If I had a penny for every time Mark has mentioned Silent Running I could bankroll a remake of Silent Running.

"Here's Johnny !" Great one! That cracked me up.

Funniest thing I've heard Mr Mayo ever say - "now you're just filibustering"

Mark sounds like he's trying to convince himself.

I loved this film, but all of the critics were saying it was awful. My last hope was that Mark would at least like it. Good.

Whenever i see a movie i like, i put the title on youtube followed by 'kermode', just to hear another perspective :)

I felt this movie was incredible, thought provoking, and had a great ending. I fail to understand why so many think of it as a flop.

Mark, the reason the film bombed was because it lacked a human element. Her had no explosions, and was about ideas. It also was warm and bursting with humanity.

Two of the critics I really enjoy listening to (Kermode and Richard Roeper) both liked it. And I went to see it today and I kind of enjoyed it as well. I understand why some wouldn't like it, but it kept me interested and the performances were great.

It's like skynet if skynet wanted to save humanity instead of destroy it.

I haven't seen the film but I like that Kermode acknowledges that his view is a minority view, whether he is right or wrong.

"Evil in raindrops"..... I think someone missed a huge part of the movie...

This will probably be an underrated classic in years to come

The tragedy at the heart of Transcendence’s story is that human ignorance breeds suspicion instead of curiosity. War co-opts dialogue. Paranoia ultimately leads to self-destruction.

Johnny Depp R.I.P

"We have to shut down the internet! It's Y2K!" < actual dialog from the movie. You're damn right it's not afraid to look ridiculous!

It would of been wiser of Pfister for his first film to be totally different from the films he is readily associated with. Transcendence could well be a Chris Nolan project. It just leaves it too open to comparison. Rather that starting with a few small films and building up to a blockbuster,Wally went balls in and that was shortsighted of him I think.

I’m with you.Mark. I loved it.

This review reminds me of his review of Prometheus, which I also loved for the idea, and the daring to be big. Jon Carter was superb up until the 40 minute mark, then it turns into something horrendous.

loved the movie. Great ideas. i feel the good concepts went over most heads.

I've been going through tons of the Kermode and Mayo film reviews and enjoying them immensely and Transcendence jumped out at me because it was such a positive review and I remember HATING it at the time. I've just watched it again to see if I'd changed my opinion but instead it became obvious why I had such a problem with it. It just comes across as incredibly technophobic and it seems no one is in any doubt that the AI is utterly evil and must be stopped at all costs, including apparently teaming up with a terrorist organisation that has no qualms about blowing people up, poisoning them and shooting people with radioactive bullets. On the flip side of this we have an AI that is apparently smart enough to know how people will react but apparently doesn't foresee that telling everyone it can assume control of people it helps and is creating a hive mind will cause them to get a tad worried. I just found the whole film an exercise in frustration, not least because there are some really good ideas at the core of it but I found the way the characters acted to be utterly transparent in the way they were all pushing the plot in a particular direction and of one conveniently unified opinion rather than a group of convincing individuals. Plus we have super-intelligent AI that seems god-like in some ways and mind-numbingly stupid in others. I tried again but I still hate it.

I have a feeling I will like this as well. It sounds like a suped up "Lawn mower man" which I think I was the only one in the world that loved that movie.

One of the reasons for the Blacklist is the studio knowing the film has potential for greatness, and while not having enough guts to fund it themselves, being damned before they let anyone else make money producing it.

The good doctor does generally like this film, but if you listen to what he is saying he does mention a list of problems that affect the film. I think he has good feeling towards this film because it reminds him of some of his favourite films (eg: 2001). He also mentions that he now has a perspective about John Carter (OF MARS!) in that he can understand why some people have taken something good out of That film when very few other people did because he likes a film (transcendence) that not many other people like. As with about 90 percent of all of his works, a very thoughtful and well rounded review. One of the best film critics in the business.

