With more and more movies coming out about the notion of artificial intelligence, moviegoers should be wondering if these pieces of creativity are capable of shaping breathtaking ideas and forming new trends in portraying a world, inhabited with AI machines. Once the attention is captured by a robot toddling among humans, the audience can be sure that at least a couple of the tale's features are common, if not trite for this genre.
Henry Jenkins, USC provost professor of communication, journalism, cinematic arts and education said, "Film and television have been especially interested in these ideas as they are themselves pushing digital media to create more human-like creatures through CGI, and thus, films about the singularity become testing grounds for new special effects techniques."
Meanwhile, moviemakers continue to spend their creative minds on constructing new sci-fi tales, coming to grips with implausible presence of AI in humans' lives. While studios are looking for fresh angles and engaging performances of bona fide AI, brief, but sufficient reviews on the latest films are an essential contribution to the evolving discourse of sci-fi movies.
Chronologically, the first movie on the list is Jake Schreier's "Robot & Frank," released in 2012. The film is unpredictably funny and wise in its angle on sci-fi. Friendly attitudes of the robot butler (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard), for a slightly cantankerous retired codger Frank (Frank Langella), aren't fearful. The buddy relationship between robot and elderly man with a failing memory is nicely woven into the plot. The odd couple isn't the only smart twist – a final-act of romance between Frank and librarian Jennifer (Susan Sarandon) almost accidentally adds unaffected emotional stroke of painful nostalgia and allows the audience to feel the sense of loss. "Robot & Frank" is a smart drama with the powerful presence of Mr. Langella on-screen, where the complications of aging are combined with a sci-fi tale about sentient machine, that can rather be a new way of life, than a mechanized threat to humankind.
A perfect tale from Spike Jonze, the film "Her" approaches the issue of humanity in the world, inhabited by human-like operating systems. The OS (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) saves the main character, Theodor (Joaquin Phoenix), from his solitude in the physical world – and the question is, whether Theodor is still able to feel and participate in real life.
Wally Pfister portrays the fusion of man and machine from another angle in his gloomy, time-consuming mystery "Transcendence." The plot takes us to the darkest implications of AI presence. The scientist Will Caster (Johnny Depp) is no longer a human after his consciousness is uploaded into a machine to save him from dying. A god-like holographic presence of Caster is a starting point for Pfister's attempt to build a grand drama on romance between machine-based Johnny Depp's character and his on-screen wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall). They both fail to bring truthful emotional feeling, despite Ms. Hall's glossy-eyed performance and Mr. Depp's final-act revelation. "Transcendence" can be listed alongside other films about evil technology, if it's not for a concept of balance, which is half-formed and reduced in its importance, thus hidden behind the main theme. The plot is woven around a big and sometimes promising idea of standoff between good and evil, but the story seems to be heavy-handed with technophobia narratives, while the characters are lifeless and unable to convey the sense of struggle between tech fanatics and resistance fighters.
"Ex Machina" is another sci-fi tale, which can be placed to contrast the previously mentioned films. Machine-based intelligence here is rather creepy than friendly, and performance is rather engaging than simply time-consuming. Alex Garland's movie proves to be as witted and supple as Alicia Vikander's performance as a graceful AI machine, Ava. Her screen creator Nathan (Oscar Isaac) is unsure of Ava's ability to think and feel for herself and thus eager to test her with the help of young coder, Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson). Brief conversations, or more likely dates, between Caleb and Ava are the driving forces of the plot, which are filled with smart solutions for expressing complications of merging humans and AI machines. Extemporaneous, but suspiciously perfect dance, performed by Nathan and his silent servant named Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno) isn't the director's simplistic solution to entertain the audience, but an important addition to the creepy ambience of uncertainty within high-tech research facility, which is also Nathan's residence. The film is not only an instrument to raise time-honored mind-body problem, but a curious view on relationships between men and women, as Ava mostly uses sexuality in order to surpass artificiality. And there's more to chew over, than the implications of robotics and artificial intelligence. "Ex Machina" is probably an example of a gender-biased film, but still compelling and thought-provoking.
"…ultimately, the quality of such films rests on the shoulders of the human characters: do the films make us care about the human beings at their center and through them, [and] care about what happens to humanity in these imagined futures?" Jenkins said. "All too often these days, Hollywood makes it easier for us to care about cute robots than complex characters, making it easier to root for the machines to inherit the Earth."
Tales of existential futurism are expected to have certain timings, bizarre twists and promising insights on relationships between human beings and high technology – and studios are encouraged to meet the expectations. However, it's the audience's choice whether these stories are hopelessly barren of fresh ideas on how far mankind can go with high-tech solutions.
Reach Staff Reporter Mariia Kovaleva here.
Annenberg Media