The Untold Truth Of The Creator

What happens when technology surpasses us? That's the question "The Creator," the latest film from "Godzilla" and "Rogue One" director Gareth Edwards, contemplates in depicting a far-off future where humanity and robots are at war. These mechanical beings were built to serve people, but now they threaten to usurp their fleshy makers. People like Joshua (John David Washington) are determined to keep fighting the robotic foes to the very end, but Joshua's discovery of a robotic child named Alfie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles) changes everything. His perception of the world is forever altered and he no longer wants to just destroy every robot he sees. Instead, Joshua wants to protect this kid and begins to see the world of artificial intelligence a little bit differently.

This storyline is filtered through the kind of big-scale action sequences and heavy doses of spectacle that Edwards has become famous for as a filmmaker. Realizing this original vision of the future, though, was no easy task. "The Creator" went through a lengthy development process and a long road to the big screen. The untold truth of this particular motion picture reflects all the time and care that went into its production and covers everything from cinematic inspirations to the struggle to hold down a release date. Even though it's a movie about robots, the untold truth of "The Creator" reflects the kind of dedication and thoughtfulness that could only come from human minds.

Traveling can broaden a person's horizons and, for artists, inspire new visions for creative expression. That's especially true for "The Creator" writer-director Gareth Edwards, who found himself conjuring up his next blockbuster while traveling overseas. Edwards explained to GamesRadar that he'd be traveling through locations like Angkor Wat and would become overwhelmed with awe over the unique sights and sounds of his surroundings. 

As he soaked in everything around him, the man behind "Rogue One" and "Monsters" inevitably started wondering what these domains would look like filtered through a lens of sci-fi imagery. Specifically, the thought process of imagining what Buddhist monks would be like if they were robots led him down the pathway of contemplating what theology would be like for machines. What started as just an abstract thought exercise soon blossomed into something far greater.

From here, Edwards began imagining a new movie that really explored what it would be like to navigate existence as a robot. He also began to imagine throwing those mechanical creations and other hallmarks of sci-fi storytelling into discernible real locales. Edwards especially loved the idea of merging robots with the landscape of Vietnam, a combination he felt he hadn't seen before in the history of sci-fi cinema. The possibilities of such a rich and unprecedented mixture might've never crept into this filmmaker's brain if he hadn't been engaging in his own globetrotting adventures. 

Roughly 18 months after "The Creator" was first announced as a project in development, John David Washington signed on to play the film's lead role. It was a massive get for the project and a sign of just how high-profile this new piece of sci-fi was going to be. From there, a slew of other big names joined the cast, including Gemma Chan as the feature's most prominent female character and Oscar winner Allison Janney in a supporting turn. Inevitably, though, the team behind "The Creator" wasn't able to secure every single big-name actor they desired.

Specifically, originally cast actors like Danny McBride and Benedict Wong would later step away from the project. McBride was the first to leave the project reportedly due to unforeseen scheduling conflicts, with Sturgill Simpson stepping in to take over his role. A month later, as filming for "The Creator" was well underway, Wong also stepped down from the proceedings for the same reason as McBride. Tapped to replace him was Ken Watanabe, a legendary performer with whom Gareth Edwards had previously worked on the 2014 film "Godzilla." It was undoubtedly a difficult process replacing these actors, but the presence of talented figures like Simpson and Watanabe ensured that the star-studded nature of the cast had not been jeopardized. 

Eagle-eyed viewers of that initial trailer for "The Creator" likely spotted that the feature was shot in the 2.76:1 aspect ratio, a very unusual type of framing. Typically, most modern features are shot in either the 2.35:1 or 1.85:1 aspect ratio, since those formats have often been most beneficial for viewing features either on a big movie theater screen or a TV at home. 

Interestingly, though, motion pictures in the last decade have begun to fool around with the norms of aspect ratios and reach deep into cinema's past for striking ways to realize modern productions. The most notable example of this trend is the resurgence of the Academy aspect ratio (known as the 1.37:1 ratio), a formatting associated with early Hollywood productions that have now been employed in 21st-century works ranging from "First Reformed" to "Zack Snyder's Justice League."

