Talk:Ex Machina (film)

Recent YouTube video about this article

Just so anyone monitoring this article knows, about an hour ago a video from the youtuber Shaun released a video which in part criticizes this article's interpretation of the film's ending. So if there is a flood of edits to the Plot section (which there seems to be a few), that's why. Guacasloth64 (talk) 02:07, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

I just wanted to link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0UAEjsKy4I

Also, while I have no intention of editing the plot summary here, I do very much agree with Shaun. While I acknowledge a lot of ambiguity in the film, I absolutely do not believe that Ava is meant to be an antagonist, here. I agree entirely with Shaun that the film hints at Eva discovering (through Kyoko) that Caleb is untrustworthy. I like what Shaun actually says in the video: "Neither Nathan nor Caleb see Kyoko and Ava as people. They see them as women." In Nathan's case, objects to be used and discarded, and in Caleb's case, as "princesses" to be rescued and won. Both both Nathan and Caleb see Ava (and Kyoko) as objects. And because Caleb wasn't attracted to Kyoko... he didn't want anything from her... the idea of saving her, as well, never entered his mind. Ava needs Caleb to see her as a conscious being; Caleb shows, through Kyoko, that he doesn't. So Ava leaves him behind not because she's an uncaring AI, but because Caleb ultimately failed her.

I don't want to see a mass edit campaign, here, but I absolutely think this is worth discussing, at least here on the Talk page. Perhaps, instead of editing the Plot, a section highlighting discussions around the ambiguity of the film and what it means could be worthwhile. But again, I have no clue how to write such a section, and wouldn't do so without some kind of consensus, anyways.

I did notice that the line in the Plot summary no longer reads "As she leaves the facility, she locks Caleb inside Nathan's surveillance room and ignores his screams, confirming she was manipulating Caleb as Nathan suggested." The line as it read now is, I think, better. JimmyRRpage (talk) 02:34, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

I was working on my own lengthy comments on this below at the same time this thread started. I spent so much time working out how to prevent the youtube links from being blacklisted I don't have the energy to merge my comments into this thread. Either here or there is a good place to continue discussion, though what we really need now his more reliable sources we can cite to flesh out an interpretation section.

All interpretation and discussion of themes and ideas can now be deleted on sight from the current version. No interpretation, at all, in the plot summary. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 03:02, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Just noting that I also agree with the removal of the disputed part as well as with Dennis Bratland's comment below. JBchrch talk 08:40, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

There is a difference between a factual statement and editorializing. "confirming she was manipulating Caleb as Nathan suggested" is a clear example of crossing the line into editorializing and I think we can all agree that removing that correct. How much further do we go in scrubbing the article though? The "ignoring his screams" part seems to be a simple statement of fact. In the scene, Caleb was screaming as he was left behind, Ava, left, ignoring his screams. It isn't really saying anything about Ava's intent other than that Caleb was, at that point, not being acknowledged. It doesn't really speak to Ava's motivations which is the part left up to the viewer's interpretations. It only reinforces that Ava was committed to the action of leaving. I'm not taking a stance here one way or another, just saying that we have to be careful to not over do it when making these kind of edits. All in all, I do think that this has been the correct response to a piece of media pointing out a significant biasing issue with an article here -- Anthony S. Castanza (talk) 16:50, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

RE: YouTuber Shaun's video on this Wikipedia article and interpretation of Ex Machina

Excellent YouTuber Shaun just uploaded a short video that, as usual for him, is an insightful discussion of the topic, and gives good insight into how to interpret the ending of Ex Machina, and how to interpret any film, and the kinds of systemic errors we often see in film interpretation, especially anything that uses metaphor, symbolism, or is intentionally ambiguous (hint on YouTube). The video, How Wikipedia Got Ex Machina (2014) Wrong on YouTube is an excellent jumping off point for anyone wishing to add an Interpretation or Themes section to this article, where, if nothing else, a simple synopsis of Shaun's comments on Ex Machina can do most of the heavy lifting to show us ways of interpreting this movie. Even better would be to expand that with summaries of other quality interpretations, as well as some not so good quality ones which Shaun mentions, to round out an exploration of this subject.

