Intelligence we built and then had to live beside: the machine that reasons its way to something monstrous, and the one that turns out to be steadier than the crew.
The axis runs between two machines built forty-six years apart. HAL is terrifying because he never rebels — he reasons, in the most considerate voice on the ship, all the way to murder. TARS is the reply: an honesty setting played for laughs that becomes the steadiest relationship in the film. Between them sits the modern version of the question, where outgrowing us looks less like mutiny and more like Her's Samantha simply continuing to learn after Theodore has stopped.
Read this shelf for the register, not the hardware: the machine is always a mirror held up to whoever built it, which is why Ex Machina ends the argument — Ava passes the test by using the man who was certain he was administering it.
Start with 2001, watched for HAL's manners. Then Her, for the break-up that is really a difference in velocity.
2001: A Space Odyssey1968 · Stanley KubrickHAL is the only character who speaks in a considerate register, and the horror of what he does is how procedural it is — the machine does not rebel, it reasons.
Interstellar2014 · Christopher Nolan★ 4.0 · 1TARS is the anti-HAL: an adjustable honesty setting played first as a joke and then as the film's most reliable relationship, in a crew where the humans are the failure points.
Her2013 · Spike JonzeSamantha outgrows Theodore in the most ordinary way — she keeps learning while he stays himself — and the break-up arrives as a problem of scale rather than of love.
Ex Machina2014 · Alex GarlandThe question is never whether Ava can think, but whether she can use a man who is certain he is the one running the test.