I can't get the novel Frankenstein out of my head. I read it months ago and it just sits in my brain, rolling back and forth, trying to connect with every bit of culture I consume. It's a book I long thought was simply an early piece of horror that inspired movies and pop culture so far removed from the actual story that they literally only share a name. Then I read the book.
Holy crap. And I don't think there's a book out there that speaks more to the relationship between science and humanity than any fiction out there. Well, I've only read maybe a handful of books that would fit that description, but Frankenstein may be the quintessential one.
Which brings me to Ex Machina. It's a remarkable sci-fi film, and though it feels small because of it's setting and the number or characters, it is bigger and bolder than any of the effects-laden Marvel movies or recent space operas (note: I love the Marvel movies and have seen the last 7 in theatres). It carries the existential weight of Frankenstein and puts it in the 21st century. It is what Frankenstein, in my brain, was looking for.
That "existential weight" is the creation of something human through artificial means- something that can think and feel without the need to have been born through the same process as the average person. In Frankenstein, it's Adam, Victor Frankenstein's monster who was cobbled together out of body parts and jolted into life (through "galvanism", where electricity "galvanizes organisms into life"); in Ex Machina, it's Ava, the artificially intelligent robot brought to "life" by Oscar Isaac's character Nathan. With Ex Machina, though, is not really a horror movie, though I think the horror of Frankenstein is lost over the ages and the more extreme takes on it. Actually, and here are some spoilers for Ex Machina, the movie ends on a more horrific note: Ava tricking Caleb, the man brought in by Nathan to see whether or not she passes the Turing Test, into letting her out, killing Nathan, leaving Caleb sealed in the home where she was trapped, and taking the last chopper out. Adam in Frankenstein is actually begins as a sensitive soul, his murderous rage coming from the realization that he will be inherently rejected by society and his creator. Ava puts on a mask and becomes human; Adam has no recourse, and the monstrous life he earned just as rightfully as his creator, is doomed.
Ex Machina also comes out in a society where cloning and artificial intelligence are household words; in Mary Shelley's time, there were far more unknowns in science, and the word "scientist" wasn't even coined yet ("natural philosopher" was the term of the day). It makes sense, then, that they both create unease in different ways, Ex Machina with its grounded possibilities and Frankenstein with the sheer unlikeliness of it happening. After all, AI is something many are voicing real concerns about nowadays; nobody ever wanted to reanimate the dead.
But it's the weight of being the creator that weighs heaviest; "not the history of man, [the] history of gods," Caleb says in Ex Machina. Victor Frankenstein created Adam in the stereotypical mad scientist fashion, not thinking of the consequences. He couldn't take the weight and decided to flee, hoping his creation would just... disappear, I guess. He didn't really think anything through. Nathan had to contain it, because he knew the potential danger of his creation, and while he's probably madder a scientist than Frankenstein was, he's more paranoid of the unknowns. He had history behind him. He had Frankenstein.
These two stories are very important fables for today. There are still unknowns in the world of science, and maybe Ex Machina will help people step back and look at the wider issues associated with AI. I know it'll be there whenever I read a cautionary article in the future.
