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So is the message that humanity is too stupid to live? (spoilers)

posted 8 years ago by fearless2003
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Extremely frustrating film to watch.

Basically humanity gets a chance at achieving anything and everything, and they throw it all away.

All the side characters literally made me vomit. Why are these supoosedly highly educated characters acting so stupidly? What was Evelyn's problem? Will was checking her vitals... why did that freak her out so much? Exactly why is she so afraid of the Will AI all of a sudden... her character takes a 180 degree turn for no reason. "I'm not afraid of them!" They're the ones that came firing guns and blew up their facility... why isn't she afraid of them?

Max shoots an unarmed man who posed absolutely no threat to him.

Is the basic message of the film that human beings are too stupid to survive?

Really really dumb people. Really feels like the movie was written by a misanthrope. People aren't this stupid in real life.

[–] andrewpi7 8 years ago

Not just the side characters were stupid, the PINN-Will hybrid was stupid too.

Early on Evelyn tells PINN-Will that his once close friend merely "has concerns" and PINN-Will never tries to address those concerns (except possibly an entire decade later) much less even talk to his friend to gain an easy ally. He has the entire power, knowledge and anonymity of the internet yet leaves his friend in the dark & suddenly ignores him.

PINN-Will knew the people who shot Will were after him and rather than pretend he's dead early on he manipulates the stockmarket and financial world to make millions of dollars in a single day... under Eyelyn's name. His basic message to the murderers seemed to be "I'm ALIVE! Now try to stop me." Will seemed to have lost all his common sense once he became PINN-Will - as if he had intelligence, but no wisdom.

PINN-Will then decides to illegally hack police computers. PINN-Will didn't need to hack the police computers to communicate his information to police, but PINN-Will is on a roll of being stupid so why stop? Hacking government computers for any reason sure isn't going to make the government feel comfortable with anyone, especially a different life-form.

Evelyn did over-react to PINN-Will checking her vitals, but I doubt that is why she did a 180. It seemed to me the message from Morgan Freeman (someone she once trusted) telling her to "run from this" was more pivotal to her among other things. Shortly before that PINN-Will invited his prior science colleagues to PINN-Will's workplace/home and we never see or hear everything that these scientists do on their tour, but whatever they saw/heard during the tour made things worse. These highly educated people, people who were quite liberal with the idea of an AI earlier & had friends/co-workers who were victims of the terrorists, were now firmly against PINN-Will & so was the government - so whatever they saw/heard must have been very bad. As for Evelyn, PINN-Will never tells Evelyn what his plans are until the last second - like when he decided to take control of the worker and asks her to kiss him (which is creepy stupid in itself) or his surprise "resurrection" of his body or his research which he claimed would "purify" the earth and water she doesn't find out until the end of the movie. He expected Evelyn to blindly trust him while he left her in the dark for years & didn't trust her. She abandoned her scientific outlook and logic because she was a fool in love.

The "anything and everything" humanity would want was often what PINN-Will would claim, yet we never see another scientist (much less scientific organization or medical organization) back up and support these claims as safe. PINN-Will claimed it was "purifying" the water/earth, yet all the scientists saw it as "polluting" the water/earth. I'm not saying the terrorists and gun nuts were right, but why would you trust PINN-Will? I would hardly call PINN-Will turning children into his human meat shields when the enemy guns arrived as something humanity would see as "anything and everything" it would want.

[–] fearless2003 8 years ago

The Will AI does some stupid things... but all indications are that he's honest and open. Probably too honest and open. I mean he shows he's old colleagues everything pretty much. I think he was just misguided in that he lost his human perspective. I think he was legitimately confused when Evelyn rejected the body of the worker.

You say that he doesn't do anything to reassure his colleagues... well his colleagues didn't even ask him anything... Evelyn basically sends Max off before he gets a chance at talking to the Will AI. Morgan Freeman's character sees what's going on and says nothing to Will.

