Tomorrow - Episode 3: Bad News Where Humans Are Concerned with Alex Garland

Episode Date: April 25, 2015

Josh interviews Alex Garland, writer of 28 Days Later, The Beach, and Sunshine, about his directorial debut, Ex Machina. The conversation goes deep and weird, exploring ideas behind the film, NSA spying, and the meaning of human consciousness. Alex and Josh also debate the relative threat of world governments, discuss their love of post-apocalyptic games, and consider the construct of gender. It’s a doozy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey and welcome to Tomorrow. I am your host, Josh Witts-Polsky. Today on the show we're going to be discussing Pong, Sex Robots, and the US government. But first, a word from our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the easiest way to create a beautiful website, blog, or online store for you and your ideas. Squarespace features an elegant interface, beautiful templates, and incredible 24-7 customer

support. Pricesquarespace at squarespace.com and enter offer code Joshua at checkout to get 10% off. Squarespace, build a beautiful. We're also sponsored by Need. Need is a refined retailer in lifestyle publication for men. Each month, Need sources incurates a selection of exclusive products from brands around the world.

They're presented in a monthly editorial, a lot like what you'd expect to find in a typical men's magazine, allowing you to find the best products with any need for copious shopping or research. Need just launch volume 2.5 featuring items from the likes of Newtie, allowing you to find the best products without any need for copious shopping or research. Need just launch volume 2.5 featuring items from the likes of Newtie, Bell and Oak, Marshall Artist, Serial, Nizolo, and more. The new collection is available at neededition.com. They've also got their Spring Forward campaign running for a few more days, a small micro

collection to help you transition into Spring at neededition.com slash essentials. This counts are up to 50% off. Tomorrow listeners who use the promo code, promo code, and yes, it's promo code, during checkout we'll receive 20% off their order. So, my guest today is an extremely fascinating, I think, fascinating, we'll find out in any moment. Man, he is an author.

He's written novels such as The Beach and The Tesseract. He has written screenplays for films you've definitely seen. Films like 28 Days Later, Sun Shine, and Never Let Me Go. And he is now a director. He's recently written and directed the film X Machina, which is in theaters at this moment. Very happy to have Alex Garland here on the podcast. Thank you for joining me.

Pleasure, thanks very much. I know you've been doing a lot of this, so hopefully this will be the greatest conversation you've ever had in your entire life. I have high hopes. Okay, good. That's good. So before we get into the, I actually, I was thinking about this conversation and I realized

that I have a dilemma in wanting to talk to you about the film that you've just done. And for those who are listening that don't know, it is a, it is called a science fiction film about artificial intelligence. I think at the highest level, it's about AI, but it's not about AI. But I watched the film, and so I started thinking about how we were gonna talk about it. And in the age that we live in, there is a thing called a spoiler, right?

And the film is not necessarily, it doesn't have some wham-bang, oh my God, you know, six-sense ending. But there are parts of it that I wanna to talk about and I realized that if I talk about them with you, it will potentially ruin the experience of seeing the film for people who are listening to this podcast. So, so should we just ditch it and do something else? I think we should just talk about games.

Well, we want to talk. You're going to talk about gaming at some point. I'm happy to talk about. Are you a gamer? Are you a gamer. I'm happy to talk about video games. Are you a gamer? I am, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm just about to turn 45. And I grew up with video games.

And like my best friend, when I was growing up, his parents got hold of this machine that had this game, Pong, which is really one of the first disseminated video games. And Pong is a moment video game. It's like sort of the equivalent of the monolith in 2001 or something, it all stems from Pong. It really tires that. And so I played that. And then years, a couple of years later, like a guy on the street, his parents, remember, bought

an Atari game system and then we're all playing space invaders. And there was Pac-Man in the fish and chip shop. And so I went on and like, I just never stopped and I love games. Do you feel like you have to qualify for 5Toy by games? You have to start with, well, I'm 45. Or is that just to put your position in the timeline of video it? I think it's I think it's just to say I always had them in my life and some respect like you almost there hasn't been a moment That's the same for me. I mean, I'm 37 so a little bit younger, but it's hard to imagine a time

I mean I we had our first computer when I was six or something so every part of it So I want to do want to get back to the movie though because I so so my dilemma was I want to talk about the movie we're going to talk about it and the question is what is your what is your stance on this do you care if we talk about details of the film or do you want to try to move around those details and talk about and we're going to talk about the ideas. I know man I mean it's like it's tricky yeah I get I get what you're describing I you know I'm out here just just to be sort of straightforward about it I'm on a tour of the states where I'm out here just just to be sort of straightforward about it. I'm on a tour of the States where I'm talking about the film again and again, and I'm supposed to be trying to set it. That's what my job is. But if you're going to have a proper

conversation about it, it's hard to talk about it without talking about it. You can't talk around. What are you going to do? Yeah. So let me, let me talk a little bit about the film. We set it up for people. For those who've seen it and not seen it. It really centers on three main characters. It takes place in a single location, essentially. Maybe it's best if you set it up. How would you tell somebody what the movie's about? If you were describing it to somebody.

Maybe this is a bad question, but... No, that's for enough. I mean, this is what I've been... This is the way I used to set it up for people, which is a young guy at a massive tech company, the world's biggest internet search engine, wins a competition to spend a week with the CEO of the company. And when he arrives at this guy's mountain retreat, he discovers he's not there just to spend a week kind of hanging out with the boss and

maybe picking up a promotion of the bonding and that kind of thing. He's actually there to take part in a test, a kind of experiment. And what it is is it's a test to see if a machine is sent in or not, whether it has a consciousness, which is anyway like ours, which you could broadly say has some similarities with the Turing test, although there's also differences as are then discussed within the film. Yeah, the Turing test comes up early. It comes up early because I think the Turing test has become a shorthand for testing a machine for sentience, but it's not actually that.