Yeah Her had so many explosions that's why everyone loved it so mutch 😜 Sadly Wally shouldn't have quit his day job. He could have directed some shorts on the side of working with Nolan, and then when he had some experience directing films and maybe winning some directing awards he could make that leap into feature length films.

I avoided it in cinemas, but it got a watch from me on netflix now. Was sureprised how good I thought it was. flawed ( the terrorists seam a bit off and the dialog, yeah) but rest was sureprisingly intriguing. worth a watch

I got excited about this movie when the trailers came out months ago. And then the critics generally panned it, so I didn't see it at the movies. I just watched it tonight and I really enjoyed it. I don't get was there was so much hate for this movie - there is a lot worse out there that does not get such harsh treatment.

Watched this yesterday, completely cold not having ready any reviews or feedback and I REALLY enjoyed it. My girlfriend on the other hand was bored stiff, so each to their own I guess.

Just watched the movie and you know what I quite liked the movie.

I actually kind of want to see it now because I have a tendancy to agree with Mark on controversial movies (controversial in the sense that some people love them and others hate them)

Nothing will ever convince me that Johnny Depp cares about 'acting', 'performance' (see the new blu-ray of 'Performance'; it's awesome).

I didn't hate the film but I felt it was definitely lacking in a few areas. One of the biggest issues is that about halfway through all the action moves to the middle of the desert, and remains there for the duration. We never get to see the wider global effects of Johnny Depp's new technologies. We don't really know what the world thinks about what's going on, whether the Luddites are becoming more or less popular over time etc.

Transcendence was pretty bad. I walked out of the theater feeling like I got Pfisted.

The lead speaker reminds me of Jim lamply from boxing

It was good to me liked it!

I wrote a better movie in my head while watching this movie. Do it like Hitchcock: The film opens with Paul Bettany's character (the blonde smart guy) going out on invitation to visit a new Artificial Intelligence Research facility in a long-lost town recently reinvigorated by his good friend Will Caster (Depp's character) and wife after not hearing from them for years. But after he arrives, things soon start to seem odd about Dr. Caster and the people of the town he's built up.

I loved it, i thought it was going to down the route of technology gone awry, but i feel it had a religious aspect to it that as humans we will destroy anything that seeks to help us

Funny, there were scenes in the third act where i just thought, why has this turned into a Michael Bay film?!

I think a lot of the ideas in this film become very confused, granted I've only seen the film once but that was my ultimate impression. I questioned the motives of various characters and didn't buy into a lot of elements in the film. However I didn't hate this film, it really wasn't the worst film of 2014 by any means. It is very pretty, it's well acted and there are a few decent intellectual one-liners in the film. I think this film could have been brilliant if its screenplay was redrafted a couple more times. I think this guy as a director will manage to establish himself as a good director. He just needs to get a better script to work with.

I think the reason this film was received so badly is because it was marketed as an action film. If you see the trailer, you see all the big gun fights and action scenes and end of the world stuff and thats what people wanted to see. And when they didnt get it there was a bit of an uproar. Thank you Mark I wasn't going to see this film but now I think I might.

I liked as much as Kermode.

"Inception managed to get away with some its dialogue." Eh, I don't know about that. No one speaks quite like the characters in Nolan's movies, and his extraordinarily verbose screenplays and loads of exposition don't exactly trip off the tongue. He also, I don't think, is "partly" the reason this got made, but probably largely. It's gotten such bad reviews, I'm just waiting on the video release.

Released too soon after Her, maybe? Big ideas movies need to be trumpeted.

I didn't mind it.

"I don't believe he's militarized his subconscious." Hahaha XD

I loved Transcendence. The part of the film most people described as slow or not having enough action was my favourite part, Wally Pfister is one of my new favourite men if film, he made an amazing FIRST film, worked on Inception and Dark Knight and has made a film written by Jack Paglan who is writing Prometheus 2.

Its the prequel to the Terminator = Skynet lite.....!

Mark is Nolanite :)

I've heard a lot of people say that the movie's really stupid but no-one's really gone into detail. Simon Mayo came closer here than anyone else I've seen. I'm going to do that now. SPOILER ALERT by the way. 1. Let's start with the end of the film. Will Caster has had 2 years to develop his various nanotech/biotech projects and he didn't think to install a firewall against a run-of-the-mill virus? More to the point, someone's actually able to create a virus that absolutely no system on the internet can protect against from a scavenger's campsite? 2. Will didn't think that people would attack his town and set up basic defences? 3. He had enough access to Evelyn's physiology that he could display in-depth info about her neurotransmitters on a screen in front of her and he still couldn't sense that she was having doubts? 4. If energy was such a problem, and as an alternative to having a huge field of solar panels, why didn't he invest some of the research time into advances in solar tech (transparent cells, artificial photosynthesis etc.) so that he could, going back to point 2, use the space to install some form of defence? 5. We saw the state of his town. He didn't think to invest in the decaying infrastructure either? There are probably many more points can be made but the basic idea is that the so-called "superintelligence" that Will became doesn't even seem to be displaying basic human intelligence. Once Will was uploaded to the computer, that should have been the end of it, there should have been no stopping him, especially once he moved to the desert town.

I liked the film

The title 'Transcendence' was a problem, it just feels like a film you've already seen.

This could have been an interesting thought provoking movie like Ghost in the Shell. It's a shame it turned out to be a crappy monster movie....

The film was great. It's tanked but I'd recommend anyone to watch it. I have to agree with the reviewer. It failed as a profit making exercise because : 1. There's a lot of god fearing Christians especially in the US that have it drummed into them that man should not try to approach godhood and as a result any movie where that's the basic premise is perceived at some level as blasphemy.(Ref: Eve's apple, Tower of Babel etc.) 2. As the review said there's a lot of people that expect movies to have a lot of explosions and this one did not focus much on that. I've read reviews that complained that the pacing was bad - I didn't see that at all. 3.Lots of people don't want High concept movies. They don't want to have to think. Show your average viewer Primer and get them to rate it out of ten... For me it's a ten. Rent this film or buy the DVD so we can have more films like this. IMHO It was great. Not perfect but a whole lot better than the reviews or the box office stats would have you believe. Luv and Peace.

Kermode waffles and waflles and waffles, then Mayo nails it in a few seconds.

Admit it Kermode, if you were not in admiration with Wally Pfister, you would be quick to dismiss this movie, without giving it any aorta of praise

Mark Kermode should marry Paul Bettany and I'll catch Jennifer Connelly on the rebound.

Isn't this movie based on one of Karl Dilkington's ideas?

Paul Bettany!

The movie sounds pretty good. Not enough explosions for people I guess though...

It makes Promethius look like the masterpiece it isnt. Plot holes like chasms are everywhere,Mcafee anybody !!

i already knew Mark would give it a positive review after seeing the interview with Wally Pfister, he also sounds a bit refrained from commentary imo. Nevertheless, i was expecting this, though i was hoping it would be 'luaded' for what it is, a miserable failure.

Transcendence is excellent sci-fi, and a really good film; definitely underrated.

I thought it was ok, not nearly as good looking or interesting as inception or memento. Its funny how Mark kermode sounds mutch like Johnny Depp's chararcter in the movie "people will allways be afraid of what they don't understand" :-P hihi

I thought 'Tracks' would be film of the week...

I wanted to like this one, but it was so plodding a dull that despite the fact that I could recognize all the great work done on it and the intelligent way it clearly understood its subject matter I fell asleep because it just wasn't an engaging story.

I'm a fan of Wally Pfister's but I just couldn't bring myself to enjoy watching Transcendence, no matter how much I tried to like it. The script was shoddy the film made less and less sense as it continued. It's only saving points are the performances from Hall and Bettany and that it's shot very well (despite this being the minimum I expect when a film is directed by a cinematographer). Also, Morgan Freeman and Cillian Murphy have near to no purpose in the film and look like they are there on loan from Chris Nolan whilst he focuses on Interstellar.

Some people are being so silly with not liking it. It's either you care for it or it wasn't that bad... jeez everyone is too strong opinioned about this.. 0_0 It's not the end of the world here folks.. :/ Oup.

The only thing I really didn't like about this film was the whole post-apocalyptic no more computers, internet, or even electricity anymore outcome of it all. I liked the idea of the AI Will Caster refinding his humanity, I think if the movie went with that instead of doing the whole we're in a post-apocalyptic society that's taken us back to the 19th century how did we get here? The story structure came off a bit ridiculous to me even though I liked a lot of the ideas behind the movie.

I like John Carter.

No one saw it because they’ve already seen it.

Mark appears to be making a number of excuses for this film rather than reviewing it. Maybe his love for Pfister is leading it. I love Wally too, don't blame him, just had an impossible script to work with. But it's not worth making excuses over, Kermode.

Get your tongue out Mark.

Losing credibility here Mr Kermode. If this is how he feels about the movie based purely on its content, he should give other flops you review much less of a lashing.

My thoughts: Currently the movie has 19% fresh rating on Rottentomatoes. To put it in perspective, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has 20% fresh rating. That's just to illustrate the times we're living in. Of course, Transcendence is a different film than Transformers and its sequels. Of course, it's probably criticized much more harsh due to it being a brainchild of Wally Pfister, not Michael Bay. The same Wally Pfister who gave us the amazing cinematography of such Christopher Nolan films as Inception or the Dark Knight films. However, whatever way you look at Transcendence, it's miles above some of the clunkers that have received far less atrocious reviews. First, to put it out of the way, cinematography is fantastic in this movie. I think nobody would argue about that, the film is just beautifully shot and Wally Pfister obviously is an expert in his field, also at choosing Jess Hall to shoot it, who has done great things here. Does the movie have problems? Yes, it does. The main problems for me were the fact that technology is too far fetched for this to be set in 2014 (mind you, not "ridiculous" or "impossible" as critics have mentioned, but even taking into account technological singularity, you can't go from AI to self replicating computers in rain drops in 2 years, not to even mention uploading a copy of a person to computer BEFORE we have viable and widespread nanotech- that's hard to believe). Yet, this is sci-fi and bigger crimes as a compressed timeline or miraculous breakthroughs in tech innovations have been disregarded in the past (see for example Inception). Another issue is that, while the big themes are presented, it's hard to really tackle all of them even if you have 2.5 hours at your disposal. And writing obviously suffers from this. Contrary to many movie critics, I didn't find Depp to be miscast or giving a bad performance here. After all, we're talking about a character who wanted to study the test results on monkeys the last month of his life and only chose to spend the time with his wife after a conversation with a friend. He was, perhaps to some Depp fans who know him from "Caribbean" movies, "detached" and "seemingly uninterested" at times but we should not forget that he didn't play exactly a man of passions here. Until being uploaded to a computer, his science work was done just for pure science, his goal wasn't to cure or fix anything, he loved his wife but this love, as important as it was for him, wasn't the thing that filled all his life. And after the upload, well... you can only act as much when you're AI staring at your wife from a computer screen and have to make others think that you're actually not a human being anymore. I think that nobody will say that his partner Rebecca Hall wasn't just pure amazing in this movie. It was, however, ideas movie first and the blockbuster only later. Perhaps it was confusing to many people, perhaps my judgement has also been influenced by the fact that I only saw it today, after 19% on rottentomatoes and a box office flop. So perhaps I went into a theater waiting for Lawnmower Man meets Transformers. Glad to say it wasn't anything like that. The fact is- I never felt bored during the film, I never saw where and how on Earth it did earn such atrocious reviews of film critics. Maybe I'm also partial due to the fact that I've studied technological singularity a lot, I've read a few novels about the subject, and mostly what you always have in them is that advanced AI is always sinister in its motivation. It's easy to explain, in order to make compelling drama you need to have conflict. If technological singularity really was about improving all our lives, then there would be no conflict and your novel would just plainly suck. Pfister's (and screenwriters') approach to creating a conflict here is highly unusual. Critics have said that these are all old and tired ideas, I somewhere even read one saying that "War Games was scarier than this". The issue