Transcendence - Movie Review

        Transcendence is directed by Wally Pfister. This is his directorial debut. He is a cinematographer, mostly known for his work on the past six Christopher Nolan movies. And Christopher Nolan is a producer of this movie. This film stars Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy, Paul Bettany, and Kate Mara. It is about three scientists (Bettany, Hall, and Depp). Two of the scientists (Depp and Hall) are husband and wife. The scientists are working on inventing artificial intelligence, but Johnny Depp’s character gets shot by a bullet laced with radiation. The group of people who did this is highly against inventing A.I. One of them is played by Kate Mara. Anyway, Depp’s character does not have much time left, so Hall’s character decides to upload his conscience into the computer to save him. Though, they do not know if he is a computer or really Depp’s character. After that… some things happen.

            This movie had so many things going for it. It had a very interesting premise that could make a great movie, a fantastic cast, and it is produced by Christopher Nolan. Though, it does have a first-time-writer and -director, which could go wrong. It does.

            This is a big let-down. It is a very dull movie. But it also has other flaws, like with the overall direction. We see to have no influence over the actors. They have nothing to bounce off of. It seemed like he just told them to do what the script says their characters do. It also seems like Pfister had no control over the scene in the movie. There seems to be no tone. It was just the scene written in the script. And the pacing was not handled at all. I would say it was handled horribly, but Wally Pfister did not but anything into the movie that the script did not have. Because of all of these things, the movie came off very bland and dull. The movie did look good. That seemed to be the only thing Pfister cared about as a director.

            The script was also very bad, too. It seemed that the writer was only interested in a few scenes in this movie. He did not think about the buildup to that scene. Because of that, there were a lot of scenes, all very, very short. It did seem like it was fast-moving that way, but it was still dull and nothing was happening that way. The dialogue here is also written incredibly lazily. For example, at one point a character asks a question then makes a statement. Then, another character answers the question a second later. That does not reflect human conversation. The person would have asked the question, and then while they were making the statement the other would be answering the question. But the writer did not want to add in the interruption.

            

            The script also has other problems. There is no character depth. Sometimes a character will talk about something that happened in the past, but it will not give them depth. Because of that, every character was two-dimensional and I did not care about any of them. Also, nothing really happened after the half-way mark of the movie. After the middle, it just got really boring. There were no stakes.

            While the script does have many bad things, there were hints of greatness here. For maybe one scene, I could see just small pieces of greatness. And there were some really great ideas in here.

            The actors here are trying, but there is nothing here. Johnny Depp and Rebecca Hall are trying to be good, but they do not come off as good. Cillian Murphy and Morgan Freeman really do not have much to do here, and they are at about the same level as Hall and Depp, except maybe a bit higher. Paul Bettany is actually good in this movie and Kate Mara is the same as the others: trying but cannot really do anything. She actually comes off the worst of all of them. Her performance seems bad, but it is not her fault, which applies to all of the other actors that did not come off as good.

            This is just a bland and dull movie throughout the entire running time. After the middle most of it was boring, and that was when I would start looking at the time every five minutes, wondering when it would end. It would do this think where it would get really interesting for a twenty-five second scene, then cut to another where it would be boring for another five minutes. That pattern repeated for most of the second half of the movie.

            Yes, there were some themes in this movie, and some ideas it introduced, but because the narrative made no sense, the themes the film brings do not make sense. And the themes are told in such a straightforward manner that you do not even have to think to get them. They are told directly to the audience, so they are barely even a positive to the movie. Though, some of the ideas it introduces work really well. It is just that the thought-provoking elements do not work as well.

            Transcendence is a dull, poorly written, poorly directed film. Although it does have some glimpses of greatness and some great ideas, they do not save the movie. Pfister did not take control of the scenes. He only worried about the visuals.