And one of the points that the guy that runs this house, the CEO is saying is, I'm past the point of a Turing test. I don't care about the Turing test. This is the next thing. So basically, he's there to test a machine for sentience and when he meets the machine, he sees that it has the external form of a girl in her early 20s and some key respects, partly in terms of the machine silhouette and also in terms of its face and voice. And then a kind of three and then subsequently four-way interaction happens between people in this very contained location.

And that's basically the setup. So the contained location, I actually was something I wanted to talk about, I thought about a lot about. Your work has a thread running through it. And the thing that I think that stands up strongly to me, if you look at 28 days later, which you wrote, and this film, Sunshine, another film that you wrote, The Beach, a novel, and then a film, isolation seems to be a thread in all of these, right? You've got people in various states of somewhat extreme isolation. In 28 days later, it's not that people are alone, but people are alone, essentially, right? You know, what we think of as human beings.

In this film, it is very much a physical isolation. You've got a small set of people, set apart from, you apart from what we would consider just normal society or reality. And on and on, I mean, spaceship and sunshine. And what is it? What is it for you about isolation? I'm just curious, is there is there is there in is it necessary? No, it's not. Although it is something I get intrigued by in a sort of repeating way. I think what I'm interested in is the terms and the situations which lead people to break down, maybe in the way they interact with each other, but also in the way they see themselves. And I think the thing about isolation is, or you could just step it back, because it may be geographic

isolation or it may be a kind of personal isolation, a sort of being lonely in a crowd type version. But what it is is that people are incredibly susceptible in their behaviour to the absence of modifiers to their behaviour. And it happens really quite quickly. We're incredibly dependent on the people around us to keep us grounded. And I encounter this as a writer, basically my job is, I see as fundamentally as a writer, is that when I'm working on say a screenplay, it's quite easy for me to spend six days in relative isolation. And then find on day five or six for some reason I've like got to go to the shop and buy some milk or whatever it is. And in that journey to the shop it says if you're you know there's something trippy about it and detached from the world and

you feel you've floated away from everyone somehow. And so the speed at which that happens and the speed at which you feel disconnected from the flow of life, I find really fascinating. And I think also my working life, I sometimes observe it. You can see it in people who are powerful and rich and who are celebrities and have a different kind of lack of modifiers around them. So broadly speaking, it's that.

In the beach, it's a community. It's a sort of inward-looking self-supporting in terms of its ideology community. And Sunshine, it's some people in a little box who are a long way from Earth and a long way from their destination. And I think in this film, the isolation extends in as much as that, although there's a few people in a small location, there also, I think what underlies this film is a question about how you can ever establish what is going on inside someone else's or something else is head. And when you realize how difficult it is to establish that and how much of what we assume is in someone else's head is actually a projection and may or may not be going on inside their

head, you can feel really very isolated because you don't know if you are meaningfully interacting with anybody. So it's that. I mean, from the get go in this film, this from almost a second I started watching it and maybe you might have watched that scene trailers for it, I knew what the film was generally about. But there is a sense of, and you do get to it later in the movie, you get into it pretty heavily of everything is a bit up for grabs, you know. You're presented with this AI that is very human and very natural in many ways.

And the characters around that seem questionable in the sense that you don't know the intent of the AI, but you also don't seem to know the intent of any of the other characters. And even at a point where you've got sort of the protagonist of the film, you know, the guy you would Caleb, the guy you would consider the hero, right? At least – Yeah, though he's not my protagonist, but – Right. – But, sure. – They're apparent protagonist. – Who's your protagonist? – Ava, the machine. Okay. Right. Well, that sort of bit, it sort of flips

at some point and it does become clear that that that she's the protagonist. That's exactly right. There's a there's a there's a baton. It's not it's not at all. It's not at all clear. Right. For no, a part of the film. And it's deceptive because it's set up with the beginning that absolutely this young guy is the protagonist. Right protagonist According to the rules of storytelling. There's no doubt Well, that's that's sort of that that's one of the tricks of the film that I that I enjoy I mean you do enjoy It's also kind of upsetting it's truly upsetting It's you know towards the back half of the film where you start to realize all the things I thought it sort of works in this in that

Sensibility of the characters in the film all the things things I thought about, who these people were in this place starts to flip. But even that sort of hero character who seems very pure and innocent, early on, there's a sense of, I don't really know, you don't really know what his motivations are and you don't really understand, there's a bit where he's aiv' a vast, if he's good. And the response seems like it could be as much a lie as it is, as it seems true, right? And I think that's

the characters throughout that, that the film are, are, they're fucking with you essentially, right? Or you feel that they're fucking with you. And maybe they're not. No, they're not. No, I think that's right. But there there is that flip and you do get a sense that the protagonist changes. And I think it's kind of terrifying because you feel like you've moved into a different film in some way, right? Not stylistically, but you start to look

back at the rest of it. I'm curious to know, was that always the intent? Was it always that there would be that turn? Yeah, it was. Although from my point of view, what happened was I was always sided with the character of the machine. And then what I had to do was keep that hidden for a while and then let that be revealed. Right. So I always knew where I was and what I cared about. And I think that I can see sometimes almost sort of being

unable to stop myself showing how much she's the protagonist or where I'm allied. And it's in things that may or may not land with people, but it's to do with where the camera sits and how long it sits there and how reluctant it is to turn away and that kind of thing. But you know and they don't. So it's both seems obvious to you as probably hidden to it. Yeah, but what you assume is that in film is that kind of grammar has has an unconscious effect. And I think it probably does. I mean, yeah, certainly, you know, where you put a cut, even down to a frame, you know, 24 through a 25th and a second one. A pause. A pause.

