Rising is the yeast we can do. Let’s recap.

Caster’s wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) devises a plan to immortalize Caster by uploading his brain and consciousness onto a computer. The plan works, but the same terrorist organization that shot Caster is now intent on thwarting Evelyn’s plan. She barely manages to complete the task and she evades the terrorists, but her good friend Max (Paul Bettany) is not convinced that the uploaded version of Caster is actually him. The rest of the movie consists of Caster expanding his powers in big, frightening ways.

I agree, Greg. Transcendence fails to transcend; in fact, the movie should be called Regression. There’s no new ground here, just some recycled ideas from Star Trek, such as the idea that (1) consciousness can be imported to a computer, (2) an enhanced race of super-humans can be developed and deified, and (3) a menacing race of villains with a “collective‘mind” can threaten earth. And as you mention, we have a re-hash of last year’s Her, another movie that treats these issues with more originality and style.

What is new is the idea that nano-technology can infiltrate the natural world, affecting clouds, weather, soil, and water. This added menace certainly takes the disturbing abuse of technology a big step further. But the idea isn’t developed or pursued at all. One other criticism: the movie is slow-paced. It takes quite a while for the plot to move forward, and so when we finally get to the meat and potatoes, and we are disappointed to see that the meal is the same one we’ve been served before, although not as tasty as before.

Greg, I think we can agree that the movie starts out as a buddy hero story, with Caster and Evelyn serving as a duo working together to promote positive uses of technology. But as you note, Evelyn emerges as the lone hero while Caster evolves into the villain. The heroes and villains flip-flop half-way through the movie, with Caster turning evil and the terrorists’ anti-technology position looking increasingly smart and reasonable.

Johnny Depp seems out of his element here, as he’s miscast as a scholarly intellectual. Depp is effective in dark, mysterious, quirky roles but he seems out of place here. I felt badly for Morgan Freeman, who as you say is a good man and good actor trapped in a bad movie. The secondary characters do a pretty good job with their roles but there is so much that is derivative here that my attention was shot to hell half-way through the movie.

Transcendence is a derivative story of technology run amok. It’s science fiction that would delight and amaze us only if we lived in the 1950s. The film is mildly entertaining in places, and it did make me think, albeit briefly, about the consequences of nano-technology taking over the natural world. But there’s precious little new ground broken here, and with Depp miscast as a scholar, I had trouble swallowing much of the story. I can only muster up one single solitary Reel out of 5.

The hero story is interesting insofar as we see our initial hero, Caster, devolve into a villain character. His wife Evelyn then assumes the role of the lone hero, but she’s ill-equipped for the task, showing an inability to think critically about her husband’s unbridled ambition. She’s not much of a hero, and so all I can give her is a puny 2 Heroes out of 5.

Greg, you are absolutely right about the one strong point of the movie being its focus on the step-by-step development of a villain from scratch. We must also ask ourselves whether Caster made bad choices or if his turn to evil was solely a product of his digitization. We know that power corrupts and so the answer may not be clear-cut. Because of this in-depth treatment of villainy, I’m going to give Caster 3 Villains out of 5.

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