Escape to the Movies: Transcendence - SkyNet? More Like SkyNot

[MeChaNiZ3D]

If the couple were two gay guys and the 'good scientist' (ugh) was a female, would the film's message be that women are more logical or moral or better for science than men? I don't know how much of a deal the movie makes about Hall being a female, but if it's not pretty blatant I don't see why it can't just be that there are 3 human scientists.

 

[Story]

@MovieBob

This is, without a doubt, the most egregious example of a really, really stupid movie that thinks it's a really, really smart movie since Prometheus.
-MovieBob

Erm. That swipe at Prometheus made me check back with your previous review of that movie.

See, Prometheus is a good movie. Not necessarily a great or a transcendent movie, but it's a really smart, enganging, great-looking, well-acted, well-directed science fiction horror hybrid for grown-ups that doesn't really have any serious flaws.
-MovieBob

So, did you change your mind on Prometheus being smart or am I missing something?

Wow, hmm I did the exact same thing.
Its not too surprising though considering MovieBob has a reputation for changing his opinion on a movie, especially ones were he was hyped for to begin with.
See Man of Steel for another good example of this.

Honestly, all you had to do was state how this moviw was in any way comparable to Prometheus to get me to stay away from it. I didn't like Prometheus before it was cool to do so.

This is just yet another point into the "Christopher Nolan is just a really well disguised hack" category for me. He's one of those directors that everyone thinks is good when he's just not.

I'm not a huge enough fan of Nolan to completely defend him but to be fair, the "worst rated" movies most connected with Nolan these days like Man of Steel and Transcendence, were produced by him not directed by him.

 

[Chimera242]

Virtuosity was the most nineties movie ever. Unbelievable cliché-overload. So much fun to see Russell Crowe play an AI who is 1/180th Hitler.

OT: Kinda what I expected from the poster. Thanks for the confirmation heads-up!

 

[AetherWolf]

I knew this movie would be mediocre at best but I was considering seeing it just because I have a huge boner for omnipotent synthetic AI villains (even if technically that's not even what this movie's about) and because Cillian Murphy happens to be in it (however small a role it is). But all I'm hearing of it is just cringe-worthy.

 

[Schadrach]

The Lawnmower Man is a better film than this? I never thought I'd live long enough to hear anyone say that about a film.

I don't know...I've seen some pretty awful movies...

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/arcade/ for example.

Also there was that sequel to Lawnmower Man, which was astoundingly awful.

(speaking *as* a cyborg, who works in cybernetics on a daily basis)

You've got me interested, what cybernetics do you bear?

I've heard of some fairly advanced prosthetics that react to nerve signals, I've heard of people implanting sensors (or in some cases just magnets) which once the brain adapts causes them to gain another sense (in the case of magnets being able to "feel" electrical fields), but not with anything like the kind of sensitivity of "real" senses (though I wonder if it was done as an infant if it wouldn't be far more acute due to greater neural adaptability, but that is about as unethical as a bit of research is ever going to be).

 

[arithine]

I don't think you got the point of the movie, the movie is playing on your expectations. You expect the AI to be the bad guy and the movie knows this.

Spoilers: Throughout the movie it's trying to make you think what the AI is doing is bad, while subtly giving reasons why it's not. At the end the movie explains how all of the AI's actions were done to improve the lives of everyone, but the closed minded views of the terrorist group and the government stopped that and threw the world into socioeconomic collapse. The self replicators in the movie is the "oh shit" moment for our female lead, who now "understands" that the AI is no longer her husband, part of the reason why she comes to this conclusion is that her husband never wanted to change the world. so she decides to help upload the virus. But it is revealed that these self replicators were to help make the ground more fertile for growing (helping with world hunger) and to make all the rivers on the planet drinkable (eliminating the water shortage), it also turns out that he was trying to improve the world because that's what HER dream was. The AI wasn't the bad guy here.

Though I did find the partial take over of patients to be morally iffy to say the least.