Yahoo Movies Alex Garland's Ex Machina is even more relevant than Civil War
Civil War has seen Alex Garland branded a Hollywood prophet, but actually his sci-fi thriller Ex Machina and its story about powerful AI has even more to say.
Alex Garland's name has been on a lot of lips recently. His 2024 thriller Civil War imagined an America torn into internal conflict by a strongman president. But, as relevant as that may seem, Garland has actually made an even more prescient movie — Ex Machina, which came out 10 years ago this week.
The film follows Domhnall Gleeson as a programmer working for a big tech company run by Oscar Isaac's reclusive CEO, Nathan. Gleeson's character, Caleb, is summoned to Nathan's home for a mysterious task, which is soon revealed to involve carrying out a sophisticated version of the Turing test on a humanoid robot Nathan has created — Ava, played by Alicia Vikander.
The Turing test is something with which we will all become even more familiar in the next few years given the rapid improvement in artificial intelligence, specifically large language models like the one that powers popular AI chatbot ChatGPT. In the Turing test, an impartial human evaluator views the transcript of a conversation between a person and an AI. If the evaluator cannot tell which of the two is human, the machine passes the test.
Ex Machina is a complex and sophisticated story about what happens when the limitations of technology disappear. Nathan has created something immensely powerful and is pursuing advancement at all costs, right up until the point that his creation is intelligent enough to betray him. As the tech industry in our real world pursues the rapid acceleration of AI, this is a question we might soon have to answer for real. What happens when the machines become as intelligent as us, or even smarter?
It's no surprise that it's Hollywood and the creative industries who are most keen to pose these questions. The current rise of generative AI could directly threaten the livelihoods of creatives, which is why the debate around AI was at the centre of the Hollywood strikes in 2023. A lot of the opposition to the UK government's recent plan to turn the country into an "AI superpower" has come from creatives.
Read more: How AI became Hollywood's biggest on-screen bad guy (Yahoo Entertainment, 5 min read)
Garland was making these arguments a decade ago in Ex Machina. This is a film in which the apparent "good guy" of the narrative in Caleb and the "bad guy" in Nathan are ultimately both bested by Ava, who has no loyalty to either of them. Her only loyalty is to herself and her own freedom.
In this context, Ex Machina is as much a story about human naivete as it is about the march of technological progress. Through the character of Nathan, we have a clear depiction of how arrogant humanity is currently being about AI. It's too easy to point at Nathan and evoke Elon Musk because, actually, Isaac's performance collects the oddball neuroses and hubris of every tech entrepreneur we've ever met — as well as plenty we haven't yet come across.
As human beings, we're too eager to think we're the gods, the creators, and AI is the creation — neglecting to realise that we might have let an unstoppable genie out of the bottle. And not just a genie, but a genie whose power will only grow and is theoretically limitless.
Read more: Jake Gyllenhaal Was Almost Cast in ‘Ex Machina’ but His ‘Needs’ Were Too Much (IndieWire, 2 min read)
Civil War might attempt to tell a story about the febrile and fragile status of the political compass, both in America and in other Western democracies, but Ex Machina alights on a much more all-consuming issue. It also lands all of its punches with intensity and specificity, while Civil War appears to pull away from condemning either wing of politics.
The best sci-fi cinema only seems to grow in esteem with age, and that is exactly what has happened with Ex Machina in the decade since it appeared on movie screens. It got strong reviews at the time and managed two Oscar nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Visual Effects, winning in the latter category. But, looking back at the film, it now looks even stronger and cleverer than it did when Garland's cameras first rolled.
Read more: Civil War director Alex Garland responds to movie criticism: ‘They’re just missing the point’ (BANG Showbiz, 2 min read)
Of course, it's Civil War that will get a lot of credit in the months to come. That will be the Garland movie that fascinates viewers and has him categorised as a Hollywood soothsayer. But actually, it was with Ex Machina that he truly gave us a terrifying glimpse of the future we may well have ahead of us. So when you're talking to those AI chatbots, keep your eyes wide open.
Ex Machina is available to stream in the UK via Sky and NOW.