A pause, one millisecond longer. It really makes a difference. It really, really does. Did I want to talk about the character of Nate. This is the CEO of the company. Nathan, yeah. Nathan. He's referred to as you in the film, is he?

He isn't as far as I know. I have to say there's something that really fascinates me about this because it's something that's become a preoccupation to me which is to do with subjectivity and memory and What people bring to a narrative what they want to find there what they project into it and and the very limited degree to which I control that I can quantify it as about a 50-50 deal between telling the story and hearing the story and people's imagination. I got, I've had some really interesting examples of that with this film, names changing, but also scenes that don't exist. Really? Absolutely. People

talking to me about scenes that just simply aren't in the film. Give me an example of a scene that doesn't exist in the world here. I had a very, very strange example of this the other day in another podcast where I was talking to an incredibly articulate interviewer, very, very interesting who who said, and there's this part in the film where they're talking about a Jackson Pollock painting and the guy says, I had my crew make two of these and she starts going on right a section of dialogue that I had written as dialogue, but had not shot and had cut out and I said, I'll believe you've read the scripts and she said, no, no, I saw it in the film and at that point I Started to doubt myself, even though I shot and cut this. This is a disaster story. It's really strange, and it's to do with the way memory works and the very fluid nature

of memory. And so I now start to think, is it in the film? I'm pretty sure we didn't do that. And in the thing, I really doubt it, and I actually concede the point within the podcast, and I say, well, look, I'm going to assume this is true. And at that moment, I really don't know if it's true or not. Then, so I do the podcast, finish. We talk about the scene that isn't in the film, which the lady is convinced that she

saw in the film. It turns out that a friend of mine back in the UK, who I had tested the script on, because actually because of some of the politics in the thing that I wanted to to test and she was the right person to test it on had had sent This section of the script to that person they had read it and assumed that they'd seen it and had conjured it in their mind She's so she's seen the actual film now. She'd seen the film laid she'd read this one bit of script She had decided now that she had actually seen that and it was in the film and that was in her memory Yeah, and I as the person who, one of the people involved in making the film, could genuinely not remember

whether it was in there or not. So the whole thing's just like a mess. So the neat thing could have happened, that's what you're saying. I believe he was called Nights, yes. Yeah, at some point in the film. Are you just saying that to appease me now? Well, I have no memory of it, but let's say it's true.

I feel like Caleb at some point calls him Nate, and it's sort of in this, because their relationship as it develops is this extremely uncomfortable. You've got, I wrote down notes when I actually don't have my front of me a bit, I'm gonna go from memory, as is probably appropriate here. The character of Nathan, or Nate, as some people have heard him with a Nate preferential.

It's like a new type of, in my opinion, kind of a new type of villain. And I don't know that there's a lot of examples of this, but this intelligent thug that he comes off in the film, almost like a so aggro, so aggressive, so may he's extremely manly. The first, I think the first time you see him, he's exercising. He's punching a bag. He's punching a bag. And there's several scenes in it. He's got this huge beard, Oscar Isaac. I mean, you know, very handsome man, very manly man, right? And the character that comes in Caleb

is a perfect nerd, right? He's a skinny, pale, blonde-haired kid, you know, fresh face, sort of shy. And their relationship immediately goes into this, so uncomfortable when they talk to each other. Because clearly there's that they're trying to figure each other out. There's a bit of from Nathan who is the CEO of the company that the kid works for. It's just some general judging sort of like this little sort of you don't understand the world, the way I do. But it becomes very aggressive and it gets increasingly aggressive, right?

And it's subtly aggressive. And I think when I think of him referring to him as Nate, why it stood out to me is because it's almost, it's like the subtle jab I thought that the character would be assertive if he did that. Yeah. And it's interesting because there are times where he attempts to be assertive and to gain some kind of primacy, some sort of front foot position within the scene. And then there's a little bit of fencing between them effectively.

But so let's say that character, Nathan, to me it resonated, I mean, I come from the world of technology, you know, I've covered it for many years, and it resonated on many levels. And I come kind of curious to know what you're thinking was as you wrote that character because he, at times he's very Steve Jobs issue. He almost in some way, some scenes looks a little bit like Steve Jobs, a younger Steve Jobs. Certainly, there's like the Google guys come to mind when you hear him talk and you think about this thing that he's working on this AI. He owns a search engine company.

It's called Blue Book. And it's the world's largest search engine. So there's clearly some ties there. Were you thinking of, I mean, did you have to think of these characters from the world's largest search engine. So there's clearly some ties there. Were you thinking of, I mean, did you have to think of these characters from the world of technology and startups? I didn't actually in truth because I don't really know any of those people.

I know exactly, I mean, by which I don't mean, clearly I don't know them personally, but I don't really know their public persona either. I mean, I'm aware exactly who Steve Jobs is and I know he would give these keynote speeches, but I've never watched any of them. I would not be able to recognize Elon Musk or Sergei, Bren or Larry Page.

