Disney might be having a rotten year at the box office after watching the likes of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and Haunted Mansion to name but three be declared dead on arrival, but there’s hope that The Creator could end up as a late-summer sleeper hit.
For one thing, it marks the first feature from director Gareth Edwards since Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and the filmmaker is back on familiar turf with a high concept hybrid of sci-fi and fantasy, something that also served him very well on his breakout debut Monsters and Warner Bros.’ Godzilla reboot.
The completely original story is drastically less expensive than the majority of its counterparts, too, with a thrifty $80 million budget ensuring it doesn’t need to tear the box office a new one in order to turn a profit, but it might be fighting an uphill battle after a shot in the trailer caused widespread controversy that led many to swear off seeing The Creator as a result.
Although Disney, subsidiary 20th Century Studios, or Edwards have yet to publicly comment on the matter, it can’t be denied that one scene glimpsed in the trailers looks uncannily like real-life footage of the 2020 Beirut explosion, which caused 218 deaths and left behind an estimated $15 billion in damage.
The narrative itself revolves around the search for a sentient AI with the power to change the course of history, but if handheld recordings of the incident have been used as the basis for an action-packed epic, then you’ve got to call it a questionable decision.
Published: Aug 2, 2023 01:40 am