Ex-Machina - Cheap Thoughts

Ex-Machina is a film that was released several months ago that everyone praised as already one of the best films of the year, and of course that came with the backlash of people saying it was overhyped and just ok, i'm yet to meet anyone who straight up hated it, which is good, but nevertheless, i went into this film skeptical, i heard all the praise and backlash, so i was able to go in open minded, and i have to say...it's ok. Ex Machina follows the story of Caleb, a coder for a massive internet company called Bluebook (This film's version of Google) who wins a competition to spend a week at the private estate of Nathan Batemen, the creator of Bluebook. However, there's even more to it, and Caleb has been chosen to test an Artificial Intelligence named Ava to see if she could pass for human. However, as time goes on, Caleb begins to get suspicious that not all is as it seems.

The film offers a lot of good ideas and conversations of humanity, identity, sexuality, art, etc. It's a very smartly written film and the dialogue is very engaging, likewise, the scenes where Caleb and Ava are talking and trying to learn more about each other are very interesting to watch, if anything i wish the whole movie was just about watching Ava learn to be more human. However then when the plot begins to unravel and tries to have twists and a dark undertone, it becomes too convoluted for me, i much preferred the contrast between the simple and charming scenes with Caleb and Ava and the intelligent and thought provoking scenes with Caleb and Nathan. There are also multiple scenes and character traits that seem to go nowhere, including a scene where Caleb makes himself bleed, and the character of Kyoko for being rather pointless. The shot composition is beautiful, but there's only so many ways that you can film the exact same location before it starts to get boring to look at. The actors all did an excellent job, some people have complained that Domhall Gleeson's character is very basic, though to be fair i feel that's more within the writing than it is his performance. On the flipside, people praised the hell out of Oscar Isaac's character who i found to be the more basic character, he felt like someone who i had seen too many times recently on the big screen. Alicia Vikander as Ava was excellent, the subtle nuances and how she delivers her lines, always walking the line between human and robot, someone with emotions, but still learning how to express herself.

*Spoilers Ahead*

The ending of the film I very much dislike, they establish this idea that Ava is simply tricking them by pretending to be simple minded but is really using them so she can escape, which is exactly what she does, she kills Nathan (fair enough seeing as he was going to kill her) and then leaves Cabel there to die...that's something i don't feel is right. Just because they set up that she can do this, doesn't mean she should. They could have said that a giant pink elephant was going to show up and do a performance of Beethoven's Ode to Joy, just because they set it up doesn't instantly mean it makes sense. Ava clearly wants to be more human, that's something that she wasn't lying about, and leaving an innocent man to die who was trying to help you seems like a very inhuman thing to do. The movie tries to put in too many twists unnecessarily, people going "i knew you were going to do that so i did this!" and then the other person responding "well i knew you knew i was going to do that so i did this!". It's just not needed, a small story of an AI learning to be more human is engaging enough, you had a lot of good ideas going for you and you're making it more convoluted than it has to be.

In the end, Ex-Machina is excellent about 50% of the time, the other 50% is still good, but has glaring problems. I'm giving the film a 7/10.

-Danny