As The Creator arrives on home video, and ahead of its Hulu streaming debut tomorrow, we were able to sit down with director Gareth Edwards (Godzilla; Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) to get more insight into his brilliant new sci-fi epic!
In our informative conversation, Edwards breaks down the unconventional way he initially visualized The Creator and how he was able to essentially utilize visual effects in a far more efficient way than we've become accustomed to. He also gets into the recent AI boom and how it influenced his initial screenplay, and whether or not there could be a follow-up.
The acclaimed sci-fi feature, which is set amidst a future between the human race and the forces of artificial intelligence, follows an ex-special forces agent named Joshua (John David Washington) who is recruited to track down the Creator and a new weapon that could potentially destroy mankind. During his mission, Josh discovers that the mysterious world-ending weapon is an AI in the form of a young child and, instead of destroying her, he takes her along with him as the pair attempt to track down the actual Creator.
The film stars John David Washington, Gemma Chan, Ken Watanabe, Sturgill Simpson, Madeleine Yuna Voyles, and Allison Janney.
The Creator is now available on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and Digital HD - and starts streaming on Hulu tomorrow!
Watch our full interview with director Gareth Edwards below and/or keep scrolling to read the full transcript! Plus, please remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more exclusive content!
ROHAN: I read about the sort of unconventional way you visualized this film, where you were scouting real locations and using those actual shots before implementing the visual effects. Can you elaborate on your approach to making The Creator and how the idea sort of came to you?
GARETH: Yeah, I mean, in terms of - what happens, I guess the reason why, I mean, my background was visual effects, and so, when you do that for about 10 years or so, and you always feel like there must be a better way of doing this stuff, you know, working on other projects, and then when you get to make your own film, you try your damnedest to do things the right way, and then you screw it up, and you try again, and all this sort of stuff.
Basically, I think one of my biggest inspirations is traveling, and so I go away somewhere on a holiday, or whatever it is, start thinking of a film, and then, you’re usually visualizing as you go, and I went and met up with a friend in Vietnam, Jordan Vogt-Roberts, who did Kong: Skull Island, and I wanted to do a robot movie next, and as we were just going around, I was just trying it on for size, so you look at people in boats or in paddy fields, and you start picturing robots, you know, or AI doing that stuff, and it looks so perfect and beautiful. You’re like we shouldn't try and contrive this, we shouldn't build a set, you know, we should just come here and film real people doing their daily lives to some extent, and then, change it in the computer afterwards. It'll be a much more efficient way.
So, we got a little bit of money from the studio to do a location scout, and I didn't tell them I was doing this, but I snuck a camera with with me, and then filmed like a 10 minute short, if you want to call it that, and then begged Industrial Light & Magic to do this process of adding, like designing it afterwards, based on whatever the footage was. It went really well and was like super efficient. Everybody realized, oh my god, we could do this so much cheaper, and got excited.
Then, we got the film greenlit off the back of that, and so then, the whole process of making the film was location based, like try not to have a big footprint, like try not to close roads and push people away, but keep the locals and keep the environment. It was tricky, because we had COVID, so obviously, there were certain protocols we had to follow, you know, test people if they were coming within a certain distance of our main actors and things like that. But yeah, it was kind of a much more organic, backwards, reverse-engineered process than normal.
So, it was more like - my bad analogy that I've used before is that the way a film is normally made, is that you paint a target on a wall, and then, you stand back and you try and hit a bullseye, and you always miss, like the wind blows, something happens that you couldn't control and you never get it, and so, what I wanted to do was like fire an arrow into a wall, anywhere, wherever it landed, and then paint a bullseye around wherever it hit to look like we've got it on target.
So, we were going and getting material that was cool, and then, afterwards in the edit, we were then designing the world around what that piece of footage was, like specifically to that shot rather than trying to dictate the world. It just turned out to be a way more efficient way of making a film in that sense.
ROHAN: Considering the massive AI boom we’ve been seeing across the globe the past year or two, especially the past few months, did you take any of that into account when you were writing the screenplay? Did it all influence you or were you trying to take it in your own direction?
GARETH: Yeah, I did not have an agenda about AI going into this film. It was using it literally as a metaphor for the enemy, people who are different, and I wanted to tell a story about someone who was kind of forced into a situation where they had to survive, they had to go on a journey with the enemy, and the two different characters kind of affect each other, and both change each other's mind slightly about what they previously thought.
