Rick Edwards Selects Ex Machina
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BAFTA AT 70 Sunday 1 October 2017 BAFTA 195 Piccadilly RICK EDWARDS SELECTS EX MACHINA London W1J 9LN As part of our BAFTA at 70 celebrations we are delighted to welcome RICK EDWARDS, ANDREW WHITEHURST and DR.MICHAEL BROOKS to discuss the science and visual effects behind Ex Machina with host MARIAYAH KADERBHAI. an you make a robot better than its creator? Can you robots, Ex Machina is equally concerned with a more immediate ‘google’ the human soul? If you were rich enough threat, that posed by socially irresponsible entrepreneurs. could you even reduce God Himself to an algorithm, In the largely unregulated, un-taxed and un-unionised world patent Him as your own proprietary software? of the tech giants we have become familiar with the notion that CNathan Bateman, the brooding mogul-cum-Svengali at the a young CEO can quickly soar above his workforce and above heart of Ex Machina (2014), naively believes he already has. But society – becoming a Philip. K. Dickian ‘Geek-Genius’ whose writer/director Alex Garland (in his stunning directorial debut) only responsibility is to pioneer new components that boost keeps one step firmly planted ahead of both the self-deluding shareholder value and his own net worth. Garland and Isaac have Nathan, and us his audience, in this disturbingly hygienic, tense fun making Bateman a grotesque caricature of Silicon Valley’s and atmospheric sci-fi thriller. real-life tycoons. Earning Garland a mantelpiece of prestigious nominations (BAFTA nominations for: Outstanding Debut; Best Original Screenplay; Outstanding British Film; an Oscar nomination “…no matter how rich you get, for Best Original Screenplay) Ex Machina is rightly lauded as a timely and exemplary re-telling of one of cinema’s enduring shit goes wrong… you can’t genres, the mad scientist and his Frankenstein creations, here remodelled for the age of AI. insulate yourself from it…” Winning a thoroughly deserved Oscar for its mesmerising special effects, Ex Machina’s other strength lies in its portrayal As Ex Machina opens we observe Caleb Smith at his work of the power-play between an unbearably conceited Nathan station. But we see Caleb only silently, as if separated from us by (Oscar Isaac, brilliantly channelling his inner ageing hipster) protective glass. The Caleb we see is a lowly young programmer, and his outpaced protégé Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson), working for the (barely) fictional conglomerate ‘Blue Book’, an underling beckoned to attend on Nathan at his palatial ‘cabin a monopoly search engine and cutting-edge technology firm. in the woods’. Isolated, over-awed and lonely Caleb becomes Caleb is being congratulated by colleagues whose computer easy prey (just as Nathan intends) to the seductive charms of screens, like his, have just informed them he has won the Nathan’s harem of advanced machinery. company’s star prize – a week alone with their charismatic, Anticipating by some years the current debate about a future remote billionaire owner Nathan Bateman on his private estate threat to humanity supposedly posed by artificially intelligent in Alaska. BAFTA AT 70 Sunday 1 October 2017 BAFTA 195 Piccadilly RICK EDWARDS SELECTS EX MACHINA London W1J 9LN Baleful, self-obsessed and alcoholic latest, and admittedly though Bateman turns out to be, an mind-blowing invention, impressionable Caleb is thrilled at the a self-aware female robot prospect of meeting his hero-boss, an calling herself ‘Ava’ (Alicia indisputable engineering prodigy. But Vikander netting a Caleb encounters Bateman’s boorish BAFTA nomination for arrogance long before he meets his Best Supporting Actress). idol, Bateman’s private helicopter pilot But the terms of Caleb’s pointing out to him Bateman’s endless experimental task (known as Alaskan land holdings below, evidence the ‘Turing Test’) have been of his untrammelled wealth and self- deliberately invalidated by imposed internal exile far away from Nathan in advance. Caleb lesser mortals. bridles but fails to appreciate how dangerously Nathan has abandoned orthodox scientific practices. magazine, has a weekly column for Release yeaR: 2014 Once those in power believe that the New Statesman and his writing has Runtime: 108 mins the rules no longer apply to them the appeared in the broadsheet media. DiRectoR: Alex Garland gateway to catastrophe lies open. At one He has lectured around the world WRITTEN By: Alex Garland point Nathan unwittingly acknowledges and is the author of At The Edge of PRoDUCER: Andrew Macdonald, that the terrible fissures in his personality Uncertainty, The Secret Anarchy of Science Allon Reich are risking everything when he bemoans and the bestselling non-fiction title eXECUTIVe PRoDUCERs: Eli Bush, the fact his almost infinite wealth still 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense. Tessa Ross; Scott Rudin cannot insulate him from ‘shit going wrong’; Garland’s talent is to blind Nathan (and us) to the most important ANDREW WHITEHURST Caleb is deposited some distance from malfunction right under his nose, until it Helping to secure Britain’s place as the Bateman’s breath-takingly beautiful rural is too late. world’s cinematic effects production retreat (Ex Machina’s uncredited star – hub, visual effects supervisor Andrew the Juvet Landscape Hotel in Norway). Whitehurst has already brought home This isolated wilderness location Caleb RICK EDWARDS the Academy Award for Best Visual assumes is Bateman’s uber-cool, luxury Rick Edwards is a television presenter, Effects for Ex Machina, and was BAFTA- home. But as Bateman rapidly explains broadcaster, writer and Natural Sciences nominated for Best Special Visual Effects. it is in fact his laboratory – a bunker-like graduate from Cambridge University. These accolades he shared with VFX testing ground. Worrying early clues that Amongst his numerous presenting team – Sara Bennett, Mark Ardington all is therefore not what it seems, and that credits are: ITV2’s comedy roast Safeword, and Paul Norris, the latter two being Caleb is perhaps in greater peril than he BBC Three’s live current affairs debate Andrew’s colleagues at the celebrated realises, are obscured by Caleb’s pathetic show Free Speech and Channel 4’s Double Negative VFX house. eagerness to demonstrate his own Paralympic Breakfast Show. He has worked in CGI for twenty intellect in the presence of his supposedly Rick is a passionate science enthusiast years and is currently working with Alex guru-like (but in fact dismissive and and hosts a long-running series of Garland again on Annihilation, due for contemptuous) master. podcasts, Science(ish), alongside Dr release in February 2018. Nathan’s unethical treatment of those Michael Brooks. Their book on the around him (whether robotic or human) series, Science(ish): The Peculiar Science Mariayah Khaderbhai is the Film Programme is mirrored in his cavalier approach Behind the Movies, is published later this Manager at BAFTA to scientific method. In an awkward month (October 2017). ‘Faustian pact’ moment Caleb is forced by Bateman to sign a non-disclosure BAFTA HERITAGE SCREENINGS agreement, only then is he informed MICHAEL BROOKS This event is part of our special his ‘prize’ is in fact to carry out more Michael Brooks is an author, journalist programme celebrating BAFTA company work for Bateman – conducting and broadcaster with a PhD in quantum at 70 and has been generously a verification experiment on Bateman’s physics. He is a consultant at New Scientist supported by Heritage Lottery Fund..