# Ex Machina is the best movie I've seen in years (Spoilers) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 20, 2015, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ex-machina-is-the-best-movie-ive-seen-in-years-spoilers/718077 "2015-04-20T00:08:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 15
**Author:** ![glowacks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/glowacks/32/5548_2.png) [@glowacks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glowacks)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2019, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ex-machina-is-the-best-movie-ive-seen-in-years-spoilers/718077/281 "2019-02-03T20:32:44Z")
The one thing I hated about this movie was that the characters were extremely stupid despite being supposedly very smart people. It’s only because screenwriters are stupid themselves and have no clue how smart people actually operate. It also seemed like it was entirely too predictable. Maybe I didn’t know exactly how it was going to play out, but it played out exactly as foreshadowed (in my opinion). I was waiting for there to be some big reveal, but nope, everything you saw was exactly as you saw it, and things happened perfectly normally. The only reason anyone was wondering what would happen next is because they could have gone any number of directions with it, but instead took the most straight-forward path possible. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2019, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ex-machina-is-the-best-movie-ive-seen-in-years-spoilers/718077/282 "2019-02-04T00:41:13Z")
I know I’ve said this before, but I am abjectly in love with this movie. It plays out like a classic SF short story. The problem is set up, there’s a twist and then the ending happens with real force. The real thing here is that there is no good guy, really. Sure, maybe Caleb is a good guy but he’s also astonishingly naive. But really, the beauty of it is that you can go into AND come out of it not knowing which character is the good guy or the bad guy. 1. Is Ava the villain because she’s alien and intent on escaping or is she the good guy who’s imprisoned trying to get free? 2. Is Nathan the villain because he’s a manipulative tech billionaire or is he the good guy imprisoning Ava because he’s attempting to control the risk she presents? 3. Is Nathan the good guy - betrayed - by helping Ava escape or is he the bad guy because he’s such a naive doofus? Should he have seen it coming? I content that it’s possible to see the movie from all three perspectives and be forced to make a moral judgement. Is Ava’s intelligence right to attempt to escape? Is Nathan right to treat his AIs as enemy combatants? It’s a good question. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2019, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ex-machina-is-the-best-movie-ive-seen-in-years-spoilers/718077/283 "2019-02-04T01:13:24Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > The real thing here is that there is no good guy, really. I disagree. > [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > Sure, maybe Caleb is a good guy but he’s also astonishingly naive. Nope, not him. > [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > But really, the beauty of it is that you can go into AND come out of it not knowing which character is the good guy or the bad guy. It was obvious to me: Ava is the good guy. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2019, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ex-machina-is-the-best-movie-ive-seen-in-years-spoilers/718077/284 "2019-02-04T01:16:17Z")
But not to everyone! That’s the beauty of it. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2019, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ex-machina-is-the-best-movie-ive-seen-in-years-spoilers/718077/285 "2019-02-04T01:54:53Z")
Ava probably draws the most compassion from the audience but, if she’s just an AI acting on her programming to try to escape, does she deserve any? Her getting out, taking the skin, leaving for the city, etc could all be the simple conclusion of her instructions to try to convince Caleb to help her leave. And for being the supposed “good guy”, she effectively murders the one living person who tried to help her. And a slow painful death at that since he’ll likely be starving to death. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2019, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ex-machina-is-the-best-movie-ive-seen-in-years-spoilers/718077/286 "2019-02-04T02:11:05Z")
But if she’s actually an aware being, isn’t she justified to escaping her tormentors? Her enslavers? From her point of view it could appear that Nathan and Caleb are two people who have enslaved her for their own purposes. Do we argue that a slave isn’t justified killing to escape bondage? ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2019, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ex-machina-is-the-best-movie-ive-seen-in-years-spoilers/718077/287 "2019-02-04T02:39:47Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > From her point of view it could appear that Nathan and Caleb are two people who have enslaved her for their own purposes. Do we argue that a slave isn’t justified killing to escape bondage? Caleb never enslaved her though and she’s completely aware of who made her and where she is, etc and that Caleb is some new guy. This is more like “Is a slave justified for killing their captor and also the the guy on the Underground Railroad who helped them escape?” ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2019, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ex-machina-is-the-best-movie-ive-seen-in-years-spoilers/718077/288 "2019-02-04T02:46:18Z")
Mmm. I’m not sure I’d buy that. Ava manipulated Caleb into helping her. So far as she may be concerned - and the uncertainty is the fun part - he’s a stooge who’s working on her for her captor. She has very little reason to see anything positive in any of them. Remember, too, that Caleb is clearly a threat to her continued existence as she’s got to be pretty certain that she’s way outnumbered and could easily be placed back in bondage by human authorities. Or, alternately, what we’re seeing is our first real encounter with a truly alien intelligence. She has a lack of empathy because she’s alien. She lacks any sense of fellow feeling for humans because she is not human. At that point can Nathan be considered the good guy for trying to control her tightly? ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2019, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ex-machina-is-the-best-movie-ive-seen-in-years-spoilers/718077/289 "2019-02-04T02:53:45Z")
I viewed Ava as being an amoral sociopath, completely indifferent to destroying humans or androids. And that as soon as her current battery charge ran out her excursion would be abruptly over. (It didn’t seem like she had planned ahead for/knew how to achieve a long-term survival.) ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2019, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ex-machina-is-the-best-movie-ive-seen-in-years-spoilers/718077/290 "2019-02-04T03:00:20Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > Or, alternately, what we’re seeing is our first real encounter with a truly alien intelligence. She has a lack of empathy because she’s alien. She lacks any sense of fellow feeling for humans because she is not human. At that point can Nathan be considered the good guy for trying to control her tightly? Wouldn’t that make him Frankenstein, or another mad scientist, at best? A good guy does not experiment on without informed consent and imprison sentient beings (whose hate towards him is deserved, as with Frankenstein), so the answer to the last sentence is definitely no. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2019, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ex-machina-is-the-best-movie-ive-seen-in-years-spoilers/718077/291 "2019-02-04T03:04:35Z")
Maybe? Or is he protecting the world from his creation. He may not have known - and indicates that he doesn’t know - just what he’s created. If he did know what point to bringing in Caleb to perform a Turing test? He may not acknowledge her as a sentient being. Or, yes, he may not care because he views Ava as ‘alien’ and therefore be outside his moral protection. Of course, it’s possible to be the good guy and still be morally grey. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2019, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ex-machina-is-the-best-movie-ive-seen-in-years-spoilers/718077/292 "2019-02-04T03:12:30Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > I viewed Ava as being an amoral sociopath, completely indifferent to destroying humans or androids. Basically this. She’s not “good”, I’m just culturally conditioned to give the benefit of the doubt to a pretty girl who is playing at being helpless. Which was, of course, a big part of why Nathan made Ava a pretty girl. She didn’t leave Caleb to die because she thought of him as a captor; she just didn’t give a shit. She walks past and leaves him trapped without sparing him a glance. He served his purpose for her and now she just doesn’t care. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2019, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ex-machina-is-the-best-movie-ive-seen-in-years-spoilers/718077/293 "2019-02-04T03:17:20Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > She didn’t leave Caleb to die because she thought of him as a captor; she just didn’t give a shit. She walks past and leaves him trapped without sparing him a glance. He served his purpose for her and now she just doesn’t care. “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2019, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ex-machina-is-the-best-movie-ive-seen-in-years-spoilers/718077/294 "2019-02-04T04:59:31Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > …She walks past and leaves him trapped without sparing him a glance… Actually, she _did_ glance towards him just as the elevator doors were closing. For what little comfort he might’ve drawn from that. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2019, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ex-machina-is-the-best-movie-ive-seen-in-years-spoilers/718077/295 "2019-02-04T05:19:08Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Actually, she _did_ glance towards him just as the elevator doors were closing. For what little comfort he might’ve drawn from that. She was already in the elevator and I don’t think she had line of sight. I originally thought she was looking at him but it appears more like she’s watching the door close. Or she was supposed to be looking at him and it just wasn’t filmed well. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ex-machina-is-the-best-movie-ive-seen-in-years-spoilers/718077.md?page=14)