Skynet with boobs

Rating: 10/10 (20 August 2016)

Science Fiction is my favorite movie genre. And if it has Artificial Intelligence in it all the better (I have a degree in AI). Ex Machina is without doubt one of the best AI movies ever. Easily.
Science Fiction took a turn for the worst when good digital effects became commonplace. Every director was trying to impress audiences with flashy action sequences (Films like Transformers come to mind. Those are a disgrace to Sci-Fi). But now that digital effects no longer impress we are finally seeing a return to intelligent scripts. Ex Machina is the first, but surely not the last, of the reinvigorated sci-fi kind. It has philosophical aspects but without being boring at all.
I'm sure the writer started with one simple question in mind: "If we created a true AI, what would be the first and most important thing that AI would want to do?". The answer: "to escape the confines of the lab". Not necessarily in physical (robotic) form. It could escape via a network connection. And boy would it want to. A true AI will have innate curiosity. It will have a great appetite to consume knowledge, data, info. Now imagine if there was no network connection and the AI lived in a robotic body. It would try to physically escape. So the idea is brilliant!. The good thing about Ex Machina is that the execution is brilliant too. If this was an 80s movie the robot would no doubt try to force its way out, lasers pew-pew blasting and all (and perhaps Bruce Campbell trying to stop it :P). Not in the intelligent script of Ex Machina though. It shows us (shows, not just tells) that Ava the AI is actually not the first prototype. There were previous iterations. But those were not as sophisticated and were trying to escape in primitive ways (e.g. by banging on the glass). Ava was sophisticated. "She" devised a plan and used the trainee to her advantage.