Johnny Depp Stars in ‘Transcendence’
Johnny Depp, who’s built a brilliant career despite many of his lamentable film choices, may not be the first actor you think of to play a genius — much less humanity’s destroyer or savior. But he’s weirdly perfect in “Transcendence,” an inelegant, no doubt implausible (maybe not) science-fiction film about a futurist whose consciousness is uploaded onto the Internet. There, he (or a mysterious vestige of his being) expands like the universe, growing larger and mutating into a being who is godlike and yet far from divine, sort of like a star at the apex of his popularity.
Directed by Wally Pfister, a cinematographer making his feature directing debut, “Transcendence” is a dark, lurchingly entertaining pastiche of age-old worries, future-shock jolts, hot-button topics and old-fashioned genre thrills. It was written by Jack Paglen, who, while researching, probably thumbed through Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus,” along with some Isaac Asimov and William Gibson. The scientist here is Will Caster (Mr. Depp), whose work in artificial intelligence has landed him on the cover of Wired magazine. (Even in a brave new world, old media remains useful shorthand.) With his wife, Evelyn (Rebecca Hall), a computer scientist, Will has created PINN, one of those supermachines with sleek surfaces, blinking lights and pulsating menace.
The twist in “Transcendence” is that the scientist becomes the monster of his own creation or so it seems. Shortly after the film opens, Will is shot by an extremist during a series of coordinated attacks on high-tech targets. He survives the initial assault only to succumb to the radiation that laced the bullet.
As he lies dying, Evelyn, in one of those eureka moments that implies her brain is as infinite as her husband’s, initially uploads Will’s consciousness into PINN, a clever bit of business she manages with their friend Max Waters (a solid Paul Bettany), a neurobiologist. One minute Will looks like a tortured lab monkey; the next, he’s the ghost in everybody’s machine. Well, it sounds plausible or at least Mr. Pfister moves fast enough that you don’t have time to puzzle over niceties like logic.
Like some other notable machine-based intelligences — including the ship’s computer in the original “Star Trek,” CORA in the television series “Battlestar Galactica” and Samantha in Spike Jonze’s recent film “Her” — PINN has a female voice. It may be that the enduringly creepy legacy of HAL 9000, the mutinous computer from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” has made it tougher for male voices to fill in these disembodied characters. Whatever the case, while artificial intelligences with any kind of human voice seem at once familiar and uncanny, further blurring the line between makers and their machines, those with female voices also suggest another creation story, that of Adam (the origin) and Eve (the product). “Transcendence” plays with this idea, and it’s not for nothing that its heroine is named Evelyn.
Once Will’s consciousness is uploaded, his voice supplants PINN’s. In its initial poetic fragmentation, the voice emanating from Evelyn’s reconfigured supercomputer sounds amusingly like Marlon Brando’s tape-recorded ramblings as Colonel Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now.” (Mr. Depp and Brando were friends.) After some throat clearing, though, Will starts to sound like himself and the movie gets its crazy on.
His image pops up on screen, like some holographic specter, a kind of rebirth that thrills Evelyn and freaks out most everyone else, including, naturally enough, the extremists. Implausibly led by a scowling half-pint, Bree (Kate Mara), they try to stop Will and Evelyn, in a chase that also pulls in other scientists and government agents played by the likes of Morgan Freeman and Cillian Murphy.
Mr. Pfister, shooting on film and working with the cinematographer Jess Hall, gives “Transcendence” the dark, gleaming surfaces that gloss up a lot of contemporary thrillers and which can’t help evoking Christopher Nolan’s work. Mr. Pfister has been the director of photography on most of Mr. Nolan’s films, including the “Dark Knight” trilogy, and Mr. Nolan has given “Transcendence” his blessing by signing on as an executive producer. So it’s no surprise that the depthless blacks and glowing whites in “Transcendence” and Mr. Pfister’s use of negative space suggest Mr. Nolan’s influence, notably in the high-tech complex where Evelyn and Will set up a compound. When Evelyn walks down one of its luminous white halls, she looks as if she’s headed right for one of Bruce Wayne’s lairs.
These visual echoes don’t hurt “Transcendence,” and they soon recede amid the escalating narrative noise. Mr. Pfister handles the predictable third-act action booms adequately — it must be contractual that every director who makes a thriller these days must blow his sets to smithereens — but he’s better when the story scales down.
When Evelyn appears in that white hallway, Mr. Pfister is showing off the production design, but he’s also bringing you close to a woman who, as Will’s power expands, is becoming progressively more isolated. One of those actresses who always seem smart even in dumb roles, Ms. Hall is very sympathetic as a woman in love and then in fear who, scene by scene and with palpable tenderness, takes over the film as Will gobbles up the world.
To an extent, “Transcendence” can be filed alongside other movies about fanaticism that have emerged since Sept. 11. Yet, for all its topical gloss and technobabble, it also draws from older, familiar preoccupations about the nature of being, which, along with Mr. Pfister’s eye and largely smooth handling of his actors, accounts for its modest pleasures.
However predictable and ridiculous, the film raises the question of what — as the machines rise — makes us human and why, which certainly gives you more to chew on at the multiplex than is customary these days. In “Frankenstein,” the monster tells his creator, “I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel.” This is the warning that pulses through many dystopian fictions and which here finds another beat.
“Transcendence” is rated PG-13. (Parents strongly cautioned.) Dystopian violence.
