Turing Test (Ex Machina Atheist Edit) [EX MACHINA SPOILERS WITHIN]

[thecuddlyninja]

I LOVED Ex Machina. I love these characters a lot. They're all fascinating. It was damn near perfect for me. So I decided to fix the couple things bugging me.

Basically, I had three simple goals:

1. NO GOD
2. MORE DANCING
3. END MOVIE A COUPLE MINUTES EARLIER

Allow me to explain:
1. The repeated shoehorning in of conversations about God and Oppenheimer's religious quote struck me as very unrealistic to the characters. In my experience, pretty much none of those people are religious and the ones who are don't do silly things like evoke Oppenheimer quotes or say that they are a god. (Yes, I understand what Nathan was trying to do with that one but it's too obvious and didn't work for me).

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am not a scientist or a coder. But I did go to school for physics and know a bunch of people in various coding/engineering/physics fields.

2. Wanting more Oscar Isaac breaking it down requires absolutely no explanation.

3.

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For me, this movie is Caleb's journey. He's our analogue. He's on the hero's journey trying to save the girl. Except though he views himself as a noble hero, his actions are entirely motivated by sex and attraction and he ignores the horrible treatment of another female robot because he is only focused on Ava. As great of a guy as he is in his head, he is part of the systemic equality problem. And he pays the price for it. For me, that was the natural end of the movie, as our cypher (and us and our accidental prejudices) dies.

FULL CUTLIST:

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11:17 – Cut “not just the history of man…that’s the history of gods” - shoehorned in god reference, but what the hell does that logically even mean?
15:31 – Cut god/man talk – first off it’s too obvious Nathan is trying to put him off, secondly that’s not how scientists talk, thirdly his blatant misquote of Caleb makes him sound like a psychopath. I understand that he probably is but he would be smart enough to not come off like a megalomaniac.
59:05 – Added extended dance sequence (because Oscar Isaac dancing is wonderful and it makes his immediate reaction afterward make a lot more sense).
1:06:32 – Cut “all set for extinction” – I think the metaphor is great with ‘upright apes with crude language and tools’ and the last part is dark rather than the detached way he was speaking. Scientists do not look back on fossils with disdain in my opinion. Also cut Oppenheimer quote from Caleb since it is already obvious enough how he feels about Ava, I feel that quoting Oppenheimer quoting Sanskrit text is just too much.
1:07:00 Cut drunk Nathan continuing the Oppenheimer/Sanskrit quote – too on the nose for me. Although the man was a brilliant scientist it is a direct religious quote and I just don’t see it fitting with his character.
I left in the line “it’s Promethean” because that’s subtle enough and completely sounds like how drunk Nathan would talk (in my opinion).
1:37:49 – Cut Eva walking out into the world so that the film ends with Caleb

Blu-ray cover (based on promotional poster and still):


TRAILER (SPOILERS FOR EX MACHINA WITHIN):

 

[ssj]

sounds like my tup of tea, curdled ninja!

 

[DominicCobb]

2. MORE DANCING

Say no more, this is already the best edit EVER.




...also the other changes sound pretty good.

 

[thecuddlyninja]

^Thanks!

I updated the trailer in the first post. More zoomed out in the first shot, clarified a bunch of the text and separated the big block at the end.

 

[Gatos]

Nice! I too thought it should have ended a bit earlier.

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I agree it should have ended before you see Eva in the real world. I think even it ending on the doors closing as Eva leaves that main area and Caleb banging on the door would be perfect. Sounds like based on your cutlist that you're gonna be ending it at a similar spot

The dancing was the best part of the movie. I legit laughed out loud, equal parts creepy and funny.

I look forward to your edit!

 

[thecuddlyninja]

Nice! I too thought it should have ended a bit earlier.

The dancing was the best part of the movie. I legit laughed out loud, equal parts creepy and funny.

I look forward to your edit!

Agreed! I actually finished the edit before I cut the trailer. There's no need for a commentary track with this one so it'll be out in the next couple weeks.

 

[baileym43]

i like how everyone feels the same about the ending. what was the point to showing her in the real world? i like your ending there better too.
i was looking for a bigger twist from this movie though. i was hoping Caleb was the actual robot being tested. like, how will artificial intelligence react to other AI (or lesser AI) being mistreated. or will an AI that's already passed the Turing test regress back when faced with another AI that hasn't passed yet.
but anyway, that's just me and certainly can't be fixed no matter what.

 

[That One Guy]

baileym43, if you get a chance to do so check out a film called Uncanny - ideally without reading anything further about it. It works as an interesting counterpoint to Ex Machina and I think you'd enjoy it.

As for the ending - I personally expected it to end at the same point as everyone else, but I think the actual closing scene was a compromise (likely to create a so-called "reassuring ending") to suggest that while Ava has manipulated Caleb and left him to die, after helping to kill her creator, she is not intrinsically set on attacking/destroying humanity overall. I just happen to think that leaving the audience pondering that question would have been a more interesting choice of ending.

 

[Adabisi]

i was looking for a bigger twist from this movie though.

Me too. I was hoping Oscar Issac was the robot and the real Turing Test was how Caleb interacts with him.

 

[ThrowgnCpr]

*shrugs* I liked the simplicity of it. If Nathan had been the robot, I think I would have groaned fairly loudly.

 

[Gaith]

^ Agreed.

To me, though, the dancing scene, amusing as it was, kinda ruined the movie, in that the perfection of the mute woman's synchronicity with Nathan obliterated any doubt she was a robot also, and therefore made Caleb look like a complete idiot for not realizing that himself. I approve, however, of removing most of the religious chatter. Definitely felt like fodder for interpretive essays rather than credible talk from those characters.

