Mini Review #1: Ex Machina (2015)

Ex Machina is a futuristic Netflix movie that invites all that watch to question what consciousness is and ultimately what makes us human. The movie revolves around the developing relationship between Caleb, a blue-collar hottie and programmer, and Ava, an artificial intelligence- also super-hot. All the while, Ava’s “father” Nathan, is observing them for an extra creep-factor. The film takes place over the course of one week and will throw so many plot twists in your face you will not know who to trust and who to absolutely love.

I loved this film. It restored my faith in the magic of movie making. The filmography is spectacular and the cast is beautiful to look at and is equally beautiful in their acting ability. Throughout the course of the film I was able to forget about the obnoxious ones in class playing various things on their various electronic devises, and simply watch. I’m not trying to sound pretentious, but not a lot of movies do that for me.

I was recently reminded of the splendor that is this film when my parents watched it for the first time on the weekend. They both grew up in the era where the future didn’t look like our present what so ever and every problem in the world was solved with the magic of technology!! (Aka, the Jetsons.) But Ex Machina shows the audience almost the exact opposite.

The entire film is set within the near distant future where everything is almost exactly the same- culture, personal appearances, etc, etc- but the technology is much more advanced. Computers scan and analyze people and the ability to create a functional AI is there. Caleb, our blue-collar hottie, “wins” a lottery contest at work (Nathans company, BlueBook) and gets to spend the week at Nathan’s estate. All is not as it seems as Nathan really chose Caleb to test Ava using a method similar to the Turing Test. Long story short, Caleb falls for Ava and as he is helping her escape, Nathan gets stabbed very precisely and Ava in turn ends up locking Caleb into the estate. SAY WHHHAAAAA!!?!?!?!?

From the first time that we meet Ava, we can physically see that she is a robot (one with a very realistic facial and bodily features), and as far as we can tell, she posses a consciousness. But what exactly is a human consciousness, or any consciousness? At what point did Ava develop a conscious? Or like her speech patterns, was she always conscious?

All of these questions bring forth further questions that allow we as an audience to dive deeper and deeper into philosophy.

What makes us human? The age-old question. From a biological stand point, Ava is not human- she does not need to consume food, only sunlight, she doesn’t need to rest and she cannot reproduce- as far as we know. But if you look at humanity from an ethical perspective, you start add things like emotions and emotional perception, intelligence, and sexuality. All things Ava displays. But this is where it gets tricky, did she actually have feelings for Caleb or was she programmed to use his sexual attraction to her against him to fulfill her ultimate goal; escape at any means.

I could probably rant all day and on countless pages and pages of the Internet, but I think you get the main picture here. Well, lets hope so. 

Overall, I recommend this movie to Millennials or people who enjoy good plot-based movies. If you want a pure action movie where you don’t have to think, go watch Batman v. Superman or something.

All in all, I give this movie 9 forced dance scenes out of 5