Why ‘Her’ is the most accurate sci-fi movie I’ve ever seen

In the world of Her people have an smartphone that you listen and talk to, an OS that tries to understand you, and a screen that is more of an accessory than a central piece. It takes place in a fictional city that is a mash up of various metropolises around the world. Art and design is evident everywhere to make daily life a little more pleasant. It was full of beautiful, warm, vibrant colour. There are no aliens. There is no war. People still have feelings. And finding love is still one of the greatest challenges of life. I believe this is the closest vision of what the future will really be like.

Ever since I first watched Adaptation I had become a big fan of Spike Jonze. It featured a kind of odd, eclectic mix of metaphysical philosophy, visual poetry, and top notch acting that pulled the most out of Charlie Kaufman’s amazing screenplay. It managed to dazzle me with such a unique story of existential angst and tickle the puzzle-loving side of my brain in just the right way. It also introduced to me the better half of Nicolas Cage that I never knew existed, which was a major bonus.

After finishing the movie I knew I had to track down the rest of his works. Being John Malkovich was the only other film he had done at the time, and it was almost equally dazzling and charming as Adaptation was. He quickly became one of the few directors that I effectively stalked on IMDB periodically to know what he was up to next. Where the Wild Things was up next. Then a short online titled I’m Here somehow connected with Absolut vodka. Despite it’s condensed format, this was my favourite work of his prior to Her. He somehow always managed to take grandiose concepts and ideas and ground them hard into the real world we live in.

I’m Here featured humanoid robots with 90's desktops for heads falling in love so hard that the shy boy-bot ends up giving himself, literally parts of himself, to the girl-bot because life is so much better with her there. In the ending shot the girl-bot is wheeled out of the robot hospital (a repair shop?) with the boy-bot’s head on her lap after he donated his body to her. It was the oddest, most extra-bitterly-sweet moment that ever made me tear up. And they were robots!

This is what Spike Jonze does. No matter if his world is the metaphysical convoluted beautiful-mess of Charlie Kaufman’s mind, or the futuristic world of advanced artificial intelligence and invisible tech, what really matters and what people are really concerned with is the way we feel from day to day. People want to connect in a meaningful way. They want to be able to share their lives with people who truly care about what they have to say. That is what I feel like when I share my photography, my thoughts and opinions, or when I write pieces like this. You wish and hope that someone out there understands you and finds value in your words, your perspectives, because it makes us feel connected. The beautiful thing Her illustrates is that it doesn’t matter where this feeling comes from as long as it feels genuine. Theodore doesn’t just have a relationship with an OS, Theodore and Samantha have a relationship with one another. The OS has feelings and thoughts all their own.

So much of the sci-fi world focuses on large scale space battles and military characterized by the iconic world of Star Wars, or they tend to focus on the future of the criminal world shown in Minority Report and Blade Runner. Any stories with regards to AI are all about how intelligent human-like android machines will reproduce and decimate the world as seen in Terminator, The Matrix, and the more recent comic-book take in the Avengers: Age of Ultron. All of the most advanced technology in these stories typically originate from the government and/or the military who loses control of their creation. This kind of plot point completely contradicts the direction that technology has been going since the turn of the millennium.

Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Uber, Netflix, and the comeback of Yahoo are all focusing one thing, the user, otherwise known as the normal person. Some of the most advanced algorithms and programs are focused on trying to figure out how people think. Why we like what we like, what makes us act in certain ways, and learning how we use language. AI are not scary robots out to get us, but rather soft, soothing, personal assitants like Siri, Ok Google, and the latest Cortana by Microsoft. Programmers are trying to figure out how AI can understand what we ask of it and how best to respond, so basically programmers are training AI how to connect with people. It wouldn’t be so far-fetched to suggest that developers are trying to turn AI into our best friends. Someone who knows us better than we know ourselves. When put that way it sounds a lot like someone who loves us, and maybe, that we could love in return.

In the near future, I hope that we begin to see a lot more of these kinds of soft science fiction. The future is not all doom and gloom, filled with destructive robots that want to replace humanity. We, as a species, need to remember the reasons why we started using tools and developing such advanced technology in the first place. It was to make our lives better.

If we can feel like there is always someone there who understands us, who is always there to listen, and who will do things for you that you didn’t even know you wanted, wouldn’t that make our lives a lot better?