Some sci-fi movies are too ambitious to disappear quietly. The Creator was one of the most visually striking studio films of 2023, but it also split viewers pretty hard when it first landed. Now that it’s on Netflix in the U.S., it’s getting the kind of second chance big-screen sci-fi usually hopes for. And once again, people seem pretty taken with how stunning it looks.
The film arrived on Netflix in the United States on March 20, and that move has put it back in the conversation. That makes sense. Streaming gives movies like this room to breathe, especially when a lot of viewers skipped them in theaters and only heard about them later through debate and word of mouth.
Directed by Gareth Edwards, the film stars John David Washington, Gemma Chan, Ken Watanabe, and Madeleine Yuna Voyles, and whether people loved or fought with the story, the film’s visual scale was never really in doubt. On Netflix, that alone is helping The Creator pull in a new crowd.
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Is ‘The Creator’ Worth Watching?
Collider’s review, by Maggie Lovitt, stated that The Creator is a visually impressive sci-fi film that aims high, even if it does not fully stick the landing. Gareth Edwards returns to large-scale science fiction with an original story about war, artificial intelligence, and what it really means to be human. The movie has a lot on its mind, and while not all of its ideas come together smoothly, it is still hard not to admire what it is trying to do.
“While The Creator is far from a masterpiece, it is a very impressive film to debut in 2023, when vapid superhero films and franchise fodder fill the airways—especially when one considers its tidy $80 million budget, which seems unthinkable considering the intricate AI designs it features. The script might have glaring flaws and painfully ambiguous morals, but The Creator is a truly remarkable piece of original science fiction storytelling. Even when it borrows from ideas established in films that preceded it, Edwards manages to make it feel fresh and new. The Creator is a beautifully crafted, albeit imperfect, science-fiction thriller that tries to unravel what it means to be a good human in a bad world.”
The Creator is streaming now.
Release Date
September 29, 2023
Runtime
134 minutes