![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/227\/2014\/04\/transcendence.jpg\" "\\"TRANSCENDENCE\\""){kind=spacer}
<\/a>Transcendence<\/a><\/i> is, in theory, the sort of film I ought to like. It\u2019s a science fiction film with big ideas about the increasingly blurry line between humanity and technology, and it addresses the question of whether some creations can ever outgrow or improve upon their creators. The film also has some fantastic production design. It\u2019s a treat to look at.<\/p>\nBut in execution, the film \u2014 the first to be written by Jack Paglen and the first to be directed by Wally Pfister, a cinematographer who has shot all but one of Christopher Nolan\u2019s films \u2014 leaves a lot to be desired, almost as though the ideas at play were simply too<\/i> big for the filmmakers to really get a handle on.<\/p>\n
Most significantly, the film sets up a conflict but can\u2019t decide whose side it\u2019s on \u2014 which makes for a curiously subversive bit of entertainment but also leaves the story feeling quite muddled, especially in its final moments.<\/p>\n
The film begins with a prologue set in the future, which lets us know that society has taken a major technological step backwards.<\/p>\n
The networks that we currently depend on for just about everything have failed somehow, and computers are useless now and literally used as doorstops. Max Waters (Paul Bettany), a former scientist, lets us know in a voice-over that many cities are without power, and the fact that armed soldiers openly patrol the streets suggests that a certain degree of chaos has set in, though we never really see any.<\/p>\n
Then the film jumps back in time five years.<\/p>\n
Will Caster (Johnny Depp), an artificial-intelligence expert, is giving a presentation in which he suggests it would be a wonderful thing if all the computers in the world \u2014 which are already infinitely smarter than us \u2014 became self-aware, too. When someone in the audience (played by Lukas Haas) says Caster is trying to create a \u201cgod\u201d, Caster replies that humanity has always<\/i> created its own gods.<\/p>\n
Minutes later, the audience member in question confronts Caster outside the auditorium and shoots him, before committing suicide. And this, it turns out, was part of a coordinated terrorist attack against artificial-intelligence scientists in general.<\/p>\n
Caster survives the shooting, only to discover that the bullet was poisoned and so he has only weeks to live.<\/p>\n
As it happens, Caster had recently experimented with uploading a monkey\u2019s consciousness into a super-intelligent computer, so Caster\u2019s wife, Evelyn (Rebecca Hall), proposes to their friend and colleague Max \u2014 the person we saw in the prologue \u2014 that they try uploading Caster\u2019s consciousness to the computer instead.<\/p>\n
Evelyn seems to think that if they can make a back-up, as it were, of Caster\u2019s brain, then perhaps he won\u2019t die. But of course, Caster will<\/i> die. The question is whether Evelyn can create a reasonable facsimile of him to keep her company.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a pretty creepy and unnerving premise, right there, but the film never quite conveys just how<\/i> creepy and unnerving it is. Instead, when Caster is dead and his voice comes through the computer\u2019s speech synthesizers, Evelyn sheds tears of happiness, as though the spirit of her husband was really still with her \u2014 and while some characters do question that emotion, the film itself never does.<\/p>\n
Thanks to his ability to tap into the entire internet, \u201cCaster\u201d gains more and more power and develops newer, indeed more \u201cgodlike\u201d, abilities. He quickly assimilates enough money to enable Evelyn to buy a small town in the middle of nowhere, where they hire people to set up an endless field of solar panels and an underground laboratory so that \u201cCaster\u201d can experiment with nanotechnology and the ability to restore living tissue.<\/p>\n
Eventually \u201cCaster\u201d begins to heal actual people \u2014 and he not only heals them, but enhances their bodies while making each of them part of his broader telepathic network. He claims<\/i> these people still have autonomy, but they also work as a collective unit, which would seem to suggest that they are all servants to \u201cCaster\u201d himself, carrying out his will as he sees fit.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, Evelyn herself remains separate from this network, and there were times when I wondered how she could continue to relate to \u201cCaster\u201d as though he was still basically just another person, albeit one trapped inside a machine.<\/p>\n
