I liked ex machina also. Is this thread ex machina lol.
We stuck with it to find sense/meaning of a gal group stumbling around making stupid decisions, even though they were supposed to be trained. Right!
Welp, going in the other direction. One of the better sci-fi films I've seen. Dealt with the completely unknown aspect of the presence well. I liked the film quite a bit. I liked Transcendence too and definitely in the minority there as well. Ex Machina OTOH although OK was rather predictable and in the end rather weak (for me)... YMMV.
I respect our different takes on this...movie. Different strokes for different folks.
There was another thread on this same movie just a while back. I did have a lot company with my take. But again, the majority are not always found to be correct.
Have a good day, and take in some great listening.
Q
When I sat down to watch it I was well predisposed to hate it that's for sure and was surprised when I was drawn in to the story. Arrival* however I could not wait to end.
Ex Machina wasn't bad by any means but it started confirming my guesses as to plot direction about 30 minutes in. Could have been my mood that night too.
*Included as a ref in that it is a film of the unknown alien motive(s) genre.
In Annihilation their motive was pretty obvious and the manner in which they were defeated was creatively weak (girl power).
I left it feeling that the Annihilation "aliens" intent was ambiguous at best if it was even sentient at all. It may have just been and nothing more.
At the start of Annihilation we see an interstellar object streaking toward a lighthouse and I thought alien invasion movie and the question was if us or them would be annihilated. When we discover that the alien was absorbing life within the expanding zone and replacing the original genetic code with its own I thought Invasion of the Genome Snatcher. From the start I didn't see any intent ambiguity. The alien's intent, like all life, is to live and reproduce and sentience is not a player in this. Would our earth genome based sentience necessarily be able to recognize an alien genome sentience or vice versa?
The film I saw was closer to The Andromeda Strain than the one you saw.