James Cameron took the Vietnam War and put it in space with Aliens, and George Lucas took the Vietnam War and took it into space with Return of the Jedi. I thought I could do it the other way around: take science fiction and put it on the ground, in Vietnam", confides the British director Gareth Edwards (Nuneaton, 1978) about The creator. A film set in 2065 in which Western humans are relentlessly confronted by artificial intelligence (AI), robots that have developed a civilization in Southeast Asia, New Asia, where they are not banned. Edwards, one of the giants of science fiction after Godzilla and Rogue One: a Star wars story, plays robots that are sometimes more human than their opponents in a film starring Gemma Chan, John David Washington, a fierce Allison Janney as a US military man in search of the creator of the AI and baby Madeleine Yuna Voiles as Alfie the robot.
Edwards, who presented his film in Madrid, is certainly not afraid of the evolution of artificial intelligence. "Whenever there's a disruptive technology everyone worries about it, but if there's ever a problem it's usually because humans are using it wrong. I am optimistic about AI. If there is ever a problem with it, on a large scale it will be because a human misused it for the wrong reasons. The AI currently has no goals. It is created to do what we want. It's a kind of slave", he explains.
He also doesn't care if one day the singularity takes place and artificial intelligence surpasses us. "In theory that day should come, but is it a year away or will we not see it in our lifetime? All we are is a network of connections, and this will at some point be recreated in a computer. At some point there should be an AI completely like us. And then, in theory, she can become stronger and smarter. I like to think that if something is smarter than us, it will be better than us. Many of the bad things that happen are due to stupidity, not intelligence. So I hope they will help us and find better ways to move forward." Are they our evolution? “Honestly, maybe. As long as they are alive and conscious like us, what's the difference? We come from apes and small mammals. I don't think the mammals look at us angrily because we are now the caretakers of the planet, or at least we are supposed to take care of it."
In the film, the futuristic tanks that exterminate the robots in scenes that look like the Vietnam War are from the United States Army. Edwards points out that the film "is a critique of the superpowers and the way in which, trying to do good and attacking enemies in other countries, they destroy many innocent people in the process", but, he clarifies, "the reason why he puts the USA in Tanks is because we did test screenings and people were confused about who was wearing them. Really? It is obviously the West, the USA! The simplest thing was to write it on a tank".
“I love the United States, I live there and my girlfriend is American, but it's hard to make a science fiction film and not point out real world scenarios. The actors and the studio want to understand every detail of the conflict. And the simplest way is to say that it is like Afghanistan but in Vietnam and with robots. Or that Osama bin Laden is the creator, and everyone wants to kill him. We think he's evil and his followers think he's the savior", he smiles.
And he adds that "movies have the opportunity to show you both sides and I think that the idea of solving the world's problems by killing the bad guy, in this case artificial intelligence, is a mistake. It only solves the problem by understanding the guy who is bad and understanding that maybe you are just as bad for them, who feel that they are the good guys. Seeing the other point of view is the way out”.