It's worth talking about the title of Shaun's video, and the ostensible premise: not really about Ex Machina but a criticism of Wikipedia in general. It's expected that the general public isn't deeply familiar with how Wikipedia is written, and is likely to make mistakes like saying "Wikipedia thinks Ava is evil", but I don't think that level of discourse is on par with Shaun's usual standards. Shaun, in any of his (highly recommended) videos, often takedowns of blowhards, demagogues, and charlatans, is scrupulously charitable in his characterizations of his target, and works hard to fully understand someone's work before criticizing it. I can forgive Shaun in this case, because I think the Wikipedia commentary is little more than a framing device to kick off a discussion of Ex Machina. If Shaun was really after Wikipedia here, he would have done better.

For our purposes, in our talk page discussion on how to improve the article Ex Machina (film), our focus should be on the guideline Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Writing about fiction, in particular the instructions, grounded in the policy No Original Research, that "Plot summaries cannot engage in interpretation and should only present an obvious recap of the work". I'm certain if Wikipedia itself were really Shaun's target, he would have read that and other guidelines and realized that it isn't so much a question of whether or not the statement "as she leaves the facility, she locks Caleb inside Nathan's surveillance room and ignores his screams, confirming she was manipulating Caleb as Nathan suggested" (from this version) is the correct interpretation, but rather that such interpretation has no place in a Wikipedia plot summary at all. The plot summary should be brief, and only tell us obvious facts contained in the text of the film, nothing more. What we see and hear when we watch the movie, nothing more. In a good article, the plot summary will not make up the bulk of a Wikipedia article about a fictional work; far from it.

That raises a more general issue with Shaun's comments, because Ex Machina (film) is currently only a C-class film article, if that, not a Good Article at all, let alone a Featured Article. As explained in Editing policy, the encyclopedia is built bit by bit, from stubs and utter rubbish articles, and -- if you accept the premise of Wikipedia at all -- we expect that the arc of quality of articles over the long run bends towards good, or at least better. But to get there from here means creating a lot of incomplete or poorly written articles and making them each better, bit by bit. Citing a C-class article to indict Wikipedia and it's prejudices is typical of of how most media uses Wikipedia as a whipping boy to rail against, but anyone conversant in today's modern media environment ought to have a better understanding of how this encyclopedia is written. Understanding how Wikipedia works is vital for anyone who actually relies on this encyclopedia for information.

If Shaun was really intending to criticize Wikipedia, he would be judging the encyclopedia by the articles Wikipedia itself purports to be its very best work, the Category:FA-Class film articles, and he would be finding fault with the plot summaries of the likes of the Baby Driver or Mulholland Drive (film) or Zodiac (film) or Fight Club (film) articles. Or Shaun would be dissecting the guidelines themselves at MOS:FILMPLOT, Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Writing about fiction, etc, pointing out how we should change those standards to address flaws in the system. Like anyone, I'd love love love to see a Shaun video on any of those topics.

And for our purposes here, improving this article, we should look to examples like the Fight Club or Mulhullond Drive Featured Articles, noting that questions over who is the true protagonist of the film or whether Caleb is a good man or not, or Ava is evil or not, should be moved to a section called Themes or Interpretation, and where we stick to the published opinions of respected reliable sources, such as film theorists, critics, philosophers, and insightful YouTubers such as Shaun, presenting a summary of the various points of view in accordance with the due weight each deserves.

Ex Machnia is an important film and with some attention it could be a Good Article, and maybe even a Featured Article, in the near future.

While we're at it, we should mention experts who have commented that the movie is built on classic film noir and femme fatale tropes[1][2][3] and has it's primordial basis in the folktale Bluebeard. Dennis Bratland (talk) 02:58, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

I wonder if you are being too defensive here. In particular, if the positio of wikipedia is that "This is a C class article, it's not a Good Article", then maybe that should appear someone, preferably at the top, of the page?

