Transcendence
(2014)
(SPOILERS) I
wanted to like Transcendence, or at
least come away from it secure in the knowledge it has been unfairly maligned;
that it’s a movie full of compelling ideas somewhat botched in the
execution. The wholesale slaughter it
has received (much of it focused on Johnny Depp, who is the least of its
problems but with a trio of underperformers in as many years it appears that it’s
his turn to be roundly dumped on) at the pens of the critics has been merciless
and assumed/hoped it must be over-the-top; this was simply the latest bandwagon
evisceration, like last year’s really quite enjoyable (also Depp starring) The Lone Ranger. Unfortunately the
brickbats aren’t entirely undeserved. Excessive maybe, since this is just a not
very good movie rather than a wholly atrocious one, but Transcendence’s virtues can be counted on the fingers of one hand
and leave several digits to spare. Yes, it looks quite nice, and the actors are
all competent. But the script stinks, and most damningly for a movie sold on
big themes and portentous existential ideas and ethical conundrums, it’s bereft
of a brain. Hinging the movie on an admittedly solid plot twist has the side
effect of sabotaging any chance to explore the concepts behind it. Transcendence
is a dumb movie with the pretensions of a smart, important one, and it’s surely this
that explains the savaging.
The picture
aches from how seriously it approaches its subject, and as a consequence its
failings are exposed all the more unforgivingly. First-timer Jack Paglen’s
screenplay is hackneyed, banal or nonsensical in any given scene. Sometimes all
three at once. His characters are devoid of plausibility, or even vaguely
ascribed motivation. Cardboard is an oft-used description for underwritten
roles, but Paglen’s characters can’t even rise to the level of clichéd; they are
no more than names and job descriptions. There are scientists, there are
terrorists, and there are FBI agents. And that’s about it. Perhaps if Michael
Bay had directed Transcendence he
would have played to script’s (lack of) strengths; he could have injected some
pace, shallow flash and gaudy excess into its empty head. Instead, first-timer
Wally Pfister (who must be counting the days until he can return to cinematography;
even Jan de Bont saw a couple of successes when he made the transition to
director before things went sour) is so convinced this is grand and significance,
he can’t see the screenplay has crumbled to dust before him.
Pfister
manages to be both long-winded and disorientatingly abrupt in his shifts of
location and motivation. Part of that is down to Paglen, but Pfister apparently
has no clue how to put together an action scene; the pace is all over the shop,
and the staging is borderline laughable. The big climax (this is a $100m movie,
remember) has the kind of threadbare compositions and sagging edits one might
expect from a straight-to-video or Syfy Channel movie. When Cillian Murphy’s
character, released from the grip of a CGI nanotech tendril, composes himself
and asks Morgan Freeman if he’s okay, you’d swear this was a rehearsal or
outtake, or someone accidentally left the camera running. It’s hopeless.
It isn’t necessarily a problem that the whole
Artificial Intelligence idea is much and over-used, such that it now seems a
little quaint. The concept of technological singularity, from which Transcendence takes its title, has more
than enough juice to follow through with something thought-provoking. When it
exceeds the collective intelligence of humanity, the artificial intelligence in
turn initiates an evolutionary leap in humanity itself. Unfortunately Pfister
and Paglen conceive of this in only the most trite ways, both narratively and
visually. There is a good idea here,
but the idea is the twist rather than the exploration of the concepts behind
it. It’s very difficult to engage with the fate (or salvation) of humanity if
you don’t care about any of its specimens. And since Pfister’s vision of this
world appears to be populated by no more than about 20 people, none of whom are
interesting, this ends up seeming like a tiny picture in spite of the vast
vistas and widescreen photography. Tiny would be all right if it meant
intimate, but the human drama never stands a chance.
