Giant Freakin Robot

Alex Garland’s (28 Weeks Later) upcoming robotic thriller Ex-Machina is rounding out its cast nicely. Alicia Vikander, who recently starred in last year’s adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, is the latest acquisition, signing on to play the female lead. Vikander joins a cast that already includes Oscar Isaaac (Inside Llewyn Davis) and Domhnall Gleeson (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows), who also appeared in Anna Karenina.

Here’s the kicker: the Swedish actress’ role isn’t your traditional female lead. She’ll follow in the footsteps blazed by Sean Young in Blade Runner and play a highly advanced, artificially intelligent humanoid robot.

The story centers around a young billionaire computer programmer (Isaac). He specifically selects one of his up-and-coming employees, played by Gleeson, to spend a week at his compound in order to participate in an experiment involving his latest project. Turns out, however, that this new endeavor is Vikander’s aforementioned female mechanoid.

Without a ton of specific details, there are a variety of directions that this story can go. Perhaps the rich guy’s creation will escape and run amok. Maybe the new guy will fall in love with robot and they’ll run away together. No matter where the narrative goes, you can’t help but walk away from this description with a serious Dr. Frankenstein vibe from the proceedings.

Anybody remember that barely publicized AMC series, The Walking Dead? I think we may have covered it a time or two. More than a week after a show’s season finale and I usually forget the show exists. Maybe you guys have a better memory than I do. The above production still, the first from the show’s upcoming fourth season, needs no context though. It’s Rick standing there with a look on his face that crosses between pensive and perplexed while someone dressed in an oversized suit jacket stands out of focus in the background. I can’t really tell if that’s a living person or not. It seems like only a zombie would be standing ominously like that, but zombies usually don’t mix and match their wardrobe.

With the announcement that Disney and Lucasfilm will be releasing at least one Star Wars movie every summer after Star Wars: Episode VII  drops in (probably) 2015, we know that the Mouse House is hard at work to deliver quality films in the Star Wars universe. Lucasfilm has hired screenwriters Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg to pen and oversee the spinoff films’ productions, while they will serve as consultants on Star Wars: Episode VII for director J.J. Abrams.

In an interview with MTV, J.J. Abrams talks about the Star Wars spinoff films that will follow after his entry into George Lucas’ universe. Apparently, Abrams will not be as involved with the spinoffs. Abrams reveals:

We’re focusing right now on this because this movie feels like this is the one that has to work for anything else to work.

There are discussions about what would happen later and how to make> this thing and to tell [the] story, you can’t look at it in a binary way. It’s obviously part of something much greater. To talk about those off-shoot films, that’s something [you] have to talk about with Kathleen Kennedy.

This is the coolest, and most frightening, thing you’ll see all day. A group of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have taught their robot, an adorable little guy named RHex, how to run, jump, and climb in quick succession.

Why is this a big deal? Because up to now we’ve seen robots that can do one of these things, but most are unable to perform these actions in a rapid sequence. Animals can do it. So can people. Up till now, this has been one of the things that set us apart from our inevitable mechanical oppressors. Well, now that gap is being bridged, and we’re one step closer to our doom as a species.