Film analysis about ex machina - Grade: B PDF

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I am writing a film analysis about a movie called the ex machina...

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One of the hidden gems 2015 could ever offer was a science fiction movie named Ex Machina. English film maker Alex Garland who wrote and directed this movie based the story on artificial intelligence. Not only that, but he also based the story on how obsessed humans are in creating something their image. This movie explores many themes like humanity and consciousness and selfish ambition – like that of Nathan, a brilliant scientist who created a robot whose scientific interest in his artificial intelligence was not commendable leading to his own self destruction. Thus, telling the audience about how the pursuit of scientific knowledge, in this situation, artificial intelligence, should not be taken lightly unlike how Nathan managed it. Furthermore, the movie discusses different parallels from the bible most popularly the relationship between God and his creation Eve, and the seven days of God’s creation. Which is also relevant to understanding the hidden message of the movie. In the movie, Nathan Bateman, is portrayed as a brilliant scientist with God-like skills and abilities in programming, yet he uses his immense brilliance for his selfish desires and interests. He started programming and coding at the age of 13, and his immense skills and knowledge led him to have a multi-billion-dollar company, Blue Book. At a certain point in the movie he says to Caleb, “Do you think I don’t know what it is to be smart? Smarter than everyone else” (55:2255:23). Through this quote, Caleb and the audience are made to comprehend the awareness of Nathan of his incredible gift. However, he decides to use this immense skill on his own selfish ambitions. Nathan perpetual selfishness are even more protruded when Caleb asked him how he created his artificial intelligence hardware. He reveals that he hacked every single mobile phone across the world and “diverged the data to the Blue Book” (37:35), this as a result makes his creations have “limitless resource of facial interaction” (37:40). Not only that, but he also even confesses to Caleb that he created Ava looking through his search history engine and based on

his interests. His pursuit of knowledge and evolutionary creations pushes him to do evil without having any remorse. Ava, who is Nathan’s robot, outsmarts Caleb and Nathan himself in the end which shows the danger of a technical advanced society which should not be taken lightly. Nathan is aware that “the evolution of artificial intelligence has been inevitable for years” (1:04:52), this is a matter “of when, and not if” (1:04:58). Nathan creates Ava despite saying that “one day, artificial intelligence will look back the same way we look at fossil skeletons from the plains of Africa” (1:06:30- 1:06:36), which suggests that Nathan is fully aware of the rapid evolution of AIs and how humans are set to be extinct. Nathan’s words are proven truthful when Ava easily tricks Nathan’s base on the weakness of emotion. She easily tricks Caleb to be on her side despite Nathan’s wise warnings to him. She deliberately turns of the cameras and tells Caleb not to “trust anything Nathan says” (31:48). Even when Caleb tells her Nathan will switch her off, she says “why is it up to anyone to” (1:03:31). This makes Nathan sympathetic towards her, thus earning her trust and using him to escape the highly secured facility....