Gareth Edwards brings us into a very vivid futuristic world yet again this time around with The Creator. We’ve seen the magic that the director has done in the past with works such as Godzilla (2014), the first film in Legendary’s MonsterVerse franchise, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016). His directorial debut actually started back in 2010 when he first gained widespread recognition for his film indie film, Monsters in which he also served as a writer, cinematographer, and visual effects artist. After his success in creating big blockbuster films from huge franchises, Edwards returns to creating original films starting with the futuristic dystopian world that he introduces us to in The Creator.
The Creator stars John David Washington (Tenet), Gemma Chan (The Eternals, Crazy Rich Asians), Ken Wannatabe (Inception), just to name a few. The film is a sci-fi action-adventure tale set in the distant future amidst a war between the human race and the forces of artificial intelligence. The film centers on Joshua (John David Washington), a hardened ex-special forces agent grieving the disappearance of his wife who 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.
The aforementioned film will be making its debut on Philippine shores on October 4, 2023, but prior to its release we here at This Is Hype Ph had the honor and privilege of sitting down with director Gareth Edwards for a quick one-on-one interview.
We know you for Rogue One and Godzilla obviously big worlds and characters in pop culture, they are a part of huge franchises, can you run us through your work process for The Creator, how was that like practically building everything from the ground up and how were your experiences and learnings from your past works able to come into play for this film?
we went to like 80 different locations and 8 different countries in South East Asia, it was kind of like going back to how films used to be made before digital CGI kind of changed cinema a lot.
Gareth Edwards
Gareth Edwards: One of the things I have learned that works best for a movie like this, an ambitious sci-fi movie, is not to build things from the ground up but to actually go into the real world where there is all this amazing stuff and shoot in real locations and let the world carry on — don’t stop it, don’t close streets, don’t stop people coming along — like, let real life happen and when you add the science fiction on top, it feels incredibly real. We didn’t build sets, we didn’t have really much green screen or anything like that, we went to like 80 different locations and 8 different countries in South East Asia, it was kind of like going back to how films used to be made before digital CGI kind of changed cinema a lot.
What was it like working with an incredible cast such as John David Washington, Gemma Chan, Ken Wannatabe, and Allison Janney, just to name a few?
As a director, they say the three most important things are: casting, casting, and casting. Like if you get the cast right, you don’t have to work as hard when you’re filming, I mean we obviously worked very hard trying to make the movie, but what you don’t have to do, which is just a joy is you don’t have to trick people into doing excellent performances.
Gareth Edwards
Gareth Edwards: It’s a bit of a dream. As a director, they say the three most important things are: casting, casting, and casting. Like if you get the cast right, you don’t have to work as hard when you’re filming, I mean we obviously worked very hard trying to make the movie, but what you don’t have to do, which is just a joy is you don’t have to trick people into doing excellent performances. You can just explain the scene and the trajectory that the character is on and they will take care of the rest. And we did things quite differently, we shot on cameras in a way that allowed us to do 25-minute takes. So, we wouldn’t stop filming for half an hour, and instead of saying “cut” and everything stopping, they would just go back to their starting positions and do the scene again and everybody did it differently each time, and sometimes strange crazy things would happen that we weren’t expecting and it made it feel a lot more realistic and natural and so everybody was really good at rolling with that and it was like doing a play or more like a documentary than a movie.
The Creator as mentioned will drop in cinemas on October 4 and we definitely have our eyes set on this film as it may very well be the game changer in the world of sci-fi storytelling. We’ll have to wait until then to find out.
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