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

polygon.com:

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