Trailer watch: John David Washington battles rogue AI in The Creator, the new thriller from Rogue One director

Humanity is at war with the machines…again.

20th Century Studios has dropped the teaser trailer for The Creator, the latest extravaganza from Gareth Edwards, the British director of Godzilla and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Promising scale and spectacle, the post-apocalyptic thriller, which caused a buzz when the footage was first shown at CinemaCon last month in Vegas, stars John David Washington (Tenet) as a human soldier who must protect an android child who may or may not be the key to ending the man-vs-AI conflict. The battle scenes where gunships attack a tropical village look like a cross between the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ raid in Apocalypse Now and the Battle of Scarif in Rogue One.

We’ve been down this AI warpath before with 2001: A Space Odyssey, Westworld, Terminator and The Matrix, but after watching trailer, it seems that Edwards, who co-wrote the script with Rogue One collaborator Chris Weitz, has conjured up something really tasty using familiar ingredients.

Filmed in England and Thailand, The Creator also stars Ken Watanabe, Gemma Chan, Allison Janney, Ralph Lneson and Amar Chadha-Patel. Interestingly, the movie was originally called True Love. Perhaps the studio didn’t want it to be confused with the Simu Liu-starring rom-com stinker One True Loves. (Ugh!) Whatever the reason, wise decision!

Amid the rise of ChatGPT and other AI tools, The Creator couldn’t have arrived at a better time when the prospect of AI annihilating mankind is becoming more science-factual than science-fiction day by day. What if all this anti-AI hostility — both real and reel — is fed into some AI deity and causes it to go on the offensive (The Skynet Effect!) ? Doesn’t this fear become a self-fulfilling prophecy? Just saying.

Watch The Creator trailer here:

The Creator opens in cinemas on Sept 28.