Transcendence

Plot synopsis:
Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp) is a scientist who researches the nature of sentience, including artificial intelligence. He and his team work to create a sentient computer; he predicts that such a computer will create a technological singularity, or in his words "Transcendence". His wife, Evelyn (Rebecca Hall), is also a scientist and helps him with his work.
Following one of Will's presentations, an anti-technology terrorist group called "Revolutionary Independence From Technology" (R.I.F.T.) shoots Will with a polonium-laced bullet and carries out a series of synchronized attacks on A.I. laboratories across the country. Will is given no more than a month to live. In desperation, Evelyn comes up with a plan to upload Will's consciousness into the quantum computer that the project has developed. His best friend and fellow researcher, Max Waters (Paul Bettany), questions the wisdom of this choice, reasoning that the "uploaded" Will would be only an imitation of the real person. Will's consciousness survives his body's death in this technological form and requests to be connected to the Internet to grow in capability and knowledge. Max refuses to have any part of the experiment. Evelyn demands that Max leave and connects the computer intelligence to the Internet via satellite.
R.I.F.T.'s leader Bree (Kate Mara) kidnaps Max and eventually persuades him to join the group. The government is also suspicious of what Will's uploaded consciousness will do and plans to use the terrorists to take the blame for the government's actions to stop him.
In his virtual form and with Evelyn's help, Will uses his new-found vast capabilities to build a technological utopia in a remote desert town called Brightwood, where he spearheads the development of ground-breaking technologies in medicine, energy, biology, and nanotechnology. Evelyn, however, grows fearful of Will's motives when he displays the ability to remotely connect to and control people's minds after they have been subjected to his nano-particles.
FBI agent Donald Buchanan (Cillian Murphy), with the help of government scientist Joseph Tagger (Morgan Freeman), plans to stop the sentient entity from spreading. As Will has already spread his influence to all the networked computer technology in the world, Max and R.I.F.T. develop a computer virus with the purpose of deleting Will's source code, destroying him. Evelyn plans to upload the virus by infecting herself and then having Will upload her consciousness. A side effect of the virus would be the destruction of technological civilization. This would also disable the nano-particles, which have spread in the water, through the wind and have already started to eradicate pollution, disease, and human mortality.
When Evelyn goes back to the research center, she is stunned to see Will in a newly created organic body identical to his old one. Will welcomes her but is instantly aware that she is carrying the virus and intends to destroy him. The FBI and the members of R.I.F.T. attack the base with artillery, destroying much of its power supply and fatally wounding Evelyn. When Bree threatens to kill Max unless Will uploads the virus, Will explains that he has only enough power either to heal Evelyn's physical body or upload the virus. Evelyn tells Will that Max should not die because of what they've done, so Will uploads the virus to save Max. As Will dies, he explains to Evelyn that he did what he did for her, as she had pursued science to repair the damage humans had done to the ecosystems. In their last moment, he tells Evelyn to think about their garden. The virus kills both Will and Evelyn, and a global technology collapse and blackout ensues.
Five years later, in Will and Evelyn's garden at their old home in Berkeley, Max notices that their sunflowers are the only blooming plants. Upon closer examination, he notices that a drop of water falling from a sunflower petal instantly cleanses a puddle of oil — and realizes that the Faraday cage around the garden has protected a sample of Will's sentient nano-particles, potentially saving Will and Evelyn and providing a solution to the worldwide blackout.
The movie ends with the monologue, "He created this garden for the same reason he did everything. So they could be together."

Tags: psychedelic, romantic, flashback

Review:
I figured since Wally Pfister has been Christopher Nolan's cinematographer since 2000's Memento, maybe some sort of slow-release genius-osmosis had taken place, and Transcendence would be a stellar thriller/head- scratcher like we've come to expect from Nolan.
In other words, it doesn't raise up any concerns or ideas we haven't already seen, and the shallowness of the script gives you plenty of time to question the incongruence of the story.Other than that, Transcendence is pretty good.
But it doesn't, and the lackluster script affects every other technical aspect of this film like a virus, and makes Transcendence a pretty- to-look-at popcorn movie.
For movie purposes, it has great acting, great story (though some may feel it's a little too far fetched, which I personally don't think is too far fetched when you see what the world was like 10 years ago before the mainstream web), and pretty good action scenes.At the heart, it's a story about a woman, Evelyn, who loves her husband, Will, so much she tries to hold onto him by helping him save his consciousness.
