Transcendence (2014)

A better title for this would be No Exposition. Because in Transcendence there is no exposition. Or at least no exposition when it comes to the characters, who they are, why they do what they do, how they know each other. My friend, with whom I saw the movie, said he just identified them by their actors, and expected them to act as characters played by these actors usually do. Morgan Freeman is the good guy, because he is always the good guy. Johnny Depp is mildly creepy, because he is always mildly creepy. And so on. Transcendence kind of plays out like a very watered-down version of David Cronenberg's Videodrome and eXistenZ in that it is about the dangers of the organic becoming too entwined with the artificial, but there is such an obvious lack of risk on the filmmakers' end that the comparison is ultimately fleeting. Instead, we are presented more with a half-baked morality tale about why scientists should not play God. In the age of the NSA and Google Glass, this is obviously a relevant topic, and one that certainly draws in audiences, but it is handled in a way that predictable with a massive, glowing, neon-lit "P". Visually, Transcendence recalls Shane Carruth's Upstream Color, in its use of bold blue-gray colors, and wide-angle, carefully crafted shots. For all its faults, this is a movie that is lovely to look at, even if shots of rain falling in slow motion make up about three minutes of the overall running time. There is a meticulous attention to detail, down to the little things like certain articles of clothing, and the markings on buildings that lend the film a certain level of realism, but director Wally Pfister also falls back on your typical cyber-age cliches; the room that houses the massive computers is very smooth and shiny, like the Apple Store. It already looks silly, because it is silly. This is a silly movie. Wally Pfister deserves credit for his visual sensibilities (at times), but he ought to return to taking orders from other directors.