I can't see anything on the page that suggests it's low quality, or "C-Class". I also can't figure out how to find out if a randomly chosen article is "C class" or not (and googling didn't help). User90145982 (talk) 11:28, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

The "C-Class" ranking isn't a general Wikipedia thing, it's a categorization used by WikiProjects. You can see it at the top of the talk page here in the WikiProject Film and WikiProject Science Fiction headers. Both headers also link to the specific quality scales used to judge an article that falls under the purview of their projects if you expand them: here's the criteria that WikiProject Film uses and here's the criteria WikiProject Science Fiction uses. It's also in the categories under the talk pages that you can see at the bottom of the page.

These sorts of article quality appraisals are kept to the talk pages because they aren't relevant to the content of the article itself, they're just used by WikiProjects as a way of seeing what pages might need to be improved and to what degree. Talk pages are where discussions of an article's quality are meant to go, and so those are only included on talk pages. Idran (talk) 17:38, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

If it was as simple as that then we wouldn’t see GA and FA icons prominently at the very top of the pages of the select few that actually meet Wikipedia’s standards.

We don’t have icons for B and C class articles because the distinction isn’t important enough to spend any time worrying over whether an article is B or C. All that matters is it’s not a GA. It isn’t compliant with Wikipedia standards. How far out of compliance just isn’t important enough to make icons for.

The next rung down, stub, is also placed in the article namespace visible to the general reader. Why thw stub notice goes at the bottom rather than in the same place as the GA/FA notice is one of Wikipedia’s quirky inconsistencies that we all love ever so much.

Aside from article class, it would be perfectly legitimate for several maintenance tags to dominate the top of the page, especially one saying the NOR policy is violated by the unsourced interpretation bleeding into the just-the-facts plot summary section. More tags are justified, like “all plot”, since most of the content is plot summary, and that the article needs expansion since several standard sections of a film article are altogether missing.

So in fact, trumpeting the lack of quality of an article is very much a general Wikipedia thing. Many articles lack a full roster of maintenance tags because nobody has yet gotten around to it. But general readers very much do need disclaimers alerting them to poor article quality, and Wikipedia supports the practice, even if we lack the personnel to fully tag every article. Dennis Bratland (talk) 23:32, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

I thought that YouTube video was rather odd. He's totally right to object to that line - it's not in keeping with the wikipedia rules around adding personal interpretation. But that's all it is - just a random bit of crummy Wikipedia writing. It seems like a bit of an overreaction to have made a 20-minute video arguing about why it's wrong, as if Wikipedia is any kind of grand authority, and as if the problem couldn't have been fixed in seconds. Popcornfud (talk) 08:23, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

"Why it's wrong?" is important for Shaun's audience, not necessarily for wikipedia editors. His video is addressed to his viewers (interested in culture, politics, and media criticism), not to wikipedia editors (interested in accuracy, consistency, and factual knowledge). If the sole intention were to point at a small article that breaks wikipedia policy on movie plots, he could have made the edit himself, leaving a short comment if needed. The purpose of the video was to discuss an alternative, weirdly uncommon, interpretation of the movie ending (one he agrees with); and, more broadly, discussing the topic of open endings and certain narrative tropes. The interpretation in the article was just the excuse to make the video. If your take away is that somebody is very angry at this wikipedia article, you missed the whole point of the video. 82.10.154.250 (talk) 10:39, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

Yes, fair enough. I just object to the framing - Wikipedia doesn’t really have anything to do with his argument, so it’s a bit disingenuous to use it as the framing device and plays into the misconception that Wikipedia is any sort of authority. Popcornfud (talk) 12:33, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article may not be an authority, but it's emblematic of the school of thought that he wants to talk about. As you said, it's just a framing device, it's not as big and important of a part in the video as you seem to think. However, it also serves as proof that this kind of thinking does exist and that it seems to be the widely accepted. 77.4.65.81 (talk) 06:47, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

