Movie Review: Transcendence

In one early scene of Transcendence, Dr. Evelyn Caster (played by Rebecca Hall) and her husband Dr. Will Caster (played by Johnny Depp) take turn to give inspiring speeches that aim to bring more sponsors to their scientific researches. Evelyn wants to change and save the world, while Will settles with "just understand it". According to Dr. Caster:

For one hundred and thirty thousand years, our capacity to reason has remained unchanged. The combined intellect of the neuroscientists, mathematicians and engineers pales in comparison to the most basic A.I. Once online, a sentient machine will quickly overcome the limits of biology; in a short time, its analytic power will become greater than the collective intelligence of every person born in the history of the world. Some scientists refer to this as the Singularity. I call it Transcendence.

The movie then proceeds to show us multiple scientific projects the team is working on, including a P.I.N.N. project where computers possess self intelligence. Most of these researches and projects sound a little far-fetched, even in 21st century where supposedly we are filled with knowledge and technologies most of us don't even know what they're capable of. Yes, we have a little here and there some impressive technologies where robots help us sweep the floor or some important breakthrough in medical research to cure a certain diseases, yet the technologies depicted in Transcendence (and to some extent, in most of the sci-fi films) are so far beyond our time one must wonder will we ever be able to achieve it?

And wonder we must, that is the whole purpose of a sci-fi: to explore the possibility of the impossible. How many times have we come up with countless prospects of cool things the computers and the internet help us achieve? We often romanticize our idea on how technologies shall be like, and we project our fantasies in movies. Don't you see in most of the movies writing codes and queries are so easy that the actors only need to type endlessly using the keyboards without even looking at what they're typing, and magically everything's solved, whatever complicated system can be shut down by just doing that. If in reality that is true my programmer friends wouldn't need to work all day making small progress on projects.

But yet we are afraid of what we don't fully understand, as repeatedly spoken by one of the characters in the movie. When we project our romantic fantasies, we would at the same time setback ourselves by projecting our fear that technologies would some day destroy us, that some robots will have an uprising against human and take control of the world. We have utter mistrust of the technologies deep down in our heart.

So that is the theme of Transcendence, the power struggle between advanced technologies and humanity. Johnny Depp and Rebecca Hall, of course, represent team advanced technologies. The anti-technology team, represented by an extremist group that is branded "terrorist" led by Bree (Kate Mara). The extremist group shoots Will with bullet laced with radioactive material that eventually kills him, but not before Evelyn uploads his consciousness onto the P.I.N.N. project, allowing him to survive in digital form. For most of the movie, Johnny Depp appears merely on the screen of a computer, sometimes even only in voice without image. He finally steps out of his creepy weirdo mode with no heavy make-up and campy body language, yet he's still creeps me out with his "is he or is he not Will Caster" mysteriousness.

The "is he or is he not Will Caster" theory is first brought up by the Casters' friends Max (played by Paul Bettany) and Joseph (played by the ever majestic Morgan Freeman, a role reminded me of him in The Dark Knight series). Evelyn does not believe them at first, and she proceeds to build a lab with the help of the internet-connecting digital Will, and together they make the already advanced technology even more impressive by healing people with nanotechnology and by doing so Will connects himself biologically with those that he heals.

It's a complicated story (yet not as complicated as The Matrix), and I suspect the director intends to make us constantly switching team to root for. Sometimes, we want The Casters to succeed, yet when Will is allegedly creating an army of hybrids some of us will begin to agree with the extremist group. But not me, I am not quite sure what to make of Bree and her R.I.F.T. group. Are we supposed to pity them as the movie progresses? They do in fact kill Will and thus set in motion everything that happens subsequently. They do in fact capture Max and brainwash him into turning against Will (OK, not entirely their credit, Max has already suspected the digital Will is not Will Caster himself). But the FBI works with them, and I didn't see Bree's capture at the end of the movie. Did I miss it? She and her team are indeed branded "terrorist" by the FBI so why they never bother to bring her in for whatever crime her group did? Besides killing Will, they also bombed a few lab facilities and killed a few others. They are murderers hiding behind a fake name of humanity.

Rebecca Hall is the heroine of the movie, yet Johnny Depp gets the top billing as always. She makes the movie more watchable by making us believe all she wants is to save the world with technologies, and save her husband by digitizing him. Imagine some other actresses with stronger personality like Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Lopez in this role, it would be less convincing that Evelyn is just a woman who wants to preserve everything her husband left behind, even in a made-believe digital world.

Transcendence does not make any new progress in sci-fi genre, it has all the typical elements a sci-fi has: impressive idea on how technologies can help us, multiple action sequences, star powers, and a "is technology good or evil" ponder. It will not be remembered as a breakthrough in movie technology (what an irony considered the movie tells the story of a breakthrough technology), if anything it will be remembered as another flop for Johnny Depp (as of the writing of this review, rumors has it that the movie opened poorly to both box office and reviews). Yet before the Tom Cruise vehicle Edge of Tomorrow arrives, you can settle for this one first. To me, if you fulfill the aforementioned elements you can call yourself a successful sci-fi. I don't need everything to be as deep as Inception. I just want to relax myself and not think too much watching a popcorn movie.

Rating: B