Do a bunch of sci-fi fan favorites produce a little gem of a movie? Or a brain fart?
You’re watching Beyond The Trailer’s review of Ex Machina...
So you’ve got Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson in front of the camera, both also co-starring
over in a little movie called Star Wars The Force Awakens. Oh, and by the way, Isaac is
also playing Apocalypse in the upcoming X-Men Apocalypse movie. Then behind the camera is
Alex Garland making his directorial debut, the screenwriter of cult sci-fi hits 28 Days
Later and Dredd. Yeah, it’s hard not to get excited about Ex Machina. Even though
it’s like the gabillionth recent film about artificial intelligence. Seriously. Let’s
see, we’ve already had the UK flick The Machine, Spain’s Automata, plus Hollywood
flick’s Transcendence and Chappie. Then this summer Skynet returns with Terminator
Genisys and, of course, we’ve also got Avengers Age of Ultron. In Ex Machina the AI in question
is Ava, a robot built by Isaac’s tech guru in secret. He wants his employee, Gleeson,
to help him test whether or not Ava has REAL emotions or is just running software which
makes her “appear” to have emotions. Buzz on the movie has promised us a real mind fuck,
but who knows if THAT’S real or just A24’s publicity department runnings its software.
Ex Machina also happens to be co-produced by Scott Rudin, Hollywood’s alternate reality
version of Harvey Weinstein. And the actress who plays Ava, Sweden’s Alicia Vikander,
has some prestige as well thanks to her 2012 turn in A Royal Affair, which was nominated
for Best Foreign Language Film. Plus Isaac and Gleeson are building their own awards
street cred. Isaac was Golden Globe nominated for Inside Llewyn David and received a lot
of attention for A Most Violent Year, while Gleeson is co-starring in two big awards contenders
this year, Brooklyn and The Revenant. Heck, maybe Ex Machine will ALSO be an awards contender!
Will this marriage of sci-fi and prestige be able to stand out from the current AI crowd?
Or is being sentient just not enough
for
a robot
these days?