Transcendence
Do you want to become God? Well, I don’t. It’s been awhile since I have seen a Johnny Depp movie, and despite my general dislike of Rebecca Hall, I figured I should give her a chance. I expect female characters in Hollywood sci-fi films to have relatively little screen time, so it can’t be that bad.
Unfortunately, it was just that bad. Hall’s character is a rather boring case of a damsel in distress, and I cannot describe how distressing the film’s anti-scientific message is. It’s one of those “oh if robots are given too much power, they would take over the world” kind of films, except here it’s about how a human being is going to want to become ‘God’ if he gets too much power. Only monotheistic cultures could conjure up such a story, because logic would dictate that if one person can become “God” so can others, making it an entire world full of Gods (which actually makes the whole thing a little less menacing).
For me, “Transcendence” is the perfect example of what happens when non-scientists make half-hearted attempts at imagining a world with better technology than today governed by irrational fear. It reminds me much of the voices from 200 years ago which said that watching a train go at higher speeds than 45km/h will give people a headache. Now that technology is plateau-ing for a few years and everybody is more interested in Twitter than real innovations, it’s not even timely to be afraid of technological advancement anymore. On top of all that, the dialogue in the film was just plain dumb and pretentious, or so it seemed to me at least.
Next time, I have to choose better movies to watch on my flights.