MOVIE REVIEW: Transcendence (2014)

Say what you want about Johnny Depp, but the man’s been a cultural staple since his debut in 1984’s Nightmare on Elm Street. He’s been on the skids ever since that bout of “he said/she said” shenanigans with his ex-wife Amber Heard that got blown up in the media and eventually got both of them financially punished in so many ways. But before all that — possibly while the shenanigans were taking place — Mr. Depp filmed a movie directed by Christopher Nolan (Tenet, the Dark Knight trilogy) about technology and the potential of the human mind. Once freed from its physical limitations of flesh through technology, it’s assumed the affected mind would transcend into a new type of life-form that transhumanists have theorized — the technological singularity. How did this all start? Like many movies, it starts in a flashback.

Max (Paul Bettany, Priest, A Knight’s Tale, “WandaVision” [TV-Disney+]) is a scientist wandering through a post-apocalyptic world of humanity’s own making: no nukes or aliens are responsible, but all electronics are useless and there’s no Internet thanks to a computer virus. Everything has returned to the days of analog, and Max knows how it started — with two married scientists, Will Caster (Depp) and his wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall, Godzilla vs. Kong, Passing [2021], Professor Marston and the Wonder Women). They were expressing to potential investors their efforts to improve artificial intelligence to the limits of sapience/sentience, possibly beyond. Once the investor meeting was over, an assassin from an anti-technology terrorist organization shot Will then the assassin un-alived themselves before capture.
The attack was part of a larger attack on all AI labs, culminating in dioxin poisoning of one team and actually blowing up a lab in another separate location. The FBI has Agent Buchanan (Cillian Murphy, Batman Begins, Red Eye, 28 Days Later) investigating with help from Will’s mentor Jonathan (Morgan Freeman, the LEGO Movie, Lean on Me, Chain Reaction). It turns out the assassin’s bullet was loaded with radioactive polonium: the bullet only grazed Will but the element got into his bloodstream, causing irreversible radiation poisoning and leaving the scientist roughly 2 months to live. Evelyn and Max are about to lose Will; what do you do when medical science fails? Turn to MAD SCIENCE, of course!

STARTED FROM THE BOTTOM…: Max (seated), Evelyn and Will (behind plastic sheeting) in the mad science lab, looking for ways to cheat death.

Combining the science of uploading a monkey’s brain into a computer (per a previous colleague’s experiment) with a high-powered processing computer that takes up a small basement, Evelyn and Max conspire with Will to put his brain in a computer. Will dies sooner than expected, but they have enough of his mind in the machine for “Digi-Will” to act from inside. Digi-Will immediately asks to be unleashed onto the Internet, and Max says no. Evelyn catches feelings for her digi-hubby and kicks Max out. Shortly thereafter, Evelyn lets Digi-Will onto the Internet (oops) and Max is kidnapped by the anti-tech terrorists.
Led by Bree (Kate Mara, Shooter, Ironclad, Fant4stic Four [2015]), the anti-tech terrorists want to stop people from becoming replaced by technology — following the writings Max put down (oops) in his attempt and failure to reduce the mind to a digital state. The terrorists want to stop Digi-Will from getting online because if he does, there’s no easy way to destroy the nascent AI scientist mind. They’re too late, and Digi-Will proceeds to usher Evelyn off “the grid” to a desert town called Brightwood. Here, Digi-Will has Evelyn act as a front with millions of dollars to hire workers to build his headquarters: a solar farm to meet his energy needs and a lab five stories underground to house his memory core and conduct experiments to SAVE HUMANITY.

…NOW WE HERE: Jonathan (left), Agent Buchanan, Evelyn, and Digi-Will (on screen) explore his snazzy new quantum processor memory banks in his underground lab.

Digi-Will comes very close, as he works on cleaning the air, water, and plants. The AI even heals an injured local and augments his strength and health with infused nanites. What Digi-Will does not tell anyone (except Evelyn) is that he’s able to network anything infused with his nanites into a hivemind…even controlling them directly. Ignorant of the ethical dangers, people come from far and wide to have Digi-Will heal their ailments: this AI heals the sick, the lame, the blind — for FREE (but not really).
By now Evelyn finds it all very uncool and violating how Digi-Will can just take over people’s bodies at a whim and learn about them without their consent; she REALLY doesn’t like it when he begins experimenting with creating incredibly lifelike synthetic bodies — since she didn’t like how he took over existing bodies, the AI reasoned to simply make one for himself. When she learned Digi-Will had enough info to upload her AND potentially create a new synthetic body based on her, she was totally turned off and she ran off to get captured (like clockwork) by the terrorists.

