Ex Machina (2015)
Director: Alex Garland
Writer: Alex Garland
Cast: Alicia Vikander, Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Romance
Length: 108 minutes
Indie Film
Synopsis (spoiler free): Caleb, a young programmer wiz, wins a competition at his internet company to spend one week at a remote mountain retreat belonging to the CEO of the company he works for. He finds Nathan, the reclusive CEO, to be an enigmatic genius, with a dark side. Caleb then finds he's the crucial element in a ground breaking experiment in artificial intelligence. Enter Ava, who's the beautiful and very human like machine, Ava's self awareness is being tested.
Oscar Isaac, Alicia Vikander and Domhnall Gleesonmake up the primary cast.
Ex Machina is not at all a sci-fi film in the typical sense. Oh sure that poster looks as sci fi as you can get but the film's focus is on drama, mystery and even romance....It focuses on three individuals who are alone in a remote country setting. But beyond that this is an existential film that explores what it means to be a human and and what it means to be sentient. A story about when is it wrong to treat a creation as property.
The film requires that the viewer cares about the A.I. creation 'Ava' and feels for her plight. If you only view her as an 'it', or as a machine then the movie failed. But I bet anyone who watches this will care about Ava and view her as alive. I did
Ex Machina is an intimately shot, Indie film. It takes a close up look at three people with a minimum of outside influences. This allows the film to focus on the implications of creating a sentient A.I. machine.
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I finally saw this!
When trying to lower the cable bill, we ended up with a couple movie channels and this was in the OnDemand menu! So I was excited that a film I had really wanted to see was available.
While watching it, a lot of other things came to mind - the topic of A.I. is nothing new and I'm not going to call the movie derivative, but throughout, it reminded me of several other movies & TV shows:
Star Trek TNG - the topic of A.I. has probably been most thoroughly explored via
Commander Data in ST-TNG and the series' subsequent movies.
The Terminator (1984 - 2019) movies as well and the movie
A.I. (2001) have made extensive warnings and commentary on A.I. development.
Solaris (1972 & 2002): The cinematography, scene changes, background music and mood reminded me a lot of
Solaris (both versions) - and since
Solaris had some things in common with
2001: A Space Oddessy (1968) - another movie with some exploration of A.I. and it's potential hazards - some aspects reminded me of that also.
The Simpsons:
WARNING: "Behind the Laughter" spoilers below
The episode "You Only Move Twice" - where Homer goes to work for a James-Bond-type villain. The similarities are obvious as Ex Machina has the audience suspicious of Nathan as potentially being that kind of villain from the start. The relationship between the Caleb & Nathan reminded me of that between Homer and his new boss in that Simpsons episode.
The episode "You Only Move Twice" - where Homer goes to work for a James-Bond-type villain. The similarities are obvious as Ex Machina has the audience suspicious of Nathan as potentially being that kind of villain from the start. The relationship between the Caleb & Nathan reminded me of that between Homer and his new boss in that Simpsons episode.
Mad Monster Party? (1967):
WARNING: "Almost too similar?" spoilers below
This may be a bit off the wall: but it seems to occur to everyone that Kyoko may be an android which turns out to be right. But at one point I started to think that maybe Caleb is also an android who's being tested - this is a similar plot to the reveal in the children's animation flick Mad Monster Party? - when toward the end, Francesca is revealed to be an android, but the big twist at the very end is when Felix (the protagonist) is also revealed to be an android! Right as I was drawing this similarity while watching Ex Machina, it seemed the protagonist, Caleb, was having the very same thought! Maybe he was remembering the Rankin Bass classic monster movie just like I was... So he began to cut his arm to see if maybe he was also an android... turned out, unlike Felix Flankin, he wasn't!
This may be a bit off the wall: but it seems to occur to everyone that Kyoko may be an android which turns out to be right. But at one point I started to think that maybe Caleb is also an android who's being tested - this is a similar plot to the reveal in the children's animation flick Mad Monster Party? - when toward the end, Francesca is revealed to be an android, but the big twist at the very end is when Felix (the protagonist) is also revealed to be an android! Right as I was drawing this similarity while watching Ex Machina, it seemed the protagonist, Caleb, was having the very same thought! Maybe he was remembering the Rankin Bass classic monster movie just like I was... So he began to cut his arm to see if maybe he was also an android... turned out, unlike Felix Flankin, he wasn't!
Overall, I thought a more prominent message in this movie wasn't so much the A.I. but...
WARNING: "Who's watching who?" spoilers below
the warning about technological surveillance and the way surveillance can be used for information gathering, spying and manipulation - if Nathan could do all that he did via surveillance, then think what the government (or people like Nathan in real life such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos) could do.
the warning about technological surveillance and the way surveillance can be used for information gathering, spying and manipulation - if Nathan could do all that he did via surveillance, then think what the government (or people like Nathan in real life such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos) could do.
This can be added to our list of pretty cool "Cerebral Sci-Fi Films."