Gareth Edwards directed what has perhaps been the best Star Wars movie of the last decade, even though it technically wasn’t a Star Wars movie. The Rogue One director has now shared how his latest movie, The Creator was directly connected to his last venture.
The Creator is Edwards’ return to directing after the success that was Rogue One back in 2016, with many people wondering why it took him so long to return to the director’s chair given the fact that Rogue One went down so well. His latest film is not so removed though, and Edwards tells of how his earliest inspiration for the film came from the tail end of publicity for the Star Wars prequel.
Speaking to 20th Century Fox in an interview that was hosted on Twitter, Edwards talked about how the two are linked “in a weird way.” Coming down from the high that was his last directorial outing, the director was on a drive to his girlfriend’s hometown in Iowa, thinking, “God, I wonder what I’m going to do next?” when inspiration struck. During his roadtrip, he saw a scene that set off a lightbulb in his head.
I ended up looking out the window listening to music for inspiration and just daydreaming and I saw all these like tall grassland, farm fields, everywhere. Then in the middle of it was what looked like a futuristic factory or building and it had some sort of Japanese writing on it and I started thinking ‘what wonder what hell is going on in there?’ And in my head, because of the way I am, everything becomes science fiction. I was like, ohh, imagine it was a factory building robots. Then I started thinking, ‘what would you think if you were one of those robots and all you’d ever seen was the inside of this factory that you were built in and then something happened and you got to step outside for the first time?’ And that was like the very first seed of the idea.
The seed sown in Edwards’ mind didn’t take long to grow into a fully fledged story, with the director going on to say, “by the time we arrived at my girlfriend’s parents’ house, the rest of the storyline sort of fell into place.”
Despite having this idea back in 2016, it has taken some time to make it a reality. The first report of the movie being underway was back in 2020 when it was reported that he was set to write and direct the movie under a different title, True Love, for New Regency, teaming up with his Rogue One co-producer Kiri Hart who acts as producer on this project. The film was renamed The Creator later on. This wasn’t the only idea that Edwards had wanted to create after 2016’s success, but it was the one that he says “never went away.”
The premise of the film is that AI (you know that thing we’re all worried will take out jobs right now) has launched an assault on Earth, exploding a nuke over Los Angeles. Joshua, a hardened ex-special forces agent (John David Washington) has been tasked with hunting down a devastating new AI weapon only to discover it is a young child, and a new war is waged inside of him over what to do with the child. This is not the first time Edwards will make us fall in love with a robot, as he did so already to devastating effect with the character of K-2SO in Rogue One.
You can catch The Creator in theatres from September 29.