Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Religious Music & Entertainment
Review: Transcendence (dir. Wally Pfister, 2014)

Review: Transcendence (dir. Wally Pfister, 2014)

Last updated on: April 22, 2014 at 12:56 am by Peter T. Chattaway

Review: Transcendence (dir. Wally Pfister, 2014) 2014-04-22T00:56:37-07:00 Peter T. Chattaway

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Transcendence is, in theory, the sort of film I ought to like. It’s a science fiction film with big ideas about the increasingly blurry line between humanity and technology, and it addresses the question of whether some creations can ever outgrow or improve upon their creators. The film also has some fantastic production design. It’s a treat to look at.

But in execution, the film — the first to be written by Jack Paglen and the first to be directed by Wally Pfister, a cinematographer who has shot all but one of Christopher Nolan’s films — leaves a lot to be desired, almost as though the ideas at play were simply too big for the filmmakers to really get a handle on.

Most significantly, the film sets up a conflict but can’t decide whose side it’s on — which makes for a curiously subversive bit of entertainment but also leaves the story feeling quite muddled, especially in its final moments.

The film begins with a prologue set in the future, which lets us know that society has taken a major technological step backwards.

The networks that we currently depend on for just about everything have failed somehow, and computers are useless now and literally used as doorstops. Max Waters (Paul Bettany), a former scientist, lets us know in a voice-over that many cities are without power, and the fact that armed soldiers openly patrol the streets suggests that a certain degree of chaos has set in, though we never really see any.

Then the film jumps back in time five years.

Will Caster (Johnny Depp), an artificial-intelligence expert, is giving a presentation in which he suggests it would be a wonderful thing if all the computers in the world — which are already infinitely smarter than us — became self-aware, too. When someone in the audience (played by Lukas Haas) says Caster is trying to create a “god”, Caster replies that humanity has always created its own gods.

Minutes later, the audience member in question confronts Caster outside the auditorium and shoots him, before committing suicide. And this, it turns out, was part of a coordinated terrorist attack against artificial-intelligence scientists in general.

Caster survives the shooting, only to discover that the bullet was poisoned and so he has only weeks to live.

As it happens, Caster had recently experimented with uploading a monkey’s consciousness into a super-intelligent computer, so Caster’s wife, Evelyn (Rebecca Hall), proposes to their friend and colleague Max — the person we saw in the prologue — that they try uploading Caster’s consciousness to the computer instead.

Evelyn seems to think that if they can make a back-up, as it were, of Caster’s brain, then perhaps he won’t die. But of course, Caster will die. The question is whether Evelyn can create a reasonable facsimile of him to keep her company.

That’s a pretty creepy and unnerving premise, right there, but the film never quite conveys just how creepy and unnerving it is. Instead, when Caster is dead and his voice comes through the computer’s speech synthesizers, Evelyn sheds tears of happiness, as though the spirit of her husband was really still with her — and while some characters do question that emotion, the film itself never does.

Thanks to his ability to tap into the entire internet, “Caster” gains more and more power and develops newer, indeed more “godlike”, abilities. He quickly assimilates enough money to enable Evelyn to buy a small town in the middle of nowhere, where they hire people to set up an endless field of solar panels and an underground laboratory so that “Caster” can experiment with nanotechnology and the ability to restore living tissue.

Eventually “Caster” begins to heal actual people — and he not only heals them, but enhances their bodies while making each of them part of his broader telepathic network. He claims these people still have autonomy, but they also work as a collective unit, which would seem to suggest that they are all servants to “Caster” himself, carrying out his will as he sees fit.

Interestingly, Evelyn herself remains separate from this network, and there were times when I wondered how she could continue to relate to “Caster” as though he was still basically just another person, albeit one trapped inside a machine.

Remember how, in Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan’s girlfriend was offended when she discovered that he had other bodies conducting scientific experiments and the like while she and he were supposed to be making love? Or remember how, in Spike Jonze’s Her, the artificial intelligence voiced by Scarlett Johannson reveals that she has been busy connecting with other people — and other artificial intelligences — throughout her relationship with the film’s protagonist?

Similarly, an artificial intelligence as powerful as “Caster” would clearly have to be doing a lot of that sort of multitasking in the background while interacting with Evelyn, yet she never seems to really face this fact. Instead, she remains remarkably incurious about what’s going on behind the facade that he presents to her on screen after screen.

Admittedly, she does get unnerved eventually by the fact that “Caster” projects his voice through the mouths of the people who are connected to his network. Remember the “surrogate” scene in Her? I have often wondered how popular that film would be if it had been about a male computer program that arranges for a man to come over and have sex unexpectedly with a female protagonist, and there are scenes in Transcendence that at least hint at how disturbing such a scenario could be.

Evelyn also objects to the fact that “Caster” can scan her body functions and thereby read her emotions, which she insists are hers, and ought to be private.

On the one hand, I sympathize: part of the mystery of marriage is that, even though two people are “one flesh” in some sense, they are still fundamentally two different persons. Things can be severely unbalanced when one partner (in this case, Evelyn) is no longer a mystery to the other on some level.

And yet, on the other hand, in a world where entire TV shows such as Lie to Me have explored the idea that careful attention to body language can reveal whether a person is lying or telling the truth, it’s not so hard to see why “Caster” can’t be fooled.

Eventually “Caster’s” cult out in the middle of nowhere attracts the attention of the FBI, who consider putting a stop to it with the help of the neo-Luddites who assassinated Caster and his colleagues in the first place.

