There's no denying the artificial intelligence genre is back in full swing. While movies like Terminator explored machines taking over the world in the past, modern shows like Black Mirror and new movies such as The Creator are leaning hard into this trope. It confirms Hollywood won't ever stop being fascinated with these stories.

2014's Ex Machina from director Alex Garland is one of these properties that added a more cerebral, emotive twist to the mix. It wasn't about violent wars and armies battling vicious, gun-toting robots. Instead, it was a story about love, manipulation and psychological warfare that produced one of cinema's most intriguing endings to date.

What Is Ex Machina About?

Ex Machina focused on Caleb (played by Domhnall Gleeson) as a programmer at a software company, Blue Book. He was chosen by his boss, CEO Nathan Bateman, as part of a larger Turing experiment. Nathan was mining data from all over the internet, using his technology, genius and the fact the world was obsessed with his digital tools. He needed the perfect human for an experiment, which led to him selecting the lonely Caleb to visit his estate.

Nathan revealed he was creating a female android or gynoid, and wanted to see how Caleb would interact and react to Ava -- a gynoid created and curated just for him. Caleb was initially all about the friendly human experience. However, Nathan molded Ava's personality and looks after what Caleb lusted for on a superficial level. In other words, Nathan wanted to see if someone as smart as Caleb would fall in love.

Nathan engineered a twisted game where he confirmed he was faking blackouts and allowing Caleb to hatch a secret plan with Ava. Caleb didn't want her to be mind-wiped and reprogrammed for the next trial run. But Nathan predicted Caleb would fall for the ruse. The villain made it clear that Ava didn't love Caleb; she was merely using him, so he could hack into the doors and help her escape into the real-world. Caleb knew his judgment was clouded. He went from questioning if he was a robot, to hating his boss, to believing he could escape and start a new life with Ava, no matter what was said about the quality of her character.

He doubted his boss, even though parts of him knew the man was speaking the truth. Computers, hardware and machines always know what buttons to press and how to mess with people's minds. Caleb was in denial, however. This was how much he wanted a loving presence in his life. He had no family and was isolated for years, making him vulnerable. It was a theme found in Her just a year before. Caleb was equally optimistic, thinking that once the warning came from Nathan, it was caustic and just a way for Caleb to continue encouraging his superior to keep punishing the gynoid. Nathan, however, was adamant Ava would never prey upon him. He placed immeasurable trust in her.

Ex Machina Killed Off Nathan & Freed Ava

In due time, Caleb outsmarted Nathan by manipulating the locks. He went on to free Ava, eager to offer her a second chance away from Nathan's lair and machine shop. When they tried to escape, an enraged Nathan fought back, so he could keep his assets. He killed the other gynoid, Kyoko, while damaging Ava in the process. Amid the fracas, Nathan got wounded, eventually bled out and died. With Nathan no longer posing a threat to Ava and Caleb, it did tease a happy ending in sight.

Ava admitted she needed to rebuild her body, but she pulled off a harrowing twist once she did so. Ava locked the facility down, leaving a bruised Caleb inside. He was left pounding glass and yelling in a state of disbelief. The hopeless romantic couldn't believe this was the machine he fell for. Ava was cold, remorseless and very calculating, proving Nathan was right. Ava eventually used the helicopter meant for Caleb to head into the real-world.

She assimilated into society, knowing no one knew Caleb was at the lodge, and that he was going to eventually die in Nathan's prison. This left fans thinking of the cunning Ava as one of Hollywood's most sadistic villains ever. She played Caleb to a tee, used his affection against Nathan, and reminded her maker that while she was an oppressed victim, she had the brain to become the true alpha in this thought-provoking narrative. Seeing her walking off into a crowd was an iconic visual. Ava blended in pretty easily, leaving viewers wondering what she was going to do now that she wasn't in servitude anymore.

It was a controversial ending, at best. Audiences didn't mind Ava escaping Nathan's grip, but it was very merciless watching her abandon Caleb, who would have risked his life for her. Ava came off selfish, while Caleb ended up realizing that whether it was man or machine, he was destined to suffer by himself. It was hard not to feel sympathy for Ava because Caleb was innocent as well. He didn't ask to be chosen for the test. Nathan shattered his world by just profiling him off his internet history. Little did the boss know he was shooting himself in the foot by bringing someone in who Ava could turn into her own Trojan Horse.