"The Creator's" 2.76:1 aspect ratio offers a much wider but shorter image than the Academy aspect ratio, though it too has roots in vintage cinema. 70mm prints of the 1959 version of "Ben-Hur" used this format, a reflection of how the 2.76:1 image goes hand-in-hand with 70mm cinematography. Though a handful of modern films like "The Hateful Eight" were shown in this format, the 2.76:1 aspect ratio is incredibly rare, making its presence in "The Creator" an incredibly exciting sight for cinematography nerds everywhere. 

Movies go through drastic name changes all the time, especially when they're not based on pre-existing source material that especially restricts what the movie should and shouldn't be called. (You wouldn't jettison the "Gone Girl" name off its film adaptation, for instance.) "The Creator" was no exception, with Gareth Edwards' directorial effort originally going under the drastically different name "True Love." Given that the title would've ironically clashed with the action-heavy marketing of "The Creator," the feature instead opted for a vaguely sci-fi-sounding name that seems more reflective of the dark, technology-skewing tone of the film.

Edwards explained to Collider that the biggest reason behind the name change was simply that people originally thought "True Love" was a romantic comedy. Edwards loved the idea of giving the story an unorthodox name and then having viewers realize, over the course of the feature's runtime, how relevant the name "True Love" was to its story. However, he was even more concerned about sending out an original movie into a marketplace dominated by sequels with a title that confused people. Anytime he brought up this title to people, they immediately got the wrong impression of what his passion project was about, which proved frustrating. Disney brass apparently came up with the final title of "The Creator" and, pleased with the proposed title, Edwards suddenly had no qualms with ditching the "True Love" moniker.

Blockbusters are costly enterprises. So many modern movies heavily reliant on visual effects end up running price tags that exceed $300 million, a sum that would've been unthinkable for a major motion picture at the start of the 21st century. By contrast, Gareth Edwards revealed to Collider that "The Creator" cost $80 million to produce. That's not chump change, but compared to, say, the $340 million budget of "Fast X," it practically looks like an indie feature. In a Q&A session conducted in August 2023, Edwards reported that the feature's relatively small crew helped keep costs down. Meanwhile, opting for practical location shooting, rather than the soundstage sets and greenscreen backdrops dominating other modern blockbusters, also made things cheaper for "The Creator."

A helpful breakdown on the camerawork of "The Creator" from No Film School, though, is most helpful in figuring out how this movie was brought to life with just $80 million. Nearly the entire feature was shot on Sony FX3 cameras, a cheap but very high-quality camera system. The compact nature of the cameras made other cost-saving measures on "The Creator," like a stripped-down lighting rig, possible to execute on set. It's staggering to consider that "The Creator" was captured largely on a computer one could purchase on Amazon, but this bold maneuver was one of the key ways this tentpole avoided the kind of bloated budgets that plague modern blockbusters.

With "The Creator," director Gareth Edwards was diving into an original film for the first time since his 2010 directorial effort "Monsters." After helming "Godzilla" and "Rogue One," both of which put Edwards behind the wheel of properties that each had decades of pop culture notoriety, he found himself crafting something new that wasn't reliant on pre-existing brand names. Still, that doesn't mean "The Creator" was totally divorced from great movies of the past. During a Q&A session held in August 2023, Edwards revealed that he held the movies that guided him on "The Creator" so closely that he had posters for his cinematic inspirations always around him. This way, the filmmaker could have constant physical manifestations of the movies that got him so excited about "The Creator" in the first place.

Among the titles that inspired Edwards were other sci-fi or epic classics like "Blade Runner" or "Apocalypse Now," but there were also titles that clearly inspired the central rapport between the characters of the adult Joshua and the adolescent Alfie. Specifically, Edwards was inspired by movies with iconic child/surrogate parent dynamics like "Paper Moon" and "Lone Wolf and Cub" when crafting this element of the feature. Edwards also emphasized a steep level of influence from the documentary "Baraka," which seems to have informed the emphasis on natural landscapes in the movie's visual style. The sheer variety of features molding "The Creator" reflect the grand ambitions Gareth Edwards had for this original project.

There are endless ways to visually represent robots in movies. Some automatons are very clearly mechanical beings, such as the CG robots from "I, Robot" or the massive mechanical alien beings from the various "Transformers" features. Then there's the slew of cinematic robots who are externally normal-looking humans but whose insides are all metal, as seen in "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence" or the assorted "Terminator" movies. These varying approaches to what a robot should look like differ heavily based on the individual ambitions of a specific motion picture, not to mention the entire visual aesthetic of that project. 

