Transcendence (2014)
Directed by Wally Pfister
Two leading computer scientists work toward their goal of Technological Singularity, as a radical anti-technology organization fights to prevent them from creating a world where computers can transcend the abilities of the human brain.
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Forget that the basic plot, about a dying researcher whose consciousness is uploaded into a computer, bears a certain resemblance to the 1992 techno-thriller The Lawnmower Man .
The densely plotted screenplay by Jack Paglen — another first-timer — is built squarely on the bones of classic Technology Is Scary movies from “Soylent Green” on, with an unacknowledged debt, perhaps, to “The Lawnmower Man” (1992).
Didn’t “The Lawnmower Man” cover remarkably similar ground in 1992?
Playing like a somber, meditative update of that nutty 1992 virtual reality schlocker The Lawnmower Man, Transcendence introduces us to Will (Johnny Depp) and Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) Caster, who form a “brilliant” scientific duo working on a ground-breaking advancement in artificial intelligence.
The concepts of humans and technology becoming intertwined is interesting, and the hope is that this could not only entertain but make us think about our own future, like “The Terminator” films (the good ones, anyway) or even “The Lawnmower Man” (honestly haven’t seen it in 15 years but remember that movie??)…however the storytelling is dull and never really engages the viewer, and it’s forays into a horror/sci-fi feel late in the film seem preposterous instead of climactic.
The first feature by cinematographer Wally Pfister (“Inception,” “Moneyball,” “The Dark Knight Rises”) suffers from a script aiming for present-tense future shock that mashes up an unholy hybrid of movies past and clichés everlasting, notably “The Lawnmower Man” and “An Inconvenient Truth.”
That may very well be true—I, for one, have been sitting at my damn computer all day—but movies haven’t really gotten evil computers right since 2001: A Space Odyssey and WarGames.
Think of omniscient HAL 9000 in “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
Watching Hall walk down the all white, brightly lit laboratory where Will conducts his magic is a mix between your worst trip to the dentist and an encounter with Hal 9000 from “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
Caster and his wife/scientific partner Evelyn ( Rebecca Hall ) have also been working on a sentient machine, which would never be made by anyone who has seen "2001: A Space Odyssey" or "WarGames."
Echoing the lessons learned from HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the message of Transcendence is that computers should not be allowed to become sentient.
Oh, you know what happens next — at least if you grew up on old-school sci-fi like "2001" and "Colossus: The Forbin Project."
A similar plot about artificial intelligence taking over the world was first presented over 40 years ago in 1970 in Colossus: The Forbin Project, a film that ended with two supercomputers communicating with one another and then controlling everything at fade out.
From this moment on, the film recklessly melds scenarios from sci-fi milestones like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and every computer-run-wild movie from “Colossus: The Forbin Project” to “Demon Seed.”
And, like in “Colossus: The Forbin Project,” does the computer have a sinister agenda as it links with the world’s technology?
And there are additional twists that link the movie to everything from “Frankenstein” to “Colossus: The Forbin Project” to “The Terminal Man,” “The Matrix” and even last year’s artificial-intelligence love story “Her.”
While Transcendence has tons of money to spend on unpersuasive digital effects and dronelike music, it shows little interest in exploring the potentially tricky benefits of a computer-enhanced intellect; it’s not even in the enjoyable realm of starkly ridiculous Cold War thrillers like Colossus: The Forbin Project.
For more than a decade Mr. Pfister has been one of the movie medium's pre-eminent cinematographers; he's the man who shot Christopher Nolan's "Batman" trilogy, as well as Mr. Nolan's "Memento" and "Inception."
The director is Wally Pfister, the man behind the camera for all of Christopher Nolan’s films since “Memento,” including the fantastically visualized cinema-scapes of the “Dark Knight” trilogy and “Inception.”
“Transcendence” director Wally Pfister is best known as Christopher Nolan’s director of photography, having lensed the director’s entire filmography dating back to “Memento.”
Nolan is the executive producer, and Pfister's movie has that "Inception"/"Memento" ambience, where audiences feel as if they're on a ride that could take them anywhere.
In short, by working with a $100 million budget, what would the seasoned eye behind “Memento,” “The Dark Knight” and “Inception” deliver in performance and narrative himself?
This is the directorial debut for Wally Pfister, the veteran cinematographer who has worked behind the camera on all of Christopher Nolan's films since Memento .
It’s helpful to remember that Nolan’s first movie was a sleepy little conceptual number called Following.
Nolan started small, on films like Following and Memento, before trying his hand at anything remotely this ambitious.
First-time director Wally Pfister, the cinematographer on “Inception” and the most recent Batman movies, working with first-time screenwriter Jack Paglen, simply lets things get too far out of hand.
Wally Pfister, a cinematographer (“Inception,” the “Dark Knight” movies) making his directorial debut from a script by Jack Paglen, doesn’t have the transcendent spark.
Even stranger, it is the directorial debut of acclaimed cinematographer Wally Pfister, whose astounding, powerful visuals on “The Dark Knight” and “Inception” whisk viewers to other worlds.
That's a shame because it's the directorial debut of Wally Pfister, the cinematographer who's given Chris Nolan's films their consistently rich, deeply focused look (and who won an Oscar for the dizzyingly layered "Inception").
I also wondered whether whether Pfister, an excellent cinematographer who has worked on almost all of director Christopher Nolan’s movies (e.g., The Dark Knight and Inception) forgot that the main job of the director has less to do with cinematic flourishes (of which Transcendence boasts many) than with with storytelling.
PHOTOS: Box office top 10 of 2013 | Biggest flops of 2013 Though Pfister is well-known as Christopher Nolan 's longtime cinematographer (nominated for four Oscars , a winner for "Inception" ), both he and screenwriter Paglen are first-timers in their respective chairs, and there are times when that shows.
