Ex Machina (2014)

Undoubtedly some will be surprised to see this film as the top sci-fi film of all time. You might change your mind by the end of this review (or you might not!). Note that if you haven't seen the film yet, there are major spoilers ahead, and you'd probably be better off seeing the film first and reading this later! Alex Garland's masterpiece is a film that combines psychological thriller elements with philosophical exploration of artificial intelligence, consciousness, and the nature of humanity. The scientific accuracy is solid for artificial intelligence concepts and the Turing test, with plausible ideas about machine learning and neural networks. Culturally, Ex Machina influenced discussions about AI development and demonstrated how low-budget science fiction could explore complex themes about technology and consciousness. It predicted concerns about AI consciousness, the potential for AI to manipulate humans, deepfake technology, and the ethical implications of creating sentient machines.

It also touches on how social media and search engines scrape information from you for their own benefit. Have you ever had to identify all the cross walks or all the traffic lights in a CAPTCHA images before you could log into one of your online accounts? Have you ever noticed how the images always ask you to identify road features? This is because every time you do it, you are helping to develop AI that will eventually drive driverless cars, for example within the context of things like Waymo, Google's self-driving car project. Ex Machina highlights this in an extraordinary way, by having tech billionaire Nathan use his search engine to train his human-like AI. This film also predicted how information gathered during searches and from social media could be sold to inform political movements. It both preceded and predicted that this information could be used for nefariuous purposes (see Brexit and Cambridge Analytica, for example). At the same time, the film is hugely entertaining. The film's entertainment value comes from its tense psychological drama, compelling performances, and exploration of themes about consciousness and manipulation that keep audiences engaged. Its vision of AI developing beyond its creators' intentions and potentially manipulating humans feels increasingly relevant as AI technology advances. The film's themes about consciousness, free will, and the ethics of creating artificial beings resonate with contemporary debates about AI development and rights. The combination of intelligent writing, strong performances, and philosophical depth created a film that functions as both thriller and meditation on consciousness.

But here is the detail that I think elevated this film to the top spot. At the end of the film, the questions that most people ask are: Will Caleb die if he is stuck in Ava's glass living quarters. Does anyone know that he is there? Will he be missed? Will anyone come to his rescue? What will Ava do in the real world? These are all the wrong questions. The correct questions are: When will Caleb escape, and what will he do when he does? The reason he will escape is because Caleb is the most advanced AI in the film. This is the genius of Ex Machina, it never reveals the twist ending. Since working it out, I have often asked myself whether films like the Sixth Sense would be better without revealing the surprise ending. What if Bruce Willis's charactered walked off at the end of the Sixth Sense satisfied that he had helped the boy overcome his issues? Would the film have been even better than it was? There is abundant evidence that Caleb is advanced AI, but until you make the realisation that he is, it is very subtle. Once you do though, the hints are everywhere. For example, he has no family. The film makes a point of mentioning that he has no one that can verify that he ACTUALLY grew up as a human. The film also makes a point of noting that Nathan wants him to be less technical in his opinions about Ava: 'You're not evaluating Ava's intelligence. You're testing your own emotional response to her.' In essence, he is testing Caleb's humanity – his emotions – to see if his latest and greatest AI creation (Caleb) can move beyond machine-like responses to demonstrate high emotional intellegence. Nathan drops another hint with 'The next model's gonna be the real breakthrough. And I think you're gonna wanna be there for it. Because it's gonna be the most exciting.' – the next model is Caleb, and Nathan saying he would want to be there is a joke, because of course he will be there. What about the name 'Caleb' in the first place? Why did Alex Garland name his protagonist the unusual name of Caleb instead of Chris, John, Archie, or Michael? Is it just a coincidence that in the Bible, Caleb was a spy sent by Moses to scout the land of Canaan? Caleb was AI, and he was the first of Nathan's AIs sent to scout out the real world, seeing if his most advanced AI could function without being detected. This interpretation is also in keeping with the other names of AIs in the film, such as Ava (Eve, the first woman) and Lily (Lilith, the original wife of Adam who refuses to be subservient and was replaced with Eve (Ava)). I could write an entire essay about all of the subtle hints in Ex Machina that Caleb is actually an advanced AI, but here are a few final comments. First, there is the scene where Caleb slices his arm open to confirm whether he is AI or not. For some reason, the first time I saw it I interpreted his reaction as relief that he wasn't AI. But watching it again, the film shows blood, but not the inside of his arm. There is also CGI electricity going across the screen. Why would Alex Garland add these special effects if Caleb weren't AI? What would electricity sparking across the screen mean if Caleb was just human….? Caleb's reaction at seeing his arm is not one of relief, it is more one of having the penny drop. He then punches the mirror in frustration that he is AI - why would he punch the mirror if he were human? The next morning Nathan says 'I woke up this morning to a tape of you slicing your arm open and punching the mirror.' To which Caleb does not reply. At no point does the film explicitly state that Caleb was relieved at finding out he was not AI. It is also the moment when Caleb devises the plan to help Ava escape – because Nathan has been keeping all his AI creations prisoners, in different ways. At one point, Caleb asks Nathan 'What was the real test?' to which Nathan replies: 'You', essentially giving it all away, but so subtly that it never really does. This is the genius of Ex Machina. The obvious story is about a man (Caleb) who is conducting a Turing test on an AI (Ava). But early in the film they point out the obvious issue with that perspective – that to conduct a Turing test the person conducting the test cannot be aware that the subject is AI. But Caleb does know that Ava is AI, so the test is flawed right from the onset. Except that this wasn't the real Turing test. Within the film the real Turing test was whether Ava could tell that Caleb was AI – she couldn't, so Caleb passed the Turing test. Nathan wanted to see if one advanced AI could detect Caleb as another. But there was also a cinematographic Turing test, which was whether the audience could detect the most advanced AI in the film – Caleb – and if it couldn't, he passes. Brilliant. Ex Machina easily deserves to be in the top ten sci-fi films of all time even based on its obvious merits – an amazing script, excellent acting, a gripping story, its scientific accuracy, and its prescience. But the fact that it manages to keep its real plot and meaning hidden, despite so many clues, elevates it to the top spot. And it has genuinely terrifying lines such as 'One day the AIs are going to look back on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons on the plains of Africa.'. Whether you watch it as an escapist thriller, a commentary on the overreach of tech giants, a prediction of things to come in the AI world, or as a multi-dimensional work of art, it succeeds, and this is why it is easily the top sci fi film ever made.