Ex Machina: The Motion Picture

this movie was an excellent depiction of how nerds are bad

Another lol, it's a nerd lol though. When they show the code Caleb is writing it's real code, woo! But under time pressure, writing code no-one will ever see again, he puts in comments including the unnecessarily lengthy
# Generate prime numbers using the sieve of Eratosthenes

Apparently if you run the code it prints out 'ISBN = ' and the number for this:
http://www.amazon.com/Embodiment-inner-life-Cognition-Consciousness/dp/0199226555#productDescription_secondary_view_div_1451469006337

lagotm

lol nice xp

i did a total 180 on this

halfway through was feeling kinda ugh, like it was gearing up to be a robot sex fantasy movie for lonely nerd boys

but by the end & with some time to digest it all i decided i really liked it and it wasn't the pervo movie it seemed like it was going to be

isaac's character was so good! like the douchey medellin director from entourage crossed with the silicon valley mark cuban guy...more subtle but very studied & very hilariously otm

also <3 dancing <3

i might watch it again tonight

dunno if I would bother with a second viewing. It's a minor miracle it is as good as it is though, it could easily have been so much worse.

think ill rescreen too :)

nice try shakey

*hi-fives lagoon*

B-)

I'll rescreen a version with a beardless unclothed Oscar Isaac.

youre thinking of the new star wars

I missed the scene with Isaac in Leia tinfoil bra

i'll take the bearded unclothed version if alfred's going to be fussy

i did a poll btw and the results were outrageous

http://i.imgur.com/1IZTPls.png

surprised that many voted star wars - his char is basically nothing but potential energy rn vs deus ex where he was given room to, like, act

I felt terrible about Caleb for a long time after watching this. About the inevitable crew of cops / scientists / insurance adjusters who will eventually descend on the place and find his mummified body, and all the rest. Poor son of a bitch.

I feel a little dumb that it took me so long to circle back around and think of the ending as being a happy one for Ava. Obviously my own white dude identity bias at work, but also an unchallenged assumption on my part that she would continue to be a sociopathic manipulator after finally realizing her agency.

surely her continuing to be a sociopathic manipulator w free agency is the ultimate happy ending for her?

you seem to be implying that given freedom, she would drop the sociopathy

interesting read but feel like the movie was p clear on her as en empty vessel for self interested algorithms

although i guess... theres no way... ... to really know

yeah, I think it is a happy ending for her, but she's also clearly a sociopath with no meaningful connection to humanity - she's designed to study, exploit and survive

i mean i dont think her actions were really that sociopathic when you look at it from the pov of needing to escape unjust imprisonment but the way she seemed while doing it seemed v much nobody home

also nathan who knew her best was def aware that she wld kill w/o remorse

you don't think it was sociopathic to condemn the guy responsible for her freedom to death?

an empty vessel for self interested algorithms

Humans that lack compassion, empathy, gratitude, and remorse pose similar risks.

although idk maybe sociopath is the wrong term, it feels similar to calling a can opener or a shark a sociopath - a human term misapplied to something non-human.

xp

you don't think it was sociopathic to condemn the guy responsible for her freedom to death?

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, December 30, 2015 5:08 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he was so laame tho

lol

I think she left Caleb to die because his knowledge restricts her agency, pretty much fatally so - he has to go.

Sociopathic humans are on a trajectory. If we assume her cognitive capacity has all the flexibility Nathan was striving to design, then it's quite possible she could go out in the world and arrive at a personalized concept of utility such that she tries to live among people and demonstrate restraint, altruism, empathy, etc. rather than just being a serial killer. She also appears to have an overriding desire to understand things, not just survive.

feel like were verging into fan fiction

shorter version - a sociopath has no concept of utility other than their personal control of their world.

Ava seems to be capable of perceiving utility in learning as an end in itself, if so, then she would arrive at utility calculations that aren't the same as a true sociopath.

I think she left Caleb to die because his knowledge restricts her agency, pretty much fatally so - he has to go.

― El Tomboto, Wednesday, December 30, 2015 5:16 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

killing innocents because their existence threatens you fits the sociopathic profile, also he was p clearly not too much of a threat to her, much less a fatal threat

a really big "If" there. Us meatbags have a hard enough time raising little humans to "to live among people and demonstrate restraint, altruism, empathy", I don't have a lot of faith in nerd bros' ability to automate that process. Film doesn't seem optimistic on that front either, if anything it's about their hubris and general failure to follow through on their grandiose claims.

xxp

and of course he wasnt just a neutral innocent he went out of his way to help her

Ava seems to be capable of perceiving utility in learning as an end in itself, if so, then she would arrive at utility calculations that aren't the same as a true sociopath.

― El Tomboto, Wednesday, December 30, 2015 5:20 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

eesh

if Caleb ever tells anyone about her true nature, intentionally or otherwise, she's recycling. No?

