On paper, Transcendence seemed like a sure thing. Starring Johnny Depp, produced by Christopher Nolan (of Inception and The Dark Knight fame), an interesting science fiction premise, and directed by Wally Pfister (the director of photography for The Dark Knight in his directorial debut). What could go wrong?
I read several reviews before I went to see the movie and most of the reviews were lukewarm or worse but I shrugged it off and went anyway because: how could Chris Nolan executive produce a film by his “go-to” director of photography that wasn’t good? Wouldn’t Nolan lend a hand if things weren’t going right?
Well, it appears Chris Nolan either left Wally Pfister to his own devices or was too busy working on Interstellar to make sure this movie was working because what we got was a huge letdown. What a disappointment. It appears Chris Nolan just called in favors to his usual actors and helped Wally get the film off the ground and…that’s about it.
What Transcendence did right
Cinematography – Wally Pfister has been the director of photography on Chris Nolan’s biggest films and it shows. The film is beautifully framed and shot.
Big Ideas – Somewhere in here was a great movie but unfortunately, the writers didn’t seem to grasp the implications of the science and I have to lay blame at the director’s feet for turning the big ideas into trivialities. At least they tried for big, compelling, timely, and interesting ideas even if they failed to communicate them well.
3 Reasons Transcendence Failed
Regardless of the few things the film did right, it got a lot more wrong:
1) Handicapping your actors – Johnny Depp (usually a huge Box Office draw) has very little to work with. His character is acted upon for the first half of the movie, not really making any choices on his own then spends the other half of the film as a robotic image in a computer with little chance to showcase his acting talent.
2) Pacing – there are some moments of tension and action but there are huge sections of the film where nothing interesting or clever happens. This is a directing problem and Pfister’s lack of experience shows most here.
3) Lack of tension – there are large portions of the movie where there is no threat / conflict or the conflict feels so obvious and contrived that we know within the first 5 minutes how the scene is going to end.
I couldn’t be more bummed to report this. I’m a huge fan of Wally Pfister as a DP. I so wished he had knocked his first film out of the park but he didn’t and I’m not sure he’ll get another chance.