There’s an incidental extra-textual tension surrounding “The Creator,” the sprawling new original sci-fi film from writer/ director Gareth Edwards. The film makes the argument for a peaceful coexistence with artificial intelligence, which isn’t exactly in line with the prevailing popular sentiment. It’s a bold — even contrarian — stance for Edwards to assert that not only is AI a future we should embrace, but that AI could possibly be more human than human.

There’s also an irony in the fact that AI couldn’t produce the kind of beautifully creative filmmaking seen in “The Creator.” The script does use familiar story beats and archetypes for its emotional core, and it visually references classics like “Blade Runner,” “Star Wars,” “Apocalypse Now” and “Aliens.” But AI couldn’t produce the kind of cinematic moment that comes early in the film, where a group of swaggering American commandos in choppers swoop over a lushly green Southeast Asian landscape. Instead of Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” as Francis Ford Coppola used in “Apocalypse Now,” they get ready to land for their raid to the moody strains of Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place.” Only a human creator could make that surprising choice work.

The U.S. military here is a brutal bunch, engaging in a retaliatory war against AI after a nuke has decimated the Los Angeles of the near future. AI is still welcomed in Asia, where humans have established an easy symbiosis with the robots, and so the U.S. has been carpet bombing every quaint village and hamlet in the region with a massive aircraft known as NOMAD.

Enter our hero, Joshua (John David Washington), who straddles an uneasy line between the two warring factions. Having lost his family and a few limbs in the L.A. nuke, he has worked for the military, going undercover to uncover Nirmata, the creator of all AI. He falls in love with his source, Maya (Gemma Chan) in the process, and when we meet Joshua, he’s cooing over her pregnant belly while a vinyl soul record plays in their beach hut. There’s a raid, NOMAD strikes, and Joshua is left with only his memories and grief over what could have been.

Washington has a certain tabula rasa quality as an actor that serves him when he has to play a cipher, such as in “Black Kkklansman” or “Tenet.” But that doesn’t help when he’s playing a man who decides to go rogue behind enemy lines against his own army simply because he wants to see his presumed dead wife again; he doesn’t quite sell Joshua’s motivation that powers him through this relentless journey.

The best aspect of “The Creator” is the visual world that Edwards dreams up. It’s a stunningly beautiful film rendered in shades of orange, teal, black and green, combining the natural beauty of the Thai landscape with advanced robotics.