If you showed me photos, I wouldn't know who that is. I've got big blind spots, I guess. He was to an extent though, in elements, he was kind of representing tech companies. Those are more familiar with. So he's got this kind of dude bro over familiar way of speaking, which is related to me to the way those companies present themselves to us, which is very much as your mates. There are things you hang out with and who have a kind of aspirational lifestyle attached to them. But the lifestyle is a hipster lifestyle.

It's about listening to music and being at the right bar and being at the right beach and that kind of thing. And what that does is obviously the fact that they are absolutely massive tech companies who are not your friends. There's a complete disconnect between those two states. Now, that uneasy feeling that gives you, I think, is then represented by Nathan because he is, in some respects, very over familiar and also sinister. Right. But that is, but that was, I mean, a bunch of notes about this is, is, I take it your view of technology might not be totally favorable. No, I wouldn't be

absolutely clear about this actually because I know how that can come across. I'm not remotely lullied about it. I don't feel that way at all. If anything, the opposite. There's, like, where Google is concerned, for example, I, there are things about Google that I really don't just like by kind of love and respect and feel excited by it. For example, the work they're doing in AI, they're spending really stratospheric amounts of money researching and developing AI, which I find interesting and exciting, and I'm looking forward to the

day when maybe there might be such a thing as a self-aware machine, that's something that fascinates me. You don't write it that way. Well, I could dispute that because it's a bit like the memory thing, it depends how you approach it. Right. It's a gray area. Well, there is a, yeah.

But just to finish, what there is is ambivalence. I think the ambivalence, it's proper ambivalence and it's important to state that. So like NASA, they're trying to go to the moon, these companies, that's what they're trying to do and I like that. I want to go to the moon. Right. I want someone to go there. But they're also incredibly powerful.

They are unbelievably powerful. And as far as I can tell, they have no meaningful oversight. There are no real checks and balances. Now, the conversation we were having about humans and a lack of modifiers that also exist with corporations. It exists with groups of humans. Unmodified anything is bad news where humans are concerned. And we see that again and again and again and again.

So it's not about saying these companies are doing something wrong, and it's not about saying they're not doing anything good. It's just saying they're so powerful that they need to be observed, that it's really simple as that. Well, there is, I mean, regulation is nascent because they're so new. I mean, I feel like in a way, you almost don't know how to regulate something like Google because you don't know what the boundaries of what is acceptable and useful and beyond that. Yeah, except you can have some pretty quick, pretty educated guesses. Well, yeah.

A board of ethics wouldn't be a bad start with people that are from outside the company as what is people from within. Right. Well, they have, I mean, I'm, they do. I assume they have a cluster of people who are making some ethical calls. Yeah, but there's no transparency. That in the assumption that you just made is exactly the problem. There needs to be some transparency with the stuff.

The degree of power is so extreme that you cannot rely on internal self-regulation. You just can't. Well, I love that in the film that you casual, it's very casual that there's a point where Nathan talks about collecting data, collecting facial expressions and all of this, to actually power the AI and have it understand humanity. And it's clearly referencing the NSA and all of the kind of data collection they've been doing in the video. Oh, and wittsingly, because that was written before Snowden made those brilliant revolutions.

Oh, was it really? Yeah. Well, you it really? Yeah. Well, you can't make it for that quick. That's probably a bad side. You know, that it's so casual in our thought that you've written it into a film of completely fictional film in reality. Yeah, although I think, although Snowden hadn't made those revelations, which for me is one of the most important things that's happened over the last few years, actually. We all knew it. That is to say, when I was discussing the script with people or sending it to people,

for example, many people would say, oh yeah, I always tape over the camera on my laptop. And so there was a sort of, we have been concerned about this, either on an unconscious level or a conscious level for quite some time. And I think it's, it's, it's seated in just some very simple stuff of being a, a, a feeling, a sense of unease where we have machines that we don't understand but seem to understand quite a lot about us. I think the, you don't need anything beyond that to stop feeling concerned. Right. Well, I mean, I think people are feeling concerned now, except to your point, do you do? Can I ask you, do you see that? I feel, I feel, I feel what concern that people are concerned, but I think people I know are concerned, but I think if you go, and I've

actually done this, you've got on the street and you say, does it, do you know the NSA is reading your emails and does that bother you? Most people say, and I actually did this right after the Snowden stuff we were doing a video thing. And people up and down, almost every person I asked said, well, yeah, of course they are. No shit. Of course they're reading our emails. Like it wasn't a big deal that it did, that it didn't seem impactful. And that's more the sense I get. That's true. And it's like a kind of low-sisee to type mentality. But I think people, there's a relatively important and powerful segment of humanity that does care.

The question is, can they do anything about it? I mean, the question is, is there, I mean, to me, government are so much more, I mean, Google's scary, I'm much more concerned about what the government might do. Okay, so can I do a counter to that? Yeah. Because I feel exactly the other way around.

I mean, it's not exactly who you should be most scared of. I think that's a complicated thing. But one thing in terms of these modifiers, if people feel sufficiently pissed off about the situation with Snowden and the NSA or GC HQ in my country or whatever it happens to be, those are government agencies and we have a mechanism within our respective countries to get rid of governments, you can vote them out. There's an electoral system. That must be nice.

Well, you do have it. It does, you do have it. It does it. You do have it. I don't know about that. OK, well, but putting that to the side, there is a system, whether it's employed properly or not, or whether people care sufficiently about it. There is a regular election cycle. And people can demonstrate their disgust

with governments by voting them out. And in this country, they've done it before, because Nixon and his administration was not likely to get reelected after Watergate. So I don't see the equivalent of that with private companies. There is a no-sional capitalist consumer power that your vote is according to what you buy. Not voting in those terms or abstaining effectively or voting against means not having a credit card as well as not having a computer, a telephone, a laptop, a tablet. So where's the vote?

I think to your point, there is a vote except it's similar to the choice we get in government, which is you've got Apple or Google or Microsoft, you've got like your selection of different governments of technology companies, but there's only a degree of difference between them. I mean, I think you look at, I'm not going to disagree with that, but I just want to say that there is entrenched in law a mechanism by which citizens can do something. Now Now whether they have a meaningful choice or whether they exercise that properly is another matter, but there is actually something that can be referred to as a system. There's a system. And it's a system which is backed up actually by some

powerful legislation that, for example, if a government in your country tried to say we're going to get rid of that legislation, they really wouldn't be able to do. Now, so it's the, I worry about it because I worry about the capitalist free market aspect of this, which is essentially unregulated. It's either unregulated for ideological reasons or it's unregulated just because they're so powerful that nobody can get to them like oil or whatever happens to be. So, But listen man, what we choose to be scared about, there's plenty to you can get rattled about. I feel worried about the lack of oversight there, but it's legit. I'm not going to say feel mellow about the Snowden stuff because I don't feel mellow about it either. Yeah, I'm going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with more. Cool. These days you can get practically everything on demand. Like this podcast, you can listen wherever you want when it's convenient for you,

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Start a trial with no credit card required and start building your website today. When you decide to sign up for Squarespace, make sure to use the offer code Joshua to get 10% off your first purchase and to show support for this podcast. Thanks Squarespace for your support of tomorrow. Squarespace, for your support of tomorrow. Squarespace. Okay, we're back without Scarland. We're talking about, we're talking, well, we, we segue it into, or fell into a conversation about governments. I want to go back to the, and're talking, well, we, we segwayed into or fell into a conversation about governments. I want to go back to the, and tell me, by the way, if you get bored of talking about the

film, because if we can't, there are other things I want to talk about. You should tell me if you got bored. Well, I'm more, I'm almost there. But I want to, that, that, that, anything character just, I think, was fascinating because there, I saw something else. You were talking about big global ideas, this big global idea of these companies and what they represent and their potential for misuse or abuse of the things that they create

and sort of the, and misuse of the things that we create using their tools or the things that we do with their tools. But that character resonated with me on a whole other level which is this very, it felt very representative of a mood that you see on the internet, something you see now, which is, and you hear people say things like,

bro grammar, or you see something like, gamer gate, you see this like, extremely male, shovanistic, almost aggro, especially on the internet, where you talk about those sort of the rules. There are very few, right, in behavior for how people behave with each other on the internet where you talk about the rules. There are very few in behavior for how people behave with each other on the internet. And it almost felt like one of the things you were saying,

and maybe this was unconscious, I don't know if you meant to do this, but are subconscious, not unconscious. It seemed like you were saying the logical conclusion, if you've let the startup guys or the programmers of the world have their go all the way through their creative process through the startup phase into creating a massive company that's a search giant

that they end up basically, and this is gonna give away a bit of the film, but I don't think too much. They'll basically make sex robots. They'll basically make female sex robots that they can abuse and use. Yeah, so I'm not, I mean, there's a whole bunch of things. I wouldn't want to, I mean, I genuinely wouldn't want to target programmers, which is a phrase I've only recently learned. I'm not saying

generalized, but it did feel like there was a thread that you could take carry through to this logical horrible conclusion. But there's two separate things. I think one of them is got nothing to do with programmers is just to do with people. It's absolutely just to do with people, which is if something is possible, someone somewhere will be trying to do it. I think that you could look at some of the issues surrounding cloning and say, if it is possible to clone humans regardless of the ethical issues, someone at some point is going to try and do it. It's just going to happen. So that's just to do with the way humans are. It's not specific to a subgroup

of humans. In terms of sex robots, I get really fascinated by this because there's sentient machines, which is a speculation that happens within the context of the film. And then there's sex robots. And robots where we have lots of robots are not necessarily sent in. In fact, none of them are sent in. And in fact, there's tons of sex robots that already exist. There's vibrators. A vibrator is a sex robot. And it's only got one part of the overall thing, but it is basically the part of the sex robot. So there you go. But I think, I'm paying with a broad stroke on robot, but what I mean is that you've got this culmination of incredible technology. You know, they go through, they talk about the brain and the body and sort of, you know,

there's mention of how the, how Eva is charged and things that are highly technical. But then it sort of develops, it goes to a place very and I consider it to be a very dark place where the worst that you might expect of a man who could create essentially a lot let's say life it at his at will and to his like you know to whatever form he He pleased We took it to this sort of immediately, you know very bad very dark place that is and maybe that's just about men Maybe that's just about humans, but I don't know that everybody would have gone that path. I feel like that character has a through line

that I saw really clearly. Got it. I mean, so my thought process was with this film, was that it started with a simple thing which is just an interest in machine sentience, AI, strong AI, and then understanding that if you talk about self-awareness in a machine, you are then just generally talking about self-awareness, so you're also talking about humans. So by talking about one and the issues of one thing, you're also talking

about the other machines and humans. Now you're talking about the same thing. The second you're talking about humans and consciousness, you're talking about interactions between humans and the way we gauge each other's consciousness and how we relate to it. And also where consciousness might come from, which is imperatives to do with social interaction. And so now you're talking about actual relationships between humans and also machines and in fact anything sentient. And as you keep broadening that out, eventually you will encompass in the general thing that you're dragging in, sexuality, and sex, and the urge is relating to that. Now, there's a separate thing then happening within the narrative, which is it is useful for Nathan to present himself to Caleb as something from which the robot needs to be rescued.