however is- Transcendence is not War Games, nor is it Lawnmower Man, nor it wanted to be scary. When watching the movie I, based on the usual genre tropes, was waiting and waiting for the moment of when will Depp's character finally go berserk and start killing people. And... it never happened. Perhaps it's a problem that this film is actually a film with no antagonists. On one hand you have Depp's character "improving and upgrading" humankind (people go for upgrades willingly, nobody has forced them), on the other hand you have a bunch of scientists, government and a neo-Luddite group that has, without any vote or debate, decided that Depp's character is "not human" and needs to be stopped at any cost. Depp's character never kills anybody in the film (at least willingly), while "humans" do. So perhaps humans are antagonists? On the other hand you can also understand the motivation of the group of humans who are working against seemingly "alien" influence exerted on the humankind by computer-Depp. Some people have said that's the weakness of the film, "human" attackers never really are given time to explain why they fight the AI, starting from RIFT Luddites and ending with Morgan Freeman playing a scientist. However, fear is not something that can be reasoned with, in many cases it's also hard to explain. From a perspective of pro-singularity guy like me, there are no actual reason of why to attack Depp's character. Some privacy issues of post singularity world are touched, as well as hybrid humans that Depp creates that can join together in a sort of a "hive-mind" appear, but computer-Depp never becomes unreasonable and it's hard to see how or why wouldn't he listen to demands of more privacy or ability to switch off "network mode" in Humans 2.0. After all, at the end he chooses to end his life by himself, with his wife seeing that, contrary to what others believe, he always was himself, even trapped into a computer. I think in 10-15 years, when we are so much more "integrated" into our technology, this movie will see its renaissance. The rise of neo- Luddites has been prophesied by many singularity thinkers and perhaps just the fact that at the moment we can't yet see those groups emerge, it's also hard to buy why somebody would want to shut down the whole internet due to strong AI. But, with each passing year, more and more anti-tech opinions emerge, especially in the Silicon Valley among those that have not been able to earn millions on tech. We all know what backlash have Google Glass users experienced (in most cases the reaction would seem totally unreasonable, as in the film, I mean- what motivates people to punch guys who wear Glass in the face, what kind of logic would you apply except the good old primeval "he's an abomination, not like us, humans" which has led to crippled babies, albinos, gingers being killed and abused), so it's not hard to imagine that the film's Morgan Freeman, despite having worked in the science field all his life, would be scared as hell seeing Depp's face and n"body" inside a computer and would say to Hall's character "get out of this place". In essence, this a movie about human nature, irrationality and fear. One of the main characters mentions that to be human is to sometimes be irrational, therefore Depp's character is not human. It is also his assumption that computer- Depp can't be the real Depp because real Depp never wanted to "change anything about the world", unlike the computer-Depp. If I wanted to go deeper, this is generally going back to the debate on what is or is not human. Neo-luddites would believe that to be human is to be something that can never change. A human is two hands, two legs, one brain, a human can only run as fast as a human can and it can live as long as a human can live, and heal as fast as human heals. Singularity proponents believe that the definition of what's human has been changing all the time and will continue to be changed. After all there was a time when humans walked around naked, or ate unprepared meat, or died of small pox. And it was all perfectly natural, as well as child birth without painkillers. This is not a movie that asks you to choose sides, it's a thriller without much "thrills" that make your blood boil or a cause to waive a flag for. Perhaps that's why people don't like it so much. But it's an important film that makes you think about the issues it presents.

lawnmower man reboot more like

I absolutely loved this movie... expectially from a Syfy perspective, but I'm a software engineer. A lot of people think AI will be terminator, but realistically that is the furthest from the truth. It just doesn't make any sense in my opinion to go through all of that, but anyways... I feel this movie really points at different possibilities that could happen and really points at how it could affect us. I also liked how it showed that there will be some people that resist... which I 100% believe will happen when we get to this point in time. Naturalists, Religious, and so on will probably reject "transcending" or merging with machine. I just rewatched the film since I own it on dvd and I think it still holds up today... actually probably even more so that most syfy.