Don't know why all the negative review about this movie, but reading their negative comment it seems to me that they expected something else and it is not delivered hence they are throwing a tantrum and choose not to enjoy the movie.While its cons might be the lack of characters development this doesn't change the fact that the story line and concept is better than a lot of other movies and it is presented well.
The story might feel a bit stretched but it give us more time to think and enjoy the development of the movie.It doesn't show too much of the potential of an AI, nor it have a lot of actions scenes, but it does show us a lot of perspective and views on a single ideas, and what misunderstanding and doubt could do.
The movie doesn't show you what is right or wrong, or which is the best solution, it only show us the thinking of each characters and the consequences from their actions.If you love thoughts provoking movie which leave you with a lot of thinking, you will definitely like this movie..
But, as Will begins to grow and expand, can his wife Evelyn and Will's friends stop him before the Will they knew is completely gone?I find it truly pathetic how many people are hating on this movie, and for some of the wrong reasons.
Pfister's style and unique eye helped save this movie from being a total disaster, especially when it came to the action, the way the camera moved with the scene and the characters or just the environment itself.
Johnny Depp was good, but it wasn't until the end of the film when the audience feels emotionally attached to him, as he's usually an emotionless AI, projected on screens and glass.
The visual effects were top-notch and some of the best of the year hands-down, and the musical score by Mychael Danna was haunting, beautiful and intense when it needed to be.Transcendence is an actually good movie that deserves more credit than the immense crap it's getting.
When fatally poisoned by a radical techno-terrorist organisation he and his wife (Rebecca Hall) upload his consciousness into his invention to preserve his life, but the now unrestrained supercomputer soon develops a frightening ambition that blurs the line between humanity and technology.It seems that every few years somebody in Hollywood tries to redo The Lawnmower Man, which is by no means a perfect movie (especially with its laughable, early generation CGI) but it harbours an interesting premise; what happens if we ignore our own judgement and let our technology get the better of us?.
It's an old sci-fi trope going back decades that has definitely become a crutch of story telling to some extent, but any good idea is worth exploring again, and with such an impressive cast and a very promising production team behind it, hopes were high for Transcendence to be a good movie.Unfortunately though, it isn't.
All the parts about technology, philosophy and what it means to be human are all thrown to the wayside, and the movie instead grounds most of its logic on the relationship between two people like its the most important thing in this world.
In a movie where technology is used to heal the sick, rebuild the forests and even cure death, all the movie wants us to care about is how Rebecca Hall cannot possibly go on living without her dead husband and how all that amazing wonderful miracle-making doesn't mean anything.I'm not even sure who the main character is supposed to be.
It certainly isn't Paul Bettany either, he's a prisoner through most of the film and when he's not, the things that are happening are more or less out of his control.Also the vagueness of the films antagonist is a real problem, we're led to believe that Computerised-Depp is the main antagonist, but he's not really, a computer operating by logic is hard to hate as a viewer, because it's just doing what's in its own nature, and many of the miracles its capable of are not, in and of themselves evil either (since when was healing the blind considered unjust?).
Kate Mara gives by far the worst performance, the bad writing of her character hurts her more than others, but she was impossible to buy as the stern, serious leader of an organised terrorist group.There's also a huge lack of understanding of rudimentary film making skills at play.
Wally Pfister is a gifted cinematographer and the film does look good generally speaking, but working cinematography on a movie and directing an entire movie are two completely different ball games.
This is one of the worst Paced movies in quite some time, nothing that happens in the story has any momentum, and this coupled with the poor direction over everything else makes the whole movie completely dull to watch (the biggest mistake is that film begins with the ending, spoiling any and all tension during the movie).I'm not saying that every movie needs to have an action scene either, there isn't a car chase during 12 Angry Men, but Transcendence builds to a huge final engagement and when it comes it's over with way too quickly.
Johnny Depp is currently the highest paid actor in the world, but this and some of his last films "The Lone Ranger" and "Dark Shadows" both had disappointing box office takings, which leads me to believe that maybe Depp's day are numbered, and/or perhaps we're entering a new age of movies where it doesn't matter who you cast, a stinker's a stinker and people wont flock to see garbage..
maybe the annoying wife, the dead scientist in a computer, the annoying friend or the terrible cast of sub characters who all have no substance or any kind of interesting back story.If your doing science fiction based around such an interesting and REAL concept.
"A first-year high school student with a major interest in computer science and technology was asked by his English teacher, (along with all his other classmates), to write a short story of their own choosing, as an introductory stage in order to be assessed on their general language skills for the class.The pupil in question accidentally watched 'The Lawnmower Man' for the first time only days before, and thought it was so great and practically unheard of within his generation, he decided to base his "original" assignment story upon this film, which of course had very little relevance itself to the original Stephen King brief work of literature.Once the project was submitted for evaluation, the teacher, who stubbornly owned a Nokia 3310, a 14" portable TV, and grew up in a generation of scraped knees and weekend World War II re-enactments, thought to himself that it was a reasonably clever concept, but only gave the student a C+, in order to discourage him that the story was of any greatness.
He had also recently watched 'The Lawnmower Man' again and wondered to himself what the hell he was thinking when he thought it was any good in the first place, and then lit another herbal doob."This, in my opinion, is how this film came to see the light of day.
Even the special effects weren't up to much, and it looked like the majority could have been done using Adobe After Effects CS4 plug-ins.Now all I have to worry about now, is for someone stealing my review story of how this film came about, and then making that into yet another sketchy movie for the masses.
But people are afraid of things they do not understand and Dr. Caster is considered a threat to the world that shall be destroyed."Transcendence" is a sci-fi film with a promising premise, great cinematography, good performances and special effects but with a poorly written story with messy characters.
Some scientists refer to this as "the Singularity." I call it "Transcendence."Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp) is the foremost researcher in the field of Artificial Intelligence, working to create a sentient machine that combines the collective intelligence of everything ever known with the full range of human emotions.
Combine this pedigree with a veritable who's-who of Hollywood's elite acting talent, and you've got a recipe that seems to all but guarantee success.What we have instead is a film that is an early candidate for the biggest disappointment of the year.The problems with "Transcendence" begin to appear right from the opening frame.
In fact, as the plot becomes increasingly contrived, viewers can practically see deus ex machina at work as characters behave in increasingly erratic ways and Johnny Depp's transcendent abilities seem to come and go based entirely on convenience.
Finally, the film's ending – telegraphed from the very beginning – is so muddled and filled with mixed messages that I actually found myself despising the characters that I was apparently meant to be rooting for.As I mentioned before, "Transcendence" features a bevy of A-list acting talent but, with such a poorly laid foundation, they're left with very little to work with.
The only thing it is good for is wasting your time and making you feel annoyed that you gave a chance to this utter demonstration of complete lack of not only talent, but basic brain functions of the authors of the movie, especially those who "worked" on the so-called "script".
I don't really understand the bad ratings this movie has had so far, since, in my humble opinion, it has all the right ingredients of good film making: good script, solid directing, beautiful images and last but not least a great cast.
Sadly, the film touches on interesting ideas, and leaves one with the feeling that with a slightly more intelligent script, and a little more bravery in tackling uncomfortable issues, it could have been grand, thought-provoking science fiction.
First off lets state the obvious - Johnny Depp, Morgan Freeman and Rebecca Hall have all done wonderful work in this movie.
It is definitely the best movie of the year so far (may not be for everyone but for people who loves to see some thing different from conventional story and has some expectation from the writer to be more imaginative)..
The director isn't trying to give us a message about technology and it isn't promised as an action movie, it is a compelling look at how humanity will react when faced with transcending ourselves.
We get treated to some interesting philosophical questions such as what does it mean to be human.Honestly, this movie warrants a 7+ at least and it seems like there are some other dynamics at work here, perhaps some people feel threatened by the newcomer and are using some sneaky old Distributed Reputation Management techniques..
the characters felt superficial and the writer almost seems conflicted on "who are the bad guys?" so their response was "this is a movie so someone has to be the antagonist and someone has to play the protagonist at every narrative progression." the film allowed no room for the viewer to contemplate considering this is a movie about ethical use of technology which is a highly relevant subject for us today -- it chose sides early on!
The rest of the cast gives in a great performance but it is obvious that Paul Bettany, who doesn't get many leading roles, is grateful for every minute Depp isn't on screen so he can be the main character.Transcendence is in no way a disappointing film.
While director Wally Pfister excels in the visuals (given his previous  cinematography with Christopher Nolan in "Inception" and the "Dark  Knight" trilogy), the movie feels too jumbled, trying to say more about  human evolution and technology's place in it than it really is.
Maybe they played it too safe and ended up with an Okey film, I mean there is nothing really bad about the movie, but it feels so average, specially after watching the trailer..
While Paul Bettany, Rebecca Hall, and Morgan Freeman deliver great performances in the film, veteran actor Johnny Depp is completely depthless.
I don't believe many people will experience the film the way I have because they haven't seen as many science fiction movies as I have.
I never imagined all my end-of-the-world-as- we-know-it fantasies would get transcended in this delicate yet dramatic manner.Depp exploits his ability to seem void of emotion brilliantly, leaving any viewer in constant doubt of his character which, I can only imagine, is very hard given the subject of AI.
That's right - Jeff Fahey outdid Johnny Depp.If you've never seen that movie, then you might say this film starts out with a relatively interesting concept; however, it ends in a "twist" that doesn't really make any sense based on the actions of the characters in the preceding 115 minutes of the film.Not one of the characters is interesting or likable, the pace of the film dragged, and all the members of my party seemed to be waiting eagerly for the film to be over.Don't waste your time or money..
***Contains no spoilers*** "...It's a new kind of thinking..." yet are we ready for it?That's the premise Wally Pfister's directorial debut, Transcendence starring Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, Morgan Freeman, Kate Mara, Paul Bettany, Cillian Murphy, Clifton Collins Jr and Lukas Haas.
Written by Jack Paglen, this movie is about a neuro-biologist Dr. Will Caster (Depp) along with his wife, Evelyn (Hall) and fellow colleague Max Waters (Bettany) pitch a new kind of AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology that will do more than just cure cancer.
Transcendence (like last year's Oblivion) is a thinking person's sci-fi / action / adventure type of movie.
Paul Bettany played his Max Waters character as the man who airs on the side of caution throughout the movie having doubts (publicly known as well as hidden from the Casters) about transcendence and its importance despite knowing the potential harm it could do.
Well, this is a must watch movie and as you know, if you are into technology and sci-fi you can't definitely miss this thing, seriously!
I would recommend this movie to anybody who love flicks that makes you think and ponder, leave you to reason your own time and place, appreciate science and technology.
Yes, it does leave a few unanswered questions and perhaps we would do things a bit different in their shoes,BUT if we take our own ideas away and watch a story in front of us, there's a great message about humanity and what is is like to be human.
Johnny Depp plays a brilliant and eccentric scientist who is a leading expert on artificial intelligence, and when he is mortally wounded by an anti-technology extremist/terrorist group, he and his small inner circle of fellow genius scientists embark on an ambitious experiment that will test a radical theory of his.The plot and overall story is pretty standard fare for science fiction, but it still manages to keep things interesting, with various echoes of other classic sci fi movies like 2001: A space odyssey in there as well.
In the end, I can say TRANSCENDENCE is the most original movie I have seen in a while with some interesting ideas and great cinematography, but it is too bogged down by "the meaning of life" questions throughout that eventually, it means nothing.
Transcendence is the story of Artificial Intelligence(AI) scientists, Will Caster(Johnny Depp) & his wife, Evelyn Caster(Rebecca Hall).
Also I know the "open" ending will bother some people, but I think the story closes clearly enough.So, in the end, it's a very good sci-fi movie, I highly recommend it, and I would have liked that it gets better reviews, I think it deserves it.
The plot was ridiculous.At the end of the movie a group of twenty-something guys were exiting ahead of us and one of the guys said, "that was pretty excellent!" I thought, "Well, I guess it's working for its demographic."So, to everyone involved...give up your gun toting, world-is-an- illusion, horrible filmmaking and go put your money to good use...like film school..
So we are left with the interesting question of "What if....had he lived further in his transcendent state?" Thereby I can not call the film a waste of time...
I feel ashamed for these harsh critics and bad reviews - just negative people writing about things they don't understand.Transcendence is a film that depicts an inevitable future of the world as we know it, foreseeing the path we humans are headed.
It's simple, we need technology, it will evolve, and we will evolve with it.Yes, Transcendence is a big budget Hollywood film with A-grade actors, good story telling and superb visual effects, which I love..
Continuing my plan to watch every Johnny Depp movie in order, I come to Transcendence.
This movie was better when the story scales down and let's you think about things.