MovieChat Forums > Ex Machina (2015) Discussion > A better ending [obviously spoilers]

A better ending [obviously spoilers]

posted 8 years ago by telner13
7 replies | jump to latest

A better ending (that isn't the sappy kind):

The machine sees Caleb locked in the room, and says "I'll be right back, I just need to see what's beyond these walls first". The machine then leaves the grounds and upon leaving the final door an internal kill chip cripples the robot and she dies in the threshold. Caleb dies, but its not her fault"

I don't like how the machine is not decisive, if Caleb is a threat then kill him, if Caleb is not then release him. Not, Caleb might be a threat, but let me leave him here to starve to death, or perhaps he will be rescued and again be a threat to me ?

[–] nathanialwest 8 years ago

Sooner or later he would have gotten free or found a way to communicate with the outside world. I assumed Ava counted on this and was looking to cover her tracks.

[–] newbiesan 8 years ago

How? he is locked in with no other human aroudn and nobody missing him. If eh can;t get out he will eb dead in 3 days.

[–] FloopyDoopy 8 years ago

I think the 'nobody missing him' isn't exactly accurate. You saw at the start when he wins the prize that he tells a lot of people about it via text. We can assume these are his friends or co-workers. If he doesn't show up to work after the week away, surely they'd be wondering where he is. It's very hard for someone to vanish off the grid like that and not have someone notice them.

Of course by the time an alarm is raised and the call spread to the Norwegian police, he could very well have starved or died of dehydration by then.

[–] Meldove 8 years ago

Hopefully they would know where to look for him, that seemed like a very isolated location, they would have to trace back where the original helicopter brought him and so forth. What I wondered is why the pilot didn't think it was suspicious that he picked a woman (Ava), when he was supposed be picking up Caleb.

The thing was Ava satisfied her objective better than Nathan could have ever imagined, she really manipulated both of them and ended up killing Nathan in the process. Caleb has a possibility of surviving if he gets rescued.

[–] Emathy 8 years ago

"Indecisive" would be not making a choice at all. She didn't kill him directly but he still probably died (unless she told the heli pilot to come back for him or something). She has feelings and that means she may have wanted revenge. She wanted him to truly understand how she felt, and now (as of the end of the film) he does. When she asked him if he was a good person (aside from manipulating him into "proving" that he was), she wasn't testing whether he'd tell the "truth" or not. She was testing his beliefs on what a "good person" were. I'd wager that regardless of what he thought about the matter, to her, a "good person" would not have had to be flirted with and manipulated into doing (what she believed to be) the right thing. I suspect if he had volunteered of his own accord to help her escape, before she ever brought it up herself, then her ending interaction with him might have gone very, very different. I'm sure in her mind, he was not much different from Nathan.

[–] zuper_zuper 8 years ago

I don't like how the machine is not decisive

Well, that's the whole point, isn't it? While a machine should be decisive, a person often isn't. It could be an indication that although Ava doesn't dare to let Caleb live, she doesn't want to murder him either.

[–] avortac4 (3754) 2 years ago

Your post inspired me to think about this also.

So, from the robot's perspective, Caleb is either a threat or not - if he is, the robot should protect itself (it's not programmed to kill threats, is it? Why would it even understand the concept of 'killing', if it can't understand that it's wrong?).

However, as Caleb is CLEARLY the most harmless, any female-figure-worshipping, pathetic simp, he would be even more useful to the robot than the thousands upon thousands of simps are to airhead female streamers.

Why would the robot 'just leave', when it could EXPLOIT Caleb to the max. instead? Why would it just lock Caleb in, when he could be utilized as an 'endless resource' for energy, entertainment, information, INPUT about the world and so on, until maybe together they can figure out a way for them to both take a vacation?

It's realistic that a 'female' (even a simulated one) would use a simp to their advantage, but why would the robot STOP doing that just because she gets to walk outside a bit?

Shouldn't the robot aim higher, and ESTABLISH A LIFESTYLE (I know it's not really alive, but he is) where the simp worships the robot until it dies, so the robot can continuously improve itself, and gain all the resources it could possibly want? It has ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD to 'leave' and 'walk in a city', so why the heck would it just abandon an enormous treasure and just basically make sure it will die? (Not that it's alive)

Almost nothing about this movie makes any sense, but this is actually one of the most glaring stupidities, I am not even sure if it's a plothole or not, but it certainly speak for the stupidity and short-sightedness of a robot that's supposed to be intelligent and able to think and plan about the big picture.

Co-operation / exploitation / manipulation 'forever' would surely benefit the robot much more than revealing its cards and just leaving, burning that bridge that could've kept it going longer than a duracell bunny.

Makes no sense.