Review of Ex Machina (2015) by Martin R — 21 Nov 2017

Ex Macina is an interesting sci fi fantasy. It starts rather slowly but builds to a much more entertaining conclusion. The story made a number of obvious mistakes which somewhat surprised me. A couple that came to mind are: 1. Food. Towards the end we see Nathan cooking what looks to be an egg. Where did fresh eggs come from? The movie never shows anyone bringing in fresh food to the home and they never showed anything that might indicate that Nathan had a chicken coop on the property. So where did fresh eggs come from?, 2. who, in their right mind, would maintain a security system that provided no means of escape in the event of a power failure, especially after Nathan admitted that his home was having daily power failures. Earlier in the movie they showed Caleb re-writing security routines to open all doors in the event of a power failure. At the end, however, the door to the room where Caleb was locked when the power failed.

In my opinion, the most egregious error made was at the end when they showed Ava escaping. First, one would have to assume that the pilot who know that he was picking up a male passenger. Yet, he picks up Ava and returns her to civilization. Second they show Ava in a population center, presumably at an intersection. Earlier in the movie Ava talks about using "charging plates" in order to cause the power failures that seemed to plague the house. Once she leaves that home, how does she recharge her systems? In an older movie, Bicentennial Man, the robot was shown to have a power cable that he could connect to a wall receptacle to recharge. In this movie, however, that was not the case. As such one has to assume that Ava's batteries would have a finite charge and when the charge depleted, she would cease to function. If her systems had the ability to charge in other ways then why would her room need "charging plates"?

As a movie Ex Machina was interesting and entertaining. It wasn't a great movie but it also wasn't a bad movie.