From Ex Machina to Blade Runner

Ex Machina was released at the end of January, a film I would recommend to many people. Written and directed by regular Danny Boyle collaborator Alex Garland, it explores the concept of the definition of humanity through the paradigm of artificial intelligence where the plot sets in motion a Turing test (a test devised to test a machine’s capacity to exhibit intelligent behaviour akin to that of a human). Watching the film got me thinking about the merits of science fiction as a genre of film. A lot of the time science fiction is heavily degraded due to false assumptions about its maturity as a genre. Opinions which can be attributed to the likes of Star Wars and the various exploits of the Superhero genre of the Marvel production company create this image of the fan base of this genre and therefore our expectations of it. You know what I’m talking about – you see a few around Imperial: Glasses wearing, acne-ridden, slightly overweight, awkward when talking to members of the opposite gender, and possessing a strange penchant for Anime.

Although it has to be said there are people like this, myself fitting some of these descriptions at some point (Being 14 was a dark chapter in my life), it leads to the neglect of one of the most influential and thought provoking genres available. For me, science fiction includes the fantastical elements of Action and Fantasy thereby creating the cinematic spectacle that is demanded by the average cinema goer, which is allowed to act as a backdrop to tell a more serious message of social realism or philosophy that would otherwise get forgotten about in the wallows of portentous indie drama. For my money, there are a few recurrent themes that are usually explored in intelligent Science Fiction: Society and class; what it means to be human; and human relationships and their transcendence.

Ex Machina, as mentioned before, plays on the theme of what it means to be human through exploring the concept of whether or not artificial intelligence can be possible as well as if emotions, thoughts, and consciousness exist, can a robot be considered human. This is a fundamental work of Descartes, dealing with the concept of self which in any other genre would probably be considered pretentious (see the eye-scratchingly inane I Heart Huckabees) but since the genre of science fiction allows the creation of worlds and concepts that are fictional but with the proviso of being feasible –Ex Machina prompted Stephen Hawking to express his worries at the dangers of AI. This theme is featured heavily within the 1982 classic Blade Runner where the artificially intelligent replicants of Deckard’s world who were created in order to fulfil a subservient role to humans start to break from their programming in order to discover what it means to be alive. Within this theme there also lies a recurrent motif of the desire of freedom, occurring in Kubrick’s 2001: a space odyssey with HAL’s rebellion or through the leaving of Scarlett Johansson’s AI operating system in the 2013 film Her.

Society and class is an issue usually tackled in some gritty British film, but is more frequently present in Science fiction. Besides the aforementioned Blade Runner, the most commercially and critically successful science fiction work that tackles this issue is that of Neill Blomkamp’s District 9. Set in Johannesburg, the immediate parallel is that of the apartheid, but replacing the oppressed race with Alien Refugees that live in shanty towns, segregated from the rest of the population. Although this may not be the most subtle of metaphors, it is still an extremely interesting backdrop for this film to take place. Another interesting case of this, albeit far less alien infested, is that of Never Let Me Go where classes of people are raised to be organ donors for higher social classes, focussing on individuals who reside in this state and their endeavours in trying to escape from their role in society. It touches on the desire for autonomy from the state but at the centre of it resides an emotional core which assists in delivering the warning of overpopulation and the rebellion against reinforcement of class roles.

Despite the humungous budgets of many Sci-Fi films, the most effective stories that they can tell is that of human relationships, forming the main attraction of the film with the interstellar space travel being used as a mere platform to convey this. The obvious example (as you may have guessed) is that of the recent Dylan Thomas enthused Christopher Nolan epic Interstellar – despite it’s reported budget of 165 million dollars, and the extensive theoretical physics that Kip Thorne was responsible for devising, the central story is that of the relationship between a father and daughter and the fact that thousands of light years can note break the bond and duty of family. Nolan is an auteur at creating movies with million dollar budgets whose central dogma is far beyond that of any other blockbuster movies, but is frequently neglected from the awards both because of the blockbuster status and the assumptions about the science fiction genre – a Science Fiction film has never won the best film award.

With this all said, it may sound like the average cinema goer requires some sort of explosion to get them to engage there brain at the moving pictures in front of them; however it is far from it, but it cannot be denied that with the variety of genres that tackle philosophy or ideas of the self, Sci-Fi is the one that permits and allows for the most cinematic spectacle within a genre, whilst manipulating the audience to consider themes that they would perhaps not consider in other circumstances, making it the most exciting and innovative genre in cinema today.