Boy. Mark is bending over backwards to try and explain why he thinks this is a good film. I'd have so much respect for him if he were to look directly into the webcam and say "I'm saying I like this film for two reasons: 1. everyone else hates it and 2. I'm friends with the director". I'd have even more respect for him were he to add "this is how I review all films; I don't need to see a film to know whether or not I like it".

If this film had have been directed by Michael Bay, he'd have hated it. He was very apologetic towards it. I don't disagree with Mark's review, the fact that he liked it seemed to be at odds with his review. As a piece of fluff, it was an okay film. I agree more with Simon Mayo, it's a really good idea for a film, but it was really dumb and stupid.

shame i was looking forward to this movie

Inception has elegant dialogue? You have a tin ear.

It's a great movie that did poor box office....that alone doesn't mean you should jump on the bandwagon and pigeon hole it under the crap movie label...

This movie is transcendent. If you like movies like Lost in Translation' and the like. Atmospheric and ideas over normal Hollywood tropes.

I found the whole thing mediocre from top to bottom. The script, the performances, the special effects all threatened to become interesting from time to time but never did. The whole thing had the kinda-cheap feel of a SyFy Channel original.

I'm sorry, this movie was a snoozefest.

"It looks beautiful." No, Mark, it's the brownest film of the year.

John carter was an ok film....I hated this movie

Seriously? A scifi movie about AI sucks because it doesn't have enough big explosions? What are you? A 13-year-old?

Wow...what a head crushingly dull piece of film making! 25 minutes in, and the heavy eyelids and the land of nod came calling. There is nothing remotely 'big ideas' about this film. I like films with 'big ideas' but Blade runner this isn’t. In order for films with 'big idea's' to work, you need other things to get the 'big ideas' across. An engaging plot, good acting, decent script writing, and a story arc that actually makes sense. Not something that akin to a script found in the dumpster from the Lost set. As for the qusi-religious psycho-babble, not since The Matrix ‘Revolutions’ and ‘Reloaded’ has the audience been presented with such Hollywood tosh of stupefying proportions. These ‘idea’s’ may be the topic of conversation in Beverly Hills, Hampstead Heath, or on the Guardian’s CiF, but to Joe Shlubb who has to pay over the top prices for this piece of garbage, we could do without the meta-physical wittering of Nolan’s pals, the very same gang behind the total car-crash Man of Steel. Like the Prometheus review, Mr Kermode, a man who usually has at least something interesting to say about film, has completely lost the plot on this one, because you’d need to be on industrial strength crack to gain any insight or enjoyment from this.......

Yes Kermode we know you hate Michael Bay but seriously Transformers 3 is an oscar-worthy picture compared to this debacle. The only thing good about the movie was its cinematography and we all know why...

Slowly beginning to lose faith in Mr Kermode. I've not seen the film, but I can obviously see how Pfister's influence overrides his opinion. If you removed Pfister, would he have the same opinion? Maybe, which then begs the question is it a good movie on it's own terms? (looks it up on Rotten Tomatoes) ...19%, I think not. He's becoming more inclined to giving good reviews to people he likes too much now.

Please check out my sarcastic review of this terrible god awful movie.

Cult film?

The film’s unfocused, confusing, poorly acted & is A lifeless sci-fi thriller flick that tries to be as good as other sci-fi films but in the end it doesn’t. (13%) (1/5 stars) (negative)

I thought it was ok, not nearly as good looking or interesting as inception or memento. Its funny how Mark kermode sounds mutch like Johnny Depp's chararcter in the movie "people will allways be afraid of what they don't understand" :-P hihi