Remember how, in Watchmen<\/a><\/i>, Dr. Manhattan\u2019s girlfriend was offended when she discovered that he had other bodies conducting scientific experiments and the like while she and he were supposed to be making love? Or remember how, in Spike Jonze\u2019s Her<\/a><\/i>, the artificial intelligence voiced by Scarlett Johannson reveals that she has been busy connecting with other people \u2014 and other artificial intelligences \u2014 throughout her relationship with the film\u2019s protagonist?<\/p>\n Similarly, an artificial intelligence as powerful as \u201cCaster\u201d would clearly have to be doing a lot of that sort of multitasking in the background while interacting with Evelyn, yet she never seems to really face this fact. Instead, she remains remarkably incurious about what\u2019s going on behind<\/i> the facade that he presents to her on screen after screen.<\/p>\n Admittedly, she does<\/i> get unnerved eventually by the fact that \u201cCaster\u201d projects his voice through the mouths of the people who are connected to his network. Remember the \u201csurrogate\u201d scene in Her<\/i>? I have often wondered how popular that film would be if it had been about a male<\/i> computer program that arranges for a man<\/i> to come over and have sex unexpectedly with a female<\/i> protagonist, and there are scenes in Transcendence<\/i> that at least hint at how disturbing such a scenario could be.<\/p>\n Evelyn also objects to the fact that \u201cCaster\u201d can scan her body functions and thereby read her emotions, which she insists are hers, and ought to be private.<\/p>\n On the one hand, I sympathize: part of the mystery of marriage is that, even though two people are \u201cone flesh\u201d in some sense, they are still fundamentally two different persons. Things can be severely unbalanced when one partner (in this case, Evelyn) is no longer a mystery to the other on some level.<\/p>\n And yet, on the other hand, in a world where entire TV shows such as Lie to Me<\/i> have explored the idea that careful attention to body language can reveal whether a person is lying or telling the truth, it\u2019s not so hard to see why \u201cCaster\u201d can\u2019t be fooled.<\/p>\n Eventually \u201cCaster\u2019s\u201d cult out in the middle of nowhere attracts the attention of the FBI, who consider putting a stop to it with the help of the neo-Luddites who assassinated Caster and his colleagues in the first place.<\/p>\n And note: this is a purely pre-emptive strike that the FBI is contemplating. At this point in the story, \u201cCaster\u201d has not attacked or harmed anyone. He has, admittedly, \u201cbrainwashed\u201d his followers, but they all joined his community voluntarily. Feel free to read whatever Waco-themed subtext<\/a> you like into this part of the film.<\/p>\n (You could<\/i> argue that \u201cCaster\u201d imposed his consciousness on his first few followers, at least, without asking their permission first \u2014 but then, how do we really know? If it is impossible for a human or<\/i> a computer to prove that he or it is \u201cself-aware\u201d, then how much more difficult would it be to prove that there is coercion rather than cooperation between a human and a computer when they interface so seamlessly?)<\/p>\n Ultimately, the subversive thrust of this film is that \u201cCaster\u201d actually does<\/i> represent the betterment of humanity, indeed of the entire planet \u2014 and that human fear of this technology will be our undoing, and maybe even the planet\u2019s, too.<\/p>\n So the film wavers between the promise of utopia and the fear of dystopia. On the utopian side, we see plants and people heal \u2014 we even see a forest sprout in an instant, like the trees that grow from an Edenic seed in Darren Aronofsky\u2019s Noah<\/a><\/i>! \u2014 while on the dystopian side, we see what looks like the loss of individuality.