And note: this is a purely pre-emptive strike that the FBI is contemplating. At this point in the story, “Caster” has not attacked or harmed anyone. He has, admittedly, “brainwashed” his followers, but they all joined his community voluntarily. Feel free to read whatever Waco-themed subtext you like into this part of the film.

(You could argue that “Caster” imposed his consciousness on his first few followers, at least, without asking their permission first — but then, how do we really know? If it is impossible for a human or a computer to prove that he or it is “self-aware”, then how much more difficult would it be to prove that there is coercion rather than cooperation between a human and a computer when they interface so seamlessly?)

Ultimately, the subversive thrust of this film is that “Caster” actually does represent the betterment of humanity, indeed of the entire planet — and that human fear of this technology will be our undoing, and maybe even the planet’s, too.

So the film wavers between the promise of utopia and the fear of dystopia. On the utopian side, we see plants and people heal — we even see a forest sprout in an instant, like the trees that grow from an Edenic seed in Darren Aronofsky’s Noah! — while on the dystopian side, we see what looks like the loss of individuality.

Thematically, this is somewhat reminiscent of a recurring theme on the Star Trek TV shows, where the various captains or the people they encounter had to choose between freedom and perfection. (Naturally, they chose freedom; the ability to walk out of Eden on our own steam was a theme they sometimes spelled out quite explicitly.)

But there’s one key difference here: “Perfection” in those stories was stagnant; it held people back from growing into something better and more enlightened. But the “perfection” offered by “Caster” is, itself, the end result of growth and evolution.

Star Trek did, admittedly, play with the notion that growth and evolution could result in a different kind of “perfect” stagnation, most notably with the Borg. And the people who have joined “Caster’s” movement do behave like the Borg at times — but they don’t actually look as grotesque and dehumanized as the Borg drones do. Indeed, instead of amputating their limbs and replacing them with mechanical prosthetics, “Caster” outwardly restores them to something resembling full humanity.

As with Star Trek, so with other films and TV shows: The natural impulse of a lot of popular science fiction has been to take the side of freedom, even if it means chaos. Consider how the film version of I, Robot took Isaac Asimov’s concluding idea — that it would be a good thing if computers secretly took over the world — and flipped it on its head, by imagining that that would be a very bad thing instead.

During the final scenes in Transcendence, it is tempting to think that the film is doing what most other films have done in that regard: that it is siding with the agents and terrorists who are determined to bring “Caster” down, and that it is portraying “Caster” as some sort of Frankenstein’s monster that needs to be stopped.

But the tragic tone of the conclusion, and its resemblance to the final romantic moments of a certain Star Trek movie, suggest otherwise.

And so, like our opening narrator Max, and ultimately like the emotionally conflicted Evelyn herself, the film can’t decide where its sympathies lie, or what it should do.

This confusion extends even to “Caster” himself, though I can’t say much more about that without getting into spoilers. Suffice it to say that, for an entity that has clear goals and an incredible ability to think several steps ahead of everyone else, he seems curiously indecisive in the film’s final scenes.

Is this a sign that Caster’s conflicted human soul still lurks within the machine somewhere? Maybe, but it leaves the film feeling kind of aimless and unsure of itself.

Acting-wise, the film benefits from decent performances.

In addition to the Dark Knight alumni who have worked with Pfister before — notably Morgan Freeman as one of Caster’s colleagues (the older, wiser one, of course) and Cillian Murphy as the FBI agent — the film also brings in Iron Man 3 veterans Hall, who does all of the emotional heavy lifting here, and Bettany, the latter of whom voiced an artificial intelligence himself in the Marvel Comics movies.

The one “off” note in the whole thing is, alas, the man at the heart of it all: Depp never quite shakes off the sense that he’s too cool for this story; as an acquaintance put it on Twitter, he seems bored, even during the scenes when his character is alive.

I did, however, like the repeated image of a circuit board sitting in a dreamcatcher. And I think I even chuckled out loud at the reference to Alan Turing.

So the film is not without its good points. It just could have been a fair bit better.

Previous Post

April 18, 2014

Noah news round-up: Oscar buzz & an environmental panel

Next Post

April 19, 2014 Flashback: The films made by Alex & Stephen Kendrick

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Anglican Planet Articles BC Christian News BC Report Bible Movies Bible Review Blog Books & Culture Campus Times CBC Radio Christianity Today ChristianWeek Essays Faith Today Festival Cinemas Guide Film Journals Georgia Straight Interviews MB Herald National Catholic Register Salvationist Today's Christian Two Chairs Ubyssey Uncategorized Vancouver Courier Vancouver Sun

Select a Month August 2025 April 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 May 2024 February 2024 December 2023 May 2023 March 2023 November 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 September 2019 July 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 April 2012 January 2012 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 November 2003 October 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 March 2002 January 2002 December 2001 November 2001 September 2001 August 2001 July 2001 June 2001 April 2001 March 2001 February 2001 December 2000 November 2000 October 2000 September 2000 August 2000 July 2000 June 2000 May 2000 April 2000 March 2000 January 2000 October 1999 August 1999 May 1999 April 1999 February 1999 January 1999 December 1998 November 1998 October 1998 August 1998 July 1998 June 1998 April 1998 March 1998 January 1998 November 1997 September 1997 July 1997 June 1997 April 1997 March 1997 February 1997 January 1997 December 1996 October 1996 September 1996 June 1996 March 1996 February 1996 January 1996 April 1995 November 1994 September 1994 September 1991

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which Psalm did Moses write?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Psalm 72 Psalm 23 Psalm 119 Psalm 90