Paglen
presents a confused and incoherent story from the first (his script appeared on
The Blacklist, which is a warning of the merits of their selection process). As
a one-sentence premise Transcendencehas potential; dying scientist Will Caster (Depp) has his consciousness uploaded to an AI programme he and wife Evelyn
(Rebecca Hall) are working on; then shit happens. That’s fine and dandy, but
Caster is dying as a result of a brush with a polonium-laced bullet fired by a
devotee of an extremist group called Revolutionary Independence From Technology
(R.I.F.T.) We aren’t give any reasons to believe such a group could come into
being, given that techno-fear isn’t causing people to rise up and start
attacking scientists in the real world. If they had some sort of deranged
religious underpinning their ethos might at least be semi-plausible. But they
exist in a land of fiction where scientifically trained individuals take up the
gun purely because the plot demands it.
R.I.F.T. are
led by Kate Mara, not a sympathetic actress at the best of times, which lends
even less inclination to comprehend why they are doing what they are doing.
There seems to be no judgement on the terrorists, even though they go around
killing people with impunity. Then the Casters’ pal Max (Paul Bettany) is
captured by R.I.F.T. and, through the least convincing case of Stockholm
Syndrome ever, transforms into a devotee of their cause. And then the FBI get behind them too. If,
as the ending appears to suggest, the twist is that they are all wrong (no one stopped Will from
destroying humanity, as he was out to transform it for the better like a kind
of quantum Jesus), you might argue the lack of explicit judgement on R.I.F.T.
is intentional; the apparent endorsement is a “Fooled you” designed to misdirect
suspicion on Will. Except they never seem remotely sympathetic since their
cause isn’t remotely believable. Max getting on board seems almost random; he’s
been knocking about for so long, why not? After all, he was always fairly
skeptical so it’s entirely believable he’d march onto the Caster complex and
start shooting people.
Transference could only have been improved by the removal
of the R.I.F.T. plotline. The makers would have lost a great chunk of
difficult-to-swallow antagonism, and had the opportunity to make more of the
powers-that-be. Presumably Paglen thought paying lip service to agency
interests in the form of Murphy’s FBI man would be sufficient to cover all bases.
Unfortunately the reticence to be involved, and even lack of awareness of
Caster’s state of play during the opening sections, just doesn’t make any
sense. They only show up in the desert when they are invited? It’s one of a
number of gaping great holes in the plot. the Not only would they be
surveilling left, right and centre, they would be appropriating any potentially
dangerous or strategically useful tech. In general, the monitoring angle of the
script, in terms of all parties, is a matter of pure convenience. R.I.F.T. seem
remarkably proficient with their watchful eyes, certainly more than anyone
else.
This lack
of scrutiny is the case across the board. Evelyn is only as smart as any given
scene allows. Being blinded by love and grief is one thing. A scientist who doesn’t
know what polonium is, quite another. She only gets worried by what avatar
hubby is up to when Morgan Freeman (in maximum pay cheque-cashing mode; his
most interesting moment comes with a shot of uneaten chocolate cake at the
beginning, and the realisation he doesn’t occupy a villainous role takes even
that away) hands her a helpful note. And how does she know the race is on to
upload hubby the Internet before its too late, or that it’s R.I.F.T. who are
coming to the front door? Last we saw, she’d thrown Max out. Perhaps great
chunks of plot deserted themselves, or more likely they were never there in the
first place.
The notion
of a righteous, scientific Armageddon at Will’s behest is the one good concept in Transcendence. But it’s squandered. The
reveal that it was Will all along doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, because
his behaviour throughout has to be
dubious to encourage the idea that he might not
be Will but a nefarious computer mind appropriating his speech and face. The
movie spends so much time attempting to deflect us in favour of the twist that
it forgets lend any back and forth to the core concept.
This is
true of the philosophical themes generally. We’ve seen numerous discussions of
machine sentience, or depictions in various forms, from 2001 to Dark Star to Demon Seed (there’s none of Proteus’ threatening
megalomania from Will) to Star Trek: The
Motion Picture. Presumably, again, the reason Transcendence never runs with the baton (if we discount ineptitude,
which we can’t to be fair) is that this isn’t AI; it’s actually Will’s
consciousness up there, so the lip service to the discussion in a couple of
scenes becomes irrelevant. So too do any existential musings on whether there’s
any soul involved in the transference of mind to a digital format. At pretty
much every turn, Pfister avoids taking the thought-provoking route. He seems
keen on a Malick-esque wonderment in terms of visual style (which would suggest
Johnny’s soul does live on in the Internet),
and the script is keen on a “love conquers all” sign-off (so dismissing a
reductive or rationalist approach).
