The year is 2044, and after solar flares have left Earth’s natural defences weak and susceptible to radiation, the human population had dropped to a mere 21 million. To combat this we started an automata programme where intelligent robots can build a new man-made defence over the sky to keep us safe from the sun’s rays. The robots are limited with their capabilities by two basic programme functions put in place. Firstly, they cannot harm a living creature. Secondly they cannot alter themselves in any way.
When a mean looking cop, Wallace (Dylan McDermott) spots a ‘pilgrim’ fixing itself, he’s horrified and blows its brains, I mean mechanical head parts, to smithereens. Jacq Vaucan (Antonio Banderas) is an insurance agent for a RCO robotics company, one of the companies that sells the machines, and business does not agree with him. He’s fed up, burnt out with the work he has to do and chases a dream of going to the coast where he hears things are better. His wife, Rachel (Birgitte Hjort Sorensen) is very much pregnant and just wants to settle down. Jacq isn’t an idealist of any sort, he just has vague memories of being a child by the ocean when times seemed better, but he isn’t sure if it’s reality or just a vacant fantasy he has. When he’s called to do a job about a family claiming one of the machines killed the family dog we get an insight into the world we’re living in. The robot is functioning fine, and the Jacq concludes the family have killed the dog to exploit the insurance company for a big payout. While living in the future and having the ability to use robots for our personal and global use, technological use has taken a step back and many are living in poverty and even slums. It’s a sort of Blade Runner–District 9 dystopia that the world is living in, and it’s no wonder Jacq wants out.
He’s told he can have the transfer he longs for, only if he can solve the issue of the ‘vacuum’ (so many nice names for these machines) that was apparently fixing itself. When Jacq discovers a robot that attempts suicide in front of him, he realises something is definitely going on and he’s got to get to the bottom of it.
On such a limited budget, director Gabe Ibanez works wonders with the special effects, never going too large or flamboyant with the dynamics of the film. The robots have an almost child-like innocence in their appearance, fitting for the idea that they are a new creation trying to grow and blossom into their own entity. Automata brings present and future fears to the forefront about the idea of growing technological advances and the future of our planet’s longevity in current form, with Automata looking at the suggestion that that a mass strike of solar flares could turn our in-habitable land into a waste of radioactivity, a genuine and terrifying notion.
The film takes a real look at social class, the idea of independence and how everyone and everything is seeking it, but it also is about evolution, life and the limitations of it all, if there are limitations. Human’s have installed the second protocol due to the fear of how far and how quickly the robots could evolve past our own limited capabilities. We’re dying out while the robots have a seemingly unlimited potential, similar to the idea of how humans from millions of years ago were miles ahead from a capabilities standpoint from the apes. It’s a running theme and one that works and is explored well.
Automata however can’t keep the level of interest and the end especially drags as Jacq is quite literally dragged through the sandy deserts for what feels like twenty long minutes of the film. It slows everything down and doesn’t really offer too much for the story. The film also never really explores the idea that we’ve taken some steps back in our technological advances (aside from the pilgrims of course) and just like human beings in the film, Automata feels like it had its limited potential.
Rating: A clever premise that starts off just as strong but gradually begins to run out of steam (6/10).
You can see Automata in theatres come October 10th.
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