Transcendence

Technology is a good servant, but a bad master that will steal your soul, ok? It gives the impression that Pfister is a senile old man (while he’s so young) who would "ban all those internets!". And he decided to share this attitude with the world through this would-be “techno"-thriller where the attitude to everyday technologies is like that your great-great grand-father would have if you went back in time and tried to explain to him what the Internet, cloud computing, uploading/downloading is. This is all very unintentionally funny, little seen method, but this is paradoxically the most minor problem that Transcendence suffers from. Much worse it that in the second half, Pfister gains a thirst for pontification and so he starts preaching about the state of society, the world, the contents of your fridge, the heavens... Simply anything that happened to occur to him or bug him during filming. The only thing is that he’s really dumb in what he says and how he says it. If onto this “quasi-Malick-like" concept, you graft scenes like IT guys cum FBI agents jumping out of a tunnel in the middle of the desert, armed to the teeth to do a bit of ratatatat in the direction of some nano-zombies while spouting wisdom such as “don’t go near them or they will infect you with a virus and upload your mind to their cloud" (meant of course absolutely seriously), then there remains nothing else to do but shake your head in disbelief or beat the table with it or else just make cruel fun out of the creators. And that is the only level where Pfister’s debut works outstandingly well. (28/08/2014)

At its most basic, Transcendence is not as stupid as some people who in their joy at having discovered a couple of holes in the logic have claimed. At its core, it’s a pretty decent sci-fi premise that greatly suffers from the behaviour of the main characters, which at times feels really weird and stupid. The actors are good, the technical aspect is fine, too, but I have a problem with its hysterical technophobic tone. Yet, in spite of all the issues (mostly in the script) that Transcendence has, it is still a pretty watchable movie. But somewhere deep inside there is potential for a lot more, that much is clear. (02/07/2014)

At very least, a strange screenplay kills a promising idea about a human Skynet. Pfister gives us beautiful, polished images, but he should have paid more attention during Nolan’s directing lessons. The storyline doesn’t hold together as it should, too episodic and the characters’ behavior is pretty chaotic. For the first time in a long time, Depp acts quite pleasantly and the cool music raises the mood a little. (10/07/2014)

We haven’t seen anything like this in a long time. This movie could’ve been saved by a single thing – if it suddenly turned black-and-white and Johnny Depp appeared before Rebecca Hall wearing an angora sweater. After the premiere, I heard three girls of about eight gushing about how they’d write on their blogs that they’ve been to the new Johnny Depp flick and how great it was. So don’t hang your head and go watch this. After all, it’s executive produced by Christopher Nolan, so what more could you possibly desire? (16/04/2014)

In my opinion, this is a critical picture of the low social intelligence of scientists who, even if they receive unlimited resources to realize their visions, fail because of miserable PR. But maybe I misunderstood it. In any case, it has been a long time since I have had to work so hard to not fall asleep in the cinema. Wally, don't make idiots out of us. [40%] (17/04/2014)