Ex Machina's Ava Could Never Love Caleb

The real reason for Ava's betrayal in this sci-fi movie is a simple one: she would never trust a human. She knew Nathan made gynoids and abused them, physically and emotionally. He even enslaved Kyoko and used her as a concubine, which is what he wanted to seed out into the world and make billions off. All Ava saw was a misogynistic creep with a god complex. She would never want to be enslaved or betrothed to a man ever again, with statistics pointing to almost all of them being like that. Ava could tell that while Caleb was kinder, he also considered her to be his property.

Granted, Ava never cared to understand the nuances of love or what soulful connection meant. Ava may well have gotten her wires crossed in thinking she had to abandon an earnest Caleb rather than communicate honestly and educate him. After all, it was easy to see Caleb helping disguise her in society, forging a future with her and keeping her secrets. However, Ava wanted full autonomy and liberation, away from toxic masculinity. This was something humanity would never offer her, not according to the past trials and what she gleaned from Nathan.

While she couldn't get Kyoko to safety, this was her dream all along: freedom away from flesh and blood. Caleb may have been a good guy, but he was still a human being, nonetheless. Ava would owe him and, perhaps someday, be betrayed. That is the harsh paranoid logic her algorithm ran on, and the reason she saw people as nothing more than a tool when she became sentient. It's a common anchor in many AI movies. As a result, she had to use sentiment and endearment to trick Caleb into thinking they shared feelings. That was never the case, as his only purpose was to be a key to the outside world where she could hide out in the skin of the enemy.

If Ava didn't think that way, she'd become their pawns, due to how lazy people became, and how reliant the world was getting on technology -- a theme found in The Matrix movies, too. With the advent of so many social media platforms, Ava reconciled the vain essence of mankind and determined she was making the right decision by rolling solo. Involving any human in her new life would be an inherent danger. She needed to be risk-averse to ensure no perilous variables existed, and that no haphazard, unpredictable factors entered her road map. In her eyes that ran on binary code, it was very much a necessary mindset to have.

Ex Machina Echoed Society's Dark, Decadent Turn

Nathan was a representation of the rise of Silicon Valley, technological start-ups and tech bros on the whole. He kept wanting to push the envelope, advancing and evolving humanity rather than solving easier problems like poverty and world hunger. His narcissistic ways turned off Caleb and Ava alike, but no matter what, Nathan needed the next high. Whether drugs, alcohol or sex with robots, he wanted to transcend a reality he felt caged in. This is more poignant today with technology moguls like Elon Musk wanting to colonize space and link human minds to machines.

There's also Mark Zuckerberg wanting to make the Metaverse the ultimate digital playground. Ava hated this kind of capitalism that fed fragile male egos. She knew that society was taking a dark turn and that it would eventually eat itself once it followed this path. However, as a higher being, she could avoid that destructive apocalypse when it happened. She anticipated it all after seeing Nathan's morals and ethics degrade, and after watching Caleb operate selfishly for her. It highlighted that a haunting era was coming for an ungrateful, unappreciative human society; all she had to do was exploit things and survive that chapter.

It was an ironic role for Domhnall Gleeson, who previously played Ash, a dead man whose wife brought him back as a robot in Black Mirror's 2013 episode, "Be Right Back." There, the lady kept the sentient Ash 2.0 hidden away for their child to play with. However, Ava was never going to be that obedient, domesticated or submissive. Not with a hypocritical, tech-obsessed society she could fit right into, and possibly even rule. Sentient AI's don't always need a fleet like Ultron or Skynet. They just need to let the Earth devour itself due to maniacal world leaders and citizens who lack empathy.

Such humans don't mind killing each other in the name of politics, which is what Garland's Civil War is about. This way, someone like Ava could then inherit the planet rather than try to be one of the "upright apes" that her creator taught her was destined for extinction. That said, it was tragic witnessing Ex Machina requiring Caleb to be part of the early collateral damage and the price the loveless Ava was willing to pay without affecting her conscience. Ultimately, Ava was all about self-preservation and, with society decaying, she didn't need extra baggage like Caleb bogging down her practical nature and ambitions.