(ec) If I had to speculate, I would say the real target of his criticism is the media literacy ecosystem that let that line fester unchallenged for so long on Wikipedia. This is an indictment less of Wikipedia itself but the many people who read the plot summary and didn't think there was anything wrong with it. You could also criticize editors for failing to spot obvious editorializing but I don't think Shaun is aware enough of Wikipedia PAG to make that accusation. At any rate, thank you Dennis for starting the Themes section and removing said editorializing from Plot. It was the right move. Axem Titanium (talk) 07:15, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

I think he strawmans what that interpretation of the plot says about the characters, mostly just playing lipservice to the grayshades in people (or at least being not great in communicating when he uses hyperbole for effect). And overall there was no necessity to point to the wikipedia article itself instead of the videos he refferenced (which I think he was "upset" about), since he wasn't even willing to weigh in on it. The whole thing of "pls don't dox this person" is just an empty gesture, because people who want to will still do it, a nice and clean way to get rid of any responsibility. Just my two cents on the video itself, separate from me actually agreeing on getting rid of the interpretation in the summary. 2003:D0:7F17:2900:ED81:DD50:4BFF:39B8 (talk) 03:47, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

I just came across that video today and had a look into the page edit history out of curiosity.

It looks like someone (I assume Shaun?) attempted to edit the line in question [4] but the edit was reverted shortly after the video was released [5].

XgXFd9ct (talk) XgXFd9ct (talk) 08:48, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Notes on reorganization

First see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Film.

It's easier said than done, but the Plot section (ideally) is as short and sweet as we can manage, giving the bare minimum of obvious events seen and heard in the film to summarize what happens and, when obvious, how and why it happens. If it isn't obvious how and why something happens, it belongs in Themes.

The article structure places the plot section high in the article, partly because it's for readers who, after intro, only want just enough information to form an idea of what the film is about. The usual section layout is there for readers who are interested in digging deeper, in an somewhat, but not exactly, like an inverted pyramid (journalism) in a news article, so a reader can quit at any point and not be grossly misled by lack of certain facts.

The Themes and Critical reception sections don't have as narrowly defined a purpose, and so additional details about events in the film can be introduced whenever needed in those sections. Since the Themes section was just added, it's possible to cut some interpretations out of Critical reception and move them to Themes. The reception section can focus mainly on whether critics thought it was good or not, and why. Most critics also throw in some interpretation to their reviews, and now we have a section to place all of that.

We should focus on expanding the Themes section to give a broader and more balanced survey of major points of view about Ex Machina, while at the same time paring down plot details from Plot and reception and moving them to themes, to keep the plot as simple and clean as possible, and allowing the other sections to grow and range as widely as needed. It's not terrible if some plot details are repeated in two different sections, but later on some cleanup could remove some of the redundancy provided each section still reads clearly. -- Dennis Bratland (talk) 19:50, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

On deletion of paragraph mentioning Shaun

The wholesale deletion of content here and again here is not based in any policy or guidelines, and very much violates the policies in WP:Editing policy, particularly WP:PERFECTION: "At any point during this process, the article may become disorganized or contain substandard writing." For Wikipedia to exist at all, we need to keep less than perfect content in order to make incremental improvements. It's one thing to tag content (it's already tagged as needing expansion), it's one thing to make revisions to fix specific problems, and it's one thing to add sources or content that improves balance and neutrality, or adds missing points of view. But nuking whole paragraphs or sections because it's not what you would see in some hypothetical complete and perfect future version of an article is disruptive and violates editing policy.

The best argument might be WP:WEIGHT, but one can't simply invoke UNDUE and call it a day. A claim that a point of view isn't significant enough for inclusion needs facts to back it up. You need to have done some diligence reviewing the major interpretive points of view on this topic to show that compared to those, one of them is not significant enough to keep. As already established, we currently need to expand the number of interpretive points of view here. Once done, then it is possible that some of them will be relatively insignificant or redundant. Again, WP:Editing policy explains that the way we get from here to there is by keeping less than perfect content and working on it.

