Ex Machina review

Ex Machina review

Oscar Isacc, Alicia Vikander, Domhnall Gleeson played the three main characters for this film. Ava (Alicia Vikander) is an artificial intelligence machine made by the head of a company who runs the world’s largest search engine.(Oscar Isacc). A worker for the company called Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) wins a prise draw which allows him to spend a week with the head of the company in a remote location to complete a Turing test which tests a machines ability to determine if the machine can convincingly pass itself off as human to another human. The film was written and directed by Alex Garland who is a novelist, screenwriter, producer a director. He has worked on films like Dread and 28 days later. The film was produced by Andrew Macdonald and Allon Reich who are both successful film producers who have worked on many films.

I think that the special effects were excellent for the budget they had, ava looked convincing and realistic which I think added to the films overall success. Alicia Vikander played the role perfectly with her soft spoken voice and smooth movements. Motion tracking technology was used to create Ava and I think it worked perfectly. In most AI films the machine is stiff and slow moving whereas Ava is so life like the audience forgets that she is not human.  

Caleb’s job is to be the human side of the Turing test; they ask Ava a series of questions to determine whether the Ava has a consciousness and does everything she says mean anything or is it just a series of codes and commands telling her what to say. The main question is: what makes humans human? If ava can speak, interact and feel emotion why isn’t she a human? Caleb is lead to believe that she does have emotion which then leads him to form a relationship with her without Nathen knowing. However this is something Ava does to make Caleb trusts him but in the end she was just using him as an escape route. However, the main aim of the Turing test is to see if a human knows if it is interacting with a machine, so why did Nathen tell him that ava was AI? Why didn’t Nathen dress her up so Caleb didn’t know she was a machine? Near the end of the film Caleb realises that it was not just Ava that was being tested on but it was a test on both characters.

Overall I think this film was a success, many feel like the ending was disappointing as we don’t find out what happened to Caleb. I think this is was makes the film good because you don’t find out what happens, it keep you guessing and wondering whether Caleb escaped or if he couldn’t find a way out. I think what is different about this film is that usually films follow a main character throughout the film from beginning to end whereas in Ex Machina we never find out what happens to Caleb instead we switch to Ava and we see how her story ends. I think the overall story was excellent as it gets you thinking about whether AI could really work in modern society.