The Creator Director Reveals Major Details of Film’s Main A.I. Premise (Exclusive)

Later this year, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Godzilla director Gareth Edwards will be dropping is next creation in theaters in the form of the semi-apocalyptic war movie The Creator. Arriving at a time where its subject is a hot topic in many industries, the film centers around a battle between humans and artificial intelligence. While the trailer lays the film’s original story out in such simplified terms, The Creator seems to be telling a much more complex tale with its own title having room for more than one possible interpretation. Edwards talked with ComicBook.com at San Diego Comic-Con, opening up about the premise of one of the year’s most highly anticipated films.

“The Creator has a double meaning because on one side it means the person who is building A.I.,” Edwards said simply. In the film’s world, one which audiences will see through the eyes of John David Washington’s Joshua character, humanity is split on whether or not this world’s artificial intelligence is an asset or an enemy. “In the eyes of the West in our movie, [A.I.] is public enemy number one,” Edwards said. “It’s like Osama bin Laden, ‘We want them dead. They’re doing this terrible thing.’ On the other side of the fence, from the A.I.’s point of view and the people who live in Asia, the Creator is like God, is creating all these beautiful people. And so, it has this double meaning.” 

Edwards also noted The Creator has biblical themes to it, as humans with their creation of A.I. and the A.I. itself might do a bit of trying to impersonate a god-like figure. “I’m friends with Jordan Vogt-Roberts, who did [Kong: Skull Island],” Edwards explained. “He invited me over to Vietnam. And ended up doing this quick whizz tour of Vietnam. And I was thinking of this movie a little bit at the time and I just kept picturing everything as robots. And we’d see Buddhist monks in temples and stuff, and you’d go, ‘God, if that was a robot, that that feels like some sort of movie that’s Apocalypse Now in the Blade Runner universe.’ And to me that was like, ‘I’ve not seen that film.’ And it was so seductive, like, ‘Got to make that film. No one’s done that.’”

“Make that film,” seems to be exactly what Edwards did. The writer and director re-teamed with some familiar faces and talents. Behind-the-camera, Rogue One‘s cinematographer Greig Fraser returned to capture The Creator having since worked on titles such as The Batman, Dune, and more. Edwards also worked with Chris Weitz on The Creator‘s script, with the duo having written Rogue One together years ago.

While Edwards and Weitz are aiming to tell a complex story, they didn’t want to develop too complex of a world and left room for elements of its scenery to be imagined by viewers. “That’s kind of the beauty of science fiction is that when you go, to me, if we traveled in time and went to 2070, when the film set, shot a movie came back in time, the ideal version is that you have the studio or other people who will watch it and go, ‘What’s that giant building?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know,’” Edwards exaplined. “And go, ‘Who’s that guy there? What’s that machine doing?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know. It was the future. I’ve got no idea.’ If it makes total sense to you immediately, it’s not the future. You shouldn’t understand.”

The person most burdened with understanding will be Washington’s Joshua. “He is, essentially in this movie, the world is divided in two. Half the world as banned AI, it’s a terrible thing, don’t want it, something horrific happened. The other half is like, ‘It’s totally fine. Didn’t happen to us. Who cares? We’re going to carry on making AI until it’s human-like,’” Edwards explained. “And it’s essentially east versus west in a way. And so, John David’s character is infiltrating a terrorist cell of A.I. to befriend them, become part of their group, a sort of insurgency over in Asia. And the movie begins when they basically come to extract him to kill the creator of AI. So it’s kind of like the opening scene is a bit picture being in Osama bin Laden’s house when Seal Team Six come. That’s the opening scene, and it all sort of goes wrong.”

As professionals in many industries from our world are feeling potentially threatened from A.I. (especially the film industry), Edwards credits his idea for The Creator arriving in theaters at such a time as a coincidence. However, he is no stranger to other uses of artificial intelligence in fictional worlds like Terminator or i, Robot, for example. “I think the similarities are inevitable because I grew up loving the movies you talked about,” Edwards admitted. “Hopefully, it’s just a starting point. Those similarities kind of take a left turn, and the film becomes quite different to those movies pretty quick.”

ComicBook.com’s full interview with Edwards is available now on YouTube. The Creator hits theaters on September 29, 2023. Are you excited for The Creator? Share your thoughts in the comment section or send them my way on Twitter.