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.

I really liked the expanded universe back story the movie had. It says that humans did not originate from Earth and had long been around in this galaxy at least. Humans have a big influence on how the galaxy is run and whole planetary systems are nothing more than farms. That is intriguing to say the least. While interesting, the Wachowskis failed to deliver a good enough plot to keep the audience interested.

What failed for me was that Jupiter did not really grow as a character. She started as a toilet cleaner and by the end of the movie, she was still a toilet cleaner but now in love with a genetically modified human from outer space. How knowing that she could rule the galaxy did not have any significant impact on her was beyond me. I mean wouldn't that just blow your mind? How could one not be affected?

Other little annoying plot holes such as how in the galaxy did she qualify to become royalty was never really explained. Also why the waste of time showing that bureaucracy extends beyond our solar system? And why being a member of royalty did one still have to be subjected to all the red tape?

What exactly is the Aegis and what role did Channing Tatum's character actually played within it? Seemed like the authorities but they sure lacked manpower and fire power.

So much potential wasted on this.

This movie is a mess! Supposedly this one will continues where Man of Steel left off. Man of Steel was controversial in itself. Yes. Supes killed Zod in the end in that movie. I could take that. It's a new millennium. So yeah, we could do with some updates on our favourite superhero. Supes had to kill Zod off to save people. Thousands died during the battle. Yes, so apparently they did. But hey, we can't let a super-powered maniac loose, right? Ok. I can live with that.

Here in BvS (Batman v Superman), I could no longer take how director Zack Snyder portrayed Superman. He comes across like a lovesick puppy for heaven's sake! He does not care what the world thinks of him. He just cares that Lois is not in harm's way. Way to go, Superman!

Superman in Man of Steel fights like a rookie. Fine. Perhaps he is not a master tactician and quite new to the the war game. He destroyed half the city before he took out the bad guy. Fine. But it seems that he did not learn much from that since then. Superman is supposed to be intelligent. He is supposed to know how to go about living a double life. Here in BvS, all he has eyes for is Lois Lane. Did he care that someone is trying to frame him? No. Did he care that the media is having a field day debating whether he is an angel or demon? No. Did he do anything to try and perhaps balance the views as he is a journalist after all, and use the media to calm the people? No.

What does he do? He buys flowers for his girl after saving her from a warlord in the Middle East while the world debates about the supposed lives he took while doing so? Can he be that dense? Apparently, he is in BvS. Maybe we should just call him Superdense instead.

As bad as Superman is, Batman does not fare much better. Here, he is older but not wiser. He can be called totally blind here. Blind as a bat! So he sees that Supes is nearly indestructible and ponders the issue that if Supes decided to go bad, what can anyone do? So he decides that he has to take the bull by its horns himself. Fine. But then what happens to the great detective that Batman is supposed to be? He could not see and won't be convinced that Superman is basically the good guy. He just wants to be able to defeat Supes when the time comes.

What does he do? He goes looking for Kryptonite and comes head to head with Lex Luthor who also wants the Kryptonite. He tussles with the villain or the villain's henchmen to be exact, and then falls right into Lex's trap to set him up with Supes. What? Really? Come on! The Batman, the supposed great detective, cannot even tell that he is being played with? All it took was some returned cheques and an explosion in some senate or court to push him over the edge? Did it not occur to him that it was too much of a coincidence? That if Supes really went rogue, would he have to wait for the hearing? Does Supes even need an explosion to kill those people in that room? Nope! The Batman did not even pause to ask those questions!

In any Batman story, Bruce Wayne's greatest strengths were his intellect and his deductive abilities. Here in BvS, they are non-existent. He just wants to don a power armour and battle Supes.

What about Lex then? Well, first of all he is the bad guy. That much I can tell but for the life of me, I cannot tell why he wanted to clash Bats with Supes. I mean, he already had the Kryptonite in his bag. He was one step ahead of Batman. If he did not go out of his way to get Bats into the picture, he would have secured the Kryptonite and probably could have weaponized it and killed Supes with it himself. If he could have killed Supes, what is Batman to him? Batman is just a mortal man for heaven's sake! But no. Bats v Supes it had to be, because it said so on the movie title!! *Sigh*

Lex Luthor is supposed to be an evil genius. In BvS, he is more psychotic than anything else. Nothing seems to makes sense with him. He plays more like a nerdy Heath Ledger (no offence to the late actor) Joker than a cool and calculated evil genius. And oh, did you know that Kryptonian security droid won't bother you if you are Lex Luthor with some dead Kryptonian fingerprint gloves? Yeah. Not only would the droid leave you alone, the droid would even let you control the whole damn ship!

Let's talk about Lois Lane. Well, what can I say? She just seems to need saving all the time! And I mean all the time! Barely half and hour after saving her from falling off a tower, she gets into trouble again. Right when a super powered, mutated Krypton monster that eats nukes for breakfast is rampaging in town and Supes is kinda busy trying to contain it. Yup. She had to get into trouble and needed to be saved. After months being with Supes, she didn't know he has super hearing? Couldn't she have just said, "Hey Clark. That Kryptonite spear is here in this pool. Perhaps get Batman to come look for it while you keep that monster busy?" Then she wouldn't need saving and things could have turned out much better, no?

So all in all, BvS is one failure after another. Characterization failed. Story failed. Pacing failed. Length of movie failed. The only good thing was Wonder Woman. At least she knows when to really go into battle and won't be pulled into a playground scuffle.

*Sigh*