Transcendence (2014)

[Jack Nevada]

Okay. I'm definitely in the minority on this. 

[ChD]

It's an alright movie. Interesting idea. Terrible execution.

[ladyevenstar22]

I watched this last night and I loved it , ok not all of it but the essential idea of transcendence made me give it an A I think the characters love story was sweet! Not a fan of paul bettany character or that chick from house of cards or any of the other characters I love the idea of an AI , I like intelligent characters like that who can really usher in change , and make a positive impact on the real world To be honest I was sad some dumb ass terrorists poisoned and murdered him , a brilliant man with so much potential for all humanity Its like imagining someone murdering einstein or any other great figure of science So yeah I was ok with them transfering his consciousness to the AI , did I think it was going to work no but it was cool and I hate how paul bettany is all I'm getting out of dodge then, when before he helped all the way.Had he stayed I'm sure he could have help instead he goes all stockholm syndrome and leads the terrorists who killed his friend wtf Plus I love that he was all protective of her as an AI, got her off the grid so they could build his new place coz he needed more powerAnd I loved the place he built , they had a good thing going, he did it all for her The amazing technological breaks he did because of the state of art processors that enable him to achieve things Now don't get me wrong the whole robot thing of controlling people wasn't cool but it seems like a natural extension , this guy loved his wife and wanted to give her someone to touch , so maybe all these things weren't shot in the best way but I loved the sentiment as I did in HER , it seems natural that a sentient intelligence that is self-aware and super smart would want to achieve what would seem the ultimate goal become flesh, he wanted to come back and be with her the same way she didn't want to let him go and die and so uploaded his brain Maybe I watched this film wrong and should have found it awful but I didn't I was rooted for him and I didn't understand why they wanted to kill him , they never tried to understand him or work with him How easy would it have been to say hey dude let's compromise no turning humans into bots and we let you live and work with you at healing the planet and all sickness. So yeah in that sense the movie lost me I was just sad at how gun-ho they were , the guy wasn't hijacking planes and cars trains to explode crash and kill millions like I read in robopocalypse I believe he could have been reasoned with eventually but they never gave him the benefit of the doubt , they didn't give the world a chance to decide if his contributions were worth his existence So now all humanity went "revolution" lifestyle pff regression instead of evolution How long before same thing happens The concept of progress is in our dna , we can't help it or else we'd still be chasing our food and sleeping in caves , we're always striving to be better think better live better!That's why I couldn't stand those hippie terrorists Feels like I wrote a dissertation ha ha ha so anyway that was my 2 cents going against the majority hereNow to find don jon thread just finished watching that right now and I'm speechless lol

[Webslinger]

Just as the tepid critical reviews and surprising lack of hype suggest, Transcendence is a mess - a somewhat intriguing mess, mind you, but a mess nevertheless. The film has a few intriguing ethical ideas that it begins to wrestle with, but it mostly abandons these ideas and its character development in order to take its story in increasingly bizarre, nonsensical directions. In particular, there's a plot development in the second half of the film that feels awfully reminiscent of one in Iron Man 3; but while the content feels a bit less jarring in unapologetically free-wheeling popcorn fare, it's discordant in a brooding sci-fi film that appears to be taking itself seriously. It also doesn't help matters that the characters aren't terribly interesting or well-developed, which leaves the talented cast with disappointingly little to work with. To the credit of first-time director Wally Pfister, there are some well-composed images (not surprising considering his background in cinematography), there's some eerie atmosphere, and the action scenes are more than competently staged. However, Pfister, the cast, and ultimately the audience are betrayed by an emotionally inert and logically impaired script. From a creative standpoint, it has to be one of the bigger disappointments of recent memory. 

 

C-

[ACCA]

A very strange, and also misunderstood film.

 

I will be the first to say this went totally over the heads of the general audience, and I don't blame the general audience for not getting this film. It's a very high concept film that used a lot of cutting edge science and pseudo-science with very little to no exposition.

 

The film had other problems of course; the pacing was really bad, the editing was very inconsistent, the film was too short. I don't know if this was studio interference or Pfister's inexperience as a first time director. Either way the flaws are what they are.

 

I thought the acting was decent for the most part, not spectacular, but not bad.

 

The cinematography was solid, the visuals were very interesting as well.

 

Now even considering the flaws of this film, I thought the overall idea and content of the film was absolutely brilliant. I got all the ideas and concepts the film was trying to convey, but only because I read a lot about science and technology.

 

So for me, the film worked, despite all of its flaws. I can totally see how it didn't work for the general audience.