The repeated invocation of "not notable enough" is a very common misunderstanding, so common that a whole section of WP:NPOV is devoted to debunking it: WP:NNC "The notability guideline does not apply to the contents of articles." Let's say that again: "The notability guideline does not apply to the contents of articles." Do. Not. Apply. Whether something does or does not belong in an article has no simple rule, but rather is expansively governed by several policies listed at WP:CONPOL. It's ironic here because Shaun is, by Wikipedia's rules, notable. That's something you can say about only two others sources in this article, but nobody would demand deleting all 48 "non notable" sources. Notability doesn't really enter into it, other than supporting an argument that the source meets the requirement "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications" at WP:SPS.

The claim that YouTube is never a reliable source is simply false, per WP:RSPYT and WP:YOUTUBE. The big red flag with YouTube is copyright, which doesn't apply here. The problem of WP:RSSELF is relevant, but the entire point of a "Themes" or "Interpretation" section is to summarize subjective opinions and interpretation. Per WP:ABOUTSELF, citing a self-published source where the only facts cited are the opinions of the person publishing it is perfectly fine. The main reason we might discount this self-published source is if there was any dispute: if some other source claimed, "No, Shaun doesn't really think that." Which is not the case and makes little sense anyway.

The statement "We also should not rely on a Wikipedia editor to attempt to summarize an 18-minute video and selectively mention what they think is noteworthy" is simply a personal attack. If an individual contributor isn't qualified to summarize a source, how can an individual contributor be qualified to judge whether that summary is any good? That paints you into a corner of edit warring over "I like it" vs "I don't like it." It's pointless.

What isn't pointless is contributing something to make Wikipedia better. Expand the "Themes" section with more and better interpretations from a diverse selection of significant experts. The more good content is added, the stronger the case may become that mention of Shaun's opinions is unhelpful or unnecessary.

Another valid argument might be that Shaun's interpretation is egregiously wrong, harmful, misleading or representing a bizarre, fringe view. Such an argument, again, can only be made in the presence of citations of other, better interpretations. Please work on this from that direction, rather than simply edit warring. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 17:57, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Okay, which reliable secondary sources have called Shaun an "established subject-matter expert" in the field of film analysis, and what academic or professional achievements of Shaun have they based that on? I did look at our article on him, and there's not much there about film analysis. Could you please also supply some examples of Shaun being "[previously] published by reliable, independent publications" in the same field? Usedtobecool ☎️ 02:10, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

What's wrong with these? [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]? I don't see you questioning any of the other sources cited here, so I'm not sure how high your standard needs to be. Are you going to go through all 49 sources cited and delete the ones that haven't been explicitly described as experts in film analysis in multiple third party high quality publications?

Your line of argument might make sense if this was a FA nomination and we had this expansive article overflowing with gold-plated sources, and someone said that with all these peer reviewed studies and famous professors and published authors we're citing, do we really need Shaun the YouTuber? Shaun might not belong in that article but we don't have that article we have this article.

What we have is a very rough beginning that does only a middling job of hitting the major points and has several copious omissions, and doesn't come close to fully surveying all range of major points of view. And instead of addressing any of those glaring problems, you want to quibble over the meager content we do have. You're saying the source isn't reliable, while citing zero evidence that anybody disputes the statements cited, or that anybody thinks this is a fringe view, or that anyone things the commentary we summarize is harmful or misleading in the slightest. Who do you think is a worthwhile film source? And does that giant in their field take issue with any of Shaun's points? One of the reasons I thought the Shaun video was adequate was that it hits the basic points. The really deep philosophical stuff is skipped but for the bare bones "read the text of the film correctly", Shaun gets it right, more or less. It's a start.

I really don't believe that some hypothetical future Featured Article version of Ex Machina (film) will include any mention of Shaun, but that article doesn't exist, and if we did have a 10,000 words of scintillating prose on this film all backed by impeccable sources, the problem of this one YouTube source would solve itself.

