18
Apr/14

TRANSCENDENCE

18
Apr/14
TRANSCENDENCE

Johnny Depp plays a scientist who has more than just his eyes on the future of artificial intelligence in TRANSCENDENCE

TRANSCENDENCE (Wally Pfister, 2014)
Opens Friday, April 18
www.transcendencemovie.com

In 2005, futurist Ray Kurzweil wrote The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, forecasting the next stages of artificial intelligence and its effects on humanity. That idea is taken to a whole new level in Wally Pfister’s overblown and ultimately ridiculous Transcendence. Johnny Depp stars as Dr. Will Caster, an AI expert targeted by R.I.F.T. (Revolutionary Independence from Technology), a terrorist group led by Bree (Kate Mara) that is calling for “Evolution without Technology.” After a conference, Will is shot, and his wife, Evelyn (Rebecca Hall), and best friend, Max (Paul Bettany), consider uploading Will’s brain into his supercomputer, PINN (Physically Independent Neural Network), before he dies. While Evelyn wants to keep her lover alive any way possible, Max considers the potential ramifications if they succeed. And succeed they do, beyond their wildest expectations — and far beyond any kind of plausibility, leaving the audience openmouthed in amazement.

Max Waters (Paul Bettany) and Evelyn Caster (Rebecca Hall) meld man and machine in sci-fi thriller

Max Waters (Paul Bettany) and Evelyn Caster (Rebecca Hall) meld man and machine in sci-fi thriller

Oscar-winning cinematographer Pfister has shot most of Christopher Nolan’s visually dynamic films, including Memento, Inception, and the Batman reboot, but his first directing foray is a major disappointment after a promising beginning. Written by debut screenwriter Jack Paglen and photographed by Jess Hall (The Spectacular Now, Hot Fuzz), Transcendence, of course, looks great, although its visual splendor becomes repetitive as the film reaches new levels of stupidity. Even the cast, which also includes Morgan Freeman as a sage research scientist, Cillian Murphy as an FBI agent, and Cole Hauser as a military officer, seems more and more disoriented as Pfister and Paglen deliver a frustrating mess that, for good and, mostly, bad, evokes such genre classics and cult favorites as Demon Seed, Colossus: The Forbin Project, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Her, Donovan’s Brain, Night of the Living Dead, and, yes, They Saved Hitler’s Brain. Transcendence is an ever-more-absurd Orwellian nightmare headed by a power-mad twenty-first-century HAL 9000, another attempt at portraying man as God for the umpteenth time since the original Frankenstein, and a stupefying failure at that.