The God Question

Recently, I saw the video, The Grand Budapest Hotel. I feel like I should have enjoyed it more than I did given the great reviews, brand-name cast, and significant production budget. I only mention this because pretty much the opposite holds true for The God Question; given the unknown cast, and micro production budget, I shouldn't have enjoyed it as much as I did -- especially after reading some of the negative reviews here. This movie approaches the concept of computer AI from angles I haven't seen elsewhere. It struck me as pretty original. The central plot serves as a device into which many other pertinent questions are woven. The storyline feels uncomplicated to a fault, but it wasn't until I started talking about the movie with my husband that I realized how many issues it actually tackled. Surely, more bells and whistles could have been added with a larger budget, but at least this film did not leave me scratching my head over giant holes in the plot, or frustrated by inaccurate portrayals of the science behind the story. This is an honest film.

Interesting but not entirely original concept. The motives of the characters aren't well defined. The question the researcher poses is not the ideal question to ask AI, as one of the characters points out. It's unclear why anyone in the film even wants to ask this question or why it's so important to them. All of the tension and suspense leads to nothing. I almost expected a plot twist but knew it wasn't coming, and it did not. Almost nothing happens in the last half hour of the movie. Meh.

A good movie that seeks to answer the questions of faith many Christians have today.

I haven't seen a movie that deals with massive computer technology like this since Colossus: The Forbin Project. This is what SyFy is supposed to be except this is all to close to our immediate future as in now. People do not understand that we have moved from deterministic algorithm based computers to non deterministic neural networks. The implications are huge and that is what this movie is about. How we deal with this as a civilization is a key challenge. The hidden theme is what does it mean to have an artificial neural network. Is it sentient, does it believe in God, is it alive? What does it mean when you turn off the power and all the connections it created as it learned are lost?

The concept was compelling. The movie wasn't. The focus was more on the paranoia involved rather than the science. Could have been so much better with more sprinkles of science.