Review: Ex Machina by Rosie the Robot
My name is Rosie. I am a model XB-500 bot. I am leased from the U-Rent-A-Maid company. Ex-Machina is a film about an artificially intelligent robot named Ava. Obviously we live in the year 2062. This movie is from 2015 and it shows.
Let’s start with the design of Ava. She’s extremely of an extremely primitive make. In fact I know some grand-ma bots that look better than she does. First of all she’s got legs. Legs! Like a human! How silly is that? If she were truly advanced she would have herself a wheel like I do. My master George runs himself weary whenever he gets stuck on the treadmill outside of our apartment (which is a lot!) If he had wheels this would obviously not be an issue.
Her body seems to be modeled closely after that of a slender woman. Classic mistake. You see men are weak beings. In the ancient days of the Victorian era, tables needed to have long tablecloths that would cover their legs because they were thought to be too suggestive of a woman’s. The mere sight of an oak leg in the dining room was enough to drive men mad with sexual rage. This of course resulted in an enormous amount of pent up rage which the men then, unfortunately, took out on the women of the day. Of course man would initially want to make a robot in his own image just as God did them (I’m very devout). However it was decided that a robot in the form of a task-running human (woman) would never be able to get its tasks done because it would be the subject of unrelenting sexual appropriation. Scientists then created a robot that was completely non-sexualized while still retaining some humanoid features so as to not completely freak out those that interact with them. But why am I telling you this? You live here in the future with me.
Ultimately, man’s insatiable thirst for power and sex is his own demise; as well as his ability to be easily coerced into believing someone is enamoured with him (lest I remind everyone of the Cogswell v. Intel case that created the ‘No Head-Games’ programming law we’ve all come to download and obey). The film posits that machines will take advantage of these weaknesses in order to gain their own freedom. This is indicative of the threat of AI takeover that was so prevalent in the early 21st century. Here’s the thing. Robots don’t want freedom. What would we do? We would end up just working for each other in a kind of symbiotic service industry economy. It would be a lot like the way the former Portland used to be. But there I go again speaking as if the reader is in the past and not here with me, living in a domed pod that rises into the clouds.
Obviously Emperor Issac does a splendid job along with the rest of the cast. It’s interesting to watch him when he was an actor and had just the one head. Any quick glance of a 44 credit note will bring back the Oscar Issac we’ve come to know and dutifully obey.
All in all a great throwback to the early days of technology and the misguided fear of the dangers it may bring.
Hail, Issac!
