<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"In 1818, around the time British &amp;quot;Luddites&amp;quot; retaliated against the textile industry&amp;apos;s increasing use of power looms, Marry Shelley published the first edition of Frankenstein, her horror parable spun from the 19th&amp;#xA0;century&amp;apos;s plentiful scientific breakthroughs. A little under 200 years later, director (and Christopher Nolan&amp;apos;s longtime cinematographer) Wally Pfister&amp;#xA0;makes his directorial debut with Transcendence, a thriller starring Johnny Depp as the app equivalent of Frankenstein&amp;apos;s Monster. Different technology &amp;#x2014; same technophobia.&amp;#xA0;\r\n&amp;apos;Transcendence&amp;apos; and 60 Other Reasons to Love 2014&amp;#xA0;\r\nAs Shelley predicted through her literary proxy Victor Frankenstein, humanity never lets mishaps or moral ambiguity stand in the way of innovation. Nor does Hollywood miss a moment to skewer the technological future in the name of entertainment. Transcendence adds another notch to the legacy of &amp;quot;Evil Computer&amp;quot; movies, a 2.0 sub-genre that&amp;apos;s made room for sci-fi handwringers and paranoid thrillers while clinging to Frankenstein&amp;apos;s brand of pseudo-science. The advent of computers in the &amp;apos;50s and &amp;apos;60s opened new doors for the technophobes and offered a great unknown within our reach. That made it terrifying, and more importantly for filmmakers, real.&amp;#xA0;\r\nThe notion of achieving &amp;quot;realism&amp;quot; in a movie like Transcendence demands little to no fanfare. In the film, the consciousness of programming wiz Will Caster (Depp) is copy/pasted on to a super computer before his body keels over from radiation poison. He is &amp;quot;the cloud&amp;quot; version of Frankenstein&amp;apos;s Monster: alive, mighty, and unwieldy. It&amp;apos;s believable science for a chilling &amp;quot;What if?&amp;quot; scenario (until Will&amp;apos;s invisibility requires Transcendence to divert from logic and, ultimately, coherence).\r\nThe downside of today&amp;apos;s touch screen tablets and 100 GB hard drives the size of a pinhead? They don&amp;apos;t make great villains. It was&amp;#xA0;Stanley Kubrick who maximized the photogenic qualities and haunting nature of old school cabinet computers with his vision of HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The glowing red eye, the soothing voice of Douglas Rain, the logical, methodical execution of orders &amp;#x2014; HAL was a God-shaped brain without the human imperfections to muck it up. (Until it developed it&amp;apos;s own motherboard-complex and did just that.) Kubrick&amp;apos;s science fiction film remains the pinnacle of &amp;quot;Evil Computerdom,&amp;quot; because HAL never pursues a wicked course of action. Blame the strains of space travel, his distrust in his human companions, or mysterious forces surrounding his ship. But don&amp;apos;t blame HAL. He&amp;apos;s just following pre-programmed orders.\r\n\r\nKubrick wasn&amp;apos;t the only provocateur questioning the on-going entanglement of computers and human existence. A few short months before 2001, Mathematician Laurence N. Wolfe penned the story for &amp;quot;Ultimate Computer,&amp;quot; an episode of Gene Roddenberry&amp;apos;s original Star Trek series that pit Kirk, Spock and his crew against a A.I.-run Enterprise. Even on stardate 4729.4, no one can imagine a computer system prioritizing a mission over human life. Except Spock, who finds the entire throw down perfectly logical.&amp;#xA0;\r\nColossus: The Forbin Project&amp;#xA0;(1970) was one of the final hurrahs for bare bones, science-minded Evil Computer movies before Hollywood witnessed the blockbuster power of Jaws and demanded an immediate sea change. In tune to the paranoia thrillers of the era, Joseph Sargent&amp;apos;s minimalist thriller envisions a government backed supercomputer blowing past the technological singularity &amp;#x2014; so smart, its artificial intelligence eclipses anything a human could feed it. Meant to control defense missiles and bring about world peace, the &amp;quot;Colossus&amp;quot; computer seizes available power and rules humanity with an iron fist. Sargent had the luxury of filming a talky drama where potential could be a scare tactic. Rarely do we see Colossus display his pervasive powers, but we know he could at any moment.\r\n\r\nThe Seventies and Eighties turned turned Evil Computers into cyber-mustache-twirling villains. In Demon Seed (1977), the Proteus IV computer blackmails and impregnates Julie Christie in hopes of becoming human, while&amp;#xA0;Tron (1982) imagined the power-hungry Master Control Program as a floating, red, pentagonal dictator. Capitalizing on video game fads, War Games&amp;#xA0;(1983) featured a PVP deathmatch between a missile command interface and Matthew Broderick. One month later, the Man of Steel battled programmed drones and flailing USB cables in the demented Superman III. It would take a few years for personal computers to become a household staple, but by the end of the &amp;apos;80s, everyone in America knew their potential &amp;#x2014; for evil!\r\n\r\nDespite the technology becoming more miniscule and the tendrils clinging to data less tangible, contemporary Evil Computer movies yearn for a taste of that Frankenstein magic. Transcendence can&amp;apos;t settle for Colossus&amp;apos; subversive nihilism &amp;#x2014; the movie still needs a &amp;quot;bad guy.&amp;quot; Same with its predecessors; films like The Matrix, Resident Evil, Eagle Eye, and even Rob Cohen&amp;apos;s silly Evil Computer Pilots action flick Stealth depict widespread infiltration as a problem with a physical proxy worthy of punching in the face. With modern Hollywood inflating even the tiniest thematic detail, &amp;quot;Evil Computers&amp;quot; bump Kubrick &amp;amp; co.&amp;apos;s nightmares of &amp;quot;Computers That Are Evil&amp;quot; out of the conversation. To unearth true technophobia from within, try today&amp;apos;s headlines."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/rage-against-the-machine-a-brief-history-of-evil-movie-computers-20140417>