Review: ‘Transcendence’

“Transcendence” definitely WANTS to be a heady science fiction movie that explores big ideas and makes a big impact, but instead it lands a little short, for some reason not really having the gravity or weight needed to establish that emotional connection between the characters and the plot, and in the end just being maybe a few steps above something like “The Lawnmower Man.”

Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp) is the world’s foremost mind when it comes to artificial intelligence and all that scientific mumbo jumbo, and he wants to use his knowledge and creations to learn more about the world and the people living in it, while his wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) wants to use the same technology and knowledge to actively make the world a better, safer, cleaner, healthier place. And then there’s RIFT, an underground anti-technology terrorist group, led by a foxy little chick with smokey eyes (Kate Mara), and very early in the movie they make a coordinated attack on numerous computer labs, killing dozens of people and blowing up a bunch of machines, all in an effort to thwart the scientific community.

Dr. Caster becomes a casualty of this war, though his death is slower, allowing time for his brain waves and consciousness to be uploaded into an already functioning artificial intelligence machine.

Don’t focus on that little detail, that’s what “suspension of disbelief” is all about. The movie doesn’t really bother to focus on this little facet on which the entire plot hinges, and that’s fine, because that’s cinema.

So Captain Jack Sparrow becomes the Ghost in the Machine. Immediately afterward his wife Evelyn is fighting with their business/science partner Max (Paul Bettany) as to whether the AI is Dr. Caster or not, especially as the AI asks Evelyn to connect it the internet for more access to information and power. Max thinks, and rightly so, that this is a bad idea. We all know this is a bad idea. Don’t hook up the potentially mega smart, supercomputer AI thing to the goddamn internet. But Evelyn is all like “this is my husband inside this machine” and does as it says.

Next thing you know, AI Will and Evelyn are building a mega science lab in the desert and they are doing crazy things with nano technology and it all appears to be good stuff on the surface, but this is a science fiction movie, we all know that the point of this story, in one aspect anyway, is how the hubris of man leads to our own downfall. An Icarus’ wings sort of deal. Of course the AI claims it is trying to improve the world and make everything better, and Evelyn is happy to help because she wants the same thing, but just because they both want to “improve” the world does not necessarily mean that their ideas for improvement are aligned. Of course for Evelyn, if she comes to this realization, it is too late to remove culpability. And that’s another part of the whole hubristic collapse, the possible realization that the original good intentions have been perverted into something terrible, or perhaps they were terrible all along, just a shift in perspective forces this realization upon the characters.

Without getting spoilery or more detailed than I already have, this movie does bring up some good, albeit already asked, questions about how far is too far when it comes to man’s scientific and technological advancements, and whether or not the creation of an artificial intelligence with so much computing power is akin to trying to supplant God with a man-made God (which Will Caster briefly and somewhat obliquely contends that the idea of a god is man made to being with). There is some heady stuff in this movie superficially, in terms of big ideas, bringing up the big questions, but then none of it gets too thoroughly explored.

For a movie with such an outlandish premise at its center, it is kind of strange how everyone seems to walk around in a daze in this film, not really acknowledging how CRAZY some of this stuff actually is. Even the terrorist group leader just walks around wide eyed, trying to convert people to her cause without really getting emotional about any of it. And of course there is Johnny Depp, who never raises his voice, barely seems to register any emotion at all, either as a human or an an AI, though of course this could be a very intentional choice, making Will Caster so overly even keeled and robotic as a human that when he is approximated as an AI that it is impossible to tell if it is really him or just a program pretending to be him.

And that’s another thing; though the ambiguity and mystery of whether or not the AI is really Will or just a program is actually very intriguing on the surface, in the long run it doesn’t matter if it is Will or not, because the AI’s actions were all the same anyway, and it all would have led to the same outcome. I don’t know, maybe I’m just not reading deep enough into it or I missed something on my one viewing, but this interesting mystery also ends up being a pointless one.

Also, it must be said, and they show a touch of this stuff in the trailers and marketing, but nanotechnology as a PHYSICAL menace is silly looking, like comic book movie level silly. When strands of nano-bots work together to hold down people like webs and do stuff like that, all I could think of were the actors on set that day in the desert being asked to pretend that some unseen force is holding them to the ground, with some guy going, “don’t worry, we’ll add it in post, it’ll look great” off to the side.

“Transcendence” also does this thing I do not like and found pretty harmful to the movie’s overall impact and dramatic punch, which is it started with a scene that reveals all of the aftermath of the story, the final results, with a voice over that, if you listen closely, reveals the ultimate fates of two characters in the story, and then it jumps back “five years earlier” and we get to spend the movie seeing how we got to that moment. And then when we revisit this part at the end of the movie all over again, we’ve already seen these images, images that could have been a potent way to visually end the film, and instead was redundant and not surprising at all. The movie robbed itself of its own build up and climax because we knew where we were going to end up. Whatever surprise or unexpected moment there could have been was neutered and rendered rote. A shame.

So it is a movie with good ideas but not necessarily fully executed well. It always feels a little awkward when a movie strives for that level of deepness and intensity and ends up being really more boring and mundane than anything else. Hell, at least they swung for the fences, and didn’t try to make something that really is as silly as “The Lawnmower Man.” It’s better than that movie at least. Unless you want campy and silly, in which case, Lawnmower Man it up.