History Film / ExMachina

* SealedRoomInTheMiddleOfNowhere: [[spoiler: Caleb's ultimate fate, locked in Nathan's room, in Nathan's locked-down house with no power, hundreds of miles from any sort of help. There is a fridge full of water, but there's little chance of him getting out or of anyone coming to look for him before he dies of starvation.]]

* TheSociopath: [[spoiler:Ava. With a near-sociopath like Nathan as her father, it's little surprise.]]

* NotSoDifferent: Early in the film, Nathan forces Caleb to sign a morally questionable non-disclosure agreement (''without'' letting him consult with a lawyer first) in order to protect the secrets in his lab, and he repeatedly prevents Caleb from having any contact with the outside world. At the end, [[spoiler: Ava refuses to let Caleb escape Nathan's lab with her, instead leaving him behind to die of starvation. Just like Nathan, Ava proves that she's willing to go to extreme measures to keep her secrets from the outside world, and she'll screw people over if that will allow her to reach her goals.]]

* ArtisticLicenseEngineering: The film goes out of the way to sidewind around the Turing Test, claiming that it isn't really a Turing Test in the strict sense, but even when it is describing how a Turing Test is ''supposed'' to work, it gets it wrong. A true Turing Test, even a properly blind one, requires at least one human to act as a control. The whole point of the Turing Test is that you can't prove that an AI is sentient by talking to it, because you can't prove that ''people'' are sentient by talking to them. All you can do is demonstrate that an AI displays as much sentience-indicating behaviour as a person.

''Ex Machina'' (sometimes stylised EX_MACHINA) is a 2015 British science fiction thriller film written and directed by Creator/AlexGarland, marking Garland's directorial debut, and starring Creator/DomhnallGleeson, Creator/OscarIsaac, and Creator/AliciaVikander.

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* MoodWhiplash: Caleb confronts Kiyoko and asks her where Nathan is, only for Nathan to walk in at that exact moment. Caleb whirls on Nathan and we prepare for an intense confrontation - then Nathan flips on the red mood lighting and disco music and starts dancing with Kyoko.

* SlidingScaleOfUnavoidableVersusUnforgivable: The writer/director stated in interviews that AVA's choice to [[spoiler: leave Caleb in an inescapable room to die slowly and painfully]] was about "survival." However, since the movie doesn't even hint at this necessity it comes off more as [[spoiler:being even more cruel than her killing Nathan.]]

** {{Invoked}} with the alcohol bottle labels, of all things. Nathan drinks "Keikaku" beer, which fans of a certain [[Manga/DeathNote anime series]] would recognize as meaning "plan" in Japanese. And he also drinks "Koros" vodka, Koros being the Greek demon of disdain and surfeit (disgust brought about by overindulgence).

* BlandNameProduct: Blue Book is pretty much Google in all but name. It even ''sounds'' like "Google" when they say it quickly.

''Ex Machina'' (sometimes stylised EX_MACHINA) is a 2015 British science fiction thriller film written and directed by Alex Garland, marking Garland's directorial debut, and starring Creator/DomhnallGleeson, Creator/OscarIsaac, and Creator/AliciaVikander.

** Robert Oppenheimer's quote from the Bhagavad Gita; not only the well known "I have become Death, destroyer of worlds" but also ""The good deeds a man has done before defend him". Also just before Nathan passes out he says "It's Promethean, man." The EitherOrTitle of ''Literature/{{Frankenstein}}'' is ''The Modern Prometheus''. Like Natan, Viktor Frankenstein created an artificial human, only to fall victim to his own hubris.

* NoisyRobots: Unlike the clanking, whirring robots usually represented by this trope, Ava makes a rather smooth buzzing sound when she makes any significant movement, like [[QuizzicalTilt tilting her in confusion]], and she makes no noise at all with small movements. Even further, [[spoiler: any of Nathan's robots can cover up their noise when covered up by a skin sheath]].

* MinimalistCast: Except for the helicopter pilot, the [[spoiler: robot]] characters who appear only in the flashback footage, and the faceless extras at the end--all of whom have short appearances or no lines--Ava, Caleb, Kyoko, and Nathan are the entire cast, and Kyoko is TheSpeechless.

* StrongFleshWeakSteel: [[spoiler:When Nathan and Ava go hand-to-hand, Nathan absolutely destroys her, literally breaking her arm off in one blow. The video we see of the earlier robots also shows one of them smashing her arms to nubs as she tries to escape her cell.]]

* SceneryPorn: Nathan's estate is built in a beautiful valley, and the audience is regularly gratified by a shot of the landscape. In fact, filming was done in Norway, though it could easily double as [[TheOtherRainforest Washington State or British Columbia]].

** Nathan watching Caleb specifically is foreshadowed in the very first scene of the film: when Caleb finds out he won the contest, there is a camera angle from the POV of the camera on his phone, which shows patterns from a face-detection algorithm on him and those around him. Later on, in Nathan's home/research facility, when Caleb is in his bathroom and cuts his arm, there is a POV from the camera inside his mirror, which shows the same pattern.

** Kyoko [[spoiler: perfectly mimicking Nathan moves in real time, while he's clearly improvising his dance. Now what that could possibly mean...]]

* ChekhovsGun: There is a brief scene of Kyoko preparing dinner, and a close-up on her slicing fish with a knife. This knife later becomes very important [[spoiler:when she and Ava stab Nathan to death with it]].

* PlatonicCave: At the end, Ava ascends into the sunlight, leaving the other "prisoners" behind--a direct reference to Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Visually underpinned in the last scene by showing the shadows of pedestrians on a sidewalk.
** Discussed earlier, but not by name, when discussing the idea of a person who knows absolutely everything about color, but has never actually seen it as her only source of information is a black and white television.

** The only reason the final act can happen is because for whatever reason Nathan didn't see a crucial part of the CCTV recordings, when Caleb was busy setting up his ploy. To drive this point home, Nathan ''knew'' Caleb was on his computer already, since he staged the whole situation from the start.]] In the same time, this makes Caleb's plot a ''massive'' case of GambitRoulette, as it can only work if for whatever reason [[spoiler: Nathan is not checking all the recordings]].

* JustAMachine: [[spoiler:Nathan ultimately shows no empathy towards his creations; whatever pride he may have in them, he clearly thinks nothing of repeatedly dismantling them and starting over]]. Caleb does, although his motives are a little ambiguous. In the end, Ava (apparently taking the attitude of Just a Human) leaves them both behind to die.]]

** Nathan's [[''Film/{{Ghostbusters|1984}}'' "Who You Gonna Call"]] reference which [[PopCulturalOsmosisFailure Caleb doesn't quite get]].

It has nothing to do with either the Creator/BrianKVaughan [[ComicBook/ExMachina comic]].

It has nothing to do with either the Creator/BrianKVaughan [[ComicBook/ExMachina comic]], or with the 2005 [[VideoGame/HardTruckApocalypse post-apocalyptic truck driving game]].

** [[spoiler:There are scenes that hint at Caleb possibly being the real AI, and Ava being used to test his humanity. Lampshaded when Caleb, himself, starts to wonder [[TomatoeIntTheMirror if he's real]], after the [[RoboticReveal reveal that Kyoko is an AI]]. He checks to see if his own skin is fake and even cuts himself.]]