Ex Machina: Massivelly overrated

Last time I wrote about a directorial debut, it was a great one (The Gift), sadly with Ex Machina it is a different story. Alex Garland gets pretty much everything wrong, with his weak plot, poor dialog, and despite the cast, even poor acting. Essentially the only thing he has going for him, is the VFX department, which lately seems to often be the deciding factor for a film's popularity.

One's face after watching Ex Machina

Click to show spoilers

Ex Machina addresses a very current issue, the great dilema of AI, but fails miserably at doing so. Already from the beginning, you get a taste of the absurdly forced dialog that will propagate through the entire movie, to an extent that is indescribable. I know it is a movie about artificial intelligence, but it would be nice if the actual human intelligence in the film wasn't so artificial itself. [...]

More than just poor dialog, every action each character takes, seem out of place and/or nonsensical. All that below average film making is then etched into our minds by one of the most poorly thought out and executed endings in cinematic history.

Moreover, Ex Machina is contradictory in the depiction of its main robotic subject as an intelligent "being", capable of emotions and autonomous ideas, equivalent to a human, while giving her somewhat unnatural speech and definitely unnatural expressions. Her expressions don't seem like those of an intelligent being, not because of a mechanical limitation, but rather because they seem like pre-programmed patterns of reactions to specific events, evident from their homogeneity and repetitiveness. Are we to think of Ava as a perfect analog to humans, or just an extremely advanced robot? Garland certainly seems to want us to believe both!

Sadly, even the strong cast could not turn this sub-par script into something worth watching. And actually, the poor writing greatly impairs the actors' ability to portray the characters in any form that could be described as a good performance. Alicia Vikander and Oscar Isaac's acting ability can be better witnessed in such films as the great The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Two Faces of January respectively. As for Domhnall Gleeson, I have not seen much of him, so I can't really say.

Beyond the generally poor writing, there are some annoying factual and visual errors. For instance, on the helicopter ride to Nathan's property, it is declared that it was a several hour journey, so it doesn't seem clear to me how the helicopter would have enough fuel to make it there and back. Then there is the scene where Ava is "putting on some skin", and despite the thickness of such skin, she actually becomes "smaller/thinner" after it is applied, something that is most evident from her chest (an error that could easily be avoided by the makeup and VFX departments). And finally, there is the absolutely horrifyingly bad stabbing scene. That is probably the most fake looking stabbing ever seen on film. It just seems as if Nathan was a ghost, as the knife passes straight through him, with zero resistance, and it is made even worse by the fact that he was stabbed in the back and chest, areas where there is a thing called "rib cage", so the knife would not only have to overcome the strength of the skin, but also find its way between the bones.

Also there is the major hole, that is what will Ava do in the world? She has no documents or form of identification, nor place to stay, nor anything at all. So after gratuitously betraying Caleb, and seemingly naturally getting on the helicopter, she just walks into the world and lives happily ever after?

Further more, why would Caleb tell Nathan what he did to free Ava? Wasn't he expecting Nathan to beat him? I actually thought it was surprising he didn't kill Caleb.

Now on a different matter, I have to take my hat off to the VFX team, as this is one of the rare instances where the VFX shots are mostly (completely?) not relying on green screen, and the 3D elements are incorporated directly into the footage with the sets and backgrounds. That is nice to see, as it for instance facilitates matching lighting of sets and characters, making everything feel much more integrated.

What did you think of Ex Machina? Share your thoughts in the comments bellow! Will you watch Ex Machina? If so, share your thoughts in the comments bellow! If not, share them anyway!