One of the best sci-fi movies of the 2010s was released 11 years ago today, and its unforgettable ending remains one of the genre’s meanest twists. Sci-fi twists can be a blessing or a curse, depending on how they are handled. Any longtime fan of the genre will likely remember the first time they came across a particularly ingenious Twilight Zone episode whose ending left them stunned, or a Black Mirror outing that had them speechless on first viewing.
However, sci-fi is also home to some infamously corny twists, as revelations like “It was all just a simulation” or “They were aliens all along” are uniquely convenient for lazy writers in this genre. Fortunately, 2015’s acclaimed Ex Machina avoided these tired tropes when director Alex Garland’s sci-fi thriller premiered in 2015. An unbearably tense two-hander, Ex Machina sees Domhnall Gleeson’s programmer Caleb visit the isolated woodland home of Oscar Isaac’s eccentric tech CEO Nathan. Nathan tasks Caleb with working out whether the robot he has invented, Ava, is capable of genuine human consciousness.
Ex Machina’s Bleak Twist Ending Is Uniquely Brutal
Spoilers follow for this modern cult classic, so readers who haven’t watched Ex Machina yet should tread carefully. At the end of Caleb’s torturously confusing week with Ava, a smug, self-satisfied Nathan reveals that he really selected Caleb due to his loneliness and susceptibility to emotional manipulation, and his true test was seeing whether Ava could convince the programmer to help her escape Nathan’s remote, high-tech cabin home. Nathan’s hubris soon comes to haunt him when he discovers that Ava predicted his manipulation of Caleb and used their confrontation as a chance to engineer her escape.
With the help of Nathan’s earlier model Kyoto, Ava kills Nathan and prepares to leave for the outside world. In the process, she traps Caleb in Nathan’s home, condemning him to a slow death thanks to the cabin’s extreme isolation and Nathan’s infamous obsession with privacy. While plenty of Twilight Zone episodes feature twists that might be more unexpected, the sheer cruelty of this final revelation makes Ex Machina a uniquely bleak genre outing.
Ex Machina Is One of the Most Influential Sci-fi Movies Of the 2010s
Numerous episodes of Black Mirror were directly influenced by Ex Machina, with “Playtest” feeling particularly indebted to Garland’s movie. However, the later movies Morgan, I Am Mother, and even the lighter, more optimistic After Yang also all borrow from Ex Machina, making the sleek, bleak futuristic thriller one of the decade’s most influential entries into the genre. Since Ex Machina also started Garland’s A-list directing career in the genre, its broader influence on the genre is almost incalculable.
Without Ex Machina, viewers would never have gotten the director’s later sci-fi hits Annihilation and Civil War, the former of which features a similarly bleak twist ending. Ex Machina’s twist ending alone makes the movie’s plot uniquely compelling, and its mean-spirited revelation is a killer addition that further elevates its story. However, the movie’s broader influence on the genre as a whole is what makes Ex Machina one of the most important sci-fi stories of the 2010s.