Transcendence - Movie Review
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Director: Wally Pfister
Writer: Jack Paglen
Stars: Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany, Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy, Kate Mara
Science Fiction Film
Transcendence is one of those movies that mixes in a lot of philosophizing and responsibility-for-the-future content in with its story telling. Fortunately for the casual moviegoer, it keeps the message well camouflaged, and it isn’t nearly so preachy as Seagal’s archetypic On Deadly Ground. On the downside, it takes a slow moving close to two hours to get the story told.
At its heart, this is an old story. Doctors Will Caster (Johnny Depp), Max Waters (Paul Bettany) and Joe Tagger are all scientists working on artificial intelligence, with different philosophies and goals. Eventually they all ask: when does a program stop being a series of programmed responses and become something more? Unfortunately, the answer is long and not very interesting.
While these scientists (oddly. they don’t really seem to be computer programmers), and others around the world, all plod toward figuring out how to build an A.I., an astonishingly well-coordinated and cohesive group of eco-terrorists calling themselves R.I.F.T. (Revolutionary Independence from Technology) is working against them. They have an almost prophetic view of what the world is heading toward, and will stop at nothing for what they consider the greater good.
After the first forty-five minutes, I was having trouble suspending my disbelief at a number of points. The technobabble wasn’t working for me (despite not being a hard science person), and too many elements were things I’d seen elsewhere. During one particularly bad scene I had a flashback to Michael Crichton’s less than stellar novel Prey.
The worst failure was elements of the performances: I think the actors were set up to fail. Through most of the movie, Johnny Depp is interacting as a flat version of himself and has a Maxx Headroom-like mechanized tone to his voice. Rebecca Hall (as his wife) comes off as very stiff during those scenes, making them interminable. If you didn’t buy how in love the couple was early in the movie, the rest fell flat. Things were much more lively when Paul Bettany and Morgan Freeman were on screen–they elevated things and kept it interesting.
Another issue with this one is the way it’s structured. The prologue takes place in the future, thereby robbing the climax of any tension whatsoever. Not that it was hugely logical to begin with. All of the interesting scenes from the beginning are later repeated, in case you missed their significance, making the beginning redundant at best.
A good enough program/A.I. is nearly impossible to distinguish from a person–from early attempts like the computer psychotherapist “Eliza” to today’s personal assistant “Siri”–it’s easy to be fooled. This is the heart of the classic science fiction film Blade Runner, where Deckard carefully questions Racheal before he determines that she is the perfect fake human: even she doesn’t know she isn’t human.
Skip this one–go watch Blade Runner again instead.
Written by Elektra Hammond
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Elektra Hammond
Elektra lives in Delaware with her husband, Mike, and the cat herd of BlueBlaze/Benegesserit catteries. When not freelancing or appearing at science fiction conventions she travels world-wide judging cat shows.
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