Transcendence is a bad movie for a lot of reasons related to story, as I put in my initial review. I noted in that review that there is an obvious influence from Christopher Nolan, who is an executive producer on the project and has worked extensively with Wally Pfister.
In thinking further about the film, that influence from Nolan may extend to Transcendence's political message (muddled as it may be on first reflection). By now, you've probably at least heard some reference to the ugly politics of Nolan's Batman films. The Dark Knight was an anti-democratic paean to George W. Bush and colonialism. The Dark Knight Rises was as much a reactionary counter-attack on people that disliked the first film's politics as anything else. It has also been called monarchist, which is relevant here.
So what are the politics of Transcendence? In short: bow down to your tech overlords and stop questioning their greatness.
Will and Evelyn Caster are leading technology titans. They are developing some of the world's most advanced technology and Will himself is a superstar (he is shown being approached for autographs). Evelyn is apparently an idealist that wants to save the world. Will's latest project is an attempt to build a supercomputer that will both dwarf's man's knowledge and develop a consciousness of its own, or at least have one downloaded to it. When questioned whether he is trying to invent a god, Will, elliptically, admits that he is.
Will is assassinated by a Luddite terrorist group. Before he passes, however, Evelyn is able to download Will's brain and consciousness to the supercomputer. Will then manipulates financial markets to score big and to develop his grander plan.
Toward that end, Will and Evelyn build a massive laboratory in a desert town. Pfister and screenwriter Jack Paglen makes sure to let us know that the town is run-down, worthless, drug-infested, and filled with trashy people. But the technologists will bring them economic salvation by bringing them the world's most advanced tech facility. The rich have come to save the poor! Basically, the tech industry as economic savior for a nearly abandoned, worthless town. A suggestion of gentrification, one of the raging battles involving the tech industry, perhaps.
Will eventually saves a man's life by injecting him with nano-machines. Only Will does more than save the guy - he enslaves him by taking over his mind. When townspeople see that the guy has developed super-human strength, they begin lining up and asking for the same treatment from Will. And then a video goes viral and people begin showing up from all over the world to be cured of their diseases (and to become Will's drones). One might think Pfister and Paglen were painting Will as the healing Jesus, but I do not remember anything from Sunday School about Jesus trading healing for enslavement (free will typically being a pretty important thing in the Judeo-Christian tradition).
Will reminds us on multiple occasions, however, that these people are coming on their own and out of their own inspiration. I think the point is to claim that they are committing themselves to him, rather than being enslaved. But the film does not address whether the people understand or even know that they are about to surrender their free will and identity. When Will takes over the mind of a person to speak to Evelyn in physical form, there's no suggestion that the man gave his permission or that Will even asked for it.
To suggest that people would enslave themselves to Will voluntarily so that they can be cured of disease or obtain superhuman strength should be quite controversial and thus it needs to be dealt with more completely. Yet the movie does not address it directly. In a press interview, however, Pfister himself has declared: "[I]f the characters can use technology for the betterment of society, why not wipe out pollution? Why not heal people with diseases?"
At what price? Freedom and self-determination? Apparently so.
It is too easy to say, "Look at all the great things we can do with technology," and to ignore the fundamental question of what we have to give up in return. It is also spectacularly naive for Pfister to suggest that the only things the tech titans are doing are trying to wipe out pollution and heal diseases. Somehow Uber hasn't conquered global warming but I guess we just need to give it more time and more freedom to price gouge.
Eventually, the FBI and the terrorists team up after the government realizes that Will is taking over everything and has injected his nano-machines into the environment in order to enslave the entire world. The FBI and terrorists are not able to stop Will, however. It is only when Evelyn asks Will to put it all to a stop that he willingly takes on a computer virus and his reign is ended. The virus is a dumb Hollywood plot device that might have been cute when Roland Emmerich was doing it nearly two decades ago, but now it seems pathetically dumb. For all of Will's computing ability, he couldn't figure out how to download some anti-virus software?