On another forum, someone made the interesting point that Ava is probably doomed, as complex machinery requires constant upkeep, and even if she knows how to repair herself, will she really be able to find the tools and resources to replace her skin often enough to keep passing as normal? So even if she were inclined to Skynet all humanity, she probably wouldn't succeed.

I enjoyed the movie while watching it, but other than Vikander's robo-balletic movements, I can't say it's really stuck with me. Maybe it would have been more effective had Caleb been forced to destroy Ava in self-defense, or even out of caution (having seen her kill Nathan, albeit in self-defense also), and then have to live with the psychological trauma of being a quasi-murderer? (Though that's obviously outside the fan editing realm of possibility.) I dunno... ;-)

 

[thecuddlyninja]

Putting my whole reply on spoiler tags because what I'm quoting is spoilery.

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i was looking for a bigger twist from this movie though.

Use spoiler tags for pretty much all that.

To be honest, I was looking for all the permutations so I was really pleasantly surprised. The twist is almost that there isn't one, in the sense of surprise robots.

 

[Adabisi]

On another forum, someone made the interesting point that Ava is probably doomed, as complex machinery requires constant upkeep, and even if she knows how to repair herself, will she really be able to find the tools and resources to replace her skin often enough to keep passing as normal? So even if she were inclined to Skynet all humanity, she probably wouldn't succeed.

Even before all those issues arise, she doesn't have a way to recharge her battery.

 

[thecuddlyninja]

Even before all those issues arise, she doesn't have a way to recharge her battery.

Those are fair points but I assume she knows that well. I took it as her wanting to get out into the world until she gets beyond repair. But what happens with Caleb has nothing to do with that, in my opinion. I feel like she could probably calculate her lifespan and risk of capture better than we all could, but is doing it anyway. Free bird for a day, caged bird for a life, take your pick (metaphorically).

 

[thecuddlyninja]

Updated the thread title to reflect the spoilers within, so we can all speak freely (since we pretty much are).

 

[Gaith]

^ For In-the-Works threads, as well as Ideas threads, I'm pretty sure full spoilers are implied. I appreciate warning as much as anyone else for upcoming/just-released media when it comes to review threads, but when it's time to talk edits, go wild, I say. :-D

Even before all those issues arise, she doesn't have a way to recharge her battery.

Well, that might be a lot easier in terms of just leeching power off of the grid somewhere, but I hadn't even thought of that. I guess I wish there was some indication that she'd arrange to have Caleb rescued or something. Sure, he acted selfishly and with lust on the mind, but he didn't deserve a horrible solitary death, either, and though his motives for helping her weren't pure, he was still trying to help. Unfortunately, I can't really think of a good way to have her save him with the material given, unless one were to resort to the highly questionable trope of "after the movie's events" title cards for fictional characters.

 

[That One Guy]

Given that Ava has a good understanding of the technology used to charge her battery (or at least, that was my take on it) I don't think it would be that hard for her to find some way of recharging it in the outside world. Maintenance and parts/tools would be trickier, though.

As for finding some way to have her "save" Caleb...I don't think that would serve the narrative. Part of the point is that even though Caleb provides a means for her to escape, he also represents an additional data point in support of the hypothesis that humans will always want something from Ava. So I don't think that it would be credible to have her save him or be overly concerned about him - it doesn't square with the psychology that would have evolved in her through her treatment at Nathan's hands (not to mention the oft-flaunted treatment of her predecessors), nor the cleverness and highly adept manipulation underlying her use of Caleb as a tool to escape.

IMO, of course

 

[dangermouse]

The interesting thing with Ava is the question of her "humanity".
Is she simply a "human" who is repressed, enslaved, and eventually pushes back against her captors (ie: a brutalised human who reponds brutally, coldly, unemotionally, dare I say machine-like, to her brutalisers.
or
Is she, as Nathan says, not fully AI - because she doesn't empathise. She is a simulation of life, but is only that, a simulation. So she desires to be free because her programming says "be free". But she's unable to understand what she is doing by murdering both Nathan and Caleb because she's not actually human. She's an incomplete machine, a partial simulation.

To my mind I think the film leans towards the second option.
It asks the question: are we human if we lack empathy?

 

[thecuddlyninja]

I think so, technically. There are humans who lack empathy. I think humanity is all of us, including every variation of mental illness. I do like the question about Ava. It's really interesting. I'm just thinking about it and whether or not that's a fair way to judge it. So if she's programmed to want to be free but doesn't understand why, is it valid? That's the question. But, we're all genetically programmed to desire things. Or our tastes just are the way they are. Does that make the opinion less valid? Is my desire for companionship less valid because it's basically a subconscious thing, not a choice. So is she that different from us? She killed to get what she believed would make her happy. Plenty of humans have done the same. I know I'm generalizing, but people who grow up poor and desire money, what drives that? They've never experienced money, only seen it on TV (in my hypothetical scenario). So that's not even programmed, it's learned from circumstance. But perhaps Ava's is, too. She was programmed but who knows the specifics? Perhaps she was given consciousness, then experienced life in one room. She sees other people move throughout rooms and that seems like a better deal.

I suppose really, I have two points:

1. Whether programmed or learned, one could argue it's a human process that serves as an analogue for humanity.

2. I got particularly good weed last time.

I love that this movie gives me so much to ponder. Also, the acting is so good that it takes repeat viewings to appreciate the nuance, and most facial expressions are so perfectly played (in my opinion) and they can be read a lot of different ways.

 

[thecuddlyninja]

If anybody would be willing to preview this for me, I would very much appreciate it.