 | |
| Nathan Bateman | |
| Aliases: | Nathan |
| Continuity: | Ex Machina |
| Notability: | Main character |
| Type: | Scientist; Business owner |
| Gender: | Male |
| Race: | Human |
| Status: | Deceased |
| Died: | 2014 |
| First: | Ex Machina |
| Actor: | Oscar Isaac |
Nathan Bateman is aka El Barbón a fictional scientist and business owner and the main antagonist from the 2014 science fiction film Ex Machina. He was played by actor Oscar Isaac.
Overview[]
Nathan Bateman was an uber-wealthy passive aggressive douche. He was also very sexy. To put it simply. He was a genius child prodigy who wrote his first revolutionary line of code when he was only thirteen-years-old. This paved the way for Nathan to create the technological mega-corporation Blue Book, which was similar in many ways to Google. Using the information that the world's most prestigious internet search engine had to offer, Nathan was able to collate this data into creating an artificial intelligence. The end-result of his work was a gynoid, which he named Ava.
Nathan put together a faux contest in which one of his Blue Book employees would win a contest to spend a week at his mountain retreat. The recipient of this honor was a 26-year-old computer coder named Caleb. However, Caleb was not randomly selected, nor was he selected because of his computer skills. After data mining all available information on Caleb, Nathan determined that he fit the profile for the work that he needed him to perform.
After having Caleb sign off on an extremely comprehensive non-disclosure agreement, he presented him his life's work - Ava. Ava was a robot whom Nathan believed represented a major step towards artificial intelligence. He wanted Caleb to perform a Turing test, to see whether Ava's actions and behavior could be determined as indistinguishable from a normal human.
Through the course of numerous analysis sessions, Ava came to realize that her own existence was in jeopardy depending upon the findings of the test. This was coupled with the fact that she was but another generation of such robots, whose "brain" would essentially be rebooted for the next upgrade, effectively killing her. Ava manipulated Caleb into helping her to escape from the underground compound.
Nathan learned about the plan and tried to stop them. He beat Caleb into submission and stormed off to confront Ava. Ava influenced another robot, Nathan's personal servant, Kyoko, into killing him. Ava stabbed him through the back while Kyoko stabbed him through the front. Nathan fell to the floor and died as the building was in lock-down.
Notes & Trivia[]
- The character of Nathan Bateman was created by director and screenwriter Alex Garland.
- Personality: Passive-aggressive. Control freak. Always wants to be the "cool buddy", but is unwilling to relinquish control of a situation, or engage the idea that he may not always be the smartest guy in the room.
- Habits: Liked to drink heavily, but compensated for getting drunk by intense early morning work-out sessions.