I'm always hunting for movies I haven't seen and with Ai now days its so easy to look up for movies by rank on IMDB, genre and year that I often look for very niche movie types, this time I was looking for a Sci Movie with rating over 7 that must have some kind of enhanced super human with some kind of powers, its always an interesting topic to me, within the output I found Upgrade (2018) with a 7.5/10 on IMDB and that's a very good score, that's a score for any movie worth watching so I jump into this movie without knowing much about it other that the main character was played by Logan Marchall Green, the guy from Prometheus (2012) one of my favorite movies. I have to say this is one of the best movies I have ever seen about humans been upgraded by machines, not necessarily because of the tech, now days its very hard to impress anyone with just new kind of futuristic tech because lets be real, we are in the future, we are at that phase where things on movies have to be extremely futuristic to impress anyone, now days with Ai we are seen all kind of generated images and videos about anything so imagination is the limit.
What I enjoy most about the movie is how well its balance between action, comedy , dark humor, tech, its a very well balanced across the board, it never felt like dragging or over stretching the script to cover ground or more time, there are times where it falls on pace but not too bad so you can just forgive it, for a low budget movie of only $3 Million, some sites suggesting $5M but still made $17 Million world wide so it was a total hit. The CGI has a few flaws here and there but I would say its because budget and probably the tech was not there, the movie goes wild in terms of sci fi as the main character gets a chip implanted in the back of his neck, yeah you can already tell how cliche and predictable this movie might be and still make a great watch, that is probably the most impressive part.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6499752/
- Platform: AppleTV+
Rottentomatoes Rating
As it is expected Grey's life becomes a living nightmare having to adapt but most important accept his quadriplegia condition on top of the loss of his wife Asha, here is where I compare Elysium to Upgrade, Grey gets approach by a tech billionaire who is basically looking for someone who has nothing to loose, it is the case and the movie on this aspect is very very cliche with all the classic aspects of the everything goes for Grey. Eron is this eccentric tech billionaire who offers him a chance to walk again by using an experimental computer chip called STEM, yup we almost there if not ask Elon. The chip is implanted in Grey's spine at the back of his neck, similar to the most recent Halo TV series, like Commander Chief could listen to Cortana; Grey can communicate with STEM, the chip not only reconnects his brain to his limbs and restore mobility, it turns out to be way much more than that, its an artificial intelligence that can speak to Grey and with his permission take control of his body with a single mission, STEM can't let Grey die as the both would go offline, this reboots Grey life who though would never walk and everything was over for him, putting him on to a journey to track down the men who murder his wife and left him for dead.
The movie really chines on the action scenes, specially when Grey goes wild with the help of STEM, almost never touched and with every single action calculated by a high end Ai makes him John Wick on steroids, there is also a very unique camera work that captures the mechanical precision level that Grey works with when STEM is on the wheel. During the fight scenes when STEM is controlling his body there is this camera angle where you have this sensation of auto aiming like you were playing a FPS game, it is expected that with such precision violence is just brutal, creating this ambient of horror for anyone who mess with Grey, its also during this scenes that the movie tend to feel a bit cringe and disturbing on how brutal STEM can be and how Grey reacts to it.
It is also interesting the philosophical approach and implications of the movie without getting too heavy, the relationship that starts to develop between STEM and Grey makes me wonder if we will ever get to such point in tech, I think depending on who you ask we almost there, just open any chat bot and start a conversation like you were buddies and it will answer any of your questions and there will also be times depending on the question that you will most likely fall into getting the answers you wanted to hear, what gets me to the next question of how much dependent we will become of tech in the future, now days there is close to nothing that we can do without a mobile device or internet, they both are part of our identity but Upgrade also approach this at first from a different angle with Grey as how initially he very rejects tech at a personal level to latter on have a more intimate experience sharing his mind and body with a high end Ai, there is such a contrast of how things start and end for him during the movie regarding tech.
Grey realize everything that went down with STEM's plan to get to him so he tries to fight back, even attempt to suicide but there was a moment when STEM tricked Grey and had a hacker remove a safety feature that gave STEM full control of his body without needing his permission anymore, this happen when STEM almost got shut down at first and Grey was loosing control of his body, his nightmares came back and though STEM was telling him the truth, an Ai that can tell lies? or is that consider survival mode? from that moment you can tell that Grey would become a slave and thats exactly what happens when its reveal that STEAM could put Grey's consciousness into a virtual reality that would become his jail and STEM remain with permanent control of his body.
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