TECH TONIC: (From left) Morgan Freeman as Joseph Tagger, Cillian Murphy as Agent Buchanan, Johnny Depp as Will Caster, (on monitors), and Rebecca Hall as Evelyn Caster in sci-fi thriller Transcendence.
The forthcoming film poses timely questions of humans’ digital dependence. By Steven Zeitchik
Shortly before he began shooting his new artificial-intelligence thriller Transcendence last year, filmmaker Wally Pfister flew Jose Carmena and Michel Maharbiz, a pair of UC Berkeley scientists, to his office in Los Angeles.
Professional consultants are common on Hollywood movies, but they’re not usually this advanced — Carmena studies neuroscience and Maharbiz is a nanotechnology specialist — and even fewer go really deep into the weeds with directors.
For 10 hours, the men pored over the script with the intensity of lab researchers on the verge of a major discovery. They discussed the density of brain signals, the limits of nanotechnology and the vexing problem of defining consciousness scientifically. “We went through line by line, hitting on a technical topic and just going through it with Wally and his team,” said Maharbiz, whose journal articles come with titles such as Can We Build Synthetic, Multicellular Systems By Controlling Developmental Signaling in Space and Time? “I’ve almost never seen people want to understand it at that level,” he added.
Science-fiction movies have looked at the possibilities and peril of artificial intelligence since HAL sought to destroy Dave Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968. Sarah Connor would later try to beat back the malicious plans of Skynet in the Terminator franchise, and Hugo Weaving’s coolly robotic Agent Smith proved a slippery foe for Neo and friends in The Matrix.
But few in this subgenre have examined the theme with the level of scientific rigour — or, for that matter, the emotionally inflected storyline — of Transcendence. Thanks to the emerging intelligence of digital creations, Pfister and screenwriter Jack Paglen are able to examine a kind of science fiction that while fantastical is both plausible and plausibly human.
Written by Paglen, a first-timer, and marking the directorial debut of Pfister, the Oscar-winning cinematographer and longtime Christopher Nolan collaborator, Transcendence concerns an artificial-intelligence researcher named Evelyn Caster (Rebecca Hall) who uploads the consciousness of her husband and professional partner Will (Johnny Depp) just before he dies from a gunshot wound inflicted by an anti-technology radical.
She is hardly engaging in disinterested science: Will is the love of her life, and the possibility that a digital replica can keep him with her is too powerful to resist, no matter the potential cataclysm.
In the ensuing weeks, the entity voiced and embodied by Will not only gains consciousness but evolves past mere human abilities, engaging in superhuman activity in the interest of bettering society (he says).
In the process, the digital being instills fear — maybe justified, maybe not — on the part of the couple’s close friend, fellow researcher Max (Paul Bettany), and government authorities fearful of a force they can’t control.
With its action set pieces and propulsive plot, the $100mn-budget Transcendence is an unmistakably Hollywood confection. Yet with its slowed-down moments hashing out questions of digital consciousness and human evolution, it also puts esoteric philosophical questions at the fore.
The film essentially offers the man-vs-machine tension of The Matrix — only this time there’s a decent chance the audience should be rooting for the machine.
“This is not ‘point the laser and zap the guy to death.’ These are real human beings faced with something large,” Depp said. “It’s something the audience is really meant to ponder.”
At a moment when sophisticated computer assistants like Siri are a part of everyday life, the movie poses timely questions. Can technology be harnessed to improve our lives or is it a force, once unleashed, that can’t be controlled? Is our current, human-centric form of existence one that future generations will see as primitive or idyllic?
In a culture of big-budget moviemaking that tends to investigate socially relevant issues years after the fact, if at all, Transcendence looks forward, asking questions we will soon be forced to think about — and, for all the movie’s entertainment value, implicitly urges us to start thinking about them now.
Despite the theoretical premise, the movie is set in a world that looks like the one we inhabit today. “I wanted it to feel like science fiction but contemporary science fiction, with as few leaps as possible,” Paglen said. “The root question is how far would you go to save your loved one, and that’s going to be more pressing if it looks and feels like our world.”
Or as Hall put it, “This is set in a world I know. This isn’t tinfoil helmets and spaceships.”
Some have yet to become intimately familiar with concepts like the singularity or a transhumanist future. Chances are, though, that our great-grandchildren will. Or perhaps our great-grandbots.
The idea of the singularity — investigated by scientists such as San Diego State’s Vernor Vinge and popularised by the author and Google futurist Ray Kurzweil — argues that computer technology is evolving so fast it can’t but either enhance or combine with human consciousness.
How this great meld will happen is a matter of debate. Humans may incorporate digital technology into their cognitive processes as a Darwinian hedge. Or consciousness could be uploaded to machines. Whatever the method, the questions are rich. At bottom, they ask both how they will change our lives and what it will mean to be human. — Los Angeles Times/MCT
Captain America: The Winter Soldier continues to rule the US box office in its second week after a record breaking opening last weekend with a $96.2mn collection. Marvel studio’s latest release, a sequel to 2011 release Captain America: The First Avenger, earned $41.4mn in its second weekend of release, which now brings the film’s domestic earnings to a total of $159mn, reports contactmusic.com. Winter Soldier is also proving to be successful in the overseas market — it has already raked in $317.7mn in ticket sales. In new installment, the plot occurs two years after the events in New York City, where Steve Rogers struggles to adjust to the modern world. He is involved with ‘SHIELD’, even if he isn’t convinced about certain aspects of its ethics. — IANS
Depp designed Heard’s engagement ring
Actor Johnny Depp designed the engagement ring for his fiancee and actress Amber Heard himself, but his attempt to create a unique piece of jewellery went awry. Depp was spotted wearing a diamond ring on his left hand and explained that it was originally intended for his partner Heard. But the ring is too big for the actress, reports femalefirst.co.uk
The 50-year-old said: “I made some drawings, which were maybe a bit out of proportion because I didn’t know what numbers meant in terms of diamond size. So boom! It came back and I realised that the diamond was the size of a human eye and might be a little uncomfortable to wear.”
Later he bought another from an antique jewellery store. “If she’s walking down the street and waves, the glare could burn someone’s retina. So I got her this one from a wonderful antique jewellery person in New York. And it hasn’t left my finger since. I’ll get it fitted to her finger and she can decide which one she wants,” he added. — IANS
Keira Knightley’s ‘extreme’ work schedule
Actress Keira Knightley says she can’t have a personal life while filming as the way she works is “extreme”. Knightley doesn’t have time for a personal life when she’s working on a film finding it hard to connect with her friends, reports femalefirst.co.uk.
Knightley refers to her recent Anna Karenina schedule pointing out it was so extremely busy when she was on set that she didn’t ever have the time to catch up with her close friends because of her “extreme” lifestyle. “When I’m not working it’s really about seeing as many friends as possible and making sure I’m there in their lives. The way I work is extreme. You can’t really have a personal life if you’re working on films all the time. There’s Skype, but, really, there’s just no way of doing it,” she said. “The hours are so long, you’re always in a different country, you’re always doing a different thing,” she added. — IANS
