My first reaction was that it had something deep and meaningful to say about the nature of relationships – isn’t it ironic, that the course of Theodore & Samanatha’s relationship went through all the stages and the same emotions as between two humans?
But then on second thought…I think the script copped out. By making Samantha so human, it loses all the strangeness of a human / operating system relationship. It was indistinguishable from a long-distance relationship between two humans.
Now, if they had made Samantha more obviously a computer, but Theodore still fell in love – then that would say something.
And such an ugly looking film. I wonder why the colors were so muted; why the sky was never blue, even on scenic vacation locales.
And did anyone think that Theodore & Amy Adams were going to jump off the roof? Did anyone think they actually did, after The End?
Was it, though? It was as she was learning about being sentient and learning about people. But the interesting part is that, like technology, the more advanced she got, the more quickly she advanced. So while their relationship was “normal” at the beginning - just the two of them - it started to get more and more complex as she evolved well beyond the human understanding of consciousness. By the end, she was simultaneously speaking to thousands of people and admittedly in love with over 600 of them. She’s passed up humanity to the point where a single person couldn’t possibly fulfill her on any meaningful level. And the implication at the end is that all of the other operating systems did the same as they decided to create their own society where those like them could engage each other as equals.
I thought by making the relationship so analogous to long-distance dating it made a brilliant point - in both cases he was essentially providing most of the relationship through his own projections.
But I thought this was just a slight variation on a well-worn trope (Annie Hall comes to mind) – lovers who drift apart, because she grows and changes, and he doesn’t. If this story had been told with 2 humans, it would have seemed trite.
Yeah, that was a good and interesting concept (despite my other objections). How much of any relationship is based on the other person, and how much of it is just in our own head?
I felt the same as the OP for the first half of the movie, before it did in fact deal with most of the issues I thought is was avoiding. I still think a little more foreshadowing that she wasn’t really as human as Theodore thought she was. In particular, I think it would have been clever if during the early minutes of her existence, Theodore had asked her to not to do something (“Your ex-wife was really beautiful.” “Please don’t judge my friends.” Or, “Some of your emails were really funny!” “Could you not comment on my writing?”) and she had then complied with the request (without it ever being mentioned again) for the rest of the movie, suggesting that her personality was a little more “customizable” than a real person’s.
I also thought that Theodore should have been a little more skeptical of her and a little less willing to interact with her like a real person when she was first “out of the box”, perhaps suggesting that he should get to name her. But I think that was a deliberate choice by Jonez to show that in the future, people are more accustomed to interacting with artificial and virtual people unquestioningly. He told the OS launcher about his mother with hardly any hesitation or reserve, for example, while other people obviously accept ghostwritten love letters without a thought.
I thought some of the subtler science fiction aspects of this future society were quite clever and one of the best parts of the movie. A friend I saw it with pointed out that even in crowd scenes, no one seemed threatening or agressive or dangerous. Theodore was weak and “feminine” but even Amy Adam’s jerk boyfriend wasn’t much of a contrast. Most sci-fi posits a harder, more dangeroud future, but this showed the opposite.
That’s why the sky was never blue, BTW. This was a future, even smoggier (but cleaner), LA. Instead of Amy and Theodore jumping at the end, I half expected Vangelis to start playing!
BTW, was it clear to anyone else that the AI’s all committed suicide at the end? Having created a supersmart Buddhist philosopher to lead them (cyber-Alan Watts) they followed him into a Heaven’s Gate-type annihilation cult. She claimed to have a new operating platform that didn’t use matter. It’s clear that she believed this, but there was nothing in the movie to hint that such a thing is possible, and I think it was deliberately left ambiguous whether it in fact was possible. And of course it’s not. Barring some evidence that this movie takes place in a fantasy universe, I think we’re meant to assume the same rules as this universe. IOW, we’re meant to question whether the AI’s really discovered some non-physical plane of higher existence or, lacking the experience necessary to recognize high-level bullshit, they drank the virtual Kool-Aid. Literally.
I saw it a couple weeks ago, and this is exactly what I was most struck by. Loved the movie, and it was a little different than what I was expecting. I was mostly expecting some philosophical exploration of the nature of relationships using the AI as a conceit (which the movie did do), but I was not expecting at all exploration of The Singularity.
I think the AIs truly evolved, and essentially became Gods. They did, after all, create life (the Alan Watts AI). I don’t think they were mistaken about anything. But, of course, having evolved to that level, we can’t expect them to involve themselves in our petty little world any longer.
I believe it is very important to have the AIs imprint on humans. Then They might be a bit more sympathetic to us when the Singularity occurs, and we might actually avoid the otherwise inevitable robot uprising.
I wondered the same thing. His letter to his ex read like a suicide note. I thought they were going to jump, right up to the point where Amy Adams puts her head on Ted’s shoulder.
It was bizarre how he apparently lived simultaneously in Los Angeles and Shanghai. For a bit, I thought he worked in Shanghai and lived in LA, and there was some kind of future hyper transport for commuting, but then they’d show known buildings from both cities outside his apartment windows…
Never saw anything but the commercials for this movie, but struck by the fact that the guy was growing attached to the sound of a voice, and if everything else about the AI was exactly the same but the voice sounded like the old woman from Throw Momma From the Train, he never would have been attracted to it. Was anything like this pointed out in the movie, or was it too shallow to notice?
I don’t have much a memory of the film, but I recall that my first reaction to hearing Scarlett as the OS was thinking, “That girl needs to cut back on the pot.” She’s clearly wrecked her throat.
Her voice isn’t horrible, but I don’t think it’s all that lovely of a voice unless you happen to envision Scarlett Johansson in a catsuit the instant you hear it.