His screenplay for28 Days Laterresulted in one of the most influential horror movies of the 2000s.
WithEx Machina,Alex Garland turns his hand to directing as well as writing.
What follows is a skilfully-wrought thriller about the nature of consciousness,technologyand human cruelty.
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Congratulations on the film.
I was really taken, first of all, by the intimacy of it, which I wasnt expecting.
Did you conceive it as a script that you would direct yourself?
I just wrote it.
I genuinely dont put much by this whole directing thing.
I get that its a big deal, but I really dont see it that way at all.
DOP, actors, producers, writers, and the director.
Theyre one of the people standing around discussing, How do we film it?
So I think directors…
I get it, theyre deified, but Ive never seen any sense in deifying anything.
This was just another film, and I was just trying to do the best job possible.
So you werent daunted by the prospect of directing?
I wasnt daunted at all.
There are always problems of one sort or another.
But really, just too much noise is made about the word director.
I find it misleading and implausible.
Youre not big on auteur theory, then.
No, Im not.
Im not saying auteurs dont exist.
Im happy for them to exist Im just saying Ive never had any direct experience of it.
Im not going to do or say anything that takes away from their work, because thats bullshit.
[Laughs]
Thats fair enough!
So can you talk a bit about where the germ of the film came from?
Was it the science fiction angle of the story, or the human nature side of it?
Well, it just came out of an interest in AI, really.
Which is before your time, Im sure.
Its really not, actually!
I grew up owning a ZX Spectrum.
[Laughs]
Okay, well.
It seems to be wanting to beat you at chess, but it doesnt want to beat you.
It doesnt want anything.
It doesnt actually know its playing chess, right?
Computers make you confront that kind of problem, and make you think about it.
Ive always been interested in that.
I dont mean AIs like on a phone or in a videogame, I mean sentient AI.
Its a very reasonable position to take I just dont personally agree with it.
Instinctively, I think there will be.
And also rationally, I think there will be.
We used to argue about that a lot over the years.
I stopped what I was doing, I wrote it down quickly and went back toDredd.
Then as soon asDreddwas finished, I got on with this one.
For me, there seem to be several strands to the story.
In the sense that when I grew up, computers were beige lumps of plastic.
Now theyre svelte, caressable things.
Was that a conscious part of it?
The way I used to phrase it is that were in a post iPhone world.
A particular emphasis is put on elegance.
When we dont see it these days in product design, were almost affronted by it.
Its cyclical, anyway.
People will probably be bringing out Acorn Electrons again or something, or whatever the fuck they were called.
you’re free to get cases for your phone that make it look like a Nintendo Entertainment System.
Yeah, the old NES control pad.
Or a Game And Watch.
Theres two concurrent things going on.
One is about AI consciousness, because any discussion about AI becomes about human consciousness very quickly.
The other is an argument, really.
Its partly an argument about the objectification of women in a particular way.
In this sense, its a literal objectification.
Evas not actually a woman.
Shes a machine that does not have a gender.
So the question is, why is she presented as a girl in her early 20s?
Its because we fetishise girls in their early 20s.
In a particular kind of way.
Sometimes you read about that being shunted onto the media: advertising does it, film does it.
Its passing the buck.
We all do it.
Men do it and women do it.
The reasons we do that are complicated, and I could make guesses as to why it is.
But what seems to be beyond debate is that it does actually happen.
And there are various tricks games being played within the film.
I saw [Ex Machina] late last year.
It was around the time the whole GamerGate thing was blowing up.
That they would become our toys.
Definitely not, but it seems inevitable that it would happen.
Its interesting all that.
It fucking obviously happens, right?
Theres also a thing you might say about videogames.
I play videogames, and its bloody obvious.
Whatever youre going to say, you cant pretend that its not the case.
Its just screamingly obvious.
And there are implications to that it just seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to observe that it exists.
Its not necessarily a bad thing; I was an adolescent male.
And actually theres a part of me that always will be.
Its a function of being what you are.
In some respects, I couldnt really tell what the argument was all about, sometimes.
I know there was a whole thing about ethics in game journalism.
Alright, whatever, yeah, fine.
But I used to think, what the fuck are people actually arguing about here?
Are we really having a discussion about whether that is the case or not?
I just didnt get it.
I found it baffling.
So much of our culture is based around male power fantasies.
Whether its films, games all sorts of media.
Its a dominant theme, so I think its important to question why that is.
Which I think your film does.
I think its important to question everything.
Pretty much everything is up for grabs, so question it.
Id say thats a reasonable position to have.
Yeah, never take anything at face value, I guess.
Male fantasies, power structures…
I guess.FIFAis a fantasy played out [in a game].
People like me arent going to get to play for England any time soon.
But now you’ve got the option to.Call Of Duty.All that stuff.
Yeah, clearly, thats something that is happening.
Its not like Im an expert.
But this is how it felt to me as a gamer.
And it was this sparky, inventive, strange world.
And playingManic MinerandJet Set Willybrought you into this dream, this kind of hallucination.
It was fucking amazing.
That got crushed for a while by triple-A titles, and I found that really, really boring.
I played them, and some of them I loved, but I found it restrictive.
I missed all that stuff.
I missed Jeff Minters games.
Id actually get my Atari Jaguar out and playTempest 2000or3000.
Yeah, I bought one!
I was one of the few.
And I loved that game.
Its in my top 10 of all time.
But now its back, isnt it?Gone Home.The Stanley Parable.
God, I love those games.
I mean, I dont just like them I absolutely love them.
Theres a game coming out,No Mans Sky I absolutely cannot wait for that.
It really looks incredible.
It feels like the games industry has gone, All that other stuff forget all of that.
I dont even really care about GamerGate stuff.
I dont give a fuck.
What Im interested in is that there are people out there.
I cant wait for anotherGone Home.I cant wait.
Those guys, whoever did it, more power to them.
Because you went from realistic novels, for want of a better term, into sci-fi.
I think Ive always written genre stuff, in a way.
In a way,28 Days Lateris really a horror movie.
But I really love science fiction, and Ive always loved it.
Its what it allows you to do.
you could explore big ideas.
And thats what I really love about it.
Alex Garland, thank you very much.
