Too Lofty for Its Own Good

Rating: 7/10 (14 January 2019)

3 May 2015. Ex Machina tries very hard to be the great cerebral sci fi version of the artificial intelligence genre. It appears that many critics and audience members may experience such a movie in Ex Machina, but when compared to other AI movies, it falls short of expectations. There are number of likely predictable twists in this movie if one pays close attention and the ending is just a script device that offers one of several possible AI scenarios that AI experts have hypothesized might occur.
In some respects AVA, Alicia Vikander performing as the primary AI character did too good a human job in portraying an AI. When comparing her to, by coincidence, AVA of the same name in the more superior The Machine (2013), it becomes apparent that Alicia's performance is more human like as a performance than as an AI becoming a human-like character. Cathy Lotz as AVA in The Machine offers up an AI presentation which an AI evolves into becoming more human-like without ever losing the artificial nature of its existence in a more realistic fashion. As such, Ex Machina doesn't quite ring true. It is the Asian character's oddly underdeveloped persona as a human being that offers up the most intriguing relational complexity. Unfortunately her character isn't presented with her full potential towards the end of the movie unlike a more action version of this same AI motif of AVA and other AIs as found in the more compelling and appealing AI movie The Machine (2013).
The mysterious creator of AVA, Jay comes across as a narcissistic Steve Job's character who seems to have both his genius and mental flaws, though how the movie ultimately ends is also suspect by how and which characters ultimately survive. Ex Machina may succeed in its raising important existential questions, but the lengthy dialogue seems more fitted to the more sedate written novel format (where the mind can rapidly absorb the dialogue) rather than the more quick-paced nature of film that strangely enough lengthens the temporal nature of dialogue so the movie becomes rather boringly extended and the energy of the pace of the movie lost.
Well paced, appealing AI-related movies that possess cerebral existentialistic touches include Lucy (2014), Spielberg's A.I. (2001). Other entertaining AI movies include D.A.R.Y.L. (1985), Kurt Russell's Soldier (1998), John Malkovich's Making Mr. Right (1987). In many ways, Ex Machina follows in the AI motif of Hal 2000, Cherry 2000, and even Ash.