Did Upcoming Sci-Fi Thriller The Creator Use Footage From 2020 Beirut Explosion In Its Trailer?
The latest trailer for the upcoming sci-fi epic The Creator is drawing flak for allegedly using footage of a real disaster.
Directed and co-written by Gareth Edwards (Rogue One), The Creator tells the story of a human soldier (Tenet’s John David Washington) who’s tasked with protecting an android child who holds the key to ending the war between humans and AI.
The movie also stars Gemma Chan, Allison Janney and Ken Watanabe.
The teaser came out on May 18, with the official trailer on July 17.
The new trailer contains brief footage (cue to 0:24) of an explosion caused by the AI after they set off a nuclear warhead in Los Angeles.
Some eagle-eyed folks find the fictional explosion eerily similar to the one which ripped through Beirut in 2020, killing 218 people, injuring 7,000 and leaving 300,000 displaced.
The blast was caused by the accidental detonation of about 2,750 tonnes of improperly stored ammonium nitrate, and according to experts, it was one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions in history.
It isn’t known whether the footage is specifically used just for the trailer or in the final cut of the movie, which is slated for release on Sept 28 in Singapore and Sept 29 in the US.
Whatever it is, the striking similarities left a bad taste in some viewers’ mouths.
Niko Pueringer, the host of the YouTube series Corridor Crew, said: “For my enjoyment of a movie, I want to go in and have fun,” he said. “I want to think these [scenes] are cool [but] when it’s actual footage, it’s not cool anymore.”
Pueringer, who’s the co-founder of the production company Corridor Digital, added that it’s one thing for the visual artists to use the real-life accident as a reference but another to exploit it as stock footage.
Watch Pueringer and his colleagues dissect the footage here:
At press time, the two-minute-and-25-seconds-long trailer clocked over 8.1 million views.
This isn’t the first time a movie received blowback for repurposing real-life disaster footage.
The 2018 Netflix apocalyptic thriller Bird Box, starring Sandra Bullock, contained footage of the 2013 train derailment in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, which killed 47 people, in a fake TV news report.
Despite calls from Canadian officials to have the scene dropped, Netflix refused to budge initially; the streamer eventually reversed the decision a few months later.
The same clip also popped up in the sci-fi series, Travelers, in a fictional newscast describing a nuclear attack on London, but was later edited out.
Netflix also came under fire for reportedly incorporating footage of a Belgium train crash that killed 19 people in its 2017 remake of the Japanese horror Death Note.
Photos: Disney, Corridor Crew/YouTube
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