The virus, however, allows the filmmakers to do what they want with Will's character - i.e., to lionize him. It allows them to show that Will sacrifices himself for man (the Jesus angle again). It also allows the filmmakers to show that, despite Will's previous megalomania and attempt to enslave all humanity, he really wasn't a villain after all!
Rather than depicting society as saved from enslavement, the film actually depicts Will's defeat as a lost opportunity. We're informed that Will just wanted to save the environment and make the world a better place for everyone. He really was Jesus Christ and we killed him!
Remember that Jesus is depicted as the king of kings in the New Testament, and Jesus was reported to have said in Matthew 28:18: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." Will becomes something of the embodiment of the concept attributed to Ezra Stiles: "A monarchy conducted with infinite wisdom and infinite benevolence is the most perfect of all possible governments." I think Stiles understood in making that statement that such a monarchy is not possible, but I'm not sure the filmmakers of Transcendence agree.
Will's end-game future is not to be judged as dystopian, but rather as utopian - i.e., the "perfect of all possible governments." We're given numerous nature shots as Will explains in his dying moments what he was doing, demonstrating a beautiful, clean world in which nature thrives and the world is "saved." The filmmakers take a side in the end, and it is Will's side. Will's dream was to create a utopia, and the filmmakers do not challenge his dream, but depict it in all its beauty.
His defeat results not in the world returning to what it was, but to the collapse of civil society when almost all technology goes offline.When the people do not submit to Will's self-appointed authority, order is lost and everyone suffers - the dystopia is the anti-tech future, not the pro-tech future. The filmmakers depict society's comeuppance not because we cannot control technology, but rather because we cannot learn to live with technology that controls us. The NSA would be proud.
Will's failure to conquer the world is depicted as a disaster for mankind - a lost opportunity to submit ourselves to our Techno-God-King and live in the post-freedom utopia he could have given us if only we hadn't lost our faith in him. Had we only accepted this authoritarian "perfect of all possible governments," i.e., Will as self-appointed monarch, we would have had that perfect, wonderful future. Instead the people suffer in hell on Earth because they chose free will.
The film suggests that if we, the majority rabble of society, do not submit and let our benevolent technological overlords do as they wish, our society will collapse and we will be worse off for it. An apt reflection of a terribly arrogant, classist, self-important tech industry.
That Pfister views Will's spirit as benevolent is confirmed in a recent interview he gave to The Wrap. That some tech titans fantasize that, through their sheer self-declared greatness, they'll be able to bring about some grand utopia where technology is the ruler, not governments of and by the people, is well publicized. Pfister does not question that tech utopian dream - he only questions whether the unwashed masses will have the faith to let the tech industry take control over our lives to make it happen.
Pfister has claimed that he wanted "the film to be ambiguous." Which is a time-honored way of pretending not to take sides, at least in public. But the film speaks louder than the press interview, and Pfister does take a side, does have a point. The ending of the film disables any attempt by the filmmakers to claim that they were critiquing religion or authoritarianism. They side with Will, their majestic king of kings. Any attempt to vest the film with ambiguity only hurts the film's coherence, not the ultimate message.
To even suggest that there is some ambiguity, however, as to whether the enslavement of the entire human race might be something worth doing in return for clean rivers is immoral and appalling. Why the hell do we even care about clean rivers if we have to surrender our fundamental humanity to the gods of technology to get there? Do Pfister and Paglen believe that authoritarian monarchy is the only way for humanity to move forward? How many cures for disease is democracy worth (to whatever tattered extent democracy still exists)?
Whether ultimately a monarchic or oligarchic viewpoint, the film is decidedly not democratic, and decidedly not of a view that celebrates individual freedom - the most fundamental individual freedoms such as free will, free thought, and basic privacy. Christopher Nolan's celebration of the benevolent overlord - the rich, white "hero we need" - has apparently been passed along to his protégé Pfister.
Transcendence is not a warning about the dangers of technology, but rather a warning against those that might try to stop the masters of the tech industry from doing whatever they damn well please, going wherever they damn well want, the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens be damned. Will and Evelyn, partners in an attempt to enslave the world, are ultimately suggested to be a great romantic couple whose only downfall is that people just didn't have sufficient faith in
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