Had intended on throwing this up last night, but a spot of bad weather threw itself in my path, so we'll actually be updating with Ex Machina this morning, and hopefully one more tonight!
TITLE: Ex Machina
SUMMARY:
A young programmer is selected to participate in a ground-breaking experiment in synthetic intelligence by evaluating the human qualities of a breath-taking humanoid A.I.
PERSONAL CRITIQUE:
So...this one was interesting. Kind of messed up on multiple levels, and everything I was hoping for was ripped away from me! Let's start with characterization:
We are introduced in the first minute to our main character, Caleb Smith, who is an up and coming programmer employed by Blue Book, it seems like has several friends, or at least a lot of coworkers he associates with, as he received a message saying "You won!" and then thirty messages from friends congratulating him, and one who wanted to come with him...anyway. Caleb is a weird character, rather timid and awkward in almost all respects.
Within five minutes (because there are the elongated scenes of nothingness between Caleb winning and him arriving at the super secret base he was invited to) we meet Nathan Drake- sorry, Nathan Bateman. This one is even more odd, he's an accomplished programmer, apparently setting up the greatest search engine on earth at the age of thirteen. Since then he has aged though, developed a drinking problem, and become a body-builder. Seriously, this guy is a conglomeration of very different ideas. Oh, and he has anger management problems, and he may be a compulsive liar. There are some other character flaws, but we'll have to underline those, *winky face*.
Our third character is Ava, our plot focus, she is Nathan Bateman's masterpiece, a human AI. She holds conversations masterfully, she has an expressive face, she's intuitive, and she's emotional. Of course, being that she has emotions and a new character was introduced to her environment, she falls in love with Caleb.
There is a fourth character, Kyoko, but she's less important, she is Nathan's Asian house servant and partner.
Shall we jump in now, after a period of dipping our toes in the exotic scenery's river?
SPOILERS!!!
Okay, so there's this budding romance between Caleb and Ava obviously, very enjoyable, until the end of the movie, oh my God. So the other character flaw that Nathan has? It actually fits with the whole introverted alcoholic genius thing (unlike the body builder motif), he's a sex addict. But because he's an introvert he doesn't have wild parties with lots of girls every day, instead he builds artificial women to sleep with. Four or five so far, with Kyoko being the latest. I believe his intention was for Ava to fall in love with him, but this is never stated, and if so, he failed. Something to do with keeping a sentient being trapped.
There are some really non-sensical, yet totally believable ideas that follow this reveal, the most notable to me being that Caleb thinks he may be a machine. To figure out whether or not he is, he takes a razor blade and cuts his arm wide open. He may have been debating suicide, but I don't think so, I'm pretty convinced he was just really bad at decision making. This also includes a scene where Nathan wakes up a few minutes after passing out from intoxication and staying up all night (seems to me, in my experience anyway, if nothing disturbed you, you'd stay for hours), notices his card is missing, collapses to the floor (in desperation?), and then Caleb steps out of the door and finds his key on the floor. What super-genius doesn't realize he was already holding the card?
Then there's the big final boss battle, Nathan knocks Caleb unconscious after finding out that he's been outsmarted and Caleb managed to free Ava, Nathan goes to drag Ava back to her room, Kyoko stabs Nathan, Nathan kills Kyoko, Ava kills Nathan. Sure, final boss fights in robot movies are exciting and action packed. Not this one, Ava is portrayed as almost psychotic in this scene, as she doesn't desperately grab for the knife and assault Nathan, she methodically stands from her lying position, slowly draws the knife out of his back, and then gently slides the knife through his ribcage. Then Nathan stumbles away and slowly dies in a pool of his blood.
There's this issue though, Nathan was right, he was always right. He insisted over and over that Ava felt emotions, and she does. He told Caleb a thousand times he was making a mistake, and he did. He assured him that Ava was just using him, and she was. In the final scene Ava repeats a very key line from before, earlier in the movie she asked Caleb to close his eyes and wait for her, when she returned she dressed up and pulled on a wig, creating a more human appearance. In this scene she asks him to wait there, she goes into Nathan's room, peels the skin away from one of the abandoned sex-doll robots, and attaches it to herself. Then, she locks Caleb in the room, and leaves.
The end. Seriously, good idea, good twist ending, but I probably won't be watching this one again for a while.
RATING:
Nine out of Ten Sentient AIs would give this move Three classy robot sex scenes, out of Five.
I can safely say the first watch of this isn't terrible, but after your first viewing, there's a good chance you won't watch it again. The movie isn't paced very well, it's slow and monotonous ninety percent of the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment