Johnny Depp gets viral in a world of ‘Transcendence’
The Internet may take over our lives.
If this comes as a news flash, you may be just a little bit late (that’s sarcasm there) ... and that’s also the problem with “Transcendence,” a 2014 sci-fi thriller whose timing was off even when the picture first hit theaters. That’s especially the case if you remember television’s “Max Headroom,” to which it bears a resemblance that’s very hard to miss. HBO shows the picture Saturday, Dec. 17.
Johnny Depp, who never seemed to shy away from an acting challenge while his career was going full-steam, largely appears via a computer screen as a scientist whose physical being meets with disaster. While there’s still time, the contents of his brain are uploaded into the world of bits and bytes.
He’s become a victim of a radical group that is against the very technology that he and his wife (Rebecca Hall) want to advance. Once his essence has been digitized, though, his iteration in that form wants to usurp every bit of information there is in the cyberworld – which presumably is destined to give him ultimate power over everything and everyone.
“Transcendence” is a cautionary tale, to be sure ... and if it has the markings of a movie made by the much-lauded Christopher Nolan, it just so happens that he was an executive producer here. This marked the directorial debut of his usual cinematographer Wally Pfister (“Inception,” “The Dark Knight”), so it’s expectedly a highly visual effort. However, on its own, that aspect isn’t quite enough, especially when it comes to being part of the arena of modern sci-fi.
Artificial intelligence long has been an interesting subject, but that’s just the thing: It’s been around for quite a while, dating back to such genre classics as “2001: A Space Odyssey” and used again numerous times since. If you’re going to come at it again then, you’d better have a pretty original way to do it.
Unfortunately, “Transcendence” relies on ideas that really aren’t all that original by this point in time. A good cast – also including Kate Mara, Paul Bettany, Cillian Murphy and the ever-authoritative Morgan Freeman – does what it can with the material, which is reasonably substantial, an appropriate situation given the caliber and talent of these actors.
In the end, though, “Transcendence” can’t transcend what has come before it: so many other movies that have done so much more that has managed to be innovative with the same theme.