And he has all sorts of ways of doing that by presenting himself as implicitly violent, punching a bag, misogynistic, slightly unbalanced, or maybe increasingly unbalanced, misquoting things back in a megalomaniac way that references to do with God that is sort of a bleak that becomes specific once he's twisted it, as reflected that on him. You're saying there's a deception in the film? Yes, they are, because that's not clear.

Well, yeah, but no, it's not clear, right? It's not clear, and actually the lack of clarity is one of the things I'm interested in, and was specifically avoiding certain kinds of signposts in terms of where the film positions itself. So the questions, the conversations that Oscar Isaac and I used to have in planning to shoot this partly so that we weren't having complex conversations about motivation on set because we didn't have time, but also just to do with being on the same

page and agreeing with each other and making the most of this was, is this a mask that Nathan is presenting? When is the mask slipping and when the mask slips? What's actually there? Is what's behind the mask exactly the same as the mask. Is he caricaturing something that is actually present in himself? Or is he amplifying it? Is he, how damaged is he? I think he is unarguably damaged, by the way. I think that there it's not ambiguous. This is a damaged person. But where are you seeing the real person and what he really feels and really thinks? When at one point he slams his hand down on the table and is abusive and unpleasant to another

character in the house. Is he finding an excuse at that moment to present himself in that way? And so there's a whole bunch of questions that I then don't want to be too specific about where the film sits with regard to it. Partly because the truest intention behind this movie was that it was an ideas film, and then it would present a bunch of questions that would be thoughtfully presented and reasonably presented that people could if they felt like it then talk about it. You don't have to tidy it up at the end. But some of it I can't tidy up

because it's not within my ability on an intellectual level or on any level because I literally don't know the answer to the question that's been posed. I think if you just look at, I mean, this is actually discussed explicitly within the film, but even if it wasn't, if you look at Ava, the machine in the representation

of her, I think it raises a question about gender just in the apprehension of Ava, it does, because she appears to have a gender. But at the same time, you know, she doesn't have a gender, which means what is gender, where does it reside? And so in particular, is it there is a there is a kind of description of her genitalia, let's just say, for lack of a better term, which is implicitly, inexplicitly female. Well, if a vibrator is explicitly male, I mean, do you attribute a gender to a vibrator? The point I'm making is that there are no immediate answers that one can reasonably make. Of the options that exist with Ava, I would say one is that the gender

resides in consciousness, so there's such a thing as a male and female mind. There's organs and there's a physical thing, as you said, genitalia, but also breasts and face eyelashes, whatever it happens to be. There's the physical appearance that we do we find it there. Or is it something that is conferred? It is by the fact that we treat Ava as a woman that makes her a woman. Now which of those three things is it? And which of them could you, at the end of the film, or fuck the film, just in general,

how can anyone in us all of these positions are at least open to some reasonable conversation. So I don't see why one would even seek to wrap that up in a bow at the end of the narrative. Right, and you don't. But that was your intent. I mean those were the questions you wanted to raise. Those were absolutely explicitly the intent and that was one of many parts of the intent. I mean, as I said, the thing I liked about this film as an idea was that from this very, very simple narrative. In fact, I think you effectively alluded to this at the beginning by saying it's not really twist-based. It's, you're exactly right. It's an incredibly linear narrative. If there's a twist, it's that we don't know.

And I think this, you talked about this earlier, you don't know what someone's thinking and you don't know what they really want or need. And if there's any twists, it's that. I agree. I assumed that I knew that people wanted things and needed things in this film, people or robots or whatever or AI rather,

but my assumptions were not correct or at least I'm not sure they were correct on many levels. No, which it does perfectly. And in an extremely, I'd say upsetting manner, but what's upsetting about it's not a, you know, it's not a necessarily violent film. There's a violence to it. I mean, it's an undercurrent of violence. There's a latent violence to it. Yeah, that starts right at the beginning and carries through.

True. I mean, it's completely unsettling in the way that I think the best, you know, it's horrific in a slow way, you know, in the way the best thrillers are, you know, the best David Lynch, I don't know if you're a fan, but his films have just a thread of extreme violence, but almost nothing happens often. Absolutely. And that's the way this film feels in which so it's very satisfying to me. The isolation was also very satisfying because those are the kinds of movies that I grew up on and love.

But it does at the end, it is not one of those, there is no wrapping up. There's a couple of things that I did attempt to answer in an explicit way. Or, no, I shouldn't say explicit because it's not actually explicit, but there are things that I attempted to answer in a way that should one be interested, one would be able to find an embedded answer that is actually taking a position. It's saying, this is where the film stands.

I have to say that a lot of that is about one's ability to access that depends on how you position yourself within the narrative. a lot of that is about one's, one's ability to access that depends on how you position yourself within the narrative. That is to say, if you ally yourself to the young man and don't have the batten pass that you were talking about, the shifting thing, then you might not see these end presentations of answers. But if you, if you shift and ally yourself with a machine, then, then they will be there. And they're questions such as, at the end of the day, after all these long conversations that they have, is she sentient, is she self-aware, and also does she have empathy? Right.

