Transcendence

Transcendence

Starts off pretty good, middle is also good, end is just ridiculous. The fun thing about the movie, and to some extent, arguably, the point, is that all of the technology is either already in existence, or is vaguely viable, the thing which makes it all function in a nice apocalyptic way is the addition of intelligence. Its a pretty good twist on the old ‘artificial intelligence goes nutso’ trope, given that the intelligence is actually that of a human, which nicely serves to accommodate a good ‘absolute power corrupts’ message. It could have been a powerful commentary on drone warfare, or the dangers of over reliance on technology, or even, a really good disaster movie. Instead the whole thing is eschewed for a stupid ending which relies on technology which is so fundamentally different from anything we have available now that it really becomes un-relateable, boring and stupid. Having an evil intelligence bent on taking over the world living in the internet is pretty scary, its not remotely scary when that intelligence literally thinks up the same wonky technology that the terminator movies came up with in 1991. Beyond this the apocalypse has no scope, it occurs in a crappy town in the middle of no-where. There was so much potential here to show people dealing with a technological meltdown, but the best thing we see is someone use a laptop as a door stop, as if a laptop is really a very effective door stop, more effective say than, a door stop.

twhittlesea

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