2050 is a film about a married video game designer named Michael Green(Dean Cain) who is having marital issues with his wife, Brooke Green. Upon discovering that his brother-in-law made a customizable sexbot Green goes to the factory to get his own perfect mate made. 2050 asks the question, ” What is intimacy, love, and romance in the posthuman world?”
Michael Green becomes lonely when his wife Brooke Green, stops being intimate with him. Brooke Green is having an affair and when she is at home is not being intimate with her husband. Michael and Brooke’s interactions are mechanical and they are going through the motions. When Michael realizes that his brother-in-law has a sexbot, he tells his brother-in-law that he will not tell his wife if he takes him to the company that makes them. At the factory that makes the sex bots, Michael Green creates his sexbot Sophia. Michael keeps his sexbot Sophia a secret from his wife and continues to see her until his wife finds out about it.
After finding out about Sophia, Brooke ends her affair and she confronts Michael about Sophia and the future of their relationship. The movie fades to black as they agree to stay with each other on the condition that Brooke could make her own sexbot. During this scene, Michael finally confronts his wife about her affair and tells her how insecure and how bad she made him feel and Brooke dismisses him. Michael proposes using the sexbots as a means to help their relationship by making them do all the things that they do not want to do.
The villain in the story is not the cheater or the sexbot but human nature. This is made clear in the discourse with the Factory CEO and how Michale choice is different from his brother-in-law’s. His brother-in-law ultimately sold the robot after realizing how empty it made him feel. His perfect girl could not push him to the next level because she was designed to be the perfect companion but did not experience human emotion.
The sexbots in the movie could not experience pleasure or understand the intense pleasure an individual gets from making others feel pleasure or happiness. The emptiness of having a companion who could never love him or feel pleasure grew frustrating and he sold his sexbot off. A machine could never feel pleasure, happiness, or intimacy. At the same time, David is trying to use the illusion of intimacy that is the sexbot to save his marriage.
The most tragic part of the movie is that Michael never grows. Michael’s wife cheated on him, and he never confronts until she confronts him about cheating on her with a robot. By the time they have the conversation in the car, she had been cheating on him for a long time and only recently broke it off. Brooke’s not sorry for her behavior just made that he cheated on her with a robot.
When Brooke asks why he never said anything, he responds that he did not want to hurt her like she hurt him. Even after everything, he still loves her and is putting her emotions and needs first. This is the very reason that she likely fell out of love with him because he does not respect himself. Michael never goes through an arc where he becomes more confident, more empowered, and more secure in himself and his needs.
At the end of the movie, he still clings to his marriage at all costs. Michael thinks that the sexbots will save their marriage because they can fulfill the unfilled needs that they have, but you cannot fix an internal problem with an external object. The problem is not one of sexual fulfillment. It is that Michael and Brooke do not love each other. Somewhere along the line, they fell out of love and grew apart. They started to look to other people and machines for the intimacy and love they were missing in each other. The fact that Michael’s conclusion is that people should not be ashamed of their wants and needs. That if they need someone or something else to fulfill them, that is okay.
The film is like a dark commentary on our society, and we could replace sex robots with social media and emergent AI. The most terrifying part of this movie is that we are living on the verge of these types of conversations happening. We are living in an age where we are more connected than ever before and just as isolated. The creation of AI friends and girlfriends is the precursor to the creation of the sexbot companions the movie describes. People are desperate for companionship and intimacy in our age but are looking for them in all the wrong places.
