Transcendence

Dustin: 3 of 5 stars Nick: 3 of 5 stars Average: 3 of 5 stars (Woozy canary)

Dustin: Transcendence is the first film directed by Wally Pfister, the masterful cinematographer behind The Dark Knight and Inception. It stars Johnny Depp as HAL 9000, Rebecca Hall as his wife and Morgan Freeman phoning in his performance (see Figure 1, below).

Figure 1

It’s set in a near future when artificial intelligence is almost an artificial reality. Will (Depp), a dying genius programmer, has his wife upload his memory into a computer. The program becomes super intelligent, but retains a human personality. To the surprise of no one who’s ever seen 2001, Alien, The Terminator or The Matrix, this turns out to be a bad idea.

Nick: Transcendence has all the great ideas and poor execution that most science fiction films have today. The general concept is fascinating, but is eventually ruined by radiation bullets, superpowered lackeys, and smart people making the most unfortunate of decisions.

Dustin: Let’s just hope radiation bullets never become a real thing, imagine if they made something like that that could also pierce armor.

In Red Letter Media’s review of Her, they said a lesser filmmaker would be tempted to have the artificially intelligent operating system go out of control and start destroying everything, and humanity would have to stop it, and it would become a big, loud, dumb action movie. I think that pretty much describes Transcendence. Transcendence is like Her as written by Michael Crichton.

Nick: The most disturbing thing is when the government agrees to team with the terrorist group, R.I.F.T., in order to stop Will. We are never told exactly why the terrorists tried to kill Will at the beginning, but they of course do. Then when all of Will’s friends meet the terrorists responsible, none of them bring up or even emotionally react to the terrorists. His best friend meets the woman soon after Will’s death, but never asks why?

Dustin: I also agree they got too cozy with the terrorists too easily. They might have been right in trying to stop Will after the computer program version of him tried to take over the world, but it seems like after someone shot my best friend, I wouldn’t ever give them a second chance.

Nick: But before they kill him, that wasn’t Will’s intention. So the terrorists are the real cause of all of this. Will caused action, terrorists react, Evelyn starts to act, and then the whole world reacts. Also, the fact that our main characters’ names are Will and Eve(lyn) should let you know that like The Matrix, there are a lot of Biblical allegories.

Dustin: That’s a good point about Will’s original intention, which was never to change the world. They hinted it was Evelyn’s dream to change the world. It’s also worth pointing out Evelyn is the one who uploaded Will into the computer program while Will just lay there dying. How much of what happened was really Evelyn’s subconscious desires? Was the AI Will just Eve’s creation? They hinted at this in the movie, but it wasn’t really explored, and that would have made for a more interesting movie.

The movie has elements from Frankenstein (man playing God), 2001: A Space Odyssey (AI destroying man), Her (romance between a human and AI), the Bible, and Michael Crichton’s Prey (nanobots). I felt a lot like I’d seen all this before and could figure out where it was going. Instead of exploring one interesting theme, it seemed like they were just throwing a lot of things at the wall and seeing what would stick.

Nick: On Rotten Tomatoes, one reviewer’s blurb decried Her for not being as complicated as Transcendence. Her only asked one question thoroughly, while Transcendence tried to make many points poorly. Her wasn’t trying to be overly ambitious, it was a simple story with a high-minded idea. In Transcendence it seems as if all they do is say “technology” and how much power it has instead of explaining how this power goes towards helping anything. Nanotechnology, RAM, hard drive, processor, oh, and NANOTECHNOLOGY!!!!!

Dustin: The movie used a lot of computer lingo and figured the audience wouldn’t understand it. The audience would just know enough to guess this is computer stuff and it’s important to the plot. Maybe it was realistic. It doesn’t really matter. But it did seem cliched. I imagine not all hackers type super fast and are 100 percent focused 100 percent of the time. They showed Morgan Freeman’s office, and all the hackers were doing programming and hacking stuff, typing super fast. In real life, I imagine some of them would be on Facebook, or typing at a normal pace, since it is hard to keep that up for eight hours a day. Then the computers explode because hacking. Must’ve been the same hackers from Live Free or Die Hard--another realistic portrayal of the capabilities of hacking.

Nick: From what I’ve read about nanotechnology, it could not come close to making humans into superhumans. What lacks here compared to a Christopher Nolan film is feeling and comedy. There is one single line in the film that made me crack a smile, but the line was delivered to the wrong person. Johnny Depp says that it’s amusing that anti-technological and peace-loving terrorists use technology (with radiation) and harm in order to carry out their “will.” This is said to Paul Bettany, while I would have preferred it to have been Kate Mara (lead terrorist), so I could just gather what it is they want and why.

Dustin: This movie could have used a little humor. One reviewer, Matt Zoller Seitz, criticised Depp’s performance for being too flat, but I think that was an artistic decision by Depp or the director to make him seem more robotic. But it certainly didn’t bring much joy to the movie.

Having said all that, I still think this movie wasn’t as bad as the Rotten Tomatoes aggregate would have you believe. It was well-made, well-acted, and you could tell the people involved were really trying. I just think as a movie trying to make a thought-provoking statement, it sort of fell flat. As an action movie with cool explosions and special effects, it worked.

Nick: I’m a big fan of Rotten Tomatoes, but I’m a little tired of people misreading the information. The 19 percent (as of this writing) on Transcendence is an aggregate scored based purely on whether or not the critic liked the movie. So one out of every five critics enjoyed the movie. But right under the large 19 percent is the average score of the actual ratings given by those critics. That stands at 4.6 out of 10. Not nearly as bad. My brother wouldn’t go see the movie because of that LARGE 19%. This movie obviously cared about what it was trying to do, and that is always worth more than seeing a shitty film doing mediocre work that will be forgotten within the next year until it makes its appearance on Netflix.

Dustin: On a related note, Adam Sandler’s Jack and Jill has a 3 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, but an average rating of 2.6 out of 10.

Nick: Paul Bettany and Rebecca Hall were as good as they could be with the script they were given. Bettany is someone who is always entertaining. There is another movie coming out next week, The Machine, that has a very similar plot, but its an indie film, so don’t expect a two-hour runtime and explosions. Transcendence also made a gigantic misstep when it starts its story with the ending. This might work with dramas (American Beauty), but it’s poorly placed in a film where the obvious is made to be even more obvious.

Dustin: I agree. Note to aspiring suspense writers: Don’t tell your story in flashback, it takes away the suspense.

Overall, I’d recommend this purely as an action film, but not as a thought-provoking cautionary tale on the perils of technology.