The setting is the castle of a modern-day mad scientist hidden in a subarctic environment.
The two primary characters of Ex Machina, Smith and Bateman are a mixed bag of big and small screen characters, past and present. There’s some resemblance to Captain Nemo and his antagonist, the whaler Ned Land, played by James Mason and Kirk Douglas. At the same time, they resemble characters out of the HBO program “Silicon Valley.”
Foremost, the two characters are Silicon Valley stereotypes. Corporations and any researcher in the field of artificial intelligence will tell you straight away that developing the first sentient robot is and will be the work of thousands of humans. The mad scientist of Ex Machina represents the amalgamation of what is a team effort and world competition. Humans still relate best to the lone traveler — Don Quixote, The Old Man and the Sea, Dr. Frankenstein, Captain Nemo, Dave Bowman, and Nathan Bateman.
With the resemblances, there are contrasts. Verne’s Captain Nemo has been consumed by the tragic weaknesses of humanity and seeks to stop humanity’s destruction while at the same time gaining vengeance. Bateman, while a megalomaniac, never expels grand plans for his invention. He is seeking confirmation that he has created perhaps the greatest of all inventions, an artificial intelligence in our own image.
The movie does not attempt to reveal an image of the near future. Part of this is simply the economy necessary to produce an original screenplay and hold any chance of profiting. Technically, the film is austere but provides sufficient details for believability.
The character Smith, enlisted as the human subject in the Turing Test, represents an innocent being akin to most of us who are not deeply involved in this ultimate creation. The character Bateman, the machine’s creator, embodies the guilt and responsibility of Humanity. By design and by performance, the star of the movie is Ava, the sentient humanoid robot. Her performance is sublime; deservedly, nominations should follow.
If there is a weakness in the nuts and bolts of this movie, it is that mad scientist Bateman has achieved such greatness but fails to specify and land contractors that could make a robust power supply and security system for his laboratory. Its a forced but crucial weakness in the plot.
