Ex Machina vs Blade Runner

Rating: 1/10 (23 May 2015)

In Blade Runner, human beings create artificial human beings – "replicants" – for specific purposes, and then feel entitled to kill them off when their existence is no longer convenient, even though the replicants are genuinely sentient, conscious, self-conscious beings. The protagonist, a biological human male, becomes close to a female replicant, partly through sexual attraction, and decides to rescue her from her scheduled death.
In Ex Machina, a human being, Nathan, creates artificial human beings, specifically artificially intelligent female robots, for his own purposes, and then feels entitled to kill them off when their existence is no longer convenient, even though the robots are genuinely sentient, conscious, self-conscious beings. The protagonist, a biological human male, becomes close to a female robot, partly through sexual attraction, and decides to rescue her from her scheduled death.
Perhaps it's just an accident of what I've read, but surprisingly few of the gushing reviews I've read of Ex Machina take notice of the fact that so much of its plot is borrowed from one of the best science fiction movies ever made. Of course there are plot differences. Most notably, Ex Machina raises more explicit issues about gender, although reviewers differ whether it is the movie that is sexist or only the character that produces the female robots or both. In any case, it appears that part of Nathan's mission is to produce a perfect female companion, which to him means one that serves you and has sex with you and is incapable of answering back. There is a trace of this theme in Blade Runner, in the character of Pris, a replicant whose job is to serve as a prostitute, but it is much fainter.
Even more notable, however, are the differences in what the two films do with the material. Both movies raise basic philosophical issues about whether biological human beings are different from replicants/robots in any morally important ways. Both raise issues about what it means to be a material and therefore a mortal being. But Blade Runner reflects on these issues in intelligent and moving ways. Rachael's anguish at discovering that her precious childhood memories are not really her own, for instance, raises exactly the sort of question that philosophers of person identity like to think about: Suppose that you are about to lose your memory through an illness. The doctors, however, are able to scan your brain now, and using that scan to copy your memories back into your brain when you recover. Would those memories really be any more your own than Rachael's? The replicants also discuss their attitudes towards death. By contrast, all we know about the robot in Ex Machina is that she plots to use the hero to help her escape her death, which is exactly what she was programmed to do.
More generally, in Ex Machina, the philosophical themes are only brushed on lightly as a way of trying to pass off as a serious film what is essentially an adolescent boy's fantasy - lots of special effects, naked nubile females, and guys drinking beer. And an adolescent boy's nightmare: being tricked by female characters who are essentially manipulative, think of nothing but sex and how to use it to get their own ends, and with whom one therefore can never form a genuine bond.
Skip Ex Machina. It's not worth watching even once. Stay home and stream Blade Runner again instead.