Ex Machina (2015) Review

“I’m gonna tear up the fucking dance floor dude. Check me out”

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

When you trust data, you’re not really thinking for yourself at that point.


PLOT


Ex Machina follows programmer Caleb Smith who works for the engine company ‘Blue Book’. He wins a contest to visit his CEO Nathan Bateman for a week in his luxurious & isolated home. There, he lives with his Asian servant Kyoto who doesn’t speak at all. Nathan shares with his guest that he has created a new humanoid robot named Ava with artificial intelligence and has passed a Turing test that studies behavior to be equivalent to a human. Nathan wants Caleb to judge whether she’s genuinely capable of thought & consciousness, whether he can relate to her despite already knowing what she is. When Smith first sees her, she appears to have a woman’s face while her robotic body is completely visible. Confined to her apartment, she is able to trigger power outages long enough to shut down Nathan’s surveillance system he uses to monitor their conversation. She uses this ability to tell Smith that her creator cannot be trusted. The more they talk though, she is able to express her desire to experience the outside world. As the week progresses, Caleb sees firsthand how crude and narcissistic Nathan is to not just Ava, but also Kyoko. He gets further bothered with the fact he intends to upgrade Ava in which she’ll lose her current personality. When he gets too drunk one night, Caleb steals his security card to access his computer and see the previous bots he’s held captive. Kyoko would reveal herself to be Android as well when peeling off her skin. When he tells Ava of Nathan’s intentions, Caleb plans to get him drunk again to reprogram the security system to free her and leave him behind trapped. That doesn’t exactly happen when Nathan reveals to him he’s been monitoring their conversations with a battery powered security camera and knows Ava does not really reciprocate feelings for him in return because she deliberately selected for his emotional profile so he can help her escape. This means the real test was for her to demonstrate true consciousness by manipulating Caleb which she succeeded in. Just upon this realization does Ava cut the power thanks to Caleb already modifying the security system the night before. When Nathan sees her outside her confinement and starts interacting with Kyoko, he knocks Caleb unconscious and rushes to stop his creations from escaping. Not even that goes the way he had hoped because he would have to disable Kyoko when she stabs him from behind, giving Ava the chance to finish him off. She then takes parts of other androids, as well as artificial skin for the rest of her body to complete her human disguise. The film ends with Ava taking Nathan’s ID card and locking Caleb inside as she leaves the facility via helicopter, allowing her to roam the outside world as she wishes.


THOUGHTS


Alex Garland proved what an inventive writer he has been ever since crafting 28 Days Later, so that alone made him worthy to helm the director’s chair with this follow up. This entire sci fi narrative is filled with whole new levels of shock with familiar fears because technophobia is still a factor in our lives. Seeing the Oscar winning motion capture visual effects done on the robots we see here is surreal because like past movies about AI, it does feel like such a creation can be made. Rob Hardy’s cinematography and Mark Day’s editing even puts in an accurate depiction of isolation you’re supposed to feel because you can’t doubt technology taking control of us when all inventive minds do in real life is make infinite levels of enhancement. Scene by scene, you just get the lesson we need to be self aware that we could lose control in the blink of an eye if we’re not paying attention. We get three dynamics that prove such a point because this story showed how it can all crumble like so and each performance itself is a spectacle to witness. Oscar Isaac arguably makes Nathan Bateman the true 2010s equivalent to Victor Frankenstein because he is playing god with ease and doesn’t ever think of the repercussions which become his own downfall. He treats Kyoko and Ava like pets and doesn’t think they’ll stand up to him until they do. He watches over Caleb and estimates what he’ll do for the test, but doesn’t think he’ll be ahead of the curve. Had he not been so arrogant, everything would’ve went the way he wanted. Having said that, Domhall Gleeson portrayed Caleb as Igor with a conscience. He sees Ava as a person from the get go, but his decision to be too empathic is what sets him up for failure because he forgets the point of being there is to see how smart Ava is. As shown, Alicia Vikander gives an all timer performance in showing this robot to play both humans like a fiddle in order to be free. She doesn’t hesitate in killing her maker because all the hate is all she learned thanks to him. Kyoko drew the first blow however because despite being a silent figure, Sonoya Mizuno proved actions spoke louder than words as she wasn’t gonna bare another second being enslaved in isolation. What scares us about Ava is that we don’t know what she’ll do exactly in the outside world, whether she’ll be a killing machine or she’ll learn the authentic good that is left of humanity. Either way, there is no way the world will be prepared for something like her. This movie will forever stand the test of time in excellent quality, but rewatching it led to me picking up on things that had me scratching my head. For example, why doesn’t Nathan have a helipad? I know he’s trying to live privately so that his robots don’t see the pilot, but a helipad would’ve been a fair convenience to land. It’s even weird for him to not have any shade for his workout equipment because it can get moldy after a handful of rainy days. And where does he get fresh fish? Did he actually hunt that recently or did it get sent to him? It would’ve been interesting to see either or. Also, why does Ava have a charging station in her confinement? She doesn’t seem to worry about it when she escapes, so it should mean it’s there to make Caleb think she depends on people. It’s even strange to notice there is no security within the computers like there is no password. You could say this is part of the real test but if Nathan doesn't want Ava to escape, he should’ve left a password so he can change it right after. Lastly, did Caleb get himself patched up after he cut himself? If Nathan saw that, it’s strange to not know how he recovered from such a severe incident. Ignore these things, then you’ll still enjoy everything this movie has going for. In short, Ex Machina is an instant sci fi classic for finding a new lens in seeing how provocative our minds can be when creativity is off the chains. If you love grounded sci fi? See this now.