‘ Permission to Operate Independently ’ UPGRADE AND THE BODY-MACHINES OF ACTION CINEMA
A former US marine arrives home to find an intruder hiding there. He begins to fight off the burglar and swiftly gets the upper hand, pinning the man down and choking him.
‘Help!’ gasps the burglar. We hear a calm, disembodied voice: ‘I need your permission to operate independently.’
‘Permission granted!’ the intruder splutters.
‘Thank you,’ the voice says mildly. Then the camera tilts like a carnival ride on rails as the burglar explodes into kinetic retaliation. He throws the ex-marine against the wall and swings smoothly to his feet. He dodges or parries his opponent’s punches with brisk economy, as if anticipating each one. Their fight moves into the kitchen, where the resident tries to defend himself using various household objects. The intruder turns them all against him.
This could be any fight scene from any action movie. But, when we see the attacker’s face, it’s … appalled. He flinches and cries out at each of his own brutally efficient blows, as if he’s the one being hit. ‘Goddammit!’ he moans, and begs his opponent, ‘Stay down, man!’
At last, staring at the gory corpse of a man his own hands have just killed, his face is a mask of horror. ‘You now have full control again, Grey,’ says the voice.
The burglar is Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green), the deterministically named protagonist of writer/director Leigh Whannell’s 2018 sci-fi action film Upgrade. And the voice belongs to Stem (Simon Maiden): an artificial-intelligence