 

Overall this gets a B+ from me, mainly for the brilliant ideas and content of the film and for Pfister daring to put such high concept ideas into the film. It was definitely a fresh film, a different film, even though it was also a deeply flawed film.

[TheMovieman]

Didn't go over me head and I found it to be incredibly dull, uninspiring and lifeless. Sure, the concept behind it was something but otherwise the dialogue was often laughable ("We're not going to fight them, we're going to transcend them") and the performances were mostly forgettable. It's a mess of a film where a lot of words are spoken but very little actually behind it.

 

What a waste of potential and some of the fault lies with first-time director Wally Pfister, the other part on the studio for giving him this kind of film rather than something smaller to get his feet wet since there is a vast difference between being a cinematographer and a director.

 

*½/*****, (D, 3.1/10, 1.25/4)

[BK007]

It's not a big a mess as the reviews suggest, though it's not very good either.

 

The middle part of the film is actually engaging and does throw up a lot of potential ideas and themes, however, they don't go anywhere with them, and the end of the film is one big dumb clusterfuck.

 

Also, potentially everyone was miscast. The script isn't strong enough in the first place, and none of the actors can save their roles from being unrealistic people. Rebecca Hall had a terrible character to deal with.

 

C-

[pepsa]

This won't be a populair post but I have to  do it:

 

I just watch Transcendence and I actualy liked it very much. I would give it a "A" score.

It didn't have much action, but the last 10 miniuts nailded completly. That were some emotional moments. I realy loved those last 5 min.

Other than that, I liked the Idea of the movie.

 

And I found the love story better than in most other love/drama movie I have seen past 5 years. 

 

Rating: A (8.8/10)

Edited July 20, 2014 by pepsa

[Lordmandeep]

I watched this 2hour  movie in 40 mins.

 

Thats how boring and a mess it is. 

[The Panda]

An intellectual thriller than manages to have no brains nor excitement. 

 

Utterly boring tripe. 

 

D-

Edited August 2, 2014 by The Panda

[Sam]

A good sleeping aids. C-/D does it really matter?

[RobinHood26]

C (74)

[Romet Loodus]

I would give this a C+

 

It's worth watching if you're bored, but don't expect anything really exceptional.

[Ethan Hunt]

A god awful pile of trash. The sire direction is horrible. Way too much focus on slow-mo puddle splashes to create anything entertaining. Johnny Depp gives a surprisingly bland performance. This film had a lot of potential. With better direction and some rewrites to improve some dialogue this actually could have been a really good movie. I really enjoyed Paul's performance but then he wasn't in much of the second half so. I would say I was slightly entertained by the first hour but by 75 minutes in I was thinking: Good god when is thing going to end. This movie was bad but Non-Stop saves it from being the worst film of the year so far

[Kvikk Lunsj]

WTF was this movie. It was so boring and dull. The characters were dumb in this movie. The concept was cool but the whole execution was terrible. What the hell was up with Will thing at the end and nobody died?

1/5  

[Webslinger]

The concept was cool but the whole execution was terrible. 

 

Transcendence in a nutshell, ladies and gentlemen. 

 

I mean, Lucy is just as stupid, but at least everyone involved with that one knows that the story and the science are utter bullshit, and they just roll with it with a wink-wink-nod-nod approach throughout. The fatal flaw with Transcendence is that it takes all of its nonsense completely seriously.

[lilmac]

Not as bad as I thought it was going to be which definitely isn't saying much.   C-

Edited September 5, 2014 by lilmac

[Water Bottle]

I thought Will Caster was going to go evil and all but not once in the entirety of the movie does he do anything approaching something that justifies taking him down. I mean, sure, injecting himself into people he's healing is a little creepy but after the first guy they all volunteer and like they aren't doing anything nefarious. There's literally no reason for any of them to oppose him and the movie fails to give anyone a reason to doubt him out of "'just cause".

 

So basically the movie is about humanity taking down a good computer. I guess the theme was supposed to be humanity's relationship with machines or how we fear the unknown but....nothing really interesting came out of this. Finally the movie decided to tell us the end in the beginning which sort of means there's no tension whatsoever, no way to anticipate what might happen, and therefore the stakes are flatlined. We know the outcome. Sure, movies are about the journey and not the destination but part of the journey is often going along. The fun of the journey is usually gone when you start and end in the same place: the destination.

 

Hopefully Wally Pfister gets to make more movies though. I think that the cinematography was top-notch, there was good acting, and a lot of sequences had good editing.

 

D+