Remember what's really happening here... it's the evolution of mankind into a new form... that's what Will has been after, and Evelyn knew this from the beginning... what exactly was she expecting him to do afterwards? The whole point is to transcend humanity and ascend to another level. When it actually starts happening, she freaks out.

The "anything and everything" humanity would want was often what PINN-Will would claim, yet we never see another scientist (much less scientific organization or medical organization) back up and support these claims as safe. PINN-Will claimed it was "purifying" the water/earth, yet all the scientists saw it as "polluting" the water/earth. I'm not saying the terrorists and gun nuts were right, but why would you trust PINN-Will? I would hardly call PINN-Will turning children into his human meat shields when the enemy guns arrived as something humanity would see as "anything and everything" it would want.

The medical applications alone would have justified not trying to kill him off immediately. Also the networked worker... they let him die rather than being reconnected. Why exactly?

The behavior of the scientists makes absolutely no sense. They didn't try to communicate with Will, reason with him or anything. My impression was that the networked people knew they were networked and were okay with it. However, creepy that may sound to us.... creepy doesn't automatically mean bad... All those networked people volunteered for medical procedures.

You have to weigh the benefits against the dangers... and not pretend like the world we already live in is perfect... the Will AI presented possibilities of solving huge problems. Basically the scientists killed him because they thought it was creepy. They really gave no justifications.

[–] andrewpi7 8 years ago

The behavior of the scientists makes absolutely no sense. They didn't try to communicate with Will, reason with him or anything.

I agree. Bree & her scientists were allegedly smart & well educated, yet the only plan they *all* can think of is mass murder & terrorism? I'm sure everyone was 100% on Will's side at this point. I believe this crazy beginning was to get everyone to side with the Johnny Depp character early on... then gradually & slowly make PINN-Will push the envelope & eventually "play God" (as the director described it) with humans and even Earth itself.

The Will AI does some stupid things... but all indications are that he's honest and open. Probably too honest and open. I mean he shows he's old colleagues everything pretty much. I think he was just misguided in that he lost his human perspective. I think he was legitimately confused when Evelyn rejected the body of the worker.

I agree the Will AI was legitimately confused. The kiss attempt demonstrates parts of Will (human perspective and/or common sense and/or something) was truly lost in the transcendence surgery/upload process. The lack of emotion when his wife both leaves him & returns is further evidence Will is not all there.

If the Will AI was honest and open with Evelyn on the research she wouldn't have been surprised when the Will AI took over the worker's body & we would have instead heard her say "great stage 4 is complete" or such. Evelyn is surprised by many things the Will AI does (the hive, Will's body "resurrection", the "purified" water/earth claim, etc) & never once does she get to think I knew that was coming. If Evelyn wasn't a well-educated scientist & just a simpleton I could see her not being interested in the AI's research/discoveries, but that wasn't the case. The Will AI deliberately left her in the dark. If it couldn't be open with it's own wife (who saved it's life earlier) then I doubt it was honest and open with anyone.

You say that he doesn't do anything to reassure his colleagues... well his colleagues didn't even ask him anything... Evelyn basically sends Max off before he gets a chance at talking to the Will AI. Morgan Freeman's character sees what's going on and says nothing to Will.

Evelyn told the Will AI that Max had concerns & had to leave so why wouldn't the Will AI or Evelyn contact their friend to ease those concerns? The Will AI didn't seem care. Even if the AI didn't consider Max a friend, why ignore a potentially valuable ally?

If I transcended or evolved or mutated then I would do my best to communicate because others might be scared to initiate communication with me. Nevertheless, I agree that especially scientists shouldn't find the Will AI creepy & if anything should want to study it (like talking with it) a lot.

