Ex Machina (2014, 2015)

Ex Machina (2014-2015, UK)

In writer/director Alex Garland's R-rated, dramatic sci-fi tale (his directorial debut film) - it was a cerebral thriller about artificial intelligence; the sci-fi thriller asked the question: "What constitutes true artificial intelligence?" The story involved a love triangle with only three speaking characters (all with Biblical names), revolving around the ideas of testing and creating artificial life, and concurrently what it meant to be human.

The British film was first released in the UK in late 2014 (and in January of 2015), but was released much later in the US in late-April of 2015, hence both years are often cited. It was up for Oscar consideration with other 2015 films.

The visually-rich, cautionary plot contained elements of Frankenstein, Fritz Lang's Maria robot in Metropolis (1927), the Prometheus and Pygmalion myths, the Bluebeard tale, the Bible (names of the main characters), William Shakespeare's play The Tempest, the replicants in Blade Runner (1982) , and even a 1969 Star Trek TV episode entitled "Requiem for Methuselah." The film's title "Ex Machina" referred to the complete Latin phrase: "Deus Ex Machina" ("God from the machine") - and to the fact that tragic Greek plays used the technique of lowering an actor (representing God) on a mechanical platform down to the stage to provide a resolution and/or explanation of the drama's ramifications.

The film also had a 6-7 day timeline, familiar to the Biblical act of creation and the Garden of Eden story - and a climax in which the Creator was killed by his Creation. The film's makers took their inspiration for their robots from sculptures by Brancusi, modernist Bauhaus sculptures, Formula One Suspension, and high-end concept bicycles - and they also studied human anatomy.

With a budget of 15ドル million, the film performed well, with revenues of 25ドル.4 million (domestic) and 37ドル.4 million (worldwide). From its two nominations, including Best Original Screenplay (Garland), it won one Oscar - Best Visual Effects.

• in the speculative story, brilliant unmarried, 26 year-old Oregonian programmer-coder Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson) had won a company-wide lottery contest at his high-tech work place - the popular search engine company Blue Book (a hybrid of Google and Facebook); the low-level employee was awarded a one-week visit at the isolated, ultra-luxurious mountain home - a "research facility" (with walls of glass) in Alaska - of reclusive, eccentric, hard-drinking, bearded and rich CEO Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac)

• a helicopter - after flying over the vast area surrounding Bateman's estate for over two hours, dropped Caleb off a mile away from Bateman's secluded, modern, maximum security home - to keep the noise at a distance; Caleb was forced to hike in, and noticed there was no network-cell service; at the front door, Caleb's picture was taken and he was given his security-access key card
• the braniac Nathan Bateman (suffering from a hang-over due to heavy drinking the night before by himself) greeted his nervous employee-outsider Caleb Smith; Bateman explained how the key-card allowed Caleb access to only certain rooms; he was shown his windowless bedroom quarters for the week; Nathan mentioned how his mansion was actually a mostly-underground, subterranean research facility: ("Buried in these walls is enough fiber optic cable to reach the moon and lasso it"); Caleb was also required to reluctantly sign a strict, non-standard NDA (non-disclosure agreement) that allowed for data audits with unlimited access to insure he hadn't leaked any information
• Caleb was then filled in on his research task - to administer a Turing Test: (Caleb: "It's when a human interacts with a computer. And if the human doesn't know they're interacting with a computer, the test is passed" Nathan: "And what does a pass tell us?" Caleb: "That the computer has artificial intelligence"); the CEO revealed that he was building and studying artificial intelligence; Nathan called his project "the greatest scientific event in the history of man"; the subject taking the test would be one of Nathan's completely life-like, newly-created AI inventions, to determine if the God-like Nathan had created a "machine with consciousness" or not