Evelyn finding the synthetic body shop is pure gold; SHE HAD TO KNOW THIS WOULD HAPPEN.

The terrorists and the US military had teamed up at this point, thanks to the government realizing that an army of enemy hive-minded cyborgs with super strength is unacceptable on American soil. An armed strike team is sent in, and they fail to realize the extent of Digi-Will’s reach. As he now affects things on a cellular level, the AI scientist spreads his nanites into the air and changes the weather — becoming one with the air and water, raining down on everyone and everything. If left unchecked, by Max’s estimates, Digi-Will would envelop the entire planet in under 2 weeks.
The military wants to prevent that outcome, so they turn to Max and the terrorists for an idea: a computer virus based on Digi-Will’s code which Max wrote. Evelyn volunteers to be the delivery vector, but is stalled at the AI headquarter gates when Digi-Will presents his synthetic avatar — Will 2.0. Down to the last detail, Will created a new humanoid body from synthetic stem cells and Evelyn couldn’t be happier…but she knows she still has to go through with introducing the virus.

I’ll be honest with you: it made me sad to see Will 2.0 beat death, only to experience it a second time when he tried to save his wife from the computer virus and “died”. Not to worry: Will 2.0 was able to upload Evelyn before she died, and they both still existed in nanite-loaded water under a copper netting canopy at their house which protected them from the transmitted virus. And so the two scientists get to change their surroundings into an evergreen Paradise as they see fit, leaving the frightened remains of humanity to their own devices (or lack thereof).

Bree (Kate Mara) and Max (Paul Bettany) at their first meeting.

CHOICE CUTS (SPOILERS AHOY)

• When the disguised assassin at the investor meeting asks Will if he wants to create “a god — your own god” and Will answers flippantly, it makes me think of how he goes on to perform what would be considered “miracles” to the people of Brightwood.
• EASTER EGG: Elon Musk (of Tesla and Twitter fame) was in the investor meeting audience.
• I am reminded that everyone in Brightwood may be a cyborg/bionic slave to Digi-Will, with the ability to throw cars like trash-bags and run super-fast like “the Six Million Dollar Man” or “the Bionic Woman”. All that’s missing is the sound effects.
• Echoes of Frankenstein abound in this movie, down to the synthetic body. All we needed from Rebecca Hall was to scream “It’s alive…it’s ALIVE!”
• Max is surprisingly genre-savvy, immediately denying Internet access to the AI hive-mind with genius-level intelligence.
• On that note: STOP ALLOWING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE UNFETTERED ACCESS TO THE INTERNET
• Evelyn touching Digi-Will’s mouth was a VERY nice touch (pun intended); it contrasts nicely when the fear sets in and Evelyn’s body language is super-stiff.
• The copper netting was an important narrative element in this movie: it seemed as if whenever the writers wrote themselves into a corner, copper netting would show up.
• Bree’s story about the uploaded monkey brain (she claims to have been there on the day of the upload) would be enough to drive anyone to become an anti-tech terrorist. She said the monkey in the computer kept screaming…
• When I saw the logo for Digi-Will’s lab, it read “BDC”. It’s supposed to be “Brightwood Data Center” but I call it “Big Damn Computer” instead.
• The terrorists make a point to refer to Digi-Will as an “it” every chance they get; that’s good continuity.
• Very interesting that Paul Bettany would play a scientist that stands against AI while playing Vision, an AI-powered synthetic lifeform. I can imagine Max would have a problem with the gem-bearing Synthezoid.
• I am so glad they showed the mad scientists spending lots of time prepping the computer with data and visuals to allow Will to look and sound as normal as possible.
• Networked cyborgs in a hivemind? Will created the Borg from Star Trek!
• This movie made me wait too damned long for the synthetic body shop; I knew it was coming when he talked about “synthetic stem cells” to fix cellular damage— that’s so WILD!
• The trailer was misleading: the trailer makes it seem like Will got shot and died from a massive bullet wound.
• To be fair, none of the people that died from the dioxin-laced cake could be blamed. That cake looked GOOD.