Review: 'The Creator' builds a fascinating world of robots and humans, and sets an epic journey within it

In a movie landscape of pre-imagined franchises, director Garth Edwards gives us “The Creator” to remind us how hard — and how rewarding — it can be to watch a world being made from scratch.

It’s the year 2065, and we’re told that humanity is fighting for its very survival against an army of A.I.-guided robots. The robots were supposed to be our friends, welcomed as laborers, housekeepers, babysitters and colleagues — until, we’re told, the robots nuked Los Angeles 10 years ago. 

A.I was outlawed in the United States and most of the world, except for New Asia (a nation-state that seems to stretch from India to Vietnam), where they’ve been fully integrated into society. Today, the anti-robot side has a massive space station, U.S.S. Nomad, that can target locations in New Asia and obliterate them.

What the American military can’t do, it seems, is find the mysterious creator of New Asia’s A.I. technology, known only by the code name Nirmata. That’s why the military brass seek out a former undercover operative, Sgt. Joshua Taylor (John David Washington) to go into New Asia and find Nirmata.

Taylor, we know from the prologue, has a history in the A.I. war. His undercover mission five years earlier led him to woo and start a life with Maya (Gemma Chan) — which ends with Taylor and a pregnant Maya in a secluded beachside house that becomes a battle ground between the New Asia A.I. guerrillas and Nomad’s targeted missiles.

Taylor is put on a commando unit infiltrating New Asia, led by the no-nonsense Col. Howell (Allison Janney) and her grizzled sergeant, McBride (Marc Menchaca). Through a series of action set pieces, Taylor eventually gets into Nirmata’s secret lair, where the U.S. military intel says the New Asian secret weapon is being developed. That weapon, Taylor discovers, is a robot in the shape of a 5-year-old human (Madeleine Yuna Voyles). Taylor takes the robot, whom he names Alphie, on the road, hiding from both sides to learn Alphie’s origins.

Edwards (who directed “Rogue One”) co-wrote the script with Chris Weitz (“About a Boy”), and together they create a fascinating world that, like the robots, seems constructed from spare parts — a little “Terminator 2,” a bit of “Aliens,” a dollop of Isaac Asimov. But in Edwards’ rough-and-tumble telling, the world-building feels fresh and lively. The coolest effect is the mechanism of the robots themselves, an empty cylinder through the neck where Frankenstein’s bolts would be.

Helping flesh out this world is an ensemble cast that includes Janney, Chan, Ken Watanabe as a noble robot warrior and Sturgill Simpson as an underground A.I. factory operator. Washington, as he did in “Tenet,” carries an action thriller without appearing to be doing any heavy lifting.

The revelation in “The Creator” is young Voyles in the central role of Alphie, able to transmit the shifting emotions of this child A.I. character — giggly one moment, Zen-like calm the next. Her journey is the one that we, as viewers, want to ride along with.

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‘The Creator’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 29, at theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for violence, some bloody images and strong language. Running time: 133 minutes.