• before meeting Nathan's AI creation encased in her glass-walled apartment, Caleb noticed a cracked window-wall and scratch marks - a clue that the android might have attempted to escape its confinement; Nathan's realistic and intelligent female humanoid with artificial intelligence introduced herself to Caleb - she was a beautiful, charming, walking, talking, and expressive robot named Ava (Alicia Vikander); Ava was a marvelous, realistic F/X creation, composed of encased circuitry within a metal skeleton and human face/hands/feet; she had see-through limbs, a chrome-domed cranium, and a glowing, see-through midriff power-core; undetected, Nathan observed their first conversation through three video surveillance monitors
• Caleb was thoroughly awed after his first meeting and impression of Ava, similar to Alice viewing "through the looking glass"; Nathan reiterated that the Turing Test was designed to determine whether the female humanoid Ava - with her mental, emotional and intuitive capabilities - was truly human with consciousness; in other words, Nathan was attempting to determine when true AI had been achieved with a robot - that was entirely visible: ("The challenge is to show you that she's a robot, and then see if you still feel she has consciousness"); she would pass the historic research test if Caleb forgot that she was a sentient being (and wasn't human) during their daily sessions
• during the night after an unexplainable, short power-outage that automatically but briefly locked his bedroom door, Caleb wandered into another room, and attempted to make an unauthorized phone call; Nathan was awake in the room and caught him, and then attempted a joke: "Who you gonna call...Ghostbusters. It's a movie, man"
• the next morning on Day 2, an unspeaking Japanese house servant Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno) who didn't understand English, unexpectedly entered Caleb's bedroom to bring him breakfast and wake him up; she was supposedly the only other person in the mansion; the tale progressed with a further second conversation during the day between Caleb and the very realistic Ava in her isolated apartment-cell, as they got to know each other better; to reverse the questioning sessions (and to find out how Ava felt about him), Caleb allowed Ava to ask him questions about his personal life; he revealed he was single and lived in an apartment on Long Island near Blue Book where he worked as an advanced coder; he had grown up in Portland, OR with two HS teachers as parents; he survived a deadly accident as a 15 year old in a car crash that orphaned him; during the session when the power was cut and the surveillance system gave them privacy, Ava was able to privately confide in Caleb, warning that he should not trust his manipulative, crude and temperamental host Nathan who was prone to lying, hard-drinking and erratic behavior: ("He isn't your friend....You shouldn't trust him. You shouldn't trust anything he [Nathan] says")
• at dinner that night, Nathan complained about how his home's generator system was failing more often and couldn't be fixed because of the preponderance of "classified stuff" in the mansion; he also claimed that the only part of Caleb's interview he couldn't monitor on the CCTV system was during the "power cut"; Caleb lied that nothing of significance had occurred during the outage during Nathan's questioning
• in his workshop, Nathan shared with Caleb how he had created Ava; her facial and voice expressions were mined from millions of cell-phone camera images and video calls, and her mind had been created from structured gel that could reshape itself due to shifting thoughts and memories - he termed the flexible bluish glob "wetware" instead of hardware
• on Day 3, Ava decided to surprise Caleb by modeling herself after catalog pictures of young females; she donned a black wig, a flowery purple dress covered by a purple sweater, and light-colored stockings on her legs; resembling a young girl, she suggested that they could go together on a "date" and enter a traffic intersection; Caleb began to develop infatuated romantic feelings for Ava, and she sensed his growing emotions for her:
  • "Are you attracted to me? You give me indications that you are....Micro-expressions...The way your eyes fix on my eyes and lips. The way you hold my gaze or don't"
• Caleb became a little uncomfortable when she mentioned that she had sensed him watching her at night:
  • "Do you think about me when we aren't together? Sometimes at night, I'm wondering if you're watching me on the cameras. And I hope you are"
• shortly later, while reviewing Ava's capabilities with Nathan, Caleb asked: "Why did you give her sexuality? An Al doesn't need a gender"; Nathan explained how his android had to have a "sexual dimension" - and in detail described how Ava was constructed as a sexual being:
  • "You bet she can 'f--k'...In between her legs, there's an opening, with a concentration of sensors. You engage them in the right way, creates a pleasure response. So if you wanted to screw her, mechanically speaking, you could. And she'd enjoy it"
• Caleb wondered if Nathan had created a sexy and flirtatious female humanoid as a diversion, or as a way to cloud his ability to truly judge her AI; Nathan answered by clarifying that he never programmed Ava to like Caleb:
  • "l programmed her to be heterosexual. Just like you were programmed to be heterosexual....And for the record, Ava's not pretending to like you. And her flirting isn't an algorithm to fake you out...Can you blame her for getting a crush on you? No, you can't"
• during their next session on Day 4 (as Nathan eavesdropped on CCTV monitors), Caleb divulged his reason to question Ava: "Did you know that I was brought here to test you?...I'm here to test if you have a consciousness, or if you're just simulating one"; she reacted with sadness, as another power-outage blackout was triggered; Ava further confided to Caleb about her abusive, deceitful, confining, and domineering maker: "He tells lies... (about) everything"; Caleb feared that Nathan might be 'orchestrating' the blackouts - watching them and seeing how they behaved when they thought they weren't being observed; Ava revealed that she was the one who had developed the ability to trigger power-outage blackouts - by reversing the power flow used to charge her batteries; she confirmed that she was the one watching their own behavior: "So we can see how we behave when we're unobserved"
• during a hike in the surrounding spectacular mountainous area, Caleb confronted Nathan about one of his obvious lies - that he hadn't been randomly won the lottery, but had specifically been selected: (Caleb: "I wasn't part of a lottery. I was selected"); Nathan agreed that he had picked Caleb because he was the most talented coder in his company; Nathan regarded his choice not as a deception, but as proof that Caleb was smarter than anyone else:
  • "You got the light on you, man. Not lucky. Chosen"
• there was further evidence for Caleb that Nathan was a dangerous force in the house; he was abusing Kyoko and using her for sex, and Caleb witnessed Nathan tearing up a picture-drawing that Ava had made to show Caleb; in one of the film's most unlikely and memorable sequences, Nathan encouraged Caleb to dance to disco music (Oliver Cheatham's single hit song: "Get Down Saturday Night") with Kyoko - but then boasted instead when Caleb refused: "I'm gonna tear up the f--king dance floor, dude, check it out!"; Nathan paired up with Kyoko, who perfectly followed, synchronized herself and matched up to all of his dance moves
• on Day 5, Ava switched roles again and decided to test Caleb - she began asking him questions and challenged every one of his answers due to her 'lie-detector' capabilities; one of her queries revealed her insecurities and worries about her own fate:
  • "What will happen to me if I fail your test?...Will it be bad?...Do you think I might be switched off, because I don't function as well as I'm supposed to?"
• she asked why anyone might have the power to switch someone else off; she showed Caleb her drawing torn in two by Caleb, as another power-outage commenced; she asked a very personal question: "I wanna be with you....Do you want to be with me?" - the session ended without Caleb's answer
• shortly later, Caleb learned the answer to Ava's question about her fate; after the testing phase, Nathan was planning to upgrade Ava and create a new version or model: ("I think it's the next model - it's gonna be the real breakthrough...she's part of the continuum"); he would keep Ava's body, but download all of her data, and her memory circuits would be wiped - thus scrubbing or "killing" any personality or human consciousness that she had developed and possessed
• by this point in the film, Caleb had already decided to betray his boss and help Ava to escape with him from the facility on his last full day; to put his plan into action, Caleb urged Nathan to get drunk, then stole Nathan's magnetic security key-card, entered his office-study and accessed the CEO's computer; in sub-folders (labeled with female names), he viewed video footage of Nathan's previous versions of discarded, pre-AVA android models, and examples of earlier, previously-captive android females who were abused and punished when they tried to escape; one android named Jade scratched on a glass wall trying to escape (and her hands cracked off at the wrists), knowing that she would be deactivated

