Interview (Written): Alex Garland (“Ex Machina”)

A Creative Screenwriting interview with Alex Garland, nominated as co-writer for a 2016 Academy Award for Best Original screenplay for Ex Machina:

How did you describe Ava’s physicality on the page?

Let me find it on my phone…It says: “We see Ava, a robot girl. She’s an extraordinary piece of engineering, proportioned as a slender female in her 20s; limbs and torso a mixture of metal and plastic and carbon fiber. Her body structure is covered in a delicate mesh skin, the pattern of a honeycomb. It’s like a spider-web, almost invisible, unless side-lit. But the one part of her that’s not obviously an inorganic construct is her face, which is that of a girl.”

Oscar Isaac’s character Nathan also had a distinct appearance, with his shaved head and beard. Was his look patterned after anyone?

The only requirement I had for Nathan, in terms of the way he looked, was that he had to be physically intimidating, with an implicit violence to him. Because the second you say he’s the boss of the world’s biggest Internet search engine, it’s straightforward that he’s super-smart by definition. So he had to be threatening — not just intellectually, but in a physical, predatory way. And to be really reductive about it: he’s a dark alpha male type, against Caleb’s softer, more gentle beta male type.

Ava had a certain economy of speech, which makes sense because she’s a robot. But you also had to also suggest a potential burgeoning consciousness. And then there’s a third level, where she’s possibly employing trickery. Tell me about writing Ava’s dialogue, with these considerations.

She’s speaking on different levels — what she’s actually saying and what she actually means behind her eyes. But that’s actually true of all of the characters. They’re all doing exactly the same thing in that respect. But in a way, I didn’t write Ava as a machine. I wrote her as a person, and there was an innocence there. An ingénue type thing. At the same time, I had to suggest that her naiveté may or may not be an affectation. But I don’t think about characters in terms of the constructs you just stated. It’s more about how I feel about them. And I liked Ava, where I was suspicious about the two guys.

For the rest of the interview, go here.

You may download the script for Ex Machina here.