Pfister created unique visual landscapes in films like The Dark Knight and Insomnia, but Transcendence lacks any sense of visual purpose.
Here, as in Nolan’s artier movies like Insomnia and The Prestige , there are repeated visual motifs acting as bookends and thematic indicators.
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Transcendence wants to be a thinking person's film about what the Internet hath wrought, à la The Matrix, questioning our dependence on ones and zeroes instead of human reason.
Moderately entertaining, periodically draggy, “Transcendence” is not as wacky-visionary as “The Matrix,” or nearly as lyrical as “Her,” which was about a man’s romantic infatuation with a computer.
As with 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix and–unintentionally hilariously–The Net, Transcendence envisions this dire cyberpunk future in an effort to freak you out like a plus sign on a home pregnancy test.
And there are additional twists that link the movie to everything from “Frankenstein” to “Colossus: The Forbin Project” to “The Terminal Man,” “The Matrix” and even last year’s artificial-intelligence love story “Her.”
Transcendence would have looked like obsolete software right after The Matrix came out, but following Spike Jonze’s masterful Her, which actually took a long, hard and perceptive look at our cultural relationship with technology, it feels like a one way trip back to the Dark Ages.
To be honest, even having done some reading on the theories of The Singularity, there were a lot of times during this movie where I really had no idea what they were trying to achieve, because we’ve seen far better uses of the conflict between man and technology before, whether it’s “The Matrix” or “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
In themes and even some imagery, this material may remind a few viewers not only of Inception, but of the should-have-been-forgotten Lawnmower Man movies and the Ghost in the Machine anime and animated features.
Nevertheless far smarter and more sophisticated than the sort of Lawnmower Man/Ghost in the Machine mashup the film’s marketing suggests, Pfister’s directorial debut is all polish and respectability without any of his mentor’s effortless crowd-pleasing.
Also read: ‘Prometheus 2’ Moving Forward With ‘Transcendence’ Writer Jack Paglen Up to this point, “Transcendence” is a little “Her” and a little HAL 9000 — which is fine — but once we get clued into what cyber-Will’s ultimate plans are, the film gets a lot dumber, throwing in contrivances that keep the audience from wrestling with complex questions and raising plot points that make less and less sense the more you think about them.
Moderately entertaining, periodically draggy, “Transcendence” is not as wacky-visionary as “The Matrix,” or nearly as lyrical as “Her,” which was about a man’s romantic infatuation with a computer.
Depp doesn’t inhabit a computer as well as Scarlett Johansson did in Her.
CAST: Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany LENGTH: 1:59 Last year, Spike Jonze's "Her" envisioned a time when men and computers might fall in love.
Last year Spike Jonze upgraded the genre in his wonderfully poetic "Her," with Scarlett Johansson's voice as a superSiri.
A love story between a human and a computer: we got one for Christmas, and it was called Her.
Just as the cheesy 1995 Sandra Bullock drama "The Net" reflected a sense of the unknown associated with the evolution of technological communication, "Transcendence" implies that the machines have irrevocably changed our relationship to reality in ways we have only begun to fathom.
But in “Transcendence,” which might have been titled “Him,” it’s very much back to square one: the culture of technophobia that gave us the predatory mainframes and cyborgs of “2001,” “Demon Seed” and “Alien,” and that early ’90s wave of cyber-paranoia thrillers (“The Net,” “The Lawnmower Man,” “Virtuosity”) that now seem as quaint as dial-up Internet.
There have been quite a number of movies dealing with the negative fallout from cyborgs including 2001 , Demon Seed , The Net , and Virtuosity.
As with 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix and–unintentionally hilariously–The Net, Transcendence envisions this dire cyberpunk future in an effort to freak you out like a plus sign on a home pregnancy test.
Those pesky neo-Luddites, led by Kate Mara (whose character seems primarily defined by her smoky eye makeup), kidnap Max and pinpoint the location of the system, but Evelyn manages to save Computer Will by uploading him to the Internet, where he is able to access everyone and everything, which throws the movie into a tailspin of Jaron Lanier-style technological paranoia, wrapped up in an understanding of “being online” that’s barely more sophisticated than that of The Net.
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The spirit of late author Michael Crichton (The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park) looms large over “Transcendence,” its mix of speculative technology and ethical quandaries making for a familiar, comfortable fit for those so inclined.
The set-up is pure early 1970s sci-fi (Pfister cites the pre- Star Wars canon of The Andromeda Strain , The Omega Man , Silent Running et al as influential) as Johnny Depp's modern Frankenstein, Will Caster, addresses a confrontational audience on the world-changing possibilities of "technological singularity" – the creation of a sentient, self-aware computer that crosses the boundary between man and machine.
At heart, Transcendence is a throwback to the fear-mongering science fiction of the past: not those atomic-age adventures like The Incredible Shrinking Man , but rather the lab-bound likes of The Andromeda Strain and Demon Seed , circa the paranoid '70s.
The concepts of humans and technology becoming intertwined is interesting, and the hope is that this could not only entertain but make us think about our own future, like “The Terminator” films (the good ones, anyway) or even “The Lawnmower Man” (honestly haven’t seen it in 15 years but remember that movie??)…however the storytelling is dull and never really engages the viewer, and it’s forays into a horror/sci-fi feel late in the film seem preposterous instead of climactic.
While Depp gets top billing (despite being daringly reduced to a small-screen presence at a fairly early stage), the heavy lifting is done by nominal supporting players Hall and Paul Bettany, both of whom do sterling work keeping the human blood count high even as rampaging nanobots and secret underground facilities push the narrative toward the overarching Skynet of The Terminator .