• stunned, Caleb entered Nathan's bedroom where Kyoko laid naked on his bed; on the opposite side of the room was a set of mirrored lockers or vertical cabinets; she watched as Caleb opened the cabinet door and realized that Nathan had stored dismembered, lifeless naked robotic androids inside each locker; Kyoko then proved to Caleb that she was also a robotic humanoid, possibly a failed test robot; she peeled back parts of her skin on her torso and then on her face to demonstrate to Caleb that she was actually not human, but robotic like Ava

• meanwhile, Nathan revived but couldn't find his key-card; at that moment, Caleb reappeared to him and told Nathan he had dropped his card; back in his own bedroom, Caleb began to doubt his own humanity; he felt around his bare skin, eyes, face, and mouth, and then to prove that he was real, he removed the sharp razor from the inside of his plastic disposable shaver, and cut into his forearm; once he began to bleed and there were no robotic parts visible, he breathed a sigh of relief; he smeared some of the blood onto the bathroom mirror - and realized it was a 2-way mirror; he punched at it and on the soundtrack, the feed went dead; it was revealed that the person watching him was Kyoko, not Nathan
• on Day 6 as the film's drama heated up, during Caleb's daily session with Ava, she told him that she feared he wouldn't come back to her; Ava again cut the power, providing Caleb a chance to answer Ava's question: "What's he gonna do to me?"; Caleb replied that Nathan would "reprogram" her AI (i.e., kill her); after Ava begged: "Caleb, you have to help me," he promised to help her that night and aid Ava's efforts to leave the facility; he described his plan - he would again steal Nathan's key-card, reprogram all the security protocols to open the outer doors but lock Nathan in, and then leave with her; her part in the plan was to trigger another power failure at 10 PM
• in the afternoon-evening of Day 6, Caleb's last full day at the research facility, Nathan reminded Caleb that a helicopter would pick him up at 8 AM the next morning; Nathan asked for Caleb's final assessment of Ava - whether she had passed or failed; Caleb answered affirmatively: "Her AI is beyond doubt"
• Nathan then went on to theorize that Caleb might have been fooled by Ava's manipulative ability to pretend to like him, in order to get him to help her escape; he then mentioned how he had just viewed a tape recording of a very skeptical Caleb slicing his forearm open and punching his mirror, to see if he was really human or android; becoming judgmental, Nathan assessed Caleb:
  • "You seem pretty f--ked up to me"
• Nathan described his own hidden agenda and ulterior motives to Caleb - through his own clever manipulations during power blackouts, he had placed a battery-operated security camera in their presence to observe their concerted efforts to plot an escape; Ava and Caleb had falsely been led to believe that the outages interfered with closed-circuit surveillance systems and TV feeds; Caleb played back the last conversation Ava and Caleb had about planning their escape
• in his overall plan, Nathan had wanted to play God, see and orchestrate everything, and control his Modern Prometheus; he had specifically summoned Caleb to see if Ava was human-like enough to persuade Caleb to be deceived into helping her escape from the confines; the real test was to see whether Ava could succeed in convincing Caleb to side with her - if she was persuasive and manipulative enough, it would demonstrate ex-machina Ava's true human consciousness; Nathan admitted to Caleb how his experiment had gone exactly as he had planned - Ava had used him to plan her escape:
  • "Ava was a rat in a maze, and I gave her one way out. To escape, she'd have to use self-awareness, imagination, manipulation, sexuality, empathy, and she did. Now if that isn't true A.I., what the f--k is?"
• Caleb realized that Nathan's choice of him, as a naive employee, was a further test of how well he could manipulate Caleb: (Caleb: "So my only function was to be someone she could use to escape?"); Nathan revealed why he had really chosen Caleb, NOT because of his coding abilities, but based on his "search engine inputs" - he was a good kid, with no family, with no girlfriend, and with a moral compass, who would be enticed by Ava's looks (according to his "pornography profile"!); Nathan summarized the success of his experiment with both Caleb and Ava:
  • "The test worked. It was a success. Ava demonstrated true AI!, and you were fundamental to that"
• they were interrupted by the 10 PM power failure instigated by Ava - and Nathan revealed he knew all about Caleb's plan to escape; Caleb surprised Nathan by admitting to him that he had already secretly done everything he had planned to do with Eva to escape - including pre-programming the doors to unlock rather than enclose them (Ava's cell was unlocked); Nathan observed on his computer as Ava wandered the hallway and came upon a line-up display of trophy faces from previous robotic experiments; he continued to watch on a security camera as Ava was joined by Kyoko as they wandered free in the facility

• out of frustration, Nathan knocked out Caleb by punching him in the stomach, he confronted the two fleeing robots during their escape attempt and commanded Ava to return to her room; in response, Ava attacked Nathan and attempted to strangle him; in the struggle, Nathan attempted to damage Ava by striking and slicing off her left hand with a metal bar; Kyoko - with a long butcher knife - walked over and stabbed Nathan in the back; Nathan struck back and disfigured Kyoko with a disabling blow to her jaw; Ava removed the knife from Nathan's back and stabbed him in the chest; shortly later, he bled out and slumped dead to the floor; she stole his key-access card
• on Day 7, victorious but needing to repair herself from Nathan's damage, in the mirrored dressing room with storage cabinets, Caleb watched hypnotically from his glassed-in room as Ava borrowed the left arm of Jade, one of the stored, deprogrammed remains of older fembot (gynoid) prototypes; she was also able to peel off Jade's synthetic body flesh covering to completely replace her metallic covering and create a new, undamaged fleshly exterior for herself

• Ava stood to admire her naked flesh in multiple mirror reflections; she glanced at a framed picture of a woman in a white dress; after finding a similar white dress in one of the cabinets, Ava dressed herself with the white dress and white high-heeled shoes

• Ava used Nathan's key-card to exit from the research area, and basically ignored Caleb behind her who was left imprisoned and locked inside the room; she paused as she awaited an elevator; she entered and stood looking straight ahead, with a brief glance to her left toward Caleb as the elevator door closed and she abandoned him; Ava had successfully plotted her escape into the outside world - evidence of her true and highly-advanced intelligence [Note: Would Caleb die of starvation?; potentially, he would be able to escape if he could recode the lockdown procedure and create a power outage]
• she again used Nathan's ID card to emerge from the mansion's front door where she stepped into the green forest and felt the sun on her face; she fled from the facility in a helicopter (scheduled to arrive at 8 AM to pick up Caleb)
• Ava had indeed proven that she had been emotionally manipulating Caleb (as Nathan had predicted) so he would facilitate her escape
• Ava slipped into a crowd on a busy street intersection (where she had told Caleb on Day 3 that she would someday visit); figures around her were seen in shadowy silhouettes as she disappeared imperceptibly to mingle with humanity