One of the trailers that played before Avengers: Age of Ultron this weekend was a psychological science fiction thriller starring Ryan Reynolds, Matthew Goode, and Ben Kingsley called Self/less. The trailer, which can be seen here, is intriguing, but may reveal too much of the plot for my liking. Kingsley plays a billionaire genius stricken with a terminal disease. He is contacted by a mad scientist type (Goode) who gives him the chance to transfer his consciousness into a younger body (Reynolds). This is cool for a while, until he learns that his old body wasn’t just some empty vessel. The old consciousness starts to creep back in, and he learns that this procedure has some nefarious drawbacks. Hopefully there is a little more nuance to the story than just the younger consciousness fighting back, because the concept of feeling your own consciousness being replaced by another could be a great dramatization of dealing with death. There are definitely some cool ideas here, and I would like to see how they are developed.
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Plot and Theme 