Science fiction is undergoing a bit of a heyday right now. Films like Arrival, Blade Runner 2049, A Quiet Place, and Ex Machina have all pushed speculative science fiction back into a spotlight that has ebbed and flowed over the decades. Speculative science fiction has a tendency to focus on a number of topics, one of the most popular being what it means to be human. Examining our humanity through the lens of a fantastical future or near-future world can be thought provoking and entertaining. Ultimately, it shines a light on some dense philosophy, all while being sometimes exciting, sometimes spooky, but always thought provoking.
Ex Machina follows Domnhall Gleeson’s Caleb, a contest winning computer programmer that gets to spend a weekend with the CEO of Google-esque company, Bluebook. Caleb is soon informed by the CEO, portrayed by Oscar Isaac, that he will be functioning as a Turing Test for his newly developed artificial intelligence: Ava.
The Turing Test was devised by British computer scientist, codebreaker, and veritable genius Alan Turing as a means of testing computers. The line of reasoning went that if a person could tell that a computer was a computer through communicating/interacting with it, then it passed. If a person failed to differentiate between computer and man, the computer passed.
As the film goes on, Caleb loses sight of just who to trust. Struggling with his own humanity, Caleb has to decide whether he trusts the charismatic scientist or Ava, who he might just be falling for.
Ex Machina Drinking Game Rules
Take a drink…
- Whenever Caleb gets goosebumps.
- Whenever the power goes out.
- When something especially dramatic happens and the synthy soundtrack gets loud.
Finish your drink…
- When you think you understand where the plot of the movie is going.
Take this list as a suggestion, and drink responsibly. As always, enjoy the show.
Check out the rest of Spire Magazine’s Collegiate Lenses series.
Leave a Reply