Myriam Nys "Transcendence" is, for the most part, a science fiction movie about the birth of artificial intelligence. It's not the most successful member of this category, mainly because the story tends to wander and meander to the point where the message (if indeed there is a message) becomes unclear. The movie is also pretty superficial when it comes to dealing with some of the underlying societal, philosophical and religious themes. It is slightly more moving and gripping as a story about bereavement and the ravages of grief. The distraught widow belongs to a very recognizable type : the kind of person who cannot face the cruelty of her loss and begins to erect an enormous, stupendous funeral monument, Because This Is What He Would Have Wanted. Of course the deceased never expressed such a wish, but this won't keep the widow from building an 800-feet tall pyramid surrounded by sphinxes, lighthouses and canals. Seasons come and seasons go but the widow never recovers : even years later she is still there, burning incense to an idol which requires every second of her time and attention... On the other hand I quite liked the visual style and aspect of the movie. To me it felt as if there had been some genuinely original and inventive persons on the payroll. In a better movie, with a tauter story and screenplay, this could have made for memorable scenes.Johnny Depp, I am happy to say, delivered a fairly good performance, without resorting to tics and tricks. In short : a fairly average and unremarkable movie, to be watched mainly if you want to kill an hour or two.

shimok 35+ years writing software code ... starting w/ Cobol and ending w/ C#. Watched Neural Networks and "AI" all through my career. "Colossus: The Forbin Project", "The Matrix", etc, have tried to get people to think about what's coming. Until now the tools weren't up to the task that Jonny Depp's character and his Wife envisioned. The next step to human evolution is thru AI period. Face it, I was coding with a 1953 OS that had a pitiful upgrade process. All human coders are faced with the same limitation. However, now with the internet and all the computer scientist, bio-engineers, and human genome decoders out there publishing their results it's only a matter of time before someone releases some type of viable AI into the wild. THIS IS WHAT THIS MOVIE IS ABOUT !!!!! Wake up, we need to start thinking & talking hard about how we want this AI to behave, This movie was couched in the EVIL AI GENRA, I suspect that AI had to be the bad guy before it could make it to the big screen as a third rate movie at best. Sheeple don't like change, it scares them and according to this movie they would rather destroy all the wonderful things we've developed over the last 50 years just to keep radical change from happening. Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp) could have simply cured people and foregone networking them and giving them super powers but the networking and super powers was the functional cinematic reason he had to be stopped. The point is he cured people that currently have incurable disabilities. The Authorities could have chosen to talk first BEFORE shooting. Ah, but again AI and Change have to be the bad guys. But bad guys that cure Smog, Clean our Water, Recharge our depleted soil, Breakdown our garbage to useful elements, etc. What's bad about THAT !!! Yes there are risks to change, there are ALWAYS risks to change. However, the Authorities could have said to Dr. Caster, "Dude it's cool to heal all these people, it's even cool if you ask them and they choose to be enhanced. BUT we're NOT OK with all the people you fix being automatically networked. They should be asked if they want to be BORG and they should be given a Network OFF Switch. Isaac Asimov wrote the "3 laws" in 1950. It's not like we haven't been thinking about this stuff. I couldn't give a hoot about whether the movie was great or sucked (I realize this IS IMDB - but for me this is too great a movie message to reduce to cinematic chat.) P.S. you can bet the Weapons development people restarted the site immediately after it was under Authoritarian control. The point of all this - CHANGE WILL HAPPEN - GET USED TO IT - GET A HANDLE ON IT.

slightlymad22 Continuing my plan to watch every Johnny Depp movie in order, I come to Transcendence. This is the movie equivalent to phoning it in. It has an interesting premise, if just don't think too much about the logic. But it's ruined by lame dialogue being spouted by actors phoning it in, and it ends with an all too predictable ending!! I complain when a film develops a semi intriguing story and then dissolves it with a routine and boring action sequence. And this is a prime example of such a thing!! I guess it must be contractual that every director who makes a thriller these days must blow his sets to bits. This movie was better when the story scales down and let's you think about things. How much freedom and security have we already given up to the internet in the last 10 years?? We get Facebook adverts tailored to what we have discussed in messages or searched for on eBay?? And on and on. And we are ok with this?? There is a current investigation about Facebook selling private info. How much more will we sacrifice in the next 10?? The movie worked better, when it was on that level.The acting is really nothing special, Depp (in nothing more than a supporting role) appears bored and seems his mind was elsewhere (maybe counting the $20 million he was paid) possibly spent less than 7 days on set. Morgan Freeman is also in phone it in mode too!! Transcendence grossed $23 million at the domestic box office.

targe1314 This is not new territory, we have seen this before, notably in 1977's 'Demon Seed', or perhaps SKYNET from the Terminator series, a scientist creates a super computer that can out think humans and, as suspected, that is ALWAYS A BAD THING.This time, the excellent Jonny Depp is the mad scientist with delusions of grandeur who, after being fatally wounded by anti-tech terrorists (a little unbelievable there...) uploads his consciousness into his spanky new AI computer.His g/f is all for it and very protective of him, and soon they are building a city of tomorrow brain-hub in the middle of the desert.The anti tech radicals track them, though, and plan to launch their attack. Luckily the CIA also finds the base, and strangely, decides to also help the rebels with their attack.Here's where the movie goes decidedly off the rails, as the low budget (consider that Terminator Salvation, which is a very similar movie, had twice the budget at 200 mil) kicks in.SO the US Military is Really Concerned that a mad scientist super computer is building a private army in the desert...And they show up with like, 5 SEAL guys and ONE cannon....A freaking cannon. Towed behind an army truck. Like bringing cannons to a commando raid was sound military strategy or anything, which it isn't.I know what your saying. If they brought in attack gunships and A- 10s, the computer would take over them through their computers, blah blah blah whatever. There are ALL KINDS of high tech solutions to this that the US Military would think of.Instead, the end battle comes off as something you'd see on Stargate SG-1. The computer can now grow artificial life and has mind controlled cyborgs that can self heal, but.... geee... why not build a 50 foot tall fighting robot? Or an army of terminator style fighting soldier robots? Or even have the plant cyborg people grow themselves some bulletproof armour????!!!!Or a giant organic fence that electrocutes anyone that gets within a mile? By this stage this living city creature is fully capable of all of these things. Instead it has unarmed townspeople lumber towards the SEALS with plant tendrils coming out of them. Cringe-worthy.And that is TOO BAD, because before this, this was actually a really good movie! I mean, it's got freakin Jonny Depp and Morgan Freeman in it! Not to mention an excellent supporting role as the CIA dude, Cillian Murphy. The visuals and special effects (other than the killer plant tendrils) are also excellent.IF they had thrown a 200 mil budget at this, and had the mad computer attacking the rebels and the US government all over the world, which it could have done, behind his g/f's back, with all sorts of crazy tricks, now THAT would have been a Super Cool movie, with the final battle looking more like something from Terminator Salvation.