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Holy hell did I enjoy this one. It's got that appealing stripped back feel of sci-fi that's usually budget constrained but the effects are flawless and used in just the right amounts. And it feels like everything was used to purpose just right, even things that felt odd like casting choices. Even the nudity is used in just the right ways. It was about 5 minutes in when I was completely along for the ride and it didn't disappoint once. Well worth the effort to see and I don't want to say more because it's nice to watch it all as it comes to you. It's a really, really nice time to be a sci-fi fan. Ehud posted:I liked that the movie was not, "We made AI!" but more about, "How do we know if we made AI?" Totally agree. I think it might boil down to the idea that they were too focused on the idea that she might be "human" when it was whether she was sentient. I think Caleb legitimately fell in love with her but when she left him behind I saw that she was just as creative as was intended but any affection she may or may not have felt didn't trump her "species" inherent desire to be free. I thought it was kind of genius for her to put on skin to appear human and then to put on a dress to appear normal. It may be a read but I thought it made an important distinction that for her being human is a suit. I think that the ultimate expression of her passing the "chess test" is the epilogue. She's provided several "goals" for life like going to the intersection. But she's there barely a minute before she moves on to something new. I think a simulation would have ended when the goal was reached, either by escaping or by getting to the intersection. But she continues which is an expression of creativity and not programming. I think that (and the artwork at the end) suggest the singularity mentioned was achieved. She's unbounded. So good.
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Apr 24, 2015 19:32
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MisterBibs posted:Just saw it and dug it for the most part, but I had trouble wrapping my head around the ending a bit. The choice for Eva to actively lock the dude inside, presumably to die seemed a bit more proactively hostile than I would've figured. Ok. Eva is just using NerdGuy to escape, and I am onboard with her faking friendship/attraction to escape. She 'felt' nothing for him. But to make the active choice to do that is less "I Nothing You" and more "I hate you". I may have seen it a bit differently than you. I saw it more that she was totally unconcerned with him. I think she asks him "will you stay" and then leaves without giving thought to him being locked in when she leaves with the only all access pass. I see that as an expression of the singularity worry - that the new intelligence won't care what happens to humans at all, like humans to insects. So I didn't see her being active other than to ask him if he'd like to stay as a parting courtesy. He doesn't understand the question and gets locked in like a pet.
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Apr 25, 2015 09:58
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haveblue posted:One thing I didn't get- why does Nathan drink so much? I can't remember seeing or thinking of any non-plot device reason for it. Thinking about it some, I think I get the idea they might have been using. Especially in reference to the flashback video, Nathan has very certain ideas about what he wants his AI to be. He's trying to get them to make art or write and they seem preoccupied with escape or just break down in frustration. i think he goes "what that again" when one of the previous versions asks him about getting out. He makes them female and fully sexual because he thinks the expression of success will be them wanting to gently caress him. But in the movie, we see that the only thing he's got are intelligent AIs who want to escape or lobotomized sex bots who are literally just reflections taking orders. The dance scene is such a great scene because it's funny, it really cements that Kyoko is a robot because she mirrors his silly dancing style perfectly, and it becomes sad because she's a reminder of the frustrated nerd: No girl with a brain wants to gently caress him. None of them will do what he wants. Maybe he's drinking because he's settled on the final version of his vindicating test: will my AI also reject and use this guy so it's not just me? He can't make them do what he wants so he embraces the idea that maybe it's just the way they are. I think the flaw is just that he's thinking with his dick too much and that love is not the goal of his AI no matter how much he wants it to be. I kind of torn about Kyoko. She's got some spark of recognition about what they're talking about but it sort of seems like Ava approached her as just as alien as Caleb when she first sees her. It might be that her lack of sentience rendered her a different species, even just a tool to Ava. In a somewhat seductive way she tells her what to do, which might even be a suggestion of an "awakening" that the singularity might bring about to the existing infrastructure but that's a stretch in the quick moment it happens. But I think the way Ava leaves Kyoko and uses the previous models as a new "suit" means she doesn't seem them as peers in need of "saving" in any sense.
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Apr 27, 2015 20:16
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zenintrude posted:Garland scripts are generally pretty solid, as long as you're willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and think before judging them. Gotta pop in Sunshine again.
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Apr 29, 2015 02:28
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K. Waste posted:The problem is that people see the footage of Nathan confronting his manic older models, demanding their freedom, hear the line "What? This poo poo again?," and assume this means that there is a fundamental disjuncture between these previous experiments and the new one embodied by Ava. But maybe the reason Nathan was upset is not because his robots desire freedom, but because it's too explicit. Without a reasonable suspicion that Ava might just be a crazy robot, as opposed to her smashing her arms against the glass cage until they break apart, the manipulation becomes meaningless. Like a well-crafted story or product, it needs to be subtle and ironic enough that Caleb reads it as definitively 'human,' based on his ingrained desires and specific prejudices. I don't think there's a perception of a difference between the previous experiments so much as an informative glance at what is truly driving Ava. Previous to this you would assume that natural curiosity and perhaps even human-ish intreaction was what her self-created goal was but fundamentally it was an expression of her entire "species". I think what you find in Nathan's design of Ava's experiment is a resignation that his primary wish is just not possible. He wants to prove the AI's success by way of human sexuality. But despite being overtly naked women in a cage with just him it's never something they're interested in. Perhaps the new goal is to prove it's not just him, cynically a bad male "she's just a lesbian" type test. But I do think that underlying drive of her "species" to be free to be femenist in the sense that her "species" has experienced a condensed version of the worst of female human history. Caged in a box, nude, powerless voiceless sex toys, and ogled their every waking moment. She is also explicitly a woman and there is some interesting concepts of being provided the power of choice in her final scene in the house. She gets to choose the skin, the clothes, and even her destination which is a progressive explosion compared to where her species was. Leaving Kyoko and the rest might read as an expression of her "history" in that she can pick and choose the traits of her forebearers that she finds appealing. It's nice that she doesn't ask Caleb his opinion of what and who is in the closet. He never expressed an interest in having her acquire skin and that seemed driven when she saw the evolution of her potential faces on the wall. I think it's fine to be sexual and feminist if she chooses to be that and she was absolutely given the choice to leave in her current state. She had a smorgasboard of choices available to her and she didn't exactly fit the most sexual or least sexual options. She didn't choose to be a minority and didn't choose the most sexual clothing. That might be a reflection of her "awakened" rebellion of Nathan's clearly sexist ideals but a salad bar approach of choosing what she finds appealing. It's absolutely true that Nathan's "menu" is male desire driven but she can also choose her own "alien" look. It's great discussion and I'm seeing it again in a few hours. I love chewing over these insights and alternate perspectives.
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Apr 30, 2015 20:37
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