Alex Garland thinks Oscar Isaac is a "supernatural" actor.
The British director helms the 35-year-old thespian in his latest movie Ex Machina, in which Oscar plays scientist Nathan, who creates a brand new type of artificial intelligence, Ava (Alicia Vikander). Domhnall Gleeson joins them as computer coder Caleb, while little known actress Sonoya Mizuno plays another android.
Talking about how he came to cast the film, Alex had no doubts about his final ensemble.
"It’s the third time I’ve worked with Domhnall; I know him very well, so that was easy peasy. The other two principles, of course there’s Sonoya as well, who plays Kyoko, I’d seen Alicia in A Royal Affair, a Danish film. I was very struck with her, it’s Mads Mikkelsen she’s acting against, an incredible, charismatic actor, really fantastic actor, but I just watched her," he gushed to HeyUGuys.
"Oscar, I’d seen him in lots of things. I’d seen him in Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies, he’s acting opposite [Leonardo] DiCaprio and he’s so effortless, I just thought he was incredible. He’s absolutely amazing, he’s like supernatural actor, he’s like Philip Seymour Hoffman, you just know immediately they’re good."
Throughout the feature, the concept of A.I. is explored as Nathan works on evaluating the human qualities of Ava. While it may seem Alex was portraying the idea that creating man-made life is morally wrong, he insists he was always looking at the larger picture.
"I’m on the side of Ava. The film is always actually on the side of this robot, who looks like a girl but is not actually a girl. It hasn’t got a gender. I was with her. I don’t feel alarmed by the idea of a new consciousness arriving," he explained. "Broadly speaking, we all do it, we’re all the product, we were all new consciousnesses created by two other people. There’s nothing intrinsically more alarming about a new consciousness in a machine as there is in a child from my point of view."
