MovieChat Forums > Transcendence (2014) Discussion > Any thoughts?

Any thoughts?

posted 10 years ago by CookieDragon
3 replies | jump to latest

I really enjoyed this film. I enjoy any film that's about consciousness, nature/human nature, utopia/dystopia and just general deep-thinking, philosophical plots. However, there were a few thing I didn't quite understand in this film.

1. Will had the intelligence, power, and technology to instantly heal people, which is fine. But how come when they were healed they had much more physical strength (and probably mental strength/intelligence too, I think) than they had originally?

2. We see at the end of the film that Will wasn't evil and that he was just trying to help out the environment and mankind. Hmm....well, if that were you, wouldn't that be the very first point you'd try to stress to people? Will seemed very nonchalant in his convictions.....and in anything he said really! When Evelyn said "Sorry for not believing you" and was DYING, at that point I thought "Well, you should have made your intentions known, you bloody fool!".

3. We see that the nano/nanites (whatever they were lol) survived in Will's Faraday Cage and were protected. When we saw it, it was three years later. The water would have evaporated by then or seeped into the ground. Unless the cage created its own atmosphere that water would be long gone.

4. The blind guy. Will said he had been blind since birth. In reality, that guy would have freaked out when his sight came back as he would have no concept of was sight was. He would not be able to make sense of the world around him at all. Plus, he wouldn't have any depth perception and thus would not be able to walk and generally move without falling/knocking things over. But again, with the nano technology, was it implied that the few years he would have spent learning about the world around him, for his brain to adjust to a brand new sense, etc, happened within seconds? I know it's not important to the plot, but it just bugged me lol.

What are you thoughts.ideas?

[–] TTboy-33 10 years ago

All good questions. I thought the film was acceptable but just did not take the risks to be exceptional. Oh well.

[–] andrewpi7 10 years ago

1. Since they had rapid healing they could push their muscles/body past normal circumstances. If they ripped their tendons running too fast, they just got healed. I also could see Will turning off the pain portions in their mind for his army. And if Will had no problem planting electronics into their mind to enhance them for his hive then why wouldn't he add nano-technology in other parts of them so they become partial cyborg (more nano, less human) as well? It's not like Will cared what the medical community thought.

2. As you said, Will had no reason to hide his intentions to Evelyn. He expects her to blindly trust him, yet he doesn't trust her? As a scientist, Will knew about peer reviews and the importance of support from the scientific community when he was human. Once he transcended he abandoned all that... he felt he was above everyone... "that's not Will". It was some weird PINN/Will hybrid with an arrogant superiority/god complex. We really see this when Will answers the self-aware question with the *exact* same answer as PINN did - he may as well of answered, "I am as self-aware as PINN." As for Will not being evil... we see the little boys in his hive sent to the front as human shields. Wouldn't a non-evil Will want the little boys added in his hive safe and away from the violence?

3. That wasn't normal water anymore - it was some freaky hybrid nano-water. You don't purify rain water by placing things in it. No science organization or government asked or approved of Will's "miracles", much less verified any were safe. The scientists who do study the rain water find it "polluted"... would you drink Will's nano-water simply because only he said it was ok? At best, Will thought he was purifying the rain water.

4. Maybe it bugged you because it suggests after the blind guy was allegedly cured he wasn't the blind guy anymore? The only people who claim the individuals in the hive have their own free will are those already in the hive & Will. At best, Will uploaded/implanted someone else's perception knowledge/memories into the blind guy's mind.

[–] Snatchy 9 years ago

4. The blind guy. Will said he had been blind since birth. In reality, that guy would have freaked out when his sight came back as he would have no concept of was sight was.

That part bothered me too. I immediately thought of "At First Sight" -- (kinda cheesy) romantic drama starring Val Kilmer as a man who's been blind since age 3 and then has his vision restored as an adult. He has to go to a therapist to "learn" how to see since he has no experience coping with visual input.

Like you say, it can be explained away as "nanotechnology/super AI took care of it" but that's another thing that bothered me about the movie -- the nanotechnology. It seemed all-powerful, all-purpose without any explanations or limitations. Magic. Once you introduce that into a story, it loses its grounding and its hard to take any of it seriously.