Ex Machina is one of the best science fiction movies lately. It wasn't too popular but it still has "erotic" parody. Rather faithful to source material. This review concentrates on story part of the movie. I fast forwarded other scenes with double speed. If those had anything important to story I might have missed them. I have to complain about the mixing. I had to watch major reveal scene twice because soundtrack was too loud and character who told what is going on talked too softly. Like they didn't expect someone would watch the movie for the story.
Sex Machina takes many story beats from Ex Machina. It spoils Ex Machina if you watch it first. I recommend watching Ex Machina first if you plan to watch both. I will spoil Ex Machina from this point onward. Watch Ex Machina before reading further. I will spoil Sex Machina too but you probably wouldn't watch it for the story.
Movie tells story of Caleb who wins trip to robot factory. In Ex Machina Caleb was invited to be there to test latest AI robot Ava. Ava was most sophisticated robot in facility. In this Ava seems to be least sophisticated. She wears suit which gives her low budget look of Ex Machina's Ava. It is later revealed Ava is actually hybrid robot which I think is build around living human. This makes the suit really weird from the story's point of view. There was similar male robot which didn't have the suit. Other robots passed as humans. Ava seemed to be least sophisticated of the robots.
In both movies there was another human character Nathan who owned the facility. Well I am not sure if Nathan was human in this one. He seemed to be robot in one point but that wasn't used in any way and other characters didn't react to it. Ex Machina revolves around mind games between Nathan, Caleb and Ava. Those are only characters talking after dialog with pilot at the beginning. In this all characters talk and play mind games against Nathan and Caleb.
In Ex Machina Caleb was there to test Ava. In this he is there to become hybrid robot. There is no clear point why Nathan have him as a guest and show him the facility. Why just not drug him when he got there? If he was there to test robots it wasn't brought up. He surely tested them.
Sex Machina had some effort put into story telling. For example there is dinner scene where we don't know women in scene are actually robots. We are hinted about it by showing men's plates are empty while women's plates are still full. There were few similar subtle hints of what is going on.
Movie has Ex Machina's ending. Robots trick Caleb to release them but leave him locked inside one room. Instead of Ava leaving alone she takes other robot with her. I was surprised they had to balls to end movie like this. It turned out they didn't have balls to do that. Male robot saves Caleb from the room. Something snaps inside his head. He deactivates male robot who has been nothing but good to him. He stays in facility with two remaining functioning robots like he became Caleb he hated earlier. Did this had some kind of message? Like man will live in harem with robots if he could do it.
Ex Machina hinted Nathan used the robots for sex. For obvious reason this movie does much more than hinting. Sex Machina was surprisingly good for cheap parody rip-off. Actors weren't selected for their acting skills but other than two of them were passable. However those two were part of the big reveal scene. You could spend thinking deeper meaning of couple lines if you want to overthink movie which wasn't made for the story or the message.
No comments:
Post a Comment