The Creator is a Sci-fi epic that puts John David Washington, Gemma Chan and Allison Janney in a war between humans and robots

In this era of widespread scepticism over artificial intelligence, there's something refreshingly optimistic — if perhaps a little naive — about a film that dares to pitch its sympathies in with the robots. So it is with The Creator, the new film from Rogue One director Gareth Edwards, a sci-fi action epic that's both topical and strangely progressive — but whose execution can be as creaky and old-fashioned as humanity itself. It's a battle that's created bitter division between East and West: A vast region known as "New Asia" is sympathetic to AI, while the US-led western territories want to terminate the bots with extreme prejudice. On a remote island in New Asia, western special forces operative Joshua has been sent undercover to infiltrate the AI, but he's fallen for local sympathiser Maya and the two are expecting a child. With humans as the rapacious oppressors and the AI hiding out in a jungle that looks distinctly like Vietnam, the visual analogies are classic Hollywood mix-and-match — audacious and striking, if borderline politically incoherent.