Common Sense Media Age: 12+ Violence 4/5 Language 4/5 Sex 3/5
My Age Recommendation: 14+ (Due to strong sci-fi violence throughout, distressing and thematic sequences, strong language, and brief suggestive content).
The only trailers I have ever seen for this movie were thirty seconds long and revealed nothing about the story or even the setting of the movie, which caused me to not think about it at all. A week before release, an article popped up and said how this movie was filmed in an ultra-wide 2.76:1 aspect ratio, which means the usual 'black bars' that show up for most movies would be triple the size, and most people were not happy. I decided to give this a shot at my local IMAX theater anyways, and I was impressed! The story is set in a world 42 years from now, in which A.I. has transformed into fully functioning robots that help in daily life, including a new process in which you can be duplicated into an A.I. version of yourself known as a simulant. When an A.I. power accidentally detonated a bomb that wiped out all of L.A., a war between robots and humans started and continues. The only hope to end the war is to find Nirmata, which is a code that could potentially destroy every single A.I. in the world. An ex-merc named Joshua is hired to find and destroy the code, but the code turns out to be inside of a simulant child. This prompts moral questions for Joshua as he learns about the side of A.I. the government does not tell you, and it raises questions for our daily lives as well. Can Joshua stop the war between A.I. and humans? Let me say, this movie was a lot better than expected. I absolutely loved the visuals, and since all of the scenes were built with minimal CGI, they looked stunning and were really impressive. I also was surprised on how emotional and intense this film was, and I was not expecting the last part of the movie to be as sad as it was. I mean many people in the theater left crying due to the ending! For the most part, the characters were developed decently so that the ending had as much of an impact as it did, but a good bit of the main characters were left undeveloped which was a little disappointing. But I did like the story and the messages mentioned throughout, and it was done really well so that the entire movie felt realistic even though it is set in a dystopian world. I also liked the dialogue for the characters (excluding the first chapter of the movie) and that helped sell the themes of A.I. taking over and it helped create the bond between Joshua and the child, which was really emotional and intense. However, this movie had one serious problem, and that was pacing. The movie was divided into chapters, and the first two chapters were moving as a ridiculously high pace. Thankfully each chapter was not of equal length, so the last three chapters (the majority of the movie) slowed down and started to develop the scene and characters a little bit more, but it left a good bit of things undeveloped and with a few plot holes too. In the grand scheme of the movie, the 20 minutes in the beginning that were kind of wasted were definitely saved by the other two hours, which is why the rating is 3 stars and not 2. Overall, this is a decent, though-provoking sci-fi movie that everyone should watch to see.
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