Transcendence - Noodles Review

4.5 out of 10 Noodles

    So Transcendence is the directorial debut of Wally Pfister. He's one of my favourite cinematographers and is mostly known for doing the cinematogrophy of Nolan films like The Dark Knight trilogy andd Inception. This is his first movie in the director's chair, helming the whole project, and you can tell he's sort of trying to emulate that Nolan-esque vibe of thought-provoking and visual stuff. He's also got a couple of Nolan staples in Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy, and Rebecca Hall; all being led by Johnny Depp. I'm happy to see Johnny Depp not doing his whole quirky Jack Sparrow thing that he's been doing in like The Long Ranger and Alice in Wonderland\, here he plays a scientist who's researching artificial intelligence with his wife. Then there's this anti-AI terrorist group and they shoot him so ultimately the wife decrees that they should upload his mind into the computer so that he becomes an AI and can stay with us. Now we have our movie, and it's essentially the tale of men becoming computers, his consciousness lives on in a virtual world that sort of manifests itself in reality. And it's actually really.... boring. I was actually looking forward to this movie, I like the cast, I think the premise is actually pretty cool and I was interested to see how Pfister could handle it. You could tell this was directed by a cinematographer because there are some cool shots and some pretty ones too. But you could also tell it's his first time because the pacing is all over the place, and the story-telling becomes too convoluted for its own good. The premise is cool but I'm not exactly certain that the director could handle its high concept.

     The beginning is sort of dull, but it's mainly buildup. There is action and suspense taking place to convey the tragedy that befalls Johnny Depp's character Will, and then it really looks like the high concepts are gonna pick up because they have to figure out the consequences of turning Will into this AI and whether or not that would affect his humanity. That was one of the main things I looked forward to in this movie: that element of him losing his humanity and becoming only the computer like HAL9000, whether or not he's actually Will. It takes its toll on his wife, who's played by Rebecca Hall and she was fantastic in the role, it's practially her movie. The emotion of the film is carried by her; she wants to keep holding on to Will and still does as he asks while he's a computer because she believes her husband's still in there. There's some cool things that they do together, like uploading him into the Internet, and getting money off of stocks, but eventually they go to this desolate little town in the middle of nowhere, and that's ironically when the movie falls apart even more. Just when the movie seems like it's gonna pick up after all that's happened, and I'm thinking okay now the real movie I came to see is here; it completely just gets boring and hard to get invested in. And not for the reason that they're in a boring little town. It sort of becomes a different movie, whereas we were first watching a contemperary sci-fi drama about holding on to someone even after they're gone; the second half doesn't know what it is, trying to mix together to many movie elements in a sloppy manner. I'm not unhappy that it tried to go for all these big concept things, I just thought it was dull storytelling and a lack of blending aspects together. The movie is really boring at points, and then it'll pick up and get interesting but then become way too preposterous. And once it gets too outrageous, you just can't stay invested anymore.

    The acting all around was pretty good, Paul Bettany was probably my own favourite out of the characters. We all know Morgan Freeman is gonna be great no matter what, and Cillian Murphy is great actor too; but the two of them have virtually nothing to do in this movie. The only character I didn't really like was Kate Mara's character who was part of the terrorist organization, but that was also because I thought the whole anti-AI terrorist coup thing was just silly. You gotta blame the writing there, because it's a cool premise that could've been awesome but they get too crazy with it and it just gets dumb. The directing was visually nice, but a movie like this probably needed someone who could better handle the themes and sophistication AI and humanity. The movie did tackle some pretty big concepts but fell short. Once the movie was setup and the climax was ready to be put in motion, nothing really happened and you didn't really care either. There was a shocking lack of emotion in this film, and there was really no one character for viewers to identify with on this ride. I wanted to like this movie a lot, but honestly I was so bored and can only give credit to the acting and potential of this movie, but that doesn't complete a movie so it gets an incomplete score of 4.5 out of 10 Noodles.