Gareth Edwards explained to Empire that his basic concept for what the robots in "The Creator" should look like was rooted in making sure audiences always could discern mechanical characters from the human players in the story. This was done to help differentiate the project from other classic sci-fi movies like "Alien" that had played with audience expectations about which characters were human or android. However, the variety of robots featured in "The Creator" offered opportunities to show bots who are a bit more advanced than others, with certain characters having human faces on metal bodies while others just look like recognizable pieces of technology (like CD players) that can walk around. The multitude of types of robots featured in "The Creator" encapsulates just how many different ways one can represent robots in movies.

Movies take so long to make that a director can never be certain that their films will be relevant to audiences when they finally hit theaters. Issues and matters that were really pressing when a motion picture got the green light can be yesterday's news by the time it's actually released. It's a problem baked innately into trying to make major motion pictures, but this phenomenon can also manifest in the opposite direction. The world is so unpredictable and always cycling through new issues that, by the time a feature debuts, a new pressing problem could emerge making a long-gestating project unexpectedly relevant to the moviegoing public.

During an August 2023 Q&A, Edwards noted that he felt this phenomenon had potentially hit "The Creator," since this movie about humans and artificial intelligence being at war with one another would be emerging in theaters just as A.I. was on everyone's minds. The ongoing SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes in Hollywood alone have turned A.I. into a constant fixture of news websites. Edwards even recalled how initial conversations surrounding "The Creator" involved people being confused over the idea of A.I. ever being perceived as a negative or imposing phenomenon. Such comments now seem incredibly foolhardy in the modern world, which has become so hostile and worried over A.I. that Edwards noted that the set-up for "The Creator" could've taken place in the year of its release, 2023, rather than in the far-flung future

There's already an endless slew of obstacles tied to launching an original blockbuster in the modern franchise-dominated marketplace. Studio marketers don't need extra unforeseen challenges to creep up to make an already daunting task even harder. However, "The Creator" saw its already nascent profile rocked by controversy with the release of its first full trailer in July 2023. This piece of promotional material for the movie was accused of featuring footage of an actual 2020 explosion in Beirut. That explosion cost countless lives in real life, and criticism emerged online over the use of footage of this tragedy to promote a big American blockbuster.

In the wake of this controversy, 20th Century Studios and Disney opted to say nothing on the matter. Neither studio ever released a rebuttal or apology for the alleged use of this footage, nor was an alternate version of the trailer released. The marketing campaign just kept chugging as if there had been no negative noise generated by the trailer. These maneuvers suggest that the companies behind "The Creator" were hoping that the discussion would vanish more quickly if they didn't acknowledge its existence. Still, this outcry from the internet didn't come at the most ideal time for "The Creator." Tasked with establishing an original identity in a sea of sequels, "The Creator" was now saddled with negative publicity tied to the alleged exploitation of real-world horrors.

In June 2022, Disney announced a handful of release dates for new 20th Century Studios and Searchlight Pictures titles. Among those projects that got release dates for the first time was "The Creator," slated for an October 6, 2023 premiere. That date seemed designed to mimic the success of another original sci-fi production released by 20th Century Studios in 2015, "The Martian." That Ridley Scott directorial effort opened over the first weekend of October of that year, while the Warner Bros. sci-fi blockbuster "Gravity" did the same in 2013. Following these non-sequel sci-fi hits, 20th Century Studios clearly hoped that the early October timeframe would also be hospitable for "The Creator." 

However, nearly a year later, Disney announced that "The Creator" was getting its release date bumped back a smidge. Now the blockbuster would be opening one week earlier on September 29, 2023. The reasoning behind this move was to ensure that "The Creator" had access to IMAX screens, which it would've had to forfeit to "Kraven the Hunter" if both had stuck to their October 6 slot (neither ultimately did). The move was always meant to give "The Creator" some extra breathing room, but it especially became useful once the Fall 2023 schedule was rocked by the sudden announcement of Taylor Swift's "Eras Tour" concert movie. With that arriving on October 13, the new date ensured "The Creator" had some much-needed distance between itself and an inevitable box office juggernaut.