It was just more like a fairytale in its premise originally, but then, you start researching AI, and start to realize this is a lot closer than we thought, and far more fascinating, potentially then just doing a fairy tale. There's a lot of ideas and problems and philosophical dilemmas at the heart of copying our brain that we're all starting to face now, and I remember we're driving, we're in the middle of jungle in Northern Thailand, heading to set and someone sent me, forwarded me an article about the Google whistleblower, you know, that felt like the AI they were building was alive, and it leaked the entire conversation, or at least a compressed version of the conversation.
And, I should have been prepping my shots for that day, and figuring out what I was going to do, and instead, I got completely sidetracked, mesmerized by this conversation, with this AI, that felt so alive and real, and scary, and it was like, oh my God, it's here. I thought this was going to be 10 years, 30 years, if at all, like landing on Mars, I wasn't sure I was gonna see in my lifetime.
That took me, and I think virtually everybody by surprise, at how fast it's all been happening, which kind of speaks to maybe how simple the rules are in our brains that allow us to think, which makes a lot of sense, because nature, like natural selection is quite a simple idea, ultimately, and creates all this complexity and variation, and eventually, humans, like the idea that a simple set of rules can create something incredibly complicated that seems designed, but isn't, you know, it shouldn't surprise us, because, of course, it's going to be like that.
It's just really how much it carries on if there's a point, you know, the feeling that it's gonna surpass, if it hasn't already. Or I mean, look, I am a visual person, I can't help but look at and dabble in things like Midjourney and Runway right now, and who knows what will be the software ten years from now, but it's kind of mind blowing, where it's all going. For future filmmakers and artists, it's something you have to wrap your head around, as you're gonna get left behind, you know, it's clearly a major tool, hopefully not to replace people, but to sort of be, as they say, like a co-pilot. Like when you're writing a script or working on any project, the fastest way to get anything is to bounce an idea off someone and iterate with somebody else, and maybe AI will be the somebody else to a lot of people. I don't know.
ROHAN: In the film, we do see Maya’s memories downloaded into a new simulant for a brief moment, so theoretically, Josh and Maya’s story could continue if they were to be redownloaded down the line. Did you have any thoughts on a potential epilogue where the story could continue or did you always want to let this be its own finite story, where you shut the door on Josh and Maya and let Alphie’s story go from there?
GARETH: I felt like my favorite thing - basically, my girlfriend when we get a little moment together, we have an argument over what we're going to watch, right? Like, you know, we've got two hours, we're going to sit and watch something, and she always wants to watch a TV series, like the new TV series she hasn't checked out and I always want to watch a film, and this happens over and over and over, and eventually she was like, what's your problem with TV? Like, why don't you want to watch a series? And, I thought about it like, what is my problem? And, after I thought about it for awhile, I was like, You know what it is? My favorite part of the story is the end.
I love endings. It's like my favorite part of a joke is the punch line, right? And, so, I like stories that reach a climax, and they're designed to go to this exact point, and there's a mic drop moment, and then, the credits roll. I think they're my favorite films, and you feel like everything was working to that moment or working backwards to that moment, and so, there's no part of me that wanted to do a Part Two to this movie or a sequel, and I think the best movies that have had sequels, like Aliens and Empire Strikes Back, they didn't really set out with that agenda.
They set out to do a self contained, like Alien is a great self-contained masterpiece, so is A New Hope, right? Completely self-contained, perfect film, and then, if you achieve that it's a higher class problem for someone to come along and tap you on the shoulder and say, could you do another? And, typically, if you've done everything right, like they had, the next idea just plays out from there, you know, and it feels like it was designed, but it wasn't, because they did such a great sort of runway for the next idea.
So, I never sit down and think, oh, you know, like we're going to try and come up with a franchise or I'm going to try and come up with a three-part film or something. I love stories that just live and die in the two hours or whatever it is they exist in, and then, that's the end of it… Says the guy who made a prequel to A New Hope. So, I'm obviously full of shit. *laughs*
The film, which stars John David Washington, Gemma Chan, Ken Watanabe, Sturgill Simpson, newcomer Madeleine Yuna Voyles, and Allison Janney, is set 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 (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 (Voyles). The film is directed by Gareth Edwards, with a screenplay by Gareth Edwards and Chris Weitz from a story by Gareth Edwards. The producers are Gareth Edwards, p.g.a., Kiri Hart, Jim Spencer, p.g.a., and Arnon Milchan. The executive producers are Yariv Milchan, Michael Schaefer, Natalie Lehmann, Nick Meyer, and Zev Foreman
The Creator is now available on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and Digital HD; and will start streaming, exclusively on Hulu, on December 20!