While it’s
a nice sentiment, that all along Will has been trying to heal the world for his
beloved, there’s no emotional heft to the Casters’ relationship. Hall gives it
her all, but it’s too much for too little character and too little support from
Depp. About the only really
compelling scene is the one where Evelyn screams at Max to leave after he
voices his objections to uploading Johnny, and there’s a nagging feeling throughout
that this is based on plot expediency rather than a grieving woman acting in a
state of confusion.
The problem
posed by the transformation of humans brought on by Johnny’s transcendence is
that it effectively takes away free will, even if it allegedly fosters some
degree of autonomy. It takes away individual mental space and replaces it with
a collective, hive mind. There’s no attempt to engage with what the changes
mean to Will’s army of augmented humans; whether they are happy to exchange
autonomy for Will to live through them. They have no appreciable voice, aside
from Martin (Clifton Collins Jr) who is rather remote and insubstantial;
perhaps he hoped Evelyn would change her mind and reciprocate when Will uses
him as a potential fuck puppet (a scene that, along with many others, is
designed to make you think computer Jonny is a nutter). It’s true that Martin
asks to be reconnected when he is unplugged, but just because you’re like the
high of drugs doesn’t mean they’re good for you. The point is, the movie does
nothing with the idea; it’s an interesting twist to have the perceived
violation of free will welcomed, since it goes against the central tenet of
pretty much every sci-fi movie (it is our individuality and separateness that
makes us human), but it goes untended.
The
nanotech subplot (aren’t we all sick to the back teeth of nano tropes in
science fiction by this point?) is a cumbersome magic wand device that further
disengages. Okay, the singularity idea brokers leaps in understanding that
would allow science to suddenly look like magic. That doesn’t mean it has to be
visualised in such a dull, pixel-heaven form. And this self-replicating
technology seems curiously fixated on the Internet for survival. Shouldn’t it
be able to exceed such limitations by its nature? Well no, because uploading a
virus as plot solution has become a Hollywood failsafe. Additionally, as others
have pointed out, shouldn’t that be only
Will’s surviving nano droplets under his garden copper mesh? Evelyn didn’t get
a chance to be uploaded, so maybe love doesn’t conquer all after all. Incontinent
plotting does, though. The visualisation of the hybrids is quite ropey too; and
isn’t it lucky that, as soon as Martin has been upgraded and is wandering about
lifting heavy machinery without breaking a sweat, his image is captured and put
on the web (and couldn’t super Johnny just have blocked it?) Of course, this a
movie where the monitors displaying Will feature a repeating glitch despite the
perfection in every other aspect. Just, because, you know, it looks cool.
There are a
couple of nice moments and sequences. I liked the idea of Evelyn descending on
a semi-ghost town I the middle of the desert and transforming it. But mostly
this is derivative or moribund or both. If there’s no clear call on whether
technological advance is a good or bad thing, this isn’t a result of carefully
considered ambivalence. It’s because the makers aren’t posing their questions
with any insight. There’s a bookend of a world without the Internet and the
rumination that it feels so much smaller; Pfister lends this a nostalgic
quality, but it’s no more thought through than Paglen’s crazy R.I.F.T.ers.
Nobody is
doing their best work here. By underplaying, Depp at least avoids drawing
attention to himself (some have charge that this is a poor performance; really,
it’s just a rather indistinct one). His polonium-chic look is the closest he’s come
with his latter day forays into the make-up chair to Edward Scissor Johnny. Hall
wastes her energy. Bettany struggles for dear life against a script that makes
him look or sound like a moron in almost every scene. Transcendence possesses a particularly under-nourished B-movie
script that diminished rather than elevated by its production values, cast and
uncertain debutant director. It takes familiar science fiction devices, debates
over consciousness, the concept of the soul and computer sentience but is
unable to sustain them with form and substance. The result opts out of any real
drama and conflict and leaves a whole lot of room for dead space, ineffectuality
and unintentional silliness. This isn’t the worst film of the year so far, but
it’s the most disappointing.
**1/2