Because I think probably those two things end up being what we value most in each other. Right. I mean, without being explicit about this, where it ends up is in such a complex place. I mean, the questions that because you don't get the simple answer of, yes, she's sentient, but if you just look at the actions, you go obviously, yes, I have the answer, right? If there's a turning, if the film, you know, is about a turning test or whatever this test is, the viewer feels, I can very easily feel yes, I know now, this thing is motivated by something

that is feels human and natural and like a desire, not like a machine figuring things out. I mean, I'm not saying that's the answer, sorry. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you can look at it that way. Yeah, sure. I mean, saying that's the answer. Sorry. No, no, no, no. You can look at it that way. Yeah, sure. I mean, I don't mind talking about this stuff, but I mean, it's kind of your core, really.

It's your show. Right. I mean, I think what I feel is there's a couple of things that Ava does that, to me, demonstrate sentience. There's a moment where you see a smile, where it's hard, where there's no one to trick. And so why would she be smiling if it wasn't a representation of an internal mine state, for example? I think there's another thing, and by the way, to an extent, this is bullshit, because what the fuck do I know, right? But this is from what I've said.

The point, you know, yeah, I mean, I'm not an AI expert, expert. I'm not an AI expert and I'm not a consciousness expert. All I'm just a layman who's interested who tries to think about it and write about it. But it did occur to me that it would be pretty difficult to understand what was going on in another consciousness unless you also had one yourself. And I think there are times when Ava is correctly figuring out what is going on inside someone else's head.

I sort of think, how could she do that if she wasn't sentient? Right. Now, someone might say, oh no, no, you could and demonstrate it. Like, I really have no idea, but it seems like a reasonable proposition, or at least something that you could reasonably discuss. No, I think that's true. It's just that the situation that is so extreme that's presented, it's difficult to imagine.

I mean, it's difficult to imagine. You can imagine yourself in that position. And I think you can imagine yourself having the same reaction that Ava has. And so it makes her character seem much more human. Okay, we're gonna talk about one more thing. I mean, we're probably close to being, I mean, I know you're very tired and you went up. I wanna talk about, because we said we were gonna talk about one more thing. I mean we're probably close to being I mean I know you're you're very tired and you went about I want to talk about because we thought I said we were gonna talk about games

And I actually in this during this conversation it occurred to me there's something you you're a gamer you currently play games Right, I'm assuming you like Xbox or whatever. Yeah, you've written you've written for games and or overseeing some writing for games Well, I I was employed as a writer for higher Where there was an existing game with levels and scenes that were required. And they said, will you write the dialogue within these parameters? And I said, yes. Because I was looking to get an in in the games industry. I've been sort of knocking on the door for a while. It's actually quite a close shot. Or at least it was for me.

I feel like, well, what was this? Well, I was like, I guess it was just before making Never Let Me Go. So maybe five years ago. It was a long, yeah, six years ago. It seems like you wouldn't, for you, writing for games would not be something that would be difficult. Oh, well, there's an implicit compliment in that, so I think. Well, I mean, I mean, your storytelling

is certainly your capable of very intense and exciting storytelling. So it seems like if I were a games developer, I'd say, God, we can get Alex Garland to write a story for us. I'm shocked to hear. I guess I'm shocked to hear. We're so fucking talented. I'm handsome.

I don't know why they wouldn't just let you write games. Thank you very much. I'll tell you what though, what happened, so I've been fascinated in this for a really, really long time, and last summer, I eventually played a game which I'd been wanting to play for a while, called The Last of Us. That's one of the greatest. It really is, I just fell for that game really hard. I think what

it did was it demonstrated in a way I'd been waiting, waiting for someone to demonstrate this. What a brilliant narrative medium games are. I had the same thought when I played it. It felt like the first time, because games have narratives and you're just like, just this dialogue is fucking awful and I don't believe in any of these characters. But that one felt like not to cut you off, but either a similar reaction. And when I finished it, it was just like, I felt like in my guts, I felt that the game, you know, the story. Absolutely. And it's beautifully written and it's beautifully acted and it's beautifully shot and it's beautifully

directed in the sound design. And you do, it's just a really exemplary piece of storytelling. I found it amazingly powerful. And the second I finished it, I kind of stared into space for about 10 minutes and then I went back and I started it again. And the only game I've ever done that on before was a game called Bioshock, which is also amazing writing. Amazing writing and it has a set up. Proper narrative twist. We're talking about twist. There is a twist in that game about two-thirds of the way through that is so elegant and so beautifully landed and constructed. So, have you played Bioshock Infinity? Is that the one setting? And it's loud.

And it's loud. I have. Do you finish it? No, I got right to the very end and she finished it. I've got a personal problem with boss fights. I hate. I hate boss. No, no, no. This is actually one of my, I'm with you on that because I get it. I actually play games on E.T.

A friend of mine who's actually an editor, you know, writes about games, was like, just playing on E.T. Because you want to experience the game, you don't want to sit like get your skills up at being good at the game. I don't know if you, if you're the same way, but that's a game. There are these bot, like the one on the ship, and it's like this extended boss fight. And you're like, you know, I always exactly. I just want to see where the story goes at this point. Like, I know that I can eventually blow this thing up, but I'd actually rather have it just blow up for me so I can see where this thing that was exactly the point I got. I didn't I didn't get past that and I have to say I mean for any gamers

who are listening to that's kind of weird because there's a game I've played Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 which is a fantastic both very very difficult games and have completed both and and really enjoyed the experience and there's some horrific boss fights in that but for some reason I felt engaged in those games in a way that I didn't. It's a big run about it. It's tedious. So I know the fight. I think I know the fight you're talking about. There's a piece right at the end of it and it's so tedious. I play, I must have played it like 20. We talk about fire shokens. Fire shokens. Yeah, it's like there's like an infinite. Yeah, there's, there's like a, it's like a big platform. You're on a ship and you're running around.

