A new intelligence is born in the second trailer for Transcendence

February 11th 2014, 8:41pm

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

We now have the second trailer for Wally Pfister's directorial debut, TRANSCENDENCE, featuring a ton of new footage that completely blows away the stuff we saw from the first trailer. There's a couple of reasons to be excited about TRANSCENDENCE, one being that it is one of those rare times that we see a big, original sci-fi flick come out of Hollywood—we've got to cherish that shit while we can, folks! The other is simply because this could mark the start of one hell of a career in the director's chair for Pfister, who is Christopher Nolan's longtime cinematographer. So far TRANSCENDENCE is looking pretty amazing, and it's nice to see Johnny Depp not covered from head to toe in makeup, so there's that!

The film follows Depp as a researcher who gets uploaded into the mainframe of his computer—in a near-future when A.I. is outpacing human intelligence. Here's the official synopsis:

Dr. Will Caster is the foremost researcher in the field of Artificial Intelligence, working to create a sentient machine that combines the collective intelligence of everything ever known with the full range of human emotions. His highly controversial experiments have made him famous, but they have also made him the prime target of anti-technology extremists who will do whatever it takes to stop him. However, in their attempt to destroy Will, they inadvertently become the catalyst for him to succeed—to be a participant in his own transcendence. For his wife Evelyn and friend Max, both fellow researchers, the question is not if they can… but if they should. Their worst fears are realized as Will's thirst for knowledge evolves into a seemingly omnipresent quest for power—to what end is unknown. The only thing that is becoming terrifyingly clear is there may be no way to stop him.

TRANSCENDENCE comes from a screenplay by Jack Paglen and stars Johnny Depp, Morgan Freeman, Kate Mara, Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany, and Cillian Murphy. It hits theaters on April 17, 2014.