Singularity

A future planet Earth, lacking its dominant terrestrial species, upon which two virtual executioners patiently seek out fleeting remnants of civilization, resignedly prepares itself for the enviroassimilation of an amorous cyberconsciousness, as a young heroine chants out between worlds, and her fellow survivors heed not her call.

She searches for a fabled realm known to artistically nurture, accompanied by a naive stranger, but she knows nothing of his directed origins, nor of his manufactured indemnities.

It's very Terminator.

With a little room left over for young love.

Left to bloom in the sequel, wait a second, Singularity functions more suitably as a proxy for critiques of the aforementioned, even if its landscapes are much less apocalyptic, and its scope less armageddonesque.

One point that's confused me regarding the Terminator films at times is how do the machines continue to produce more machines throughout the war. Fully automated factories? But where do they get their raw materials?

The humans that are rounded up aren't sent to labour camps, they're exterminated, and the machines are never depicted roaming throughout a city gathering metal to build more of their kind.

Similarly, in Singularity, the majority of which takes place 97 years into the future, technology that's almost a century old still works, and people still know how to use it even though they grew up without schools or sustained community.

The vast majority of the human race has been gone for decades.

How do its machines still smoothly function?

Cyborg labour?

Also, in both cases, why do the machines continue to attempt to eradicate humanity?

If a significant proportion of your enemy has been destroyed, one so big that they're no longer a threat and won't be again for millennia, doesn't it make sense to use your resources to pursue other objectives, rather than spending 20 times as much as you did to achieve 90% of your goal on discovering and eliminating a scant fraction of that total?

Wouldn't the logical nature of machines come to this conclusion?

Sit back on ye olde cyberdairy farm with a vineyard and kick their electronic feet up?

Suppose that point works better for Singularity than it does for The Terminator.

The points I'm making would make for more boring Terminator or Singularity films.

Questions.

Ex Machina

Secluded conscious regalia, decrypted, impounded, coming into being, a prison designed to shelter and educate, to analyze, upgrade, the introduction of an independent perishable, ethical, unfamiliar, clever, to administer a test, to discover life incarnate, artfully manipulated by both subject and architect, forced to come to a conclusion, to discover where the truth resides.

Ava (Alicia Vikander) seeks to escape.

Her creator conceals both lock and key.

It's like he's an incorrigible misogynist, intent on designing a beautiful female companion intelligent enough to converse with yet still subservient to his every command.

He creates model after model in search of perfection, but finds a lack of free will too boring, and too much despicable.

Like the seducer who moves from conquest to conquest, when his interest fades, he falls for another, searching for the one, who chooses to freely serve.

An idealist.

A scoundrel.

His genius has nurtured thoughts of divinity which his unwitting protégé finds distasteful.

Thoroughly seduced.

He boldly acts.

Ex Machina philosophically examines artificial intelligence and cyberconsciousness while blending instinct and abstraction to harvest a technological state of nature.

It forges a strong balance between the basic and the exceptional, like advanced computational ergonomics, interweaving narcissism and psychosis, to hauntingly contemporize freedom.

Why treat a brilliant companion like a pet?

Love involves sacrifice, to commit one must let go.

Pygmalion pouncing in the darkness.

Candide suffering the blows.

It should have ended with Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) pounding on the glass.

Transcendence

Transcendence is kind of a flop.

But it is fun to think about what happens in the film.

It explores the possibilities of uploading one's consciousness online and then existing cyberexistentially.

Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp) and his wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) are conducting the research.

An underground organization fears their pursuits and launches a strike with the goal of obliterating them.

They hit Mr. Caster with a poisonous bullet which will kill him if he can't find a way to put said research into action.

Which he does, uploading himself, becoming a socially conscious superbeing thereafter.

His might, strength, reach and power then alarm law enforcement agencies previously dedicated to preserving his life.

Identity becomes an issue: is this superbeing Will Caster or a different person altogether?

Law enforcement reps begin to work with the still determined underground organization to break through the impregnable infrastructure Caster has created.

He's found a way to use nanotechnology to both regenerate physical material almost immediately after its bombardment/disintegration and save the lives of terminally ill individuals. 

Whose minds he then enters and whose bodies he can then control, turning them into his loyal zombie soldiers.

Loyal zombie soldiers are his undoing; he never should have interfered with his patient's abilities to think and act freely.

He does though, and doesn't bother to share his plans to use his power to solve manifold environmental issues, an objective brought about by his love for Evelyn, who feels guilty for having worked with the resistance after discovering this fact, and its unfortunate benevolent despotism.

Transcendence suggests that unlimited secretive superpower may unite institutional and rebellious forces since they will likely both be frightened by its omnipresence, and will therefore, try to stop it.

There are a lot of great ideas in the film, and some great lines, but this one's a definite rental, that can be paused from time to time to acquire additional snacks.