It's a sort of thing. And I just didn't give a fuck. Yeah, at a certain point, I thought, what the fuck? I've given up on many, gives the new alien game. I basically gave up because it's isolation. Yeah, isolation, which has an incredible mood and sort of a great the backdrop is the story. But then it's like, it's so difficult and so tiring to keep playing

the same thing over and over again. But this is the really interesting balance you get with games. And it's why there's an extra level of artistry that is not actually required in film or novel or theater or anything like that, which is that there is a proper interactive involvement with a player. And if the game is not careful, something becomes a problem solving exercise. And the problem solving exercise splinters the mood.

And when one of the things I found so amazing about the last of us was that after playing it through, I guess, or normal, I then played it through on hard, and in hard, it was better, and somehow it never became insurmountable obstacles. It always seemed fair. It felt so really beautifully balanced game. And so amongst all the other things it was doing, brilliant, it was also dealing with the gameplay, beautiful. On the last of us, one of the things I remember,

there's a boss fight where you play as the little girl. Yes. And it's violent. It's really scary and really violent. And I remember when I was playing it, it was hard, too. It was hard to defeat the boss. And I remember thinking what I felt more than anything was not anger about not being able to get through the level, but how bad I felt for

the character that I had to keep going back into this, this battle. It's so interesting, isn't it? And I remember that. It's, it's, it's when they're running around the cafeteria as it's going for the restaurant. It's interesting to talk about those same moments because I don't actually have conversations like those many people. Most people I know are a game or an avid gamer. I'm not an avid gamer. I love them, but I look for these types of games. Yeah, but you've played through it.

And that's interesting. I mean, I'd love that game to be more widely disseminating for people to realize just how good it is and what a powerful bit is I'm telling you but what I remember there is I just wanted to kill that guy. Yeah, I don't know It's emotional. It's not it's not a battle of skill. Yeah, it's a battle of emotion You actually put you feel like you're in the in the shoes of this character You do that has to defeat this Quite horrible. I mean the setting is I have to that makes, I actually bought the version for the PS4 because I'd played it on the PS3 and then I got it again and

started playing it again on the PS4. Oh, I only played it on the PS4. Oh, so you've so recently then? No, I came to it late. It was last summer. And actually, I bought in truth, I bought a PS4 just to play it. Because I got so frustrated that I wasn't able to play this game that I knew I was going gonna love. And the weirdest thing in some respects was that when I played it, it then exceeded my expectations. Oh yeah. My expectations were pretty high. I mean, you're dead on. And there's very few games like it, almost no games like it.

And so this does this mean that you're going to be, do you wanna be writing for games? I'd love to. I mean, the idea of being able to work on a game like that, where it's putting a certain emphasis on storytelling and character and performance and stuff would just be, I mean, a truly kind of thrilling prospect for my point of view. But I've got to say, I just want to say, because that sounds like I'm angling for a job. The thing about it is, is that I don't think I would do it as well as the last of us. And I am more than happy

to be a recipient of the game, because it's so rewarding for me to play a game like that. One of the things that's been pissing me off about this press tour is that there's a game back home that I've downloaded but haven't switched on called Bloodborne, and I'm just desperate to play it. I'm just talking about Bloodborne that I'm just desperate to play. Oh, everybody's talking about Bloodborne. Fucking dying to play that game. And much more than I'd want to work on them, I want to play them. Right. So, I don't want to, yeah, I'm not sending out my CV.

Right. But this is what I was going to say. It's a unique challenge. I mean, you've, actually, you might be better suited to this challenge than a lot of writers because getting back to the way the film wraps and the way lots of your other films that you've written wrap, I mean, actually, maybe all of them, if you think about it, they're not clean. It isn't, doesn't have all the answers.

And I think one of the most difficult things in games is that it requires that you resolve, it feels like gaming that goes from level one to level 10, and then you resolve the thing and you have those answers. I think the last of us does this and that it doesn't give you all the answers, but I also feel like it's a challenge for a writer, must be a challenge for a writer to how do you create an open ended, you know, first off, there are many avenues in the game itself. The branching narrative is the thing that is the most problematic on the spot. I mean, you can go for, I guess you can go from beginning to end, but then everything in between you've got to allow for there to be enough freedom

for a player that they feel they can, they're invested in it. I believe so, yeah. But not so much that they, it's, you don't have a story. Although I think that games went down a bit of a blind alley with this in some respects, in as much as that you do not need, a branching narrative is exponentially complicated. And so you was a belief that that's what you needed to do. And I think there was too much of a sense that characters needed to be blank so that people could project onto them. And there was such a lot of evidence that this wasn't true, say Lara Croft, which clearly most people playing Tomb Raider were true, say Lara Croft, which clearly most people playing Tomb Raider were not remotely like Lara Croft.

And so there was lots of evidence, this wasn't the case, and yet the industry clung on to it. And one of the things, again, I really loved about the last of us was it doesn't do that. It doesn't really have a branching narrative. Right. It actually has a linear narrative. It just tells it beautifully and it does what books and films and theatre and television have been doing forever, which is allowing people to inhabit the character that isn't them and feel confident with that, because none of us are people living in that zombie apocalypse and that's no unfortunately for us And unfortunately for me I we have to wrap up. I got to say I feel like they're I want to keep there many other things I would talk about maybe for your next film you'll come back to America and you'll you'll come on the podcast

But Alex, thank you so much Thank you so much, and and thank you the listener for Sticking around for this conversation. And I'll be back next week. As always, I wish you the very best, even though a tragic event relates to you. you