Taken from what Rotten Tomatoes considers its “top critics”, who I have - at least - heard of (mostly).
It’s currently at 79% on RT (for what that’s worth). The Guardian and The AV Club like it, so that’s good enough for me personally.
Barry Hertz, Globe and Mail
The film is, as far as contemporary studio thinking goes, a gamble. And it pays off wonderfully.
Tomris Laffly, TheWrap
Gareth Edwards’ sci-fi fantasy is thrillingly original despite its murky take on AI.
Noah Berlatsky, Chicago Reader
The Creator is a movie about AI that is hammered, welded, and spackled together from a whole lot of other better and more coherent films.
Justin Lowe, AV Club
With few other comparable releases in play, The Creator is likely to stand as the most impressive and immersive sci-fi movie of the year.
Original Score: B+
Kevin Maher, Times (UK)
When a film has no soul the messaging tends to flop about indiscriminately in a multidirectional haze.
Original Score: 2/5
Hoai-Tran Bui, Inverse
The Creator is a visually stunning but emotionally hollow effort from the Rogue One director that mistakes its inspired vision of a new kind of sci-fi world for greatness.
Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
This kind of big, original movie is unfortunately all too rare in the Hollywood of today, and Edwards creates something that’s truly remarkable to take in…[but] underneath this shiny surface, there are unfortunately critical issues with the motherboard.
Original Score: 2.5/4
Glenn Whipp, Los Angeles Times
Unfortunately, there’s precious little in “The Creator” that feels fresh, particularly if you’ve seen one of the first two “Terminator” movies, watched “The Last of Us” or bought your kid (OK, yourself) a Baby Yoda plush toy.
Alonso Duralde, The Film Verdict
If the script wants viewers to perceive the robots as well-meaning, innocent victims — metaphorically or otherwise — it doesn’t stick that landing.
Clarisse Loughrey, Independent (UK)
An increasingly rare piece of mainstream cinema that proves CGI can be good for art when placed in the right hands.
Original Score: 4/5
Soren Andersen, Seattle Times
Too often Edwards’ attempts to work so many diverse elements into his narrative result in tangles of disconcerting confusion.
Original Score: 2.5/4
A.A. Dowd, IGN Movies
As pure spectacle, The Creator is often jaw-dropping in its imagery, its relatively frugal special effects, and the detailed depth of its futuristic design. It’s shakier as drama and sci-fi…
Original Score: 7/10
Mark Jenkins, Washington Post
Overloaded with incidents, effects and explosions, “The Creator” fails to develop the personalities and relationships that would give its central characters an affecting humanity.
Original Score: 2/4
Nicholas Barber, BBC
Edwards’ ambitious, immersive film should prompt the intoxicating awe that you might have got from The Matrix and Avatar – the feeling that you’re seeing a rich vision of the future unlike any that has been on the big screen before.
Original Score: 5/5
Dylan Roth, Observer
It is not the messiah of genre cinema; it’s a very good, perhaps great, futuristic epic that will leave you with something to talk about afterwards.
Original Score: 3/4
Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic
“The Creator” isn’t a masterpiece of the AI genre, if there’s such a thing yet, but it’s a good start.
Original Score: 3.5/5
Brian Truitt, USA Today
A movie that makes you think about existence and the world around you, explodes your brain with cool visuals and sufficiently blows stuff up? “The Creator” being a sci-fi fan’s dream is just science.
Original Score: 3.5/4
Alex Godfrey, Empire Magazine
An inspired, soulful piece of sci-fi, the endlessly stunning visuals all in service of a heartfelt, sensitive story. Gareth Edwards is the real deal — this is fantastic, enveloping cinema.
Original Score: 4/5
Peter Debruge, Variety
“The Creator” can hardly even keep its premise straight.
Nick Schager, The Daily Beast
A visually striking but shoddily written and crushingly derivative amalgam of assorted genre forefathers
Linda Marric, The Jewish Chronicle
See it on the biggest screen you can find, and who knows it may even change your mind on a range of issues, including on the so called dangers of AI advancement.
Original Score: 5/5
David Ehrlich, indieWire
The most fundamental reason why “The Creator,” for all of its shortcomings and clichés, ultimately sold me on its optimism is that it succeeds as a blueprint where it fails as a movie.
Original Score: B-
David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter
It’s too bad the movie’s visual polish and inventiveness are applied to a hackneyed story and one-dimensional characters.
Sep 26, 2023
Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
It’s an intriguing, stimulating, exhilarating movie, which really does address – with both head and heart – the great issue of our age, AI.
Original Score: 4/5
Fionnuala Halligan, Screen International
Mostly there, but the human parts that are missing are still keenly felt.
Jake Cole, Slant Magazine
With The Creator, Gareth Edwards finally finds the balance between arresting images and grounded emotional stakes.
Original Score: 3/4