Transcendence Review
RYAN: My instincts were right about this movie and I’m sorry to report that.
CAROLINE: …this just in – you don’t have to be sorry.
RYAN: I love going into a movie with low expectations but then being pleasantly surprised; but I went in with low expectations for this one and they were met!
CAROLINE: Yeah I didn’t really think the trailer was that alluring either. But Johnny Depp is Johhny Depp. Still for every big one, he has a bomb, too. Let’s not forget The Tourist, Dark Shadows and The Lone Ranger.
RYAN: Exactly. You can add Transcendence to that group. It’s so science fictiony and boring. And I love science fiction. It’s just such an average movie in every way, well, except for the casting. The cast is good so it’s really the script that’s the problem.
CAROLINE: Such a shame. I do like Rebecca Hall and Morgan Freeman, Paul Bettany.
RYAN: There’s also Cillian Murphy and Kate Mara, who is so weird in the movie – seemingly for the sake of being weird. Her story – she plays a terrorist – really needed to be fleshed out. The whole story needed more by way of subplot. It’s like a short story that was stretched into a feature and just fails.
CAROLINE: I know what you mean. I don’t even like most light sci fi so this sounds like it would really bother me.
RYAN: And it’s just so unoriginal now – after Her and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, both which featured people in computers, or that general concept. I liked this better than Her but just barely.
CAROLINE: Wow that’s pretty bad.
RYAN: The effects are cool but not enough to make an impact on the film. And Johnny’s so monotonous once he’s in the computer, which is the point, but it certainly doesn’t service the entertainment value. It feels like bad acting more than really committing to the character.
CAROLINE: Well you can’t win them all.
RYAN: No. It has a bit of an X-Men quality to it which had they explored more, could have made this a much better movie but it stays focused on the characters and implications and I just never felt it. It’s flat.
