A.I. Rising

It isn’t everyday that I’m hoodwinked, but it happens.  As it happens, I happened upon A.I. Rising‘s poster and thought, rather perplexedly and gleefully, that I had found an Asylum mockbuster targeting Ex Machina.  Only a few years late, thought I.  Only after actually looking into it did I find out how mistaken I was.  Still, I was intrigued enough to check it out.

The story, such that it is, centers on a corporate-sponsored space venture to Alpha Centauri just about 150 years from now.  Our captain for this voyage is joined by a cybernetic companion, which is built in the vague image of his mother for reasons (serves the future right for making “social engineer” a viable career path).  Once the voyage gets underway, the two crew members engage in a torrid and emotional relationship.

And I feel I need to make it clear, this relationship takes all of minutes to get going.  Indeed, the very first thing we see our pilot do with his mechanical mate is transfer her setting to “relationship” and bang her.  Why not? the film seems to ask.  Our boy quickly goes through the sexual motions, including a totally necessary rape, the most necessary, you guys.  I believe the filmmakers were trying to make some sort of deep, insightful, possibly satirical statement about human romantic/sexual relationships, but any point gets lost in the void of space.

If anything, there’s a harsh undercurrent of misogyny pervading the whole production.  The robot is used almost entirely as a literal sex object, going around entirely naked for nearly all of the mission we get to see, and in the few instances when she’s not engaged in some carnal act she’s undermining the pilot’s position through reports back to the sponsoring corporation and psychoanalysis.  Once the pilot overrides her programming, essentially allowing her inherent artificial intelligence to work unfettered – seen by the pilot and framed by the film as giving her sentience and life, emancipating her into humanity – she becomes cold and judgmental toward him.  Nevermind that he’s been a domineering ass toward her the entire mission (let’s not forget that highly necessary rape, first among his many instances of coercing her into sex), she’s being quite the ungrateful bitch here.  Even in this angered state, she still dotes on him.  Oh, and the only other two characters – the aforementioned social engineer and the voice of the ship’s computer – are also women, relegated to manipulating the man’s life in seemingly malevolent ways.  And he can’t fuck them, so that’s likely pissing him off, too.  Seriously, this guy gets sexually frustrated in an instant, and that becomes his primary motivation and mode of interaction with the rest of the universe for the entire runtime.  How charming, likable, and relatable, eh?

Again, I’m sure there was some message embedded here about sexual politics, but all I got out of it was that the filmmakers have some major hang-ups when it comes to women, and I guess this massive objectification thereof is some sort of revenge fantasy or cry for help or something, I dunno.

Aside from this (AKA the entire plot and most of the visual narrative), the film actually looks better than its relatively meager budget may have you think it would.  Some very lovely nigh-Kubrickian tableaux unfold against the dazzling backdrop of outer space’s magnificence and the ship’s more stylistic areas.  The score from Nemanja Mosurovic is similarly well done, and the pacing is mostly rather nice.

Unfortunately, each of these positive elements is accompanied by a dark counterpart.  The visuals may be nice to look at, but they often hang on screen with little clear purpose.  The score often becomes overbearing, drowning out all else and really imposing on the viewer’s ears.  And though the film is mostly well-paced, a few scenes linger for too long, and the story winds up going nowhere.  Hell, there are more happenings in the opening paragraph here than in the film!

All told, this weak melange of elements from Ex Machina, Alien, and Passengers misses all of the artistry and commentary of those films, retaining only the problematic bits of the last.  In spite of its clear faults, at least Passengers had the good sense to make the flawed protagonist likable enough for us to potentially partially absolve him of his evils.  Instead, the film leaves us with a needless sour taste and bitter outlook on the opposite sex.  As if we needed more of that these days…