The Creator Director Blasted To The Past For One Key Creative Choice [Exclusive]
"The Creator," the new sci-fi film from director Gareth Edwards ("Rogue One: A Star Wars Story," "Godzilla"), explores a near future where AI and humans are at war. As you can see from the film's trailer, a nuclear bomb has destroyed Los Angeles, which results in the U.S. going to war with its non-human opponents. However, New Asia (a conglomeration of Asian countries) has embraced AI, putting the two sides at odds with one another. When an advanced form of AI is put into the body of a child (Madeleine Yuna Voyles), ex-special forces agent Joshua (John David Washington) ends up taking the little girl on the run from the U.S., which has come up with a massive military spaceship called NOMAD that can take out targets as small as an individual being from the sky.
/Film's own Vanessa Armstrong recently spoke to Edwards about the film, including the process behind the creation of NOMAD. As it turns out, Edwards turned to a filmmaking technique from the past to make NOMAD and the overall film convey the story in a better way.
'There was no music whatsoever'
Edwards said that the pandemic gave him a lot of time to work with production designer James Clyne on NOMAD, which has a very distinctive look (which Edwards described as a blend of "a bird of prey and an all-seeing eye in the sky") and sound. While they spent a lot of time creating the visual depiction of this ship, the sound was a really important part of it as well. Edwards, who collaborated with supervising sound editors Eric Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn (whom he'd previously worked with on "Godzilla"), said the two have "a dance, is probably the nice way to say it, between music and sound, and it's never a fight." That said, the sound came first.
Editor Joe Walker ("Dune") did the first cut of the film with sound alone. "So when we watched the first version of the movie," Edwards said, "it was nearly five hours and there was just sound. There was no music whatsoever." That choice was a throwback to how films used to be done. He spoke about the choice and how it can help, not using music at first:
"It really exposes you, because music can hide problems in the storytelling. It can make you feel things and get you out of jail. So not having any music and having just the sounds was really difficult. But it's kind of the way they used to make films in the '70s: They would cut a movie together and never really have much music. And then finally, someone like John Williams comes in and it all gets elevated."
'Maybe let's not put any music in for ages'
If you've never seen a cut of a film without music, it's ... disconcerting. It can be cold and weird, and the acting can seem oddly stilted. That's sort of the point. Seeing something without music to smooth it out really forces you to look at the story and see its flaws. If it works without music, it really works. Edwards continued:
"So we were like, 'Maybe this is the way to approach this. Maybe let's not put any music in for ages.' And we got the film down to two hours-and-something, and hadn't put any music in, and we worked just really hard on the story and on the structure and the pacing. And it was super interesting. Part of me thinks that I would do that again, because it puts a lot of pressure on the sound design, but then you're not hiding behind music to save the storytelling, if you know what I mean."
Having seen "The Creator," I have to say that while the visuals are incredible, it's the story that gets you in the gut. As with any sci-fi story, you might be able to find logic questions to chew over. However, the emotional heart of the film feels composed (sorry) in such a way that there isn't any useless material. Every moment feels like it's supposed to be there. Nothing is thrown away. It's incredibly effective.
"The Creator" will hit theaters on September 29, 2023.