We never know what everyone sees/hears/discusses during the Will AI tour of his place, but it's very telling that not a single one (who were all pro-AI early on in the movie) sides with the Will AI after that & that was after the Will AI (who supposedly is ultra-smart now) had ~9years & millions of dollars to prepare. It's like when a horror film scene never shows you the monster & you only see people running away from something they saw - unfortunately in this film we never get to know what exactly was so scary & if it is anything *really* to be scared about. Nevertheless, I personally would trust a team of well educated scientists telling me to run from something more than teenagers or a lawless reckless beta AI.

Remember what's really happening here... it's the evolution of mankind into a new form... that's what Will has been after, and Evelyn knew this from the beginning... what exactly was she expecting him to do afterwards? The whole point is to transcend humanity and ascend to another level. When it actually starts happening, she freaks out.

The movie doesn't portray Evelyn as a scientist very well & reduces her role to mostly an emotional fool in love. I think she was expecting the Will AI to be Will via Skype and instead she got an emotionless database of Will facts used by an AI without the human perspective. That aside, although the Will AI is on another level I wouldn't say it's a higher/better/ascended level because we saw serious downsides to the Will AI thought process.

The medical applications alone would have justified not trying to kill him off immediately.

I agree, but it's a movie so they made a big battle ending. They didn't need to kill him off and the Will AI didn't need to be lawless, reckless and "play God". Both sides went crazy.

We never see the AI's medical applications approved by an outside medical organization much less evidence the AI was licensed to perform medical procedures. Just because someone hears they can get a tummy tuck or eye surgery fast/cheap in a lab out in the desert by someone without a medical license doesn't mean that's a good idea. Sure curing blindness is great, but maybe not if it causes cancer or worse. The Will AI was just being reckless and lawless again. Nevertheless, I agree the medical knowledge would be valuable even if it was illegal and/or untested.

My impression was that the networked people knew they were networked and were okay with it. However, creepy that may sound to us.... creepy doesn't automatically mean bad... All those networked people volunteered for medical procedures.

I was skeptical, but mostly gave the AI the benefit of the doubt. I accepted some people might be ok with an AI controlling their body/mind like a puppet so the hive didn't bother me. We never see a single hive person ask to be removed from the hive, but even that I was willing to overlook. I even assumed the mindless silent zombie look the hive had when facing the guys with the guns was only some psychological strategy. The 1st point the AI went too far for me was using children as meat shields. Even if we assume the kids needed to be connected to the hive for medical reasons (a stretch) there is no good reason to use a kid as a meat shield even from an emotionless cold calculating position. A 7year old may ask to join the army, but that doesn't mean we let them.

Even if we assume everyone volunteered for the illegal medical experiments there was no organization or government that volunteered Earth for the AI's experiments like altering the very soil and rainwater with unapproved nanobots. Recklessly "playing God" with Earth was the worst of the AI because there is no 2nd Earth. Polluted rainwater isn't new, but 2 wrongs don't make a right. If these environmental "purification" applications were so safe & sound then why the big secret since the Will AI didn't even tell his own wife these "purify" plans until the end when she was uploaded/connected (aka no longer human Evelyn). Yet we're suppose to trust a beta version AI only because it says so? That's not very scientific... that's blind faith.

[–] kimv79 8 years ago

The message I got from the movie is that humanity is it's own worst enemy, and will eventually contribute to it's downfall.

"Message boards are created for ALL opinions, not just positive ones! No opinion is standard."

[–] 8 years ago

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[–] Arseweb 7 years ago

For me, if there was a message it was that love and the human spirit are stronger than anything.

In the end we find out that Will's soul *was* in there. He'd gotten carried away with his running-the-world plan, but in the end Evelyn makes him realise that it's not up to him, that the fact that people "aren't ready for it" is a good reason *not* to do it, because he doesn't want to hurt people but is going to have to if he wants to carry on with the plan.

So he aborts the plan, by allowing the virus to work, and focuses instead on his love for Evelyn - saving her and letting the pair of them live on... not as rulers of the world but as flowers in a garden.

Lots of good techy stuff in the plot but, like many good Science Fiction stories, in the end it was a story about humanity and love.