TRANSCENDENCE Is A Pretentious Film From a Rookie Director

Christopher Nolan, Wally Pfister, Johnny Depp, Morgan Freeman… The big names attached to this film as well as the potentially great story all promised a pretty awesome movie. The movie, however, did not live up to the promise, at all.

Transcendence tells the story of the great, famous computer scientist Will Caster (Johnny Depp) and his wife, Evelyn Caster (Rebecca Hall). They are working towards sentient artificial intelligence. A radical organization does not agree with their mission (they see it as if they’re playing gods), and destroy their work and kill Dr. Will Caster.

Evelyn tries to find a way to “transcend” Will’s brain and soul, into a computer. Joseph Tagger (Freeman) and Max Waters (Paul Bettany), who initially helped her achieve this feat, both turn against her once she succeeds transcending him. When Will is finally transcended and released onto the WWW, all hell breaks loose. Sort of.

Poorly Developed Characters and an Odd Timeline

I caught myself describing Transcendence as “The Terminator without the Terminator” to friends who hadn’t heard of the movie yet. It kind of promised to be – the comparison to The Terminator’s SkyNet was easily made, and my hopes were high. I love movies that discuss the rise of the machine, and the possible consequences and implications of a sentient machine.

Transcendence hints at a philosophical underlying, but utterly fails at making any meaningful observations or statements. An example of where such philosophizing about sentient AI is done well is the Battlestar Galactica TV-Series and the earlier mentioned The Terminator movies, and compared to them, Transcendence is shallow and pretentious.

Will Caster is as flat as an 80s Super Mario, which is for a large part to blame on Johnny Depp. Depp used to be a great actor, in fact, I used to be a great fan. However,  I get the impression that in the past decade, he has gotten used to hiding behind costumes and makeup, and using silly affectations to create characters. His popularity among the audience as well as in the film industry seems to have made him lazy (or uncomfortable without all the gimmicks), and his acting performance suffered. That said, the character of Will Caster, for a highly intelligent sentient machine, didn’t seem very intelligent, and his actions and motives were contradictory as well as inconsistent.

Honestly, though, none of the characters had any depth, though Rebecca is the only one with some sort of honest motives going on, but like the other characters, she’s not very logical, nor consistent. The decisions made by the characters in this movie seem circumstantial and even confusing at points, like Morgan’s vague character who has some shady connections to the government (still have no clue what he actually did) and Bettany’s character, both decide to join forces with the radical group – the latter was even kidnapped by them, first. The government’s complaint of “we don’t cooperate with terorrists!” is disregarded without any thought – just rush in the tanks and Humvees, and let’s attack the super AI that can’t be beat! Or can he?

Not only the characters are off – the timeline is, as well. In what feels like a matter of days, ComputerWill and Rebecca build a sort of empire in a decrepit village, but off-handedly it’s mentioned this takes place in over two years. It would be odd if it took place in just a few days, but years? If that’s the case, why then didn’t the government (or the radical group) take action any sooner? The passing of time is not presented very well.

Furthermore, before the story even takes off, we’re about three quarters of an hour into the film – which is when Will is finally transcended. The story drags and drags, and even after the transcendence, it drags.

Transcendence Is The Story Of The Rookie Director and Screenwriter

All of this, however, has to do with the fact that both the director, Wally Pfister, and the screenwriter, Jack Paglen, are rookies to their respective jobs. Pfister, Chris Nolan’s long-time director of photography, had never directed a film before, and it’s the first of Paglen’s scripts to make it to the big screen. Perhaps they shouldn’t have attached all these big names to this film, so that if Pfister botched his first attempt at directing (and he did), it would go relatively unnoticed. Right now, with Transcendence having been promoted as heavily as it is and has been – announcing Christopher Nolan‘s involvement most aggressively, whose name alone makes hearts beat faster – everyone will know that Pfister‘s first piece is awful. Not a great start for Pfister, if you’d ask me.

That said, the cinematography of Transcendence was quite stunning – Jess Hall (Hot Fuzz) is the director of photography forthis movie, but undoubtedly, Pfister will have had his say over the cinematography. Not only was the cinematography great, the film was generally very well constructed in the technical department; CGI was impressive and the sets looked great, as well. Although, how they managed to style a man as beautiful as Depp so awfully and unattractively is beyond me.

The Final Word

All in all, I would not recommend Transcendence. The discussion of sentient AI is flat and pretentious, its plot is flimsy, the characters are dull and inconsistent, the directing and writing in general were off. If you’re a Johnny Depp fan, I’d be afraid you’d be disappointed and put off, so if you want to continue to be a fan, don’t watch this one.

What were your expectations for this movie? Are you going to see it? What did you think if you’ve seen it already?

What, in your opinion, are other films where they did sentient AI right?

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