“I hope you see that I’m governed by different parameters than her assailants. That I’m a good mother. Have I ever done you harm?”
When an AI raises a child in a sealed bunker after an extinction event, the question isn't whether the machine can be trusted—it's whether the child has any other choice. Join us—Pete Wright and Andy Nelson—as we continue the Thinking Machines series with a conversation about "I Am Mother." Directed by Grant Sputore in his feature debut from a Black List screenplay he developed with writer Michael Lloyd Green, the film stars Clara Rugaard as Daughter and Hilary Swank as the mysterious Woman who arrives from the outside world, with Rose Byrne voicing Mother and Luke Hawker performing the physical role inside WetaFX's practical robot suit.
We dig into why Mother may be the most unsettling AI the series has given us precisely because she genuinely cares, what the trolley problem test sequences are really measuring, and how Clara Rugaard carries the whole film with a performance that left both of us wondering why she isn't in everything. We also get into WetaFX's practical suit work, the film's relationship to the genre vocabulary it borrows from—Blade Runner, The Matrix, James Cameron—and where I Am Mother lands in an arc that has covered AI enforcement, violation, transcendence, and escape. We have a great time talking about it, so check it out then tune in. The Next Reel—when the movie ends, our conversation begins!
🎬 Watch & Discover
🎥 Our Conversation on YouTube
🍿 Watch the Film: Amazon | Letterboxd 📽️ Trailer
If You Liked This Conversation, Try These from the Next Reel Family:
The Next Reel:
The Matrix (listener's choice series)
Thinking Machines series: All episodes
Million