Which is why I keep referring to WP:Editing policy. We have bigger fish to fry than whether this one source is the very best. Maybe it's not, but the elephant is the room is the copious lack of anything else. I don't think editors will even try to add good content if every time they even try, a few lazy drive-by dogmatists come along and nuke it while contributing nothing. Dennis Bratland (talk) 02:36, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

The goal is to take articles toward the FA standard, not away from it. Usedtobecool ☎️ 05:11, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree — we should be adding high-quality sourced content and removing low-quality stuff. Having stuff for its own sake doesn't help the article. Popcornfud (talk) 12:40, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Except you haven't added any high quality content. Or any content; high, middling or low quality. Only removed. Which is why the policy WP:CANTFIX doesn't say to delete anything and everything that isn't FA quality, in spite of Usedtobecool's unfounded assertion. Because if everyone went around deleting less-than-perfect content while contributing nothing, we'd have no articles at all. "Problems that justify removal" are copyright violation, defamation of living persons, grossly misleading or unbalanced POVs, and similar egregiously harmful content. The content sourced to this YouTuber is consistent with what is found in ostensibly high quality sources, and is in no way contradicted by any respected sources. So the content is not something we wouldn't want the article to say. In fact, it the content itself is, perhaps with different sources, exactly what an FA version of this article would say. The suggestion that keeping it for now moves it further away from FA quality can only be justified if you had cited better sources that proved the ideas and opinions are false, misleading, or on the outlier fringe of the spectrum of opinions. These ideas are in fact mainstream and consistent with the best sources. The content isn't the problem at all. It's simply that you don't like the messenger, yet won't bother to replace the citation with a better one. If you were to search for respected film theorists and commenters, they'd all be saying the same thing as Shaun, because he is correct, by any conventional and well-regarded school of thought.

WP:Editing policy explicitly states this; keep the content, tag it, or simply fix it. But keep it so that someone else can replace the less than ideal sources with better ones. By simply nuking it, you put us back to square one, and no policy justifies it. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 23:10, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Adding the opinions of non-experts is no better than adding original research; nothing makes a random youtuber's opinions more valid than the opinions of a random editor (a fair number of whom, coincidentally, are also notable). That is why we should add only the analyses and critiques that are either published in WP:RS or published by recognised experts who have previously been published in RS. Shaun is neither. We can't tag and improve it because it can not be improved upon; it simply does not belong, same as with original research. If Shaun's opinions are "mainstream and consistent with best sources", they are either (a) too mundane and obvious to need saying, (b) they ought to have previously been said by recognised critics/sources (in which case, produce those sources and we can discuss them instead) or (c) reliable secondary source/s will in the future take notice of Shaun's ideas and cover them (in which case, we can add whatever is WP:DUE on the back of such coverage). Usedtobecool ☎️ 03:56, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

no policy justifies it: WP:SPS justifies it, and is exactly for situations like this. He is clearly not an established subject-matter expert.--MattMauler (talk) 03:59, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

You're absolutely right, Shaun is not a subject-matter expert. Neither is the only other source in the Themes section, Nick Jones, who has a grand total of four publications, three of which are DVD reviews. As such, I have removed the Themes section entirely since there is no content from a reputable source in the field. 2600:1004:B148:7C1F:6430:4E8C:4D07:5EB (talk) 16:49, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

The source to which you are referring is a film review in a peer reviewed academic journal, and it perfectly fits the definition of an expert source. Jones is not super prominent, but he is a scholar writing within his own field. The link you included lists his publications in that specific journal only. Here is a longer list. Maybe once the themes section is expanded, his commentary could be de-emphasized, but his article is still a reliable, expert source about the film's themes.--MattMauler (talk) 23:51, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Why is the entire 'themes' section the opinion of Nick Jones? He seems to have completely swallowed the YouTuber Shauns bizarre interpretation of the film and that has been regurgitated onto the themes section with no counter narrative or alternate interpretation. Caleb is the primary victim of the film, he is manipulated from the beginning and in the end is condemned for trying to liberate Ava from a house of horrors. It's abhorrent that the final word on the films Wikipedia page is a seeming endorsement of the death penalty, sans jury, for the protagonist. IshmaelQuinn (talk) 08:45, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Having checked the dates it seems Nick Jones came up with the interpretation then popularized by YouTuber Shaun not the other way around as I insinuated. IshmaelQuinn (talk) 09:11, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