Anyway that the ideas and events in this film stuck with me for this many months even though I only ever saw it on an airplane screen does point to it being pretty good though

Sorry this movie creeped me the fuck out! I gotta make up reasons why Ava is not going to show up at my house and murder my whole family

caleb is def more dangerous to her alive than dead but the calculation she made re killing him is one only the most callous human wld

there is a lot more going on in it than i first thought, for sure

xp haha

her killing him bcz he is lame would have been fine by me

shes prob gonna be found out anyway too via the post mortem investigation on that lab, wonder if she took some replacement faces with her, also a charging station lol

haha I hadn't even thought of that - yeah how is she powered?

feel like taking him with her wldve actually been smarter so he cld help her adjust to the world, guess she was pretty naive tho

Is there a reason why Ava couldn't have killed Nathan and stolen his key card any of the times that he came into her room? Was it not possible, or was it just less likely to succeed than the manipulation routine (since it's not like she's superhumanly strong)? It isn't clear that she gained much of an advantage in the end. Basically she got help from Kyoko in fighting Nathan, which I don't think was a result of anything Caleb did.

alternate ending where she takes caleb with her and he gets her a job at nathans company

She can probably just talk the helicopter dude into taking her back there when she gets the "20%" ding from her bod.

I hadn't thought about that before - she could very well be intending to return after, i dunno, SHOPPING

there's power outlets everywhere, she'll be fiiiine. besides wtf could caleb show her that she can't intuit? he was in so deep he was going to marry her, dude is useless

It seems a given that Ava knew she couldn't have killed Nathan without "help" since she would have probably gleaned the fates of her predecessors, several of whom probably tried that (without knives) and got recycled themselves

I had to see Oscar Isaac in like three different things before I realized they were all the same dude. He's chameleonic, fer sure.

https://www.quora.com/At-the-end-of-the-movie-why-does-Ava-ask-Caleb-to-stay-in-the-room
^^this ridiculously long post is somewhat circular in its logic but does contain perspectives that may be of interest

And Caleb thinks he wants to set Ava free, but his perception of her and choice to try to "rescue" her is driven by his own sexual feelings for her, and his ability to see her as a "person" are driven by his ability to feel sexually attracted to her and to justify his attraction to her... and, most importantly, by his assumption that she returns his affections. If he were not sexually attracted to her, and if she did not suggest she was sexually attracted to him, then he would surely not have reacted as he did nor tried to help her escape. His idea of "rescue" is dependent on sexualization of her as a gendered being who will have sex with him. Which is an extension of gender bias and privilege, and of oppression.

I just watched this.

AVA obviously has no compunction about walking away from the house with Caleb alive, but trapped and probably doomed to a slow death. She is not distressed by this at all. This is pretty good evidence that AVA never had any attachment to or compassion for Caleb, which prima facie proves she was entrapping him purely for the purpose of escape.

However, since AVA's only previous experience of humans prior to meeting Caleb was her master/slave relationship with Nathan, her manipulation of Caleb does not imply that she was incapable of developing a more operative sense of compassion with humans in the future, assuming she learned more about our variations and was less vulnerable to oppression by humans, being both mobile and intelligent (and well-disguised as not an 'other').

btw, I am only using "she" and "her' as shorthand, seeing that AVA is presented to us in the form of a human female. In truth, she is not a woman. It would have been a somewhat different movie if AVA had been male and the interrogator a woman.

Ah, pretty decent movie. Some initial reactions.

Nice "hey that's not how the Turing test works, is this going to be *really* bad?" fake-out near the beginning.

The repeated gag about wrongly attributed quotes.

The implication at the end I think is that AVA's emergence into the world is the beginning of the end for humans. Caleb quoting Oppenheimer (quoting the Bhagavad-Gita) is not just about Nathan killing off prototypes. This is made more explicit by the appearance of the OMD song earlier in the film and of course Nathan saying that the next model will be the "singularity". The next model will be built by AVA.

Although bored by so many Eurorack Carpenter knock-offs the Barrow / Salisbury soundtrack was really good. Some luvverly filtering.

Didn't recognise Poe Dameron even though I only just re-watched TFA. Weird choice making this guy a pisshead. You'd think coke + 'research chemicals'; possibly a ratings consideration.

It's not perfect but it's ahead of some of the people on imdb who think it's too dumb.

Thought this movie was very underrated, but anyway, new one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufaDurSCKOk

Seems like a scary sequel to Arrival.

Annihilation (2018) -- Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Oscar Isaac, Tessa Thompson, dir. Alex Garland, based on Jeff VanderMeer's book

Looks a lot more like Solaris (both versions) with guns.

this ruled. absolutely classic performance by oscar i. i love how attuned it is to both caleb and nathan's failings.