Transcendence (2014 film)
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| Directed by | Wally Pfister |
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| Written by | Jack Paglen |
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| Music by | Mychael Danna |
| Cinematography | Jess Hall |
| Edited by | David Rosenbloom |
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119 minutes |
| Country | United States China |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $100 million |
| Box office | $103 million |
Transcendence is a 2014 dystopian science fiction film directed by cinematographer Wally Pfister in his directorial debut, and written by Jack Paglen. The English-language co-production stars Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany, Kate Mara, Cillian Murphy, Cole Hauser and Morgan Freeman. Pfister's usual collaborator, Christopher Nolan, served as executive producer on the project.
At one time, Paglen's screenplay was part of what is known as the Black List, a list of popular but unproduced screenplays in Hollywood.Transcendence was a disappointment at the box office, grossing only slightly more than its $100 million budget. The film received mainly negative reviews; it was criticized for its plot structure, characters and dialogue.
Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp) is a scientist who researches the nature of sentience, including artificial intelligence. He and his team work to create a sentient computer; he predicts that such a computer will create a technological singularity, or in his words "Transcendence". His wife, Evelyn (Rebecca Hall), is also a scientist and helps him with his work.
Following one of Will's presentations, an anti-technology terrorist group called "Revolutionary Independence From Technology" (R.I.F.T.) shoots Will with a polonium-laced bullet and carries out a series of synchronized attacks on A.I. laboratories across the country. Will is given no more than a month to live. In desperation, Evelyn comes up with a plan to upload Will's consciousness into the quantum computer that the project has developed. His best friend and fellow researcher, Max Waters (Paul Bettany), questions the wisdom of this choice, reasoning that the "uploaded" Will would be only an imitation of the real person. Will's consciousness survives his body's death in this technological form and requests to be connected to the Internet to grow in capability and knowledge. Max refuses to have any part of the experiment. Evelyn demands that Max leave and connects the computer intelligence to the Internet via satellite.
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