MOVIE MUSIC UK

Original Review by Jonathan Broxton

The Creator is a science fiction epic from writer/director Gareth Edwards, set in a world where artificial intelligence has become wholly integrated into society, in the form of both robots and human/A.I. hybrids known as ‘sims’. However, after the A.I. detonates a nuclear warhead in Los Angeles, essentially destroying the city, the world descends into war and chaos. Years later, US army special forces agent Joshua is recruited to hunt down and kill ‘the creator,’ the elusive architect of a mysterious new type of advanced A.I. weapon that has the power to end the war and destroy humanity. However, things change for Joshua when he discovers that this ‘super weapon’ is actually a genetically modified child, who just wants humans and sims to live in peace. The film stars John David Washington, Gemma Chan, Ken Watanabe, Alison Janney, and newcomer Madeleine Yuna Voyles as the mysterious child, and it’s mostly good. It has been marketed as a cerebral, ambitious new science fiction story, and while it is certainly visually and technically impressive, I found it to be a weird conceptual mishmash derivative of other, better films: one part Blade Runner, one part Apocalypse Now, with some other Vietnam allegory thrown in for good measure. Unusually, the central relationship between Joshua and the mystical child actually kept reminding me of the one between Eddie Murphy and The Golden Child from the 1986 film of the same name, which I’m sure is not what the filmmakers envisioned. I liked it, but I wanted to like it more than I did.

The score for The Creator is by Hans Zimmer, who is yet again dipping his toes into the ‘highbrow sci-fi’ pool off the back of things like Interstellar and Dune, but if the news media is to be believed, he may not have been the director’s first choice. In an interview with LinkedIn Live for MIT Technology Review, Edwards revealed that originally, he tried to have an A.I. score the film. Edwards apparently asked an unspecified A.I. music company to use the tech to create a soundtrack in the style of Zimmer, and Edwards said the A.I. system generated a track that was maybe a “7 out of 10” in terms of how good it was in relation to something by a real composer. Eventually Edwards decided that scoring the entire movie wasn’t feasible – yet – and ended up going to the real Zimmer for the finished product, but the whole thing is a fascinating offshoot of some of the arguments I made in my review for Blue Beetle back in August, which I described as sounding like ‘the first A.I. score’.

In that review I talked about the actor’s union SAG-AFTRA, and their concerns about digital image rights among other things in the context of the ongoing strike activity, and also how the writer’s union WGA were concerned about their work being undermined by text-generating software like ChatGPT. As I said then, the impact of A.I. on film music has been negligible so far, but there are certainly concerns about whether music-composing software, similar to what ChatGPT does for text, will eventually become a norm, potentially replacing human composers when it comes to creating music. It’s impossible to know whether Edwards was serious about having A.I. score The Creator, or whether it was a marketing gimmick intended to cash in on one of the underlying thematic ideas in his screenplay, but it does speak to the broader conversation about the whole issue of creatives being replaced by tech, and the potential for a sea change in how music is written that could arise from it. On The Creator, at least the idea is an interesting one, conceptually, considering what the film is about; on other films, less so.

Thankfully, in this case, Zimmer was asked to bring his personal touch to the score in place of sterile tech, and the result is one of his best scores in several years – it’s probably my favorite new score from him since Wonder Woman 1984 in 2020. I guess that, in terms of tone and approach, you could say that the score is in the same vein as Interstellar, but with more emphasis on warmer and more appealing orchestral tones that speak to the humanity at the core of the story, and also with some subtle South East Asian textures that represent the geographic part of the world in which the film is set – a lot of it was filmed on location in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and places like that.

The score begins quite subtly with “They’re Not People,” which is dominated by big, expansive, but somehow dream-like slow chords which are less to do with thematic ideas and more to do with creating a wondrous ambiance. “A Place in the Sky” offers something markedly different, however, as Zimmer brings in a beautiful palette of ethnic woodwinds and metallic percussion ideas that very much recall the music he wrote for Beyond Rangoon all the way back in 1995 – an evocative, haunting sound of a specific place and a specific culture. Zimmer blends these sounds with some lovely string passages that are romantic yet slightly introspective, and seem to represent the relationship between Joshua and his wife Maya. “Where It All Began” is darker and more ominous, and here Zimmer augments his occasionally quite abrasive orchestral textures with a solo vocal performance by singer Stephanie Olmanni, who brings a somewhat tragic tone to the piece as a whole. This cue also features a more prominent performance of what will eventually come to assert itself as the score’s main theme, but more on that later.

