"Be careful what you wish for, cause you just might get it."

'Transcendence' is a science fiction movie about Artificial Intelligence with some classic themes in it. After a tragic event someone is brought back to life by copying his mind to a (quantum)computer. When the program spins out of control, it is up to the heroes of the story to stop the machine from destroying humankind.

Story
So far so good. A basic AI story with all kinds of possibilities, and this is where they went wrong. It looks like they could not really decide which theme(s) they really wanted to go with, so almost every theme is hinted at: Self-consciousness, Technology as a life form, is a machine able to Love, is the world holistic or based on reductionism, Could a machine ever overpower us, post apocalyptic world, struggle of morality, devotion and faith et cetera. None of these themes gets the proper time to get deepened out, so we end up with a movie with a lot of unsatisfying development.
Secondly, the first scene of the movie already betrays the end of the movie, which was a very bad decision, because it took out all the suspense from the movie and made you aware of the ending from the beginning.

Some plot holes which made me think the creators think I am dumb, but in the end made me think they are dumb:
1. I thought it was weird the 'virus' had to be uploaded by 'the wife' Evelyn, since it was basically working like an antidote (a bit weak imho) and since the AI's main goal was to "improve" everyone, not kill them, dosing people with the virus would make them invulnerable for hostile takeovers.
2. Also, the main power source of the AI was his solar park. Even though he operated on the complete Internet and everything connected to it, including the power grid itself (which is literally named in the movie.) So shutting down that solar park should not have any effect on him at all!

Characters
Besides a few 'errors in 'judgment', the cast is overall pretty good and does a nice job. Nobody will probably win an award for this movie and some characters are so anonymous I cannot even remember their characters name just after watching the movie (I seriously had to look this example up: Paul Bettany as Max Walters.)

Visuals/Music
The music in the movie was pretty decent. Nothing special, just like the movie in it's whole, but not bad either. Visuals were neat, but no megalomania was added, so you won't really be able to enjoy big massive visual spectacles on the screen. But this is not a film for that anyway.

Overall/Enjoyment
In contrary to the many negative points I wrote down, it is not bad of a movie at all. It does not reach classic heights or big majestic scenes, but you will be interested in it as long as you like the AI kind of Science Fiction. I especially liked how the movies seems to have a bit of a slower pace than is the standard nowadays, which I can appreciate.