HAVING been raised an 80s child, brought up on a diet of George Lucas, Gareth Edwards’ began a quickly illustrious career in earnest in 2010. His directorial debut, the sci-fi horror film Monsters, made hay of a shoestring budget. Hollywood noticed.

Edwards’ second film was 2014 creature feature Godzilla, a somewhat more expensive affair. Edwards rose to the challenge, breathing distinctly earnest life into the world’s longest running film franchise.

Monsters’ $500k price tag must have felt like pocket money when Rogue One came along. His third. The 2016 Star Wars standalone gifted Nuneaton born Edwards a budget of over a quarter of a billion dollars. He repaid that trust with the franchise’s best entry in three decades. Not since The Empire Strikes Back was Star Wars so thrilling.

Where other auteurs have found themselves swallowed, chewed up and spat out by the Hollywood machine, Edwards has remained true to his own vision. Perhaps this was always his plan?

Having earned the trust of critics, fans and the big studios alike, Edwards this week returns to originality with some hefty financial firepower in his arsenal. The Creator hasn’t quite a Star Wars budget but looks every penny of the price tag it has. Edwards, after all, knows a thing or two about fiscal ingenuity.

The Creator is set on a dystopian future Earth. It stars John David Washington as Joshua, an ex-special forces agent, hardened by experience and grieving the disappearance of his wife. His world is at war, humanity locked in brutal combat with the might of artificial intelligence gone rogue.

When word reaches the human contingent that the AI architect, known as the Creator, has developed a weapon capable of ending the war, Joshua and his team are dispatched to destroy it. One thing they hadn’t bargained for was how they would feel on learning that this mankind massacring machine is just a child.

Gemma Chan and Ken Ken Watanabe co-star in the film, which also features turns by Allison Janney and Ralph Ineson. Music from film icon Hans Zimmer lends the film suitable gravity, while there’s visual splendour in the work of cinematographers Greig Fraser and Oren Soffer.

Critics have been raving about The Creator for weeks now, some hailing the film the best sci-fi in years. Certainly, it’s one to be seen on the biggest of big screens.