In Transcendence,
Evelyn Caster (Rebecca Hall) is introduced as the classic mad
scientist, someone who moves forward with experimental technology
without stopping to consider the consequences. Of course, she has a good
reason to do so: love. Her husband, the brilliant scientist Will Caster
(Johnny Depp), was making breakthroughs in the field of self-aware
artificial intelligence when an anti-A.I. group, Revolutionary
Independence from Technology (R.I.F.T.), assassinates him with
radioactive poisoning. Since it’s such a villainously slow death, Evelyn
has enough time to copy his brain activity and upload his
“consciousness” into the A.I. supercomputer he created. Friend and
fellow scientist Max (Paul Bettany) has reservations about copying
Will’s consciousness and hooking it up to the world’s network of
computers, but Evelyn considers it a sound scientific plan, since a
digital husband is better than no husband at all.
Similarly, on paper,
Transcendence seems like it should be good idea. It’s an original sci-fi concept, not based on a pre-existing franchise property.
Wally Pfister, longtime director of photography for
Christopher Nolan,
chose it as his directorial debut. (In one of the wan bonus features,
someone calls Pfister a veteran with the passion and energy of a
first-timer.) The cast also features members of the Christopher Nolan
Repertory Company, including Morgan Freeman and Cillian Murphy. With all
of these factors in place, it wouldn’t seem unreasonable to expect a
movie on the level of Nolan’s
Inception. But, like Dr. Caster’s experiments,
Transcendence is much smarter in theory than it is in practice.
Not that the movie should be blamed for trying. Many recent films have focused on
Transcendence‘s
two main themes: the practical applications of self-aware artificial
intelligence, and humanity’s relationship to it. Just a few months
before the film’s release, for example,
Spike Jonze‘s
Her covered
similar ground. But while
Her focused in an emotional, one-on-one human interaction,
Transcendence‘s
view is more macro, centered on the power of A.I. that has access to
the world’s accumulated knowledge in a plugged-in society. Or was it
more of a political view, telling the story of the struggle between the
people who barrel forward with new technology too quickly versus the
people who rally against it entirely? Or is it about whether or not
humans can form a romantic relationship with A.I. created from the exact
neural pathways of someone they once loved? And, if scientists can
create A.I. from the exact neural pathways of a living human, what makes
that A.I. different from the original? In short: What makes us human,
and can it be copied or created?
These are big questions, and
Transcendence tries to tackle all of them without ever really getting a bead on any of them...
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