Robert Kouba
Singularity

A sci-fi film that is certainly forgettable due to the naïveté with which events unfold and without any particular depth, directed by Roberto Kouba and starring the two young actors Julian Schaffner and Jeannine Wacker.

The heart of the story is told in the prologue at the beginning of the film. Elias Van Dorne (John Cusack), CEO of Va Industries, the most important company in the field of robotics and apparently a sort of enlightened benefactor of humanity, creates a type of robot for military use with the aim of reaching a quick resolution of all ongoing conflicts on the planet. However, his invention turns out to be a double-edged weapon which, instead of resolving, causes a multiplication of conflicts globally. His own figure, clearly inspired in some way by those who have been variously considered the 'gurus' of the contemporary world for their innovations in the technological and consequently social field (given the particularly sober aspect, I would say that the model for the character is more Steve Jobs than Elon Musk, although the innovations represented in the film are clearly more akin to those that constitute ideas and projects of the CEO of SpaceX and chairman of the board of Tesla Motors, SolarCity, and co-founder of PayPal and OpenAI), consequently ends up being the target of a negative media campaign against him.

In 2020 - at the height of the crisis depicted above - Van Dorne announces the launch of a new technology. Its name is Kronos: a supercomputer whose purpose is to put an end to every conflict on the face of the Earth.

But given its programming, as soon as it is inaugurated, Kronos immediately begins to attack those it considers the main culprits of every conflict on the planet: that is, human beings. This initiates a lopsided conflict in which the powerful machines and means of Kronos rapidly lead to the destruction of the human race.

The narrative resumes ninety-seven years later when a few survivors still populate the planet, trying to escape Kronos's destructive wrath. In this scenario, two young people, Andrew and Calia, meet and decide to join forces to reach the city of Aurora, which, truth or legend, is believed to be the last safe haven on the planet where the human species leads a peaceful and prosperous existence, sheltered from the machines' attacks.

During their journey to Aurora, Andrew reveals himself to be something different from a man: he is actually a machine, built by Van Dorne apparently with the aim of gaining Calia's trust and learning the exact location of Aurora. But we will discover in the end that he is something more and his greatest invention: Andrew is indeed a machine capable of self-generating and renewing, innovating its thoughts and knowledge even according to what may be its emotional perceptions. In some way, he constitutes, according to his vision, the last lifeline he wanted to provide to the human race in an inevitable confrontation against the machines of the supercomputer Kronos.

In the finale, a real plot twist will reveal that Van Dorne's plans are actually much more elaborate than they might appear, and that he possesses a broader vision regarding the survival of the human race than might seem. Like a deus ex machina, he practically pulls the strings of the game from the beginning to the end without ever intervening, aware that he is not only the creator of what he considers a creature (that is, Andrew) that has surpassed humans in every possible aspect, but also the one who will eventually guide the two parties towards a confrontation that he will witness as a solitary and impassive judge in his infinite solitude.

It is indeed the figure of Elias Van Dorne, as mentioned portrayed by actor John Cusack, which is the most interesting aspect to focus on in commenting on this film. How much and how a figure such as Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs, or Elon Musk can impact, due to the power they can achieve and sometimes even broader than that of heads of state such as the President of the United States of America, on the dynamics of our society and our individual freedoms.

The power assumed by a single figure, such as even Mark Zuckerberg, is inversely proportional to what is destined to every other single individuality, and how much these enlightened characters are actually interested only in economic gain and how much, instead, each of their choices, without resorting to reptilians and David Icke's conspiracy theories, goes in the direction of implementing a broader plan in the medium-long term and that proposes the creation of their ideological model. How much can it actually be the latter, as even natural in the vision of a single human being (after all, each of us has our own vision of the world and, it is assumed, in our actions aims to achieve it), different at this point - without wanting to force comparisons - from what could have been the intentions of Adolf Hitler or any other 'visionary' head of state or dictator of the past in terms both of gaining power and purely ideological. It is clear that the line between the two situations represented is very thin, perhaps even too much, while the answers and means at our disposal to respond to something of this kind are apparently increasingly less and something that in the larger geopolitical context appears to be residual. Practically useless.