The Creator might be the first great movie of the new AI era, from the director of Rogue One

If you’re like me and hold director Gareth Edwards’ Star Wars movie Rogue One in pretty high regard — in fact, honestly, it’s my favorite of the entire franchise — then I suspect that you, too, will be intrigued at a minimum to check out this first look at his upcoming sci-fi thriller The Creator. Which, from the looks of things, just might be the first great movie of the new AI era dominated by ChatGPT and other generative AI advancements poised to bring a staggering degree of change to the world in relatively short order.

20th Century Studios, New Regency, and Entertainment One released a trailer for The Creator on Wednesday. The movie opens on September 29, and thanks in part to a star-studded cast that includes John David Washington, Gemma Chan, Ken Watanabe, Sturgill Simpson, newcomer Madeleine Yuna Voyles, and Allison Janney, it looks … jaw-droppingly epic.

As far as the story goes, the official summary of The Creator is as follows:

“Amid 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.”

I coincidentally read an article from The Atlantic just yesterday about this very thing — titled Never Give Artificial Intelligence the Nuclear Codes — which completely freaked me out. It’s all pretty mind-boggling stuff, the degree to which AI systems like ChatGPT are advancing, such that they can produce realistic-sounding songs and movie and TV show trailers with only the most minimal of prompts from a user. Hopefully, it doesn’t come to anything worse, but it’s also no surprise that creators are bringing stories like these to fruition.

Edwards certainly brought something fresh and original to Star Wars, with a heartfelt story about rebels giving it all for a (seemingly) lost cause. And who can forget that epic Darth Vader lightsaber battle aboard the ship? All of which is to say, I have no doubt the director’s talents have been put to good use with The Creator.

In the meantime, until it arrives, I recommend the following two older movies that have solid AI stories at their core — and which, fortunately, weren’t too overly sanitized into a silly Hollywood spectacle:

• 2013’s Her, available via video on demand
• and 2015’s Ex Machina, available to stream with an HBO subscription