There are many problems with AI, not the least of which being the fact that it's 90 degrees outside as I type this in the middle of October. Upgrade proposes a more ethical use to AI. Some people use it to ask Grok if a picture of pregnant John Cena is real. Our hero uses it to get sweet, bloody revenge.
Upgrade
Year: 2018Directed by: Leigh Whannell
Written by: Leigh Whannell
Starring: Logan Marshall-Green, Betty Gabriel, Harrison Gilbertson
Runtime: 100 minutes
Sometime in the not-too-distant future, Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green) and his beautiful girlfriend/fiancé/wife are living a happy, loving life as a happy, loving couple. They are young, beautiful, happy, and they love each other so much and she gets shot in the face. Don't act so surprised, that's how these movies go. A simple night out ends with their self-driving car malfunctioning, and the ensuing robbery escalating into a senseless murder. Grey and his girlfriend/fiancé/wife are both shot in the altercation. She dies, he survives but is paralyzed.
Months pass and police are no closer to identifying the attackers than Grey is to walking again. He's at rock bottom and ready to compromise himself to a permanent end. This state of mind means he has nothing to lose and is vulnerable to questionable moral and ethical decisions. Enter: eccentric tech weirdo who puts a robot chip in Grey's spine. Grey has a new lease on life. The birds are singing, the Sun is shining a little brighter, and he will not rest until everybody responsible is disposed of with purposeful and intense violence.
That premise alone gets me fired up, like I'm about to storm out of the tunnel and take the field for a playoff game. But premise will only get you so far. Upgrade is successful primarily because of Logan Marhsall-Green's performance as Grey. I assume anyone who is reading this review grew up watching MST3K. Cast your mind back to how many movies Mike, Joel, and The Bots watched that starred a down on his luck hero and had him discover some kind of futuristic weapon. Yes, I am specifically talking about Laserblast, but I digress. Marshall-Green's portrayal elevates the film from "it's alright, but there are a couple of sick fights you should check out" to essential viewing.
Marhsall-Green spends most of the movie acting against himself. The implant, called STEM, is a voice in his head that only he can hear. Their relationship begins as a JARVIS-type back and forth like in Iron Man. STEM, rewind the video. STEM, identify that guy. STEM, zoom in on that building. And that's fun, we here at the Terrible Zaibatsu love an investigation into a seedy underbelly of crime and corruption. The problem that arises when pursuing people who shoot others in the face is that you end up in places that aren't handicap friendly. Grey ends up at one such place, and this is the first lean-in moment for us watching at home. STEM senses that they're in a jam that they won't be able to talk themselves out of and it politely asks Grey for permission to steer. Permission granted. STEM momentarily takes over Grey's body and violence follows.
This is where Marhsall-Green shines. Part of it is the physicality and the deliberate movement in this first encounter. What would it look like for a hyper-intelligent super computer to turn you into a killing machine? How do you move fluidly and robotically a the same time? Equal parts stiff and instinctive. No wasted movements. STEM operates Grey with the clinical efficiency of someone who was worked at a slaughterhouse for years and mentally checked out. But Marhsall-Green, while doing all of this, is reacting to his own actions with horror. His body and his face are giving polar opposite performances at the same time. He is not a badass action star, he is a vessel for violent retribution, and he can't stop it. If he tells STEM to give back control, he's back to being a quadriplegic and the movie will end shortly thereafter. So he has no choice but to beg the guy to stay down so that the violence will stop.
But that nauseating feeling doesn't last long. It's a lot to take in at first, sure. But the police still haven't found a single suspect. So something has to be done. And now that Grey knows what he's capable of, he's not scared. He's a little overconfident, almost cocky. At first it was like a possession, a demon taking over his body and using it to wreak havoc on others. But now...now he's a weapon, and a pretty good one at that. If the police won't handle it, he will. After all, being a quadriplegic is the best alibi you can ask for.
Upgrade is a fantastic revenge film, the kind I would excitedly recommend to anyone who will listen. But it's also a study of what happens to a man who gradually and consciously hands over his own autonomy and humanity to artificial intelligence. And I really want to touch on that last part. You know the old saying "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”? Well, 2018 feels like it was 50 years ago. I remember seeing this when it came out and thinking of it as a slick, violent version of a Black Mirror episode. You know, back when those were still good. This felt like a warning about the dangers of losing your sense of personhood and letting a computer do your thinking for you.
Less than a decade later and you can't scroll too long on TikTok without finding a high school teacher in tears, crying that their students are old enough to drive a car but can barely spell their own names and are submitting essays with the ChatGPT prompt still at the top from when they copy/pasted it. People are walking into stores, asking why they can't find something, and then getting belligerent because Chat told them it was in stock, so they need to go to the back and find it. It's bleak out there.
Upgrade's ending (which I wont spoil) went from "damn, that could happen one day" to "I guarantee that has happened at least twice in the last six months." Upgrade may have given us a peek into a grim future, but the worst thing to come to pass since its release is the fact that they haven't made 5 sequels by now. If we have to live in a world where people fall in love with their AI chatbots, can we at least get one more?
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