Transcendence: What To Watch After You Experience The Singularity

Johnny Depp's disembodied digital self would approve.

By Brent McKnight | Updated 6 months ago

Inception

Pfister is most known as cinematographer and director of photography. Though he is responsible for filming high-profile movies like Moneyball and The Italian Job, it is his collaborations with Christopher Nolan for which he has gathered all sorts of acclaim. In fact he’s lensed every one of Nolan’s films except The Following. The Dark Knight trilogy—Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises—are gorgeous films to look at, but none of the movies he filmed hold a candle to 2010’s Inception.

The continually shifting dreamscapes are some of the most stunning, memorable images put on film in recent memory. Pfister walked away with a well-deserved Oscar for that one, and for all of its flaws, all of the things that are wrong with Transcendence, it is a good-looking film. Unfortunately the script doesn’t offer him much opportunity to put his skills to good use or much of a framework to prop up the images. There are a number of sweeping aerial shots, cool visual motifs like record player and extreme close ups of nature that attempt to further the nature versus technology theme, but the narrative is so surface level that all this does is add a gloss to an otherwise lackluster film.