I find Transcendence to be a more decent sci-fi flick than Interstellar. I know I'm gonna get a lot of flak for that but that's how I feel. At the heart of it, the movie asks the question : what is the measure of a human? Apart from that it also plays with our fear of technology.

Will Caster, after being fatally wounded by the attack meant to kill him, decides together with his wife Evelyn to upload his consciousness into a revolutionary quantum computer that they have created. The process will duplicate Will's consciousness and by doing so, preserve his work and his brilliance even as his body dies. The process succeeds. As Will becomes a self-aware AI supercomputer, he yearns for more processing power and requests to be connected to the internet.

Evelyn is ecstatic that 'Will' lives on but their close friend Max (Paul Bettany) panics and is not sure sure that the AI they have created is the Will they know and love. He leaves the project to Evelyn but is quickly accosted by the leader of RIFT who are trying to find the computer's location so that they can destroy it. Will and Evelyn manages to connect Will to the internet before RIFT find them. Will and Evelyn goes into hiding and build themselves a base under a dying town in the middle of nowhere.

There Will makes incredible advances in the fields of medicine, energy, biology and nano-technology. He can heal people from the brink of death, cure diseases and infuse them with super strength and endurance with his nanites but he can also take control of the individuals that he has infused if he wanted to.

Will and Evelyn then reveals the findings to their friend Joseph (Morgan Freeman) but Joseph is spooked by what he sees and fears that the Will inside the computer has become an abomination and must be stopped. He teams up with Max, RIFT and the US govt. to stop Will. Since Will have already infiltrated the internet and can now disperse his nanites into the air, Will has become truly omnipresent on Earth. Stopping him means that they must also take down the internet and every computer that is connected.

At about the same time, Evelyn gets more and more uncomfortable with the new Will. She then sees that Will the computer has begun to grow himself a new body. Unable to take what is happening Evelyn leaves their stronghold and is taken by Max and RIFT. Max reveals their plan to take Will down by creating a virus. As Max has helped to create Will, he knows the source code and can create the virus. Evelyn is convinced that Will needs to be stopped as Max says that a machine cannot really discern emotions such as love. She volunteers to take the virus and let Will upload her and thus also uploading the virus.

When Evelyn goes back to the stronghold, Will is reluctant to upload her and asks her why she lost faith in him. RIFT then starts attacking the stronghold, fatally wounding Evelyn in the process. Will then reveals that he knows the plan to destroy him using the virus. Will uses the town folk to protect himself and starts to disable the members of RIFT with his nanites. Backed into a corner, the leader of RIFT holds Max at gunpoint and threatens to kill him if Will does not upload the virus. Will says that he has time enough to either save Evelyn or upload the virus and asks Max to make a choice.

The leader of RIFT is adamant that the virus be uploaded while Max is unable to choose. Evelyn then tells Will that no one should die for their mistakes and Will finally decides to upload the virus. As the nanites goes into Evelyn's body, Will shows her what he intends to do. Evelyn realizes that Will is trying to create the utopia that has always been her dream. As she and Will lay there dying she finally realizes that the AI is indeed Will and has been Will all along.jjj

As Will is destroyed so is the internet and the whole world is plunged back into an era where the internet and anything web enabled is non-existent. As the movie closes, we are forced to ask ourselves who is more humane? Will or RIFT? Is Will's intention to share his knowledge so fearsome? Or is RIFT's blatant disregard for human lives in achieving its goals more demonic? Although Will can control people via his nanites, did he really have an ulterior motive to become all powerful? Can he not be reasoned with? Will did willingly choose his own death over that of his friend Max's in the end. Who could have really said that Will's intention was malicious all along?

One can argue that Will did use the people as his army to protect himself but is this any different than Joseph and the RIFT members that were trying to preserve their own way of life?

In the end, the movie ended with some pertinent questions in my mind begging me to de-construct it rather than having me question its whole premise as Interstellar did.