Reviews

The whole medium/psychic aspect of this episode was really disappointing.

A perpetuation of afterlife beliefs, leaving people still dealing with their fear of death in the first way put forth to them, the simplest and easiest way. Rather than dealing with the fear of death in a realistic, evidence based way, it teaches one to focus on the invention of another life(an afterlife). Which implicitly devalues the one life all evidence shows is their only one. Anything that devalues one's perception of life like an afterlife belief is so sad and disturbing.

I was hoping that a more thoughtful analysis of life would be found in a show that addresses A.I.

This movie goes from good to absolutely horrible faster than any movie I have ever seen.

Tho the conclusions that the movie leads to should have probably been easily guessed early on in the movie based on a lecture Cage makes for his college class containing various inaccuracies and a setup for the conclusion that the movie will try to lead you to.

The lecture is regarding determinism and "random chance". He states that the world is either one way or the other and then goes on to attempt to define each.

1). He states that determinism means there is purpose, but this is incorrect because as far as we know only humans can ascribe purpose to things(like how we ascribe purpose to a glass for holding fluid). Just because there is a causal relationship between one thing and another does not mean that cause has a purpose. If you trip and fall, sure the thing you tripped on is part of the cause of your fall, but there was no purpose ascribed to what you tripped over. If you were to look at it beforehand, it had no reason for being there. It is in hindsight that we desire to find a reason, and attempt to understand by ascribing a purpose. The movie assumes an originally ascribed purpose, which is the primary flaw in the entire line of reasoning of the movie, and it is of course not addressed in the movie considering it is a religious movie in disguise.

2). He states that the alternative to determinism is random chance, and he even mentions "random mutations" as if to put evolution by natural selection as part of the opposing side of his previously declared dichotomy. This is again absolutely incorrect because evolution is deterministic, there is a causal relationship between the change in allele frequencies. If you accept determinism it is absolutely absurd to state that mutations in an organisms are actually random.

Keeping this incorrect idea of determinism in mind, the movie continue to conclude/assume an original purpose ascribing being(God) and goes through various religious symbolism(Sin, Angels, Heaven, Noah's Ark, Adam and Eve). And in the end concludes that they are fine with dieing because they are going to a better place(Heaven).

I really wish movies like this would not hide that they are religious until the end like this one. I prefer not to waste my time and I hope you will not either.