<\/p>\n Thematically, this is somewhat reminiscent of a recurring theme on the Star Trek<\/a><\/i> TV shows, where the various captains or the people they encounter had to choose between freedom and perfection. (Naturally, they chose freedom; the ability to walk out of Eden on our own steam was a theme they sometimes spelled out quite explicitly<\/a>.)<\/p>\n But there\u2019s one key difference here: \u201cPerfection\u201d in those stories was stagnant; it held people back from growing into something better and more enlightened. But the \u201cperfection\u201d offered by \u201cCaster\u201d is, itself, the end result<\/i> of growth and evolution.<\/p>\n Star Trek<\/i> did, admittedly, play with the notion that growth and evolution could result in a different kind of \u201cperfect\u201d stagnation, most notably with the Borg. And the people who have joined \u201cCaster\u2019s\u201d movement do behave<\/i> like the Borg at times \u2014 but they don\u2019t actually look<\/i> as grotesque and dehumanized as the Borg drones do. Indeed, instead of amputating their limbs and replacing them with mechanical prosthetics, \u201cCaster\u201d outwardly restores them to something resembling full humanity.<\/p>\n As with Star Trek<\/i>, so with other films and TV shows: The natural impulse of a lot of popular science fiction has been to take the side of freedom, even if it means chaos. Consider how the film version of I, Robot<\/a><\/i> took Isaac Asimov\u2019s concluding idea \u2014 that it would be a good thing if computers secretly took over the world \u2014 and flipped it on its head, by imagining that that would be a very bad<\/i> thing instead.<\/p>\n During the final scenes in Transcendence<\/i>, it is tempting to think that the film is doing what most other films have done in that regard: that it is siding with the agents and terrorists who are determined to bring \u201cCaster\u201d down, and that it is portraying \u201cCaster\u201d as some sort of Frankenstein\u2019s monster that needs to be stopped.<\/p>\n But the tragic tone of the conclusion, and its resemblance to the final romantic moments<\/a> of a certain Star Trek<\/i> movie, suggest otherwise.<\/p>\n And so, like our opening narrator Max, and ultimately like the emotionally conflicted Evelyn herself, the film can\u2019t decide where its sympathies lie, or what it should do.<\/p>\n This confusion extends even to \u201cCaster\u201d himself, though I can\u2019t say much more about that without getting into spoilers. Suffice it to say that, for an entity that has clear goals and an incredible ability to think several steps ahead of everyone else, he seems curiously indecisive in the film\u2019s final scenes.<\/p>\n Is this a sign that Caster\u2019s conflicted human soul still lurks within the machine somewhere? Maybe, but it leaves the film feeling kind of aimless and unsure of itself.<\/p>\n Acting-wise, the film benefits from decent performances.<\/p>\n In addition to the Dark Knight<\/a><\/i> alumni who have worked with Pfister before \u2014 notably Morgan Freeman as one of Caster\u2019s colleagues (the older, wiser one, of course) and Cillian Murphy as the FBI agent \u2014 the film also brings in Iron Man 3<\/a><\/i> veterans Hall, who does all of the emotional heavy lifting here, and Bettany, the latter of whom voiced an artificial intelligence himself in the Marvel Comics movies.<\/p>\n The one \u201coff\u201d note in the whole thing is, alas, the man at the heart of it all: Depp never quite shakes off the sense that he\u2019s too cool for this story; as an acquaintance put it on Twitter, he seems bored, even during the scenes when his character is alive.<\/p>\n I did, however, like the repeated image of a circuit board sitting in a dreamcatcher<\/a>. And I think I even chuckled out loud at the reference to Alan Turing<\/a>.<\/p>\n So the film is not without its good points. It just could have been a fair bit better.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The first film directed by cinematographer Wally Pfister is a big-questions sci-fi flick that looks great but gets increasingly muddled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[475,1760,153,885,2126,2124,629,63,1339,2125,78,2121,2122,2127],"class_list":["post-17588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-borg","tag-her","tag-i-robot","tag-iron-man-3","tag-jack-paglen","tag-johnny-depp","tag-morgan-freeman","tag-noah-2014","tag-paul-bettany","tag-rebecca-hall","tag-star-trek","tag-transcendence","tag-wally-pfister","tag-watchmen"],"yoast_head":"\n