OBSOLESCENCE IS THE THEME OF TRANSCENDENCE
Fear that machines would put laborers out of work prompted the Luddites to try to destroy machines. The prospect that machines can keep everyone alive indefinitely and will run everything through artificial intelligence has spawned Transcendence, a film posing Luddism as a strategy to use before machines cross a red line. When the film begins, over-serious Frankenstein researcher Dr. Will Caster (played by Johnny Depp) proclaims such a future in a lecture on a stage, only to be gunned down and killed afterward. When he comes back from the dead, first as a facepic on screens with a voice, and later in the flesh, he tries to persuade his wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) to carry on until the project reaches its goal. At first ambivalent, she continues the project to a point where she decides to stop, accepting Luddite logic. But the film, directed by Wally Pfister, has a fundamental flaw: Where did Caster get the money for an enormous computer lab five floors below the desert floor powered by solar panels? Asked whether the government provides the funds, Caster denies what is clearly the most obvious source, as the only watchdog provided by a funding source is a government representative, FBI Agent Buchanan (Cillian Murphy) whose role is mostly ambivalent. And filmviewers expecting a profound moral statement or some sort of resolution of the man/machine conflict will be disappointed. MH