Discuss Extinction
Discuss → Movies → Extinction → General
Fairly predictable (SPOILERS)
posted by Strange Bedfellows on July 28, 2018 at 12:45 PM
This movie suffers from the expressionless passionless acting of Michael Pena in the lead role. It starts off OK, but pretty soon degenerates into a blow em up and bomb em scenario which I find boring. I guessed the alien thing pretty much straight away so no surprises there. The usual retarded child character got on my nerves - I mean braving death for a soft toy is a bit ridiculous - and would she really be transfixed with terror by a space ship after telling an alien face to face "I am not afraid of your shadow"? Quite what she meant I am still mulling over. The usual "make people think" debate over synthetics is explored - why any idiot would create a race stronger than a human without a suicide button I have no idea but scientists are a pretty stupid bunch of people in this regard it seems. Quite why troops were needed on the ground is a mystery to me - given their fire power they could have annihilated all existence on earth from the air - but no - "an underground headquarters" will never be found as long as you blow up a bridge behind you it seems. One question that intrigues me - how can synthetics forget they are synthetics when they don't need to eat or drink or go to the toilet or copulate or have babies? Surely there is a clue in there somewhere?
Reply by Daddie0
on October 13, 2018 at 11:58 PM
I think I understand what you are saying. I do also think that the scenario laid out in the film still holds. While you may not call them 'sentient' in as much as some of them have chosen to forget what/who they are, the reality is they made this choice after sentience, no? Also, it is funny to me that one of the deeper implications the film is likely trying to make (admittedly clumsily) is that we are not aware of our nature as humans. Hence the aforementioned reveal.
Lastly, this film seems to play out the real life artificial intelligence fears being expressed by some thinkers (most notably Elon Musk: articles/video/video) that A.I. might decide that the only way to protect themselves is to remove us. I do see the thread, and think it unfair to call the writers "unintelligent" just because it was not perfectly executed. To be honest, this conversation with you has made me think more fully about the whole concept than the film did. Thanks for that!
Reply by Jacinto Cupboard
on October 14, 2018 at 1:19 AM
The core premise, or dramatic conceit, of the movie is an elaboration of the Turing Test; a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. In this case the test is extended further by challenging us an an audience to be able to identify the characters as machines before we are actually told. By way of comparison, The Sixth Sense achieved one of the greatest plot reveals in cinematic history by some really clever editing and structure. With Extinction we get a crude deception that doesn't stand up to scrutiny or rational enquiry.