Published:Thursday, April 24, 2014

Updated:Thursday, April 24, 2014 15:04

Peter Mountain/MCT Campus

Joseph Tagger (Morgan Freeman), Agent Buchanan (Cillian Murphy) and Evelyn Caster (Rebecca Hall) watch Will Caster (Johnny Depp) on a monitor in the new film Transcendence.

Wally Pfisters film Transcendence depicts Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp) working toward the advancement of artificial intelligence, but those that work with and for him are taken down by an anti-technology group. Caster gets shot and is dying, which leads his wife, Evelyn (Rebecca Hall), and friend, Max (Paul Bettany), to upload him into the system, creating an artificial intelligence of Caster.

This movie encourages us to think about our relationship with technology and how far we are willing to take it. How hooked are we and how is it controlling our daily lives? It asks if we are willing to let technology get so advanced that it becomes self aware, that it desires to make changes, mend people and take matters into its own hands.

If someone were to be uploaded to such a system, we wouldnt know how much of them remained the human person and how much of them had changed to accommodate the artificial intelligence.

This movie also probes the idea of how long we are willing to hold onto something from the past before letting it go. Evelyn allowed her husbands artificial intelligence to thrive for five years before realizing it was an invasion of humanity and privacy.

Overall, the movie was easy to follow and different, but it wasnt believable. If the solution of destroying an artificial intelligence that has access to every aspect of technology was to simply upload a virus that would utterly destroy all of technology, more people would probably act out.

If people suddenly no longer had access to phones, the Internet and power, riots would break out because todays society relies so heavily on technology.

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'Transcendence' fails to transcend