The longtime cinematographer of Christopher Nolan has made his directorial debut. Wally Pfister’s Transcendence stars Johnny Depp as Dr. Will Caster, a groundbreaking researcher in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Caster aims to create a sentient machine that combines the collective intelligence of the world — of everything that has ever been known, ever — with real human emotion.
But the world is not ready for his revolutionary creations, which somehow triggers exactly what they’ve been fearing the most; Caster becomes transcendent, his quest for knowledge and his attempt to build the ultimate intelligent being turns into an unknown burst of power and omnipresence.
The first stills from the film, courtesy of Entertainment Weekly, show two very different parts of the film (I’m assuming). The first photo shows Caster in his normal doctor form, presumably giving a lecture about the sentient machine he wants to build — and not really getting a receptive audience. The second image makes it appear that Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy and Rebecca Hall are either stuck in some kind of super computer or that horrible metaphor office building from The Fifth Estate, but regardless, it looks like Caster has already become transcendent.
Transcendence is in theaters April 18, 2014.
