Turing Test

This was a fantastic edit. A bit of pixelation in some of the power outage scenes, but otherwise flawless. Excellent work.

Just finished watching this edit. My evaluation: flawless visual and audio editing, and no holes in the narrative or theme work (goodbye, God). Like watching an official, studio-released film. The video quality wasn’t perfect – darker scenes suffered from some slight artificating – but that’s just surface. Oscar Isaac dancing was fun, and the new footage didn’t disrupt the film’s pacing at all. The film’s original ending was too sentimental and too tidy. I found thecuddlyninja’s new ending to be far superior. A thought-provoking, entertaining film, and a great edit.

I really enjoyed Ex Machina when I first watched it. The thing that stood out to me most was the ending. I thought to myself man they should have ended this sooner. thecuddlyninja's edit deals with this exact issue. The new ending was good, my personal preference would have been when Eva steps out of the hallway and the door closes -> end credits. Still the spot where thecuddlyninja chose to end the edit is a vast improvement over the theatrical ending.

As far as the extended dance sequence. The original dance sequence was such an unexpected, funny and creepy scene. I had read an interview with Oscar Isaac about how there was much more to the dance than what was shown. thecuddlyninja flawlessly inserts the extended scene into his edit.

Removal of the God talk. I actually didn't mind this in the theatrical version. I understand thecuddlyninja's reasoning behind his choice though. The cuts were seamless to my eyes and ears.

Visual and Audio editing, as already mentioned, pretty damn good.

One gripe is the video quality. The picture looks a little soft (I'll have to check my DVD to see if this is inherent to the source material). Also some of the darker scenes, and the scenes that were red (i.e. the power failure scenes) the quality seemed to noticeably drop. Still overall the majority of the edit looked good.

Good job on this edit! This is a fine example of an edit where less is more.

This was a really solid edit and flowed well enough that I didn't notice any cuts or snips. The A/V and narrative are all top notch. The movie itself is still boring to me and not very entertaining but the editing was flawless and TheCuddlyNinja a masterful job

Great cut of a fantastic movie. The cuts are minor but judicious—as what Nathan has accomplished is already godlike, there's no need to make any blunt pronouncements about gods and Oppenheimer, and thecuddlyninja's removal of these bits goes a long way to smoothing out the narrative and tone.

The extended dance scene is fabulous and makes me wish everything included a disco sequence—biblical movies, World War II documentaries, lunch, funerals, you name it. Note that the audio noticeably takes on greater reverb as the extended scene kicks in.

*Schpoiler ahoy*

The new ending is perfect. Even though there are several points at which one could cut the movie and still end strongly (e.g., Ava walking into the woods, or right after she boards the helicopter, or heck, even the original ending), I find thecuddlyninja's solution emotionally powerful, cutting right after the elevator door closes and Caleb frantically calls after Ava. Part of the reason this new ending works so well is that the electronic score crescendos as she enters the elevator then fades rapidly into sonic emptiness, echoing Caleb's newfound despair.

The edit's picture generally looks great. An issue is the very noticeable judder in the last 12 minutes of the edit, extending even into the credits. I'm not sure how or why the glitch occurred, but it makes me hope for a revised, judder-less version of this most excellent edit.

Enjoyjoy: 10 artificial but almost human pelvic thrusts.

Addendum: thecuddlyninja released a second version with smoothed-out audio during the dance sequence and a judderless ending. the A/V quality and audio editing scores were upped from eight and nine respectively to reflect these changes.