MOVIE REVIEW: Archive (2020)

I’m not sure where I heard about Archive from; probably my late-nights scouring the internet for signs of artificial life outside of ChatGPT or other AI or VI (virtual intelligence) software. In any case, this movie by writer/director/designer Gavin Rothery (Moon, The Last Man, Star Citizen [VG], Battalion Wars [VG]) was a wild ride, with a Shyamalan-esque twist that made sitting through the slow and moody story worth every minute. While on the subject of time, the movie makes a beautiful show of the pitfalls of what we do with our time and the people with whom we spend our time.

Our story starts in a hidden lab in a frosty forest, where roboticist George Almore (British actor Theo James, “The White Lotus” [TV], Red Tails, and the Divergent series) works remotely on a top secret project for his boss Simone (Rhona Mitra, Doomsday [2008], Beowulf [1999], “The Last Ship” [TV]) at her tech company. The hours are long and the days lonely as he jogs through the snowy forests and mountain trails to take his mind off the recent death of his wife, Jules (Stacy Martin, The Last Photograph, High-Rise, Nymphomaniac: vol. I and II). To sate his grieving, George’s employer has paid for an in-home Somnolescence archive — an analog funerary storage device with the digitized memories and personality of the deceased as an AI. In this case, the contents are of Jules and she and George can interact via simulated video and audio phone calls — but only for a short time, and then the data degrades and the AI is gone forever. But the data inside the Somnolescence archive can be ported over to digital media, and George hatches a plan to bring Jules back…one way or another.

The J1 (left) and J2 (right) units, successive achievements in robotics and AI tech.

To keep himself company in the bleak wilderness, George builds three humanoid units each better than the last: J1 (an armless bipedal robot with the intelligence of a 5-year old personality), J2 (a blocky humanoid robot with the intelligence and emotional control of a 15-year-old personality), and his latest creation J3 (a near-perfect artificial humanoid with a developing adult personality) who is missing one important thing — LEGS. What George hasn’t told J3 is that her mind is based on an advanced copy of Jules’ mental data stored through Somnolescence — a service he told Jules he would not purchase before her death. It gets even worse when two Somnolescence agents pay a visit and realizes he’s tampered with the device — a very big breach of the terms-of-use contract that could potentially destroy Jules’ archive. So George works harder and faster to beat the clock, building a new android body with skin and hair and LEGS.

The highly-advanced J3 unit, dressed in athletics clothing for an outing in the forest.

While J3 and George grow closer as a result of the newer android’s form, the now-jealous J2 is overcome with emotion and destroys itself by walking into a nearby lake. This single action pushes the entire movie into overdrive as other companies retrieved the drowned J2’s tech, and now George’s employer is coming to confiscate his hard-wrought work by force. Thankfully, George met with his company’s security adviser Tagg (plated by Peter Ferdinando, Ghost in the Shell [2017], Snow White and the Huntsman) who gave him a gun in a case. The actual tool is the case: if it is opened, it triggers a security lockdown of the entire facility, providing its user with a sidearm behind closed doors. George uses both tools to great effect to defend his lab and creations, but the danger is still present inside the lab as is turns out George is the true danger.

The whole time he was working on the J-series, his end goal was to create a realistic housing for Jules’ digital consciousness. Some problems about that: the only one being honest about it was J2, George has not told J3, and J3 has developed her own personality from the day she was activated. If he puts the Jules archive info into J3’s android frame, then J3’s personality ceases to exist due to overwriting the data. George doesn’t care and does it anyway, using guilt to coerce J3 into allowing it to happen. With Jules now in J3’s body, the two of them have to pack up and run to affect an escape…at least that how it SHOULD have ended. It doesn’t end that way, and it has to be seen to be believed. Hands down, it’s one of the best moves I’ve seen in a while.

George Almore (Theo James) and J3 (Stacy Martin) share a somber moment.

CHOICE CUTS:

• I wish George had said, “I’m glad I built you those legs J3, because we’ve got to run” when the action started to ramp up. Would’ve been a nice touch.
• The isolated and snow-covered forest was amazing to watch, like a dream land. The dark waterfall was a spellbinding element to the environment, all misty and beautiful.
• On the flip-side, the cyber-punk city scene was far too ORANGE. Neon red is fine, but so much orange? I guess the designer wanted to stand out visually from the neon blues and pinks of more common cyberpunk environments.
• There’s no reason why George should have been an asshole to J2. He understood J1’s limitations; what stopped him with J2? Perhaps it was J2’s growing independent streak.
• The scene where J3 tries to bridge the Uncanny Valley was something George should have foreseen as a robotics developer that was able to reach as far as he did with implemented research. It’s like he’s never seen a movie about robots approaching sentience before.
• A bit more about the development of the J-series project: Knowing what little has been put out there for robotics (see the incredible Boston Dynamics video showing robotics progress over the past 40 years) and for breaching certain portions of the Dr. Masahiro Mori’s “Uncanny Valley” (see the teledildonic products at sex-toy conventions and expos), it is completely surprising that George didn’t add any anatomical functionality to accommodate the urges of an adult mind in an artificial body. The sensory programming would be insane, but he DID program a robot with taste buds and gave it realistic sensitive skin (was it TPE or silicone medium; who knows?) so it’s not outside the realm of possibility.
• Speaking of taste buds, how do you like lemon but NOT lime? Now that’s a sign of great programming to get such a distinction right.
• The seam lines on J3’s skin and shell made me think of Cyberpunk 2077. TRULY I MISS THAT GAME.
• The visuals of this film reminded me of the 1999 Björk song “All is Full of Love”, especially the accompanying video. The idea of the hidden lab makes me think of the movie Ex Machina.
• The two Somnolescence agents were played by actor Toby Jones (Captain America: the First Avenger, Finding Neverland) and writer/actor Richard Glover (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Into the Woods [2014]).