This is an excellent movie, one well worth watching (it comes out on digital platforms this Friday and DVD in July). There are only 4 characters and for 98% of the movie, 1 location, yet it is rich with narrative material. It's an intelligent story, both in terms of content (some interesting ideas about artificial intelligence) and plotting with some surprising twists and turns. It would make a great double feature paired with the movie "Her". Both deal with AI. Both deal with a male protagonist falling in love with a female AI. Both deal with AI moving from servant to an entity with free choice. But whereas "Her" ends with a somewhat hopeful feel, not so with "Ex Machina"... unless, of course, you find yourself rooting for Ava... which I did! One other brief note: "Ex Machina" is yet another example of movies that do little in the way of story setup and exposition. Like "Lucy". And "All Is Lost". Movies that get into the action almost immediately. In "Ex Machina," Caleb wins the contest - no dialogue - then finds himself in a helicopter and deposited into the vast estate of multi-billionaire Nathan. Literally within 4 minutes. I think this is a reflection of modern audiences who want everything NOW and seemingly don't need as much exposition or setup to get 'into' a story. Who else has some thoughts on "Ex Machina"?

I watched this last night in preparation for this week's discussion and... I was completely blown away! My second favorite movie this year so far with GOOD KILL. To think it didn't really attract me to begin with because of the subject matter... Just goes to show that our minds should always be wide open. The first thing I noticed was the fact that in only about a minute's screentime, we know what the story is. No dialogue, just images. And when Caleb gets to the house, there's no explicit talk about why he is there, it is all told through dialogue only, making this movie feel almost exposition free. And it was so beautiful to look at. I couldn't help thinking of Kubrick or BLADE RUNNER and SUNSHINE (my favorite Danny Boyle movie, brilliantly scripted by Garland) - the modern, sleek almost empty house is the perfect set for these complex, full characters. I'm looking forward to the discussion this week :)

Marija, you are a living, breathing example why I push this series: To get writers to watch movies as they roll out in theaters and in digital platforms. And so great that you liked it as much as you did! I concur re Garland's visual style of storytelling. You never once feel the presence of the director with fancy camera shots, rather he lets the characters do their thing within the context of each scene and each setting. I thought that restraint, not to point at himself with camera tricks and what not, really kept us IN that story universe. As the movie goes along, it begins to feel more and more claustrophobic which is a great tip-off to the surprising end. I think your comparison to Kubrick is an interesting one and in particular The Shining, also set in a remote mountain environment, a handful of people in effect 'trapped' there, and a protagonist character who goes through a substantial deconstruction. But also the camera work, the kind of dispassionate approach to setting it up and letting it work. More close-ups in Ex Machina, but important, especially to feature Ava's face, a remarkable job by Alicia Vikander. I look forward to your impressions and thoughts during the week's discussion.

I watched the movie when it came out but then bought the (oddly formatted) script on amazon and also read it. Both are very compelling and engaging. Regarding plot, I noticed that almost each surprise/reveal in the movie was planted by a "set up" somewhere earlier. It was thoughtfully written and executed. A few technical quibbles: (1) if the robots learned so much from the world by Nathan's spying on the world's cell-phones, why wouldn't they learn programming? Maybe I'm missing something but it seems Kyoko, who seemed to have access to the area where the robot bodies were stored, could have easily gotten the key-card when Nathan was drunk and then hacked the system like Caleb. (2) While the world seemed more advanced, I'm wondering why Ava's existence would be so surprising, given the number of programming problems Nathan would have to solve. For each problem he solved (eg, advanced learning algorithms), he could spin it off into its own application and leverage the profits to fund Ava development. This is one surprise that I thought could have used a better set up. As a big Asimov fan, robots which violate the three laws of robotics is a surprise. In the end, are we to conclude that Nathan made a programming mistake? Somehow the killing of Nathan by Kyoko set up when they learned their brain was being reformatted. Lots of interesting questions in this movie!

On a number of tech issues, I just had to suspend disbelief and go with the flow of the story. One disturbing theme of the story is sexual objectification and exploitation. All of Nathan's AI models are female. His experiments are embodied in lithe bodies with attractive faces, reflections of Nathan's female ideal. Kyoko is more than a servant; she's also a sex slave. Nathan doesn't become emotionally involved with the robots, as does Caleb. He uses/abuses them.

