Gareth Edwards Says Apu Trilogy Influenced The Creator: ‘It’s Terrible Thing To Do But…’ | Exclusive – News18

British director Gareth Edwards has revealed that Satyajit Ray’s Apu Sansar, also known as the Apu Trilogy, played an influential factor during the making of The Creator. In an exclusive chat with News18 Showsha, Edwards revealed that he watched the trilogy — featuring Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956) and The World of Apu (1959) — during the pandemic and it made him want to make a film set in the South and East Asia.

Gareth Edwards, who also directed Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) and Godzilla (2014), said, “I watched those during the pandemic and that influenced the film a little bit in terms of… It just reassured me that I really want to mark a science fiction film in that part of the world (South and East Asia). It’s a terrible thing to do but I spent time watching that film imagining that it was a science-fiction and I got very excited about it. That was the main one I watched recently that had an impact.”

Watch the full interview below:

It is no secret that Satyajit Ray’s films have influenced international cinema. Directors such as Martin Scorsese, Akira Kurosawa, and Wes Anderson have spoken about the impact the legendary Indian filmmaker has had on them and their cinema.

Meanwhile, in the same interview, Gareth revealed that they also paid a lot of attention to the music. The director had roped in the legendary Hans Zimmer for composing the music for the futuristic film. However, Gareth was clear he wanted the composer to create the kind of music which is not his usual style.

“When we were doing the music, we didn’t want people to realise it was him. We didn’t want it to sound like another soundtrack he has already done. When you make a movie, you have put in music before the composer actually makes the final score so we had to use temporary music and we tried all kinds of things in the sequences (featuring the Asian locations), and one of them was Cambodian music. We filmed in Cambodia and there was actually a real band playing and one guy was blind and they were just amazing. I bought their CD and we tried using that,” he revealed.

Describing the climax scene of the film, Gareth said, “He took a theme which is towards the end of the movie, that is with Orchestra and choir and very sort of a religious sound and he gave it all these Asian instruments. The audience gets to learn it earlier in the film without realising it and then they hear it in this totally different version towards the end and it feels familiar. It was these little tricks that I thought was very clever.”

The Creator stars John David Washington, Gemma Chan, Ken Watanabe, Sturgill Simpson, and Allison Janney. 20th Century Studios India releases the film on September 29, 2023, only in cinemas.