“Surrounded” is a tragic-sounding action cue which blends the South East Asian orchestrations with a more imposing, brass-heavy action sound that is effective in context, but the turning point of the score comes in the subsequent “She’s Not Real,” which introduces a new theme for the relationship that develops between Joshua and the mysterious child-like ‘weapon’ that he nicknames Alfie. A sense of drama and heroism begins to assert itself here, coinciding with the way that Joshua – who has hitherto been a staunch believer in the anthropological superiority of ‘real’ humans over robots and sims – begins to understand and empathize with Alfie’s plight. Zimmer uses a bold four-note phrase, usually carried by brass, and usually in counterpoint with a dynamic ascending string rhythm, to illustrate the idea, and as the score builds towards its finale, this theme will begin to dominate in a series of increasingly impressive ways. It’s interesting, actually, how Zimmer’s music for the Joshua/Alfie relationship feels more emotionally striking than the actual in-context depiction does; I found that in the film Joshua’s switching sides, and the fatherly protection he feels for Alfie, was a little rushed, too sudden, too out-of-the-blue. Zimmer’s musical response to this same concept, however, has much more emotional depth, and helps sell the story in a more convincing way.

The nine-minute set piece comprising “Standby” and “Missile Launch” underscores a key scene where Joshua and Alfie work together and try to stop the military launching a devastating barrage of missiles at A.I. targets, and it is excellent. “Standby” starts slowly and intimately, with a lovely woodwind statement of the main theme, but it gradually begins to grow into something substantially more powerful. The main theme for brass asserts itself, the tension is increased by adding in the metallic percussion textures alongside the propulsive strings, and eventually a full choir joins in, giving the cue a sense of importance and scale. The cue ends with a Dark Knight-style action sequence, fast strings underpinned with incessant percussion, and this then gives way to the monumental “Missile Launch,” where Zimmer revisits the sound of Interstellar by way of a prominent pipe organ underneath the churning, surging strings and imposing choir. This religioso sound works wonders in context – these missiles would be a God-like catastrophe for the A.I. people, raining fire and damnation upon them from heaven – and as a listening experience it’s equally successful, especially when the rousing main theme rears its head as a motif for the heroic efforts Joshua and Alfie make.

“Prayer” is a more contemplative, spiritual-sounding piece, a beautifully arranged hymn for choir and pipe organ that, again, speaks to the religious elements of the film’s screenplay, where Alfie continually asks Joshua whether, as an A.I.-created synthetic human, she will go to heaven if she dies. After a low-key piece of moody sound design in “The Wounded,” and then a more energetic action sequence in “Lab Raid” which expertly blends the orchestra with ethnic percussion and Tibetan throat singers, Zimmer returns to his religioso sound in “Heaven,” except here he combines that sound with the reflective South East Asian/Beyond Rangoon textures to excellent effect. What I like about this piece – and, indeed, the score as a whole – is how Zimmer combines these different sound palettes in response to the developing narrative of the film. It sounds like this should be a no-brainer, film scoring 101, but it’s increasingly uncommon in film music for a score to be this specific in terms of dramatic development, and I feel like I need to praise it when I hear it done this well.

The big finale of the score is “True Love,” in which Zimmer breaks free of all the shackles of restraint and offers an enormously powerful and emotionally cathartic musical payoff. The swell of the orchestra, the way it combines with the choir, Tina Guo’s haunting solo cello, the crescendos of noise that lead into glorious brass performances of the relationship theme for Joshua and Alfie… I don’t mind admitting that it gave me goosebumps in context. I have always found that Zimmer is at his best when he writes like this; for all his discussion about new ways of doing things, experimentation with sound design, and so on and so on, I still believe that when he goes for the emotional jugular and goes big and bold and beautiful, that’s when he excels. The Lion King, Gladiator, The Last Samurai, The Prince of Egypt. You know the sort of music I’m talking about. This cue is in that vein, and it’s just outstanding.

The Creator is a really, really good score, which successfully blends some of Zimmer’s more modern science fiction sensibilities with the evocative Asian sound of scores like Beyond Rangoon, and builds up to a powerful, emotional finale that really stirs the soul. And, really, this score is the perfect rebuttal to anyone who thinks that A.I. film music is the way of the future – it takes an actual person, someone with musical sensitivity and dramatic intelligence, to take all these seemingly disparate elements and bring them together into a score which has this much heart and depth.

Buy the Creator soundtrack from the Movie Music UK Store

Track Listing:

• They’re Not People (2:19)
• A Place in the Sky (2:25)
• Where It All Began (4:11)
• Surrounded (2:34)
• She’s Not Real (2:13)
• Standby (6:12)
• Missile Launch (3:01)
• Prayer (2:47)
• The Wounded (3:08)
• Lab Raid (4:31)
• Heaven (6:57)
• True Love (3:30)

Running Time: 43 minutes 48 seconds

Hollywood Records (2023)

Music composed by Hans Zimmer. Conducted by Gavin Greenaway. Orchestrations by Oscar Senen. Additional music by Steve Mazzaro. Featured musical soloists Aleksandra Suklar, Pedro Eustache and Tina Guo. Special vocal performances by Stephanie Olmanni. Recorded and mixed by Geoff Foster and Alan Meyerson. Edited by Ryan Rubin, Graeme Stewart and Neven Seus. Album produced by Hans Zimmer and Steve Mazzaro.