(L-R): John David Washington as Joshua and Madeleine Yuna Voyles as Alphie in 20th Century Studios' THE CREATOR. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Courtney Howard // Film Critic
While independent cinema has thrived when it comes to its genre titles, it’s been a hot minute since we’ve gotten an original, big budget sci-fi film from a studio. Many IP-based and sequelized offerings have flourished, it feels we’re overdue for something a bit more unique to enter the marketplace. Gareth Edwards, who honed his craft on MONSTERS and applied his visionary skills to GODZILLA and ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY, returns to his roots with THE CREATOR. Described as a Vietnam movie combined with futuristic sci-fi, it tells the story of a man tasked to retrieve a super weapon overseas. Only when he does, he finds out that weapon is a small child and that child isn’t exactly a child, but the key to winning a war waged between AI and humans.
Of the sneak-peek clips we saw, the first emphasized the love story between Joshua (John David Washington) and his pregnant wife Maya (Gemma Chan). The second showcased the beginnings of a PAPER MOON-inspired journey with Joshua and his charge Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles), a robotic youngster. The third and final clip was pure action warfare waged between the AI and “New Asia” refugees and the American Army, led by Colonel Howell (Allison Janney), who are on a mission to wipe out all AI.
At the film’s recent footage presentation integrated with a live Q&A with Edwards, the affable filmmaker shared a bit about how he created and collaborated to make his epic vision become a reality.
THE CREATOR’s Genesis
Edwards revealed he began thinking about this film on a cross-country road trip. “As we were driving through the Midwest and there’s all these farmlands with tall grass, I was looking out the window, I saw this factory in the middle of this tall grass. It had a Japanese logo on it and I was thinking, ‘I wonder what they’re making in there.’ Because of my tendencies, I was thinking, ‘Oh, probably robots.’ Imagine you’re a robot built in a factory and suddenly, for the first time ever, you got to step outside in the field and see the sky. I wonder what that would be like. It felt like a really good moment in a movie, but I didn’t know what that movie was. And it was like somebody tapped me on the shoulder and was like, ‘It could be this.’ The ideas started coming. By the time we pulled up at the house, I had the whole movie mapped out in my head, which never happens. That’s a good sign.”
A Concept Art Pitch Turned Reality
Edwards sold his pitch to New Regency on the strength of the artwork. He states, “Some of my closest friends are concept artists. I just started building up this library of imagery until I had about 50 images. I went into New Regency and I laid out all the artwork and talked them through the idea, beat by beat. Essentially, you look at all that imagery and it’s incredibly ambitious and the natural reaction is, ‘This is a $300 million dollar film. There’s no way we can do it, but we’d love to.’ I was like, ‘No, no, no. We’re gonna do it very differently. We’re gonna film with a very small crew and reverse engineer the whole movie.’ In theory, what you normally do is you have all this design work and people say, ‘You can’t find these locations. You’ll have to build sets in a studio, against green screen and it’ll cost a fortune.’ We were like, ‘What we want to do is go shoot the movie in real locations in real parts of the world that look closest to what these images are and then afterwards, when the film is fully edited, get the production designer, James Klein and concept artists, to paint over those frames and put the sci-fi on top.’ We [then] basically had to go try to prove it.”
THE CREATOR’s Locations
Authenticity was key for Edwards and the production. “On a normal movie, you’re lucky to get away from the studio a handful of times. On this we went to 80 locations and we didn’t really use any green screen. There was a little bit here and there, but very little. And, if you keep the crew small enough, the theory was, the cost of building a set, which is typically like $200 grand, you can fly everyone to anywhere in the world for that kind of money. We went to Nepal, the Himalayas, active volcanos in Indonesia, temples in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Tokyo for the major city stuff and did a little bit at Pinewood, using their LED stage craft [edit note: The Volume].”
Edwards Cast The Smartest Extras Ever
In the film, there’s a sequence that shows when Alphie escapes the underground vault she’s been kept in, popping up in a field to escape the American soldiers’ attack on the lab. Many other scientists who’ve been caring for her also are fleeing the base. Turns out those extras were extra method. Edwards explains,
“When we were in Thailand, we were like, ‘We need to find a technologically advanced factory.’ We looked everywhere. There were car manufacturing plants that were nervous about us filming and we eventually found a particle accelerator. It’s probably the most advanced tech in Thailand. We were like, ‘Please, please, could you let us film?’ There was no way they would allow us to film here. They sort of asked, ‘What do you want to do?’ ‘Well, there’s people with guns shooting and there’s explosions.’ This is a multi-million dollar facility with leading chemists and scientists. At the very last minute, someone goes, ‘What filmmaker is doing this? What films has he done?’ ‘He did this STAR WARS film called ROGUE ONE.’ And they were like, ‘Can we be in it?’ We were like, ‘Sure, whatever!’ And so everyone running around [in that scene] are nuclear physicists. They were amazing.”
Gareth Edwards didn’t want to assign a date on when THE CREATOR takes place
“I tried to avoid putting a date… I didn’t want to write a date for the movie, because even like Kubrick gets it wrong. But at some point you have to. I did some math and picked 2070. And now, like an idiot, I feel like I should’ve picked 2023, because everything that’s unfolded in the last few months is scary weird. This idea of war with AI, everyone wants to know the backstory. It was all these ideas that you have to set up that humanity would reject this thing and not be cool about it. The set up for our movie is pretty much the last few months. It’s kind of strange.”
The Innovative Thinking Behind Filming THE CREATOR
“I wanted it to feel as realistic as possible. We need to shoot in full 360 degrees. The biggest thing working against you when you’re trying to do that is you have lights. The second you want to move the camera, you see the lights and it takes 20 minutes to move them and it takes forever to shoot a scene. So the way we worked, we had really sensitive camera equipment. We could use the LED lights, which were lightweight. You have a boom operator holding a pole with a microphone on and we thought, ‘why can’t you have a guy holding a pole with a light on it?’ We had a Best Boy with it, running around with it, holding the light by hand. What would normally take 10 minutes to change, was taking 4 seconds. We would do 25 minute takes and let the scene play out 4 or 5 times and give it this naturalism and realism.”
THE CREATOR opens on September 29.
