The Creator is the first real post-‘war on terror’ movie

30.09.2023 - 13:37 / polygon.com / Gareth Edwards

The United States’ officially designated “Global War on Terrorism” began 22 years ago, just three days after the Sept. 11 attacks. The U.S. ostensibly launched that war to combat terrorism, and went on to wage it in at least four different countries, which were often falsely homogenized into “the Middle East” to simplify the government’s messaging. President George W. Bush’s rhetoric at the time insisted that the war on terror was about eliminating terrorist threats to America’s security, freedom, and way of life — though in truth, the word “threat” was applied loosely, and “guilty by proximity” replaced “guilty by association.” The war ultimately lasted 20 years and functionally ended, after a protracted semi-occupation of Afghanistan by U.S. forces, with an unceremonious retreat in 2021 — though low-level combat operations continue to this day in other regions.

The Creator, the excellent new science fiction movie from director Gareth Edwards (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) is not about the war on terror. But it is about the world that the war on terror left in its wake.

The script, by Edwards and Chris Weitz, sets the story in a slightly alternate history. In the near future, robots called Simulants (or Sims) are loaded with artificial personalities and intelligence that mimics humankind. After a tragic attack by a rogue Sim, the result of a human programming error, the U.S. government decrees that Sims are a threat to Americans’ freedom and way of life, and must be eradicated. So the U.S. Army goes to a region called “New Asia” — a collection of a Southeast Asian countries that allow Sims to have rights on par with those of humans — with NOMAD, a new weapon that’s essentially a suborbital flying fortress. NOMAD can rapidly move anywhere in the region and bomb areas suspected of Sim activity, which strikes fear into the locals and makes underground Sim operation difficult, but certainly not impossible.

When America began its war on terror, few could have accurately predicted a decadeslong quasi-occupation of a foreign country. And it wasn’t until years later that information about the collateral damage of U.S. airstrikes started to gain traction in the public eye and on the world stage. Political and military officials have often described drones as weapons with “surgical” precision, but as it turns out, explosions aren’t choosy about who they kill.

The Creator puts all those acts — the death and destruction wrought by warfare and military occupation — front and center. In the movie’s universe, NOMAD is a flying monument to America’s ever-present military might and the outsized nature of its response to terrorist threats. Small gatherings of Sims and pockets of New Asian resistance fighters are met