The Creator is the new and ambitious sci-fi film from director Gareth Edwards, who helmed Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and 2014’s Godzilla. It captures the beauty of a world that’s torn apart by humans and robot AI with grand vistas of farmers in the countryside and towering cities. Set in the future, Sgt. Joshua Taylor (John David Washington) is tasked with eliminating the Creator, who has a mysterious weapon that can put an end to the war and humanity. He bonds with a robot child, Alphie (Madeleine Yuna), who turns out to be the weapon he’s looking for.

After directing a huge blockbuster movie like Rogue One, Edwards came up with the idea of The Creator when unwinding on a trip with his girlfriend.

“There are lots of ways of trying to explain where the idea came from,” Edwards said during the film’s press conference. “The most unique one, which I remember very clearly was that I had just finished Star Wars. I needed a bit of a break, and we decided, with my girlfriend, that we’re going to go and see her parents who live in Iowa, which is on the other side of America. And we’re like, ‘Okay, we’ll do a four-day road trip. And the great thing about having finished a movie is your brain sort of deletes, like, formats the hard drive.”

Putting on a pair of headphones and looking out the window, he saw a farmland with a Japanese logo. Gareth’s imagination quickly went to sci-fi mode on his trip, and he imagined robots being built there.

“And so, then you’ve got this, like, blank canvas,” the director explained. “And I wasn’t expecting to think about the next film or get any ideas. But I’d just put some headphones on, I was looking out the window. And we went through this, like, tall grass, sort of farmland area. And there was this factory that went by and it had what looked like a Japanese logo on it. And I thought, just ’cause the way I’m wired, like in science fiction, I was like, ‘I wonder what they’re doing in there?’ Like, ‘Oh, maybe it’s robots or something cool.’ I’m like, ‘I doubt it.’ But and then I was thinking, ‘Oh, imagine being a robot built in a factory and you step outside the factory for the first time.'”

The idea continued with Edwards envisioning a robot walking outside for the first time and seeing a new world filled with grass and nature. The concept was tossed to the side, but he couldn’t escape it when it grew bigger and bigger.

“And I thought, ‘Oh, that’s a cool little moment in a film,’ but I don’t know what that would be,” he said. “And I threw it away and carried on thinking about other things. But it kept coming back the rest of the trip. And I was like, ‘Oh, you know what that could be?’ And I started building on the idea. And by the time we got to my girlfriend’s parents’ house, I kind of had the basics of the whole movie mapped out, which is really rare.”

About The Creator

Synopsis: Amidst a future war between the human race and the forces of artificial intelligence, Joshua (Washington), a hardened ex-special forces agent grieving the disappearance of his wife (Gemma Chan), is recruited to hunt down and kill the Creator, the elusive architect of advanced AI who has developed a mysterious weapon with the power to end the war… and mankind itself. Joshua and his team of elite operatives journey across enemy lines, into the dark heart of AI-occupied territory… only to discover the world-ending weapon he’s been instructed to destroy is an AI in the form of a young child.

Gareth Edwards directs the film from a script by Edwards and Chris Weitz, from a story by Edwards. It’s produced by Gareth Edwards, Kiri Hart, Jim Spencer, and Arnon Milchan and executive produced by Yariv Milchan, Michael Schaefer, Natalie Lehmann, Nick Meyer and Zev Foreman.

The film also stars Ken Watanabe (Inception, Godzilla), Sturgill Simpson (Dog) and Allison Janney (I, Tonya).

The Creator releases in theaters on September 29, 2023.