Some movies reel you in with dazzling dialogue and plots;

Some movies turn you upside down and tie your brain in knots;

Some movies overwhelm you, leave you speechless in mid-sentence;

Then there are those none-of-the-abovers—like Transcendence.

We first heard about it last year; it was too good to be true.

The director was the guy who’d made the Dark Knight movies blue!

(We don’t mean Mr. Nolan, but instead a different Mister—

Nolan’s crack cinematographer, a guy named Wally Pfister)

On the surface, it had everything a sci-fi fan could ask,

from its highfalutin title to its all-star genre cast:

Cillian Murphy was in 28 Days Later and Inception,

And Cole Hauser was—well, he’ll just beat us up if he’s not mentioned.

Plus Johnny Depp! Computers! A dose of Morgan Freeman—

The greatest film Prez ever by unanimous agreement!

We try not to be such fanboys, but please get us our inhaler!

(Oh, and also, this excitement was before we’d seen a trailer.)

So the day it finally came out, we bought tix with trembling fingers,

Then we sat back and prepared ourselves for setpieces and zingers.

We watched it. We sat there. We looked around and said,

"Wait, it’s just about some asshole who gets sucked into the Web?"

That trope’s been put to bed, guys; have you never seen The Matrix?

How about Ghost in the Shell? The collected Phillip K.-Dicks?

We’ve been uploading our brains in fiction since the gene was spliced—

And your big idea was ripping off the girl from Poltergeist?

Look, the thing is, genre stories should be all about evolving,

Whether that means sentient ape revolts or simply puzzle-solving.

But a low-res rendered cyber-face is not Inception's equal—

If it was, we’d all be waiting for the fifth Lawnmower Man sequel.

Are we sounding like mere haters? Are we bottom-feeding trolls?

Are we ruining the prospect of Transcendence Oscar gold?

We’re just trying to put an end to myths of Man Versus Machine.

Now let’s find that laptop Depp is on—and wipe its hard drive clean.