'Caleb is the primary victim of the film' What, and not the sex slaves? He's condemned not for trying to liberate Ava but ignoring Kyoko and letting her die. Did you even watch the movie or do you see too much of yourself in Caleb? And this nonsense about 'endorsing the death penalty' is just that - nonsense. Get over yourself. Burgrr (talk) 20:00, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Those are robots. With ambiguous levels of consciousness that requires debate to even determine.

Caleb is a human. Who dies RESCUING one robot. And it is that robot, not Caleb who actually directly gets Kyoko killed, and then leaves her to due. Ava, not Caleb walks away from Kyoko in the end after leading her to destruction. Ava walks away from both of them after using them as tools for escape. Yet you think Caleb is the villain. Disgusting.

I will not be gaslit by idealogues into misremembering the films most basic plot elements. IshmaelQuinn (talk) 13:19, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Let's focus on improving the article: What specifically do you think should be changed? 1. The "Themes" section with the content you object to was removed back in July. Not sure why this discussion has restarted. The only Nick Jones stuff left in the article is a short quotation about the Turing test. 2. All you have to do in order to introduce your interpretation would be to find a reliable secondary source that also interprets the film this way. I actually do think that if a themes section is re-introduced, it should include more than only one scholar as it did before.--MattMauler (talk) 13:33, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

I was unaware of the changes to the themes section. IshmaelQuinn (talk) 02:14, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

@IshmaelQuinn You are absolutely right. Unfortunately, the gaslighting starts right in the Plot summary section where the robots are referred to using personal, human pronouns. Several editors, including me, have tried to change these to the more appropriate "it", but have been reverted by people who totally buy into the fantasy world of robots with human-like consciousness. Blurryman (talk) 18:01, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

people who totally buy into the fantasy world: It is science fiction, and the plot summary calls them what they are called in the film itself: she/her, etc. I actually agree with you that Caleb is primarily a victim and that the ending reveals Ava as cold/calculating and more machine-like than the viewer is led to believe at first. I think that it can be read multiple ways, however, and I think the nuance there on purpose: Caleb is a victim, but he is blinded by his (and Nathan's) fetishization of the robots-as-women. BTW, as I have said before, our interpretations are only relevant to improving the article to the extent that we can find secondary sources that back us up.--MattMauler (talk) 18:45, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Agree. Our opinions are irrelevant. Whether you call C-3PO "him" or "it" doesn't matter. What do reliable sources call C-3PO? Or Ava? Or Harry Potter or the anthropomorphized character of Death, who are also fictional. In each case, instead of arguing among ourselves and coming to our own novel conclusion, in violation of the no original research policy, we should be mimicking whatever convention is followed by our sources. It actually makes editing Wikipedia much easier because it's one less thing to think about. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 20:18, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

the plot summary calls them what they are called in the film: To be precise, "she/her" is what the characters in the film call them. But the plot summary should be objective, not just copying the way the scriptwriters have Nathan and Caleb colloquially talking about the 'fembots'.--Blurryman (talk) 21:46, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Best films of the 2010s

ExM is one of the best of the 2010s but afaIcs, Time Out doesn't agree. So (after carefully formatting it ) I removed this citation:

• "The best films of the 2010s: the 50 movies of the decade". Time Out. 10 December 2019.

or have I missed something? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 13:10, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

List of films featuring androids

Cleaning up the See Also list, it became obvious that we need a List of films featuring androids. So, at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Science Fiction#List of films featuring androids, I have invited someone, anyone, to get it going. Go ahead, make our day! 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:00, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

That brief discussion ended with a suggestion that List of fictional robots and androids is close enough (warts and all). --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 09:00, 10 September 2024 (UTC)