Johnny Depp Stars in ‘Transcendence’
Johnny Depp, who’s built a brilliant career despite many of his lamentable film choices, may not be the first actor you think of to play a genius — much less humanity’s destroyer or savior. But he’s weirdly perfect in “Transcendence,” an inelegant, no doubt implausible (maybe not) science-fiction film about a futurist whose consciousness is uploaded onto the Internet. There, he (or a mysterious vestige of his being) expands like the universe, growing larger and mutating into a being who is godlike and yet far from divine, sort of like a star at the apex of his popularity.
Directed by Wally Pfister, a cinematographer making his feature directing debut, “Transcendence” is a dark, lurchingly entertaining pastiche of age-old worries, future-shock jolts, hot-button topics and old-fashioned genre thrills. It was written by Jack Paglen, who, while researching, probably thumbed through Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus,” along with some Isaac Asimov and William Gibson. The scientist here is Will Caster (Mr. Depp), whose work in artificial intelligence has landed him on the cover of Wired magazine. (Even in a brave new world, old media remains useful shorthand.) With his wife, Evelyn (Rebecca Hall), a computer scientist, Will has created PINN, one of those supermachines with sleek surfaces, blinking lights and pulsating menace.
The twist in “Transcendence” is that the scientist becomes the monster of his own creation or so it seems. Shortly after the film opens, Will is shot by an extremist during a series of coordinated attacks on high-tech targets. He survives the initial assault only to succumb to the radiation that laced the bullet.
As he lies dying, Evelyn, in one of those eureka moments that implies her brain is as infinite as her husband’s, initially uploads Will’s consciousness into PINN, a clever bit of business she manages with their friend Max Waters (a solid Paul Bettany), a neurobiologist. One minute Will looks like a tortured lab monkey; the next, he’s the ghost in everybody’s machine. Well, it sounds plausible or at least Mr. Pfister moves fast enough that you don’t have time to puzzle over niceties like logic.
Like some other notable machine-based intelligences — including the ship’s computer in the original “Star Trek,” CORA in the television series “Battlestar Galactica” and Samantha in Spike Jonze’s recent film “Her” — PINN has a female voice. It may be that the enduringly creepy legacy of HAL 9000, the mutinous computer from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” has made it tougher for male voices to fill in these disembodied characters. Whatever the case, while artificial intelligences with any kind of human voice seem at once familiar and uncanny, further blurring the line between makers and their machines, those with female voices also suggest another creation story, that of Adam (the origin) and Eve (the product). “Transcendence” plays with this idea, and it’s not for nothing that its heroine is named Evelyn.
Once Will’s consciousness is uploaded, his voice supplants PINN’s. In its initial poetic fragmentation, the voice emanating from Evelyn’s reconfigured supercomputer sounds amusingly like Marlon Brando’s tape-recorded ramblings as Colonel Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now.” (Mr. Depp and Brando were friends.) After some throat clearing, though, Will starts to sound like himself and the movie gets its crazy on.
His image pops up on screen, like some holographic specter, a kind of rebirth that thrills Evelyn and freaks out most everyone else, including, naturally enough, the extremists. Implausibly led by a scowling half-pint, Bree (Kate Mara), they try to stop Will and Evelyn, in a chase that also pulls in other scientists and government agents played by the likes of Morgan Freeman and Cillian Murphy.
Mr. Pfister, shooting on film and working with the cinematographer Jess Hall, gives “Transcendence” the dark, gleaming surfaces that gloss up a lot of contemporary thrillers and which can’t help evoking Christopher Nolan’s work. Mr. Pfister has been the director of photography on most of Mr. Nolan’s films, including the “Dark Knight” trilogy, and Mr. Nolan has given “Transcendence” his blessing by signing on as an executive producer. So it’s no surprise that the depthless blacks and glowing whites in “Transcendence” and Mr. Pfister’s use of negative space suggest Mr. Nolan’s influence, notably in the high-tech complex where Evelyn and Will set up a compound. When Evelyn walks down one of its luminous white halls, she looks as if she’s headed right for one of Bruce Wayne’s lairs.
These visual echoes don’t hurt “Transcendence,” and they soon recede amid the escalating narrative noise. Mr. Pfister handles the predictable third-act action booms adequately — it must be contractual that every director who makes a thriller these days must blow his sets to smithereens — but he’s better when the story scales down.
When Evelyn appears in that white hallway, Mr. Pfister is showing off the production design, but he’s also bringing you close to a woman who, as Will’s power expands, is becoming progressively more isolated. One of those actresses who always seem smart even in dumb roles, Ms. Hall is very sympathetic as a woman in love and then in fear who, scene by scene and with palpable tenderness, takes over the film as Will gobbles up the world.
To an extent, “Transcendence” can be filed alongside other movies about fanaticism that have emerged since Sept. 11. Yet, for all its topical gloss and technobabble, it also draws from older, familiar preoccupations about the nature of being, which, along with Mr. Pfister’s eye and largely smooth handling of his actors, accounts for its modest pleasures.
However predictable and ridiculous, the film raises the question of what — as the machines rise — makes us human and why, which certainly gives you more to chew on at the multiplex than is customary these days. In “Frankenstein,” the monster tells his creator, “I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel.” This is the warning that pulses through many dystopian fictions and which here finds another beat.
“Transcendence” is rated PG-13. (Parents strongly cautioned.) Dystopian violence.