I'll second your reading, Paul, about dealing with sexual objectification. I found this really fascinating about the film and this kind of thematic layering seems to be what Garland does really well, he actually uses sci-fi to ask those "what if" questions. I'm also of the opinion that Caleb is just as bad as Nathan in his objectification of Ava which is why he is left behind. Nathan's perspective (of falling for and wanting to free Ava) may have a benign intention behind it instead of Nathan's grooming for sex slavery of the AI, but Nathan is still imposing an identity on her from his position of power and interrogator.

Nathan implies that Caleb was selected because of his web browsing history -- which would include porn. IOW: Ava's appearance and mannerisms are tailored to what Nathan knows would turn on Caleb. Ava has no data set -- that is, no memories formed from first-hand experience of male behavior -- other than the exploitation and abuse she has witnessed and suffered from Nathan. Thus, she has no empirical reason to like or trust Caleb any more than she does Nathan.

Good points, David. And thanks for the link to the three laws of robotics as laid down by Asimov: 1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws. In some respects, it seems like Ex Machina goes straight into the buzzsaw of these three rules, taking us from a starting point where the three are accepted as fact, then turning them on their head - again, similar in some respects to the movie Her. Re the logic of the story: I went along with Paul's approach: suspended disbelief. I was interested in the characters, thought the setup and general subject matter was compelling, and once I picked up that Nathan was a slippery figure potentially with underlying motives, I was along for the ride. I remember with Super 8 came out and there was all this yowling about logical and factual errors in the story, I wrote a blog post: Emotional Logic Trumps Rational Logic. Sure, for some moviegoers, that's a deal-breaker. And some movies can go too far into utter illogicality. However I think most moviegoers watch films because they want to be entertained. And at the end of the day, if the filmmakers have made a movie long on entertainment while short of story logic, almost always the former trumps the latter. But as I say, this varies per moviegoer and movie.

Paul and Jacob, you raise some really interesting points re the sexual objectification of the A.I., and the point about Caleb being guilty (in his own way) of this as well as Nathan is an especially intriguing one. One of the beauties of this movie is the shift at the end where we realize Ava has been playing both of them. So if we were to shift protagonists and look at the story universe through her eyes as the central perspective, it's a story of empowerment, isn't it? Two guys, both seeing A.I. as objects, even poor Caleb seduced by a fantasy come to life... both acting as if they are in the power position... both are defeated by Ava with an assist from Kyoko. Through this lens, one can make the argument, I think, this is a feminist film, the rise of the individual versus a patriarchal system. The desire for authentic human contact trumps hyper-logic and super-technology. This will be something we can explore further when we talk about both Characters and Themes. Thanks, Paul and Jacob, for your observations. Relevant and insightful.

I am so happy that we are looking at this movie. It has to be one of my favourite recent movies. I like "genre" films and books. I especially love stories that take the precepts of their genre and work with them, rather than just playing with them. Ex Machina is a film about the birth of AI, and what that would really mean. a real "what if" scenario which is ( I feel ) at the heart of good science fiction! What I really loved was that the core question was true to itself "How would you react to a real AI? How would the meeting of a human mind and _something else_ play out?" But what makes good sci-fi is that this question has been coloured by, and is a good commentary on, real world social issue - power disparity, sexual objectification I loved the way the setup influenced the problem - the AI is essentially a repurposed search-engine, making connections between data. This makes the outcome even more interesting as the mind is not programmed so much as grown by experiences and input. This brings up the nature vs nurture question that plagues all human development psychology as well :) This also makes this interesting, as the meeting is really a meeting of an alien mind, as even Nathan (the inventor) cannot fully understand what he has created. I also love the setup - that Nathan has setup himself for a classic scientific problem - he has created an environment that unintentionally optimises for a fail condition - he is making an alien mind (completely non human) and is creating an environment where it has to pretend to be human. The "unintended effect" is something that is completely overlooked by both Nathan and Caleb - Ava is very very good at tricking both men into thinking she has human emotions. They both expect certain behaviours based on what they think that human would do... they are fatally wrong :)

That is excellent analysis, Kenny. It's great to see how you and others have a much deeper understanding of science and technology than I do, and the movie still passes muster. I tend to be very forgiving on that front because I'm just not terribly technical or scientific. As long as it makes sense at a base level, I like the central story concept, and feel compelled by the characters, I'm in. So a question for you and those others who are more deeply into science: Are the 'human emotions' Ava expresses real on a HUMAN LEVEL or are they fabrications (intentional) or approximations (unintentional) on Ava's part? Or is that even a legitimate question?

Had this thought: What about dual meanings of the word "machina"? First meaning: Machine. So one would think that would apply to Ava and A.I. in general. There is a second meaning: scheme, plan, machination. That works for all three characters. Nathan's scheme with Caleb. Caleb's scheme to free Ava. Then Ava's scheme to use both guys to escape. So that works! Of course there's also "Deus ex machina". Writers understand it to mean don't pull out an ending to a story from your ass, it has to derive from the internal logic of the story, not some external agency. But there is a more literal meaning: God - from - machine. While "deus" is not in the title, it hangs there as a ghost, doesn't it? And Ava, who ends up manipulating these mere humans for her own ends, does act as a kind of small "g" god.

I would say that Ava's emotions are fabrications, yet real on the human level from a human observer. They felt real to me when I watched it, anyway!

That's a double entendre I didn't realize. Very clever! I think the idea of Nathan as god (small g) is reflected in the script: CALEB If you’ve created a conscious machine, it’s not the history of man. It’s the history of gods. then later NATHAN You know I wrote it down. That other line you came up with. About how if I’ve created a conscious machine, I’m not man. I’m God. CALEB … I don’t think that’s exactly what I said. then even later NATHAN ... See? I really am a god. CALEB I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.

Oh, absolutely, David. Ava = Eve, right? Nathan = Creator... and as Caleb says, destroyer, too. In fact, that exchange really sends up yellow flags about Nathan. He's been a bit weird before - like hungover while drinking alone the night before. But the whole "God" talk suggests megalomania at work. Good citation.

I read through most of these comments and I will discuss some of the topics covered. Some of the folks I agree with to an extent, but there are also traces of flawed thinking present. First off, I consider this movie to be one of the best of the genre, and probably the greatest of it's sub-genre. It has been mentioned multiple times that there are four characters in the movie. While this is true, it would be simple and maybe even more accurate to count Kyoko as a half-character. I was convinced throughout the film that she was in fact a robot, but I kept wondering why she was free to roam the house while Ava was kept imprisoned in her own subsection. Well after giving it a bit of consideration, I think that it is quite obvious (especially after finishing the film) that Kyoko wasn't as "free" as Ava. She had some kind of "regulator" programmed into her mind to make her actions more predictable, stripping her of the capacity of complex decision making, therefore making her more trustworthy in Nathan's eyes. Someone asked why she didn't just take Nathan's ID card and hack the system as Caleb did. I believe that if Ava were in Kyoko's position, she would have done this or anything else to escape, while Kyoko simply wasn't capable of this kind of planning. I agree that at the beginning Caleb appeared to fill the role of Protagonist, though by the end of the film the viewer (at least this one) is unable to label any one person as a P or an A. There are no heroes or villains in this movie. I think the author of this article understood this fact when he basically dubbed all the characters "tricksters". In my own words, they were all looking out for their own wellbeing (including poor little Caleb), even at the expense of the wellbeing of everyone else. For instance, even Caleb didn't seem to consider the imprisonment of Ava to be inhumane or even strange until he began to "fall in love" with her or whatever. Nathan, in my opinion was the most straight-shooting personality whether his motives seem agreeable or not. The only reason he withheld the information he did from Caleb (which was quite a lot) was to preserve the integrity of the experiment. Also, it was mentioned that this move is a feminist movie. I think that that is a bit of stretch, considering that if all of the genders of our characters were switched it would not come naturally to view the movie as an anti-feminist movie. My rating for "Ex Machina": 9.5/10

I actually found this exchange of words to be humorous, and I think that's how it was meant to be presented, at least from Nathan's point of view. He obviously knew that Caleb didn't use those actual words. He was having fun at Caleb's expense.

Dick, thanks for your observations. Interesting re Kyoko and I think you must be right: She had to have had some sort of regulator. The idea of the trickster dynamic at play with all the characters? That was my idea, glad to see you resonated with it. I agree: There are no heroes or villains in the movie, although by the end of the story, I certainly sympathize with and root for Ava. Finally a 9.5/10? I down with that. Again thanks! Check out the other movie analyses here. Everything including comments goes into the archives as a resource for writers now and in the future, so feel free to contribute your reflections.

The script is now available for a free download (pdf). See http://nofilmschool.com/2015/10/ex-machina-end-tour-more-screenplays-your-consideration for more details.