In the past decade, entertainment has become obsessed with the idea of artificial intelligence and what its existence might mean to humanity.
Although AI gets depicted as sometimes harmless, and occasionally benevolent, such as in the Joaquin Phoenix film Her, it is also often depicted as something we should fear, something that has every aspect of humans except for humanity itself.
In the upcoming sci-fi thriller Morgan, the title character seems to fall into the latter category: an AI designed to quickly learn and adapt, but which still doesn't yet have the capacity to understand what humanity is.
In a new trailer for the film, Morgan meets Kate Mara's character, who arrives at a top-secret institution to investigate this synthetic being. It seems that Morgan is almost too happy to meet Mara's character, perhaps to the point that bad things will soon start happening. The trailer describes how Morgan evolved as she became a walking and talking thing within a month and had self-sufficiency within six months.
"Therefore her capacity for intelligence is far greater than the average human being," Luke Scott told Entertainment Weekly. "But without giving too much away, we can develop a creature which has all of these physical attributes, but what about the emotion and what it means to be a human? That is something that cannot be implanted, it has to be learned."
Ridley Scott is Morgan's executive producer, with the film being the directorial debut of Scott's son, Luke. It's no wonder the trailer has a very Alien vibe.
Morgan also stars Paul Giametti and Toby Jones. The Witch's Anya Taylor-Joy takes on the role of the creepy and malevolent synthetic Morgan.
Here's the official description of the movie:
"A corporate troubleshooter (Kate Mara) is sent to a remote, top-secret location, where she is to investigate and evaluate a terrifying accident. She learns the event was triggered by a seemingly innocent 'human,' who presents a mystery of both infinite promise and incalculable danger."
It's likely the accident referred to is the result of something the AI did, and it's also probable that it'll do something worse as it reaches its adolescent years.
Morgan arrives in theaters on Sept. 2.
