy the AI “weapon” the “terrorists” have developed. But this “weapon to end all weapons” turns out to be the AI equivalent of a human child who holds the key to the protagonist reuniting with the protagonist’s seemingly terrorist wife. As well as maybe also holding the key to world peace. Meanwhile, the child AI needs the love, protection, and guidance of a parent to survive and develop deeply human emotions. (Because, you know, emotions. They’re what make people do good things, right?)

Movies being movies, a lot of people and seemingly sentient machines are going to have to die in splatters of gunfire and spectacular explosions before we can find out who wins: the US military meanies or the AI robots and their friends, who just want to live free in peace and harmony.

Thematically, there’s a lot going on in The Creator. It’s very anti-colonialism, for instance. It also wonders how sentient robots will feel about being, essentially, slaves. It wants to tell us that maybe AI will be good for us. Instead of wanting to exterminate us—we who are actually the violent ones who refuse to see the humanity in others—maybe AI will want to be our friends and partners. Maybe AI will help us to develop the humanity lurking somewhere within ourselves and make us better human beings.

But for me, the overarching theme of The Creator is rage at America’s arrogantly militaristic habit of seeing things in black and white (US vs them, good guys vs terrorists, humans vs AI) and of annihilating the enemy at all cost, including that of the lives, livelihoods, housing, and villages of the civilians we don’t see as mattering. Watching this bitter rebuke to “shock and awe” was especially moving right now, on the brink (at least at the time of this writing) of Israel’s potential offensive into Gaza that will be Israel making the same mistake America made after 9/11. We could have taken the world’s sympathy and support (for we had it!) and used it to make the world a better, more equitable, more peaceful, much less impoverished, and more just place. Instead, we spent decades extracting bloody, violent revenge for a single terrorist act. Yes, our pride was wounded, and yes, nearly 3,000 people died as a result of the 9/11 terrorist attack, but the damage and death we caused in response with our mighty military machinery and soldiers gained us nothing, not even satisfaction. All it did, besides kill people and destroy their homes, was take the world into a dark, unstable place where there are now so many sides (within societies and between them) and they all hate each other. We all hate each other and this is ripping the fabric of our societies apart and making life more horrible for everyone. Rampaging like a million Godzillas on methamphetamine might feel as good as smashing glass when you’re mad, but it’s not right. It’s what evil empires do and it has terrible geopolitical repercussions. Especially when you wrap up your claim in the mantle of morality that you don’t actually have.

Of course, few movies are without their flaws. A lot happened in this movie that strained all credibility... and for the most part, it wasn’t the speculative elements. If the plot consisted of a lot of interlocking threads, every last one of them went full circle and tied itself into a tidy little bow by the end, which was ridiculous. Related to this, foreshadowing struck often and always like a sledgehammer. And there were far too many implausible events... characters who just happened to stumble in the right direction to end up in the right place at literally exactly the right time to make exactly the connection (that had gotten set up in another implausible and convoluted set of circumstances) that was totally unexpected (but that you saw coming 30 minutes previously because of the sledgehammer foreshadowing), etc. The AI child has extraordinary powers over machines when the plot needs it to but doesn’t have those powers when the plot needs it not to. The US military people are all such hardcore, single-minded, murder–all–the–AIs–at–all–cost lunkheads that the tragic backstory they give at least one of them to excuse it just comes across as laughable. Also, come on. Los Angeles gets nuked and only a couple of million people die? Does the alternate timeline not know that nearly 20 million people live in the Los Angeles megalopolitan area? Also, why barrage AI hot spots with bombs and missiles, doing so much collateral damage, when a great bit electromagnetic pulse would be far more effective while simultaneously sparing human beings and their homes?

Despite this, the movie is a moving spectacle. And it felt new. Which is not easy to do, as anyone who has sat down to try to write sci–fi could tell you. Sci–fi is so far beyond the first flush of its youth, unless you're really good, that just about any story you come up with has been written several times before. Despite the clunkier aspects of the plot, whoever wrote The Creator is really good. This sci–fi movie broke ground.

These days, I rarely stay for the credits of movies, but I felt compelled to for The Creator. It was so magnificently made, I’d found myself wondering how you would even go about writing a prospectus for a film like this. It was filmed at so many different places around the world and it had so much excellent CGI, there was only one moment in the movie where I was like, oh, that’s totally obviously CGI (and normally I scoff all the time at CGI). How would you even begin to figure out how many people you’d need to make a film this epic and detailed, much less how to coordinate their efforts. How could you begin to calculate how long it would take to make a movie this ambitious or how much it would cost so that the end result was excellent? (Turns out, the cost is $80 million, which is between a quarter and a third of the cost of a typical Marvel movie.)

My best guess—before and after watching the extensive credits—is that it took at least a thousand person-years to get this film made. There were so many animators. And they all seem to have done a painstaking job.

So, kudos to The Creator, the art with which it was made, and the themes that it tackled. Now get thee to a proper movie theater. In fact, the shiniest, newest, most up–to–date movie theater you can find. Movie theaters need our help to survive in this world of streaming, and spectacles like The Creator need to be seen on a big screen.