Really shaky intro here, Bob, railing against egotistical assholes unaware of their own ignorance and then merrily blowing past a perfectly valid interpretation of a film and condemning it out of hand by assigning your own prejudices and deeming them the Word of God.
Pull up a chair and consider an alternate interpretation, full of spoilers, so be wary.
What if RIFT is not meant to be the protagonist? They certainly aren't portrayed in a very positive light. Their default tactics are various flavors of murder and they have less interest in establishing an active dialogue than Al Qaeda, they lack the ability to self-scrutinize to the point where the very basic principle that violent action begets violent counter-action (i.e hastening the singularity that all quailed at the though of), and to top it all off, are lead by a young woman who swiftly goes from well-intentioned extremist to the crazy-face sister of the hypocrite liberal girl meme. RIFT are almost unthinking, absolutely illogical and a representation of some of the very worse biological response humanity has to offer. Why name them the heroes? The movie portrays them very clearly, and quite frankly unashamedly, because they exist, they exist in every reactionary twitch against GMOs, every Fox newsworthy tirade proclaiming that a woman's body can prevent pregnancy during rape, every man or woman who thinks strapping on a bomb and targeting a civilian installation will somehow overthrow an oppressive regime. RIFT is a totem for the worst of mankind's behavior, the responses and actions driven by fear, at times somewhat justified, at times utterly blind, but all rooted in a common terror of the unknown, the new, and the uncontrollable.
Contrast this with the scientists you dub the antagonist, a married couple driven to the extraordinary by extraordinary circumstances. Isn't it extraordinary, that it's not some power hungry man or group that spawns this immense leap in AI technology, but the love of a woman and friend working to save the colleague they both loved? In fact, we can blame love for most of the major events both the human and synthetic elements precipitate. That AI, far from sinister, far from deeming humanity some pox to be scoured away, pursues every last single action because it believes it is fulfilling the desire of the one individual it was beholden to, that it loved, a love not defined by biochemical exchange or biological imperative, but by the recognition of value, the understanding that it values this person, and even if said persons emotional impulses and reactions seem incomprehensible, they are still of value and worthy of evaluation and even resultant self-modification. It's the difference between compassionate and companionate affection and the basis for most long-lasting, healthy relationships.
This AI never kills a single individual (with the possible exception of a couple soldiers attempting to kill it), and offers to cure the ails of any given person so long as they can accept an autonomous, but networked existence. Now there's plenty of room for ethical debate here. Is it robbing these individuals of their humanity, their identity, their basic sapience? After all, it's proven that he can override their impulses at any given moment to fulfill a specific purpose. And yet at the same time, once disconnected from the AI's network, such an individual is hardly grateful, and hardly full of stories of the black, abysmal, soulless terror on the other side. Rather, knowing he's on the cusp of death, he begs to be reconnected, a far cry from the vision of hell espoused by RIFT's leader (a monkey, hooked up to a similar machine, screaming and screaming). Yet never once, does RIFT or the greater portion of shown humanity associated with them, stop to parley, to draw terms at what is and is not acceptable. Rather, in fear, they lash out. Hell, even the once-man-now-AI's wife succumbs to the fear of a being she no longer fully comprehends, she fails to explain or enumerate on those feelings, reacting instead on impulse. And the AI lets her leave. No HAL, no GLADOS, it just lets her leave.
And your "hero's" last ditch effort to slay the "evil" AI? Pump its lover full of a virus and then send her off in the hopes that it'll kill itself trying to save her life? Hardly the noble, fucking option. Perhaps it isn't meant to be. The AI's response? Far from an almost well-deserved at this point world ending shebang, it sees the dagger, recognizes the irrationality of the human motivation behind it, and still acquiesces to that idiot, emotional response. Saving what it can, a single moment suspended with its wife, and willingly submitting to death and releasing its hold on the humans it healed in the process. Would you decry its choice as illogical? In a certain light, an organism taking any action that knowingly threatens its survival and growth is illogical. And by another view, coming to grips with the realization that some intangible things are of more worth than biological and evolutionary imperatives is a much higher expression of logic.
By this interpretation, I can deem this movie a rather lovely thing to watch with a rather potent, and beautiful message. Sure the science was soft enough to spread on toast, but a sci-fi film driven more by emotion and message rather than spectacle, has every right to be quite soft. And no fucker who worships at the altar of Star Wars and/or Star Trek has a safe place to stand and condemn it. There's a place for a marriage of hard sci-fi and hard message, but a book provides a far better medium than a film in that instance. So there's my review, I quite liked it, but then again, I loved the Fountain, different strokes for different folks, eh? My interpretation has no more intrinsic merit than Bob's, but it seems sound and in harmony with the data provided and at least I can pull it out and examine it without smothering myself in a thick, sticky layer of cynicism beforehand, so I've got that going for me.
This community has the oddest love/hate relationship with now popular phrase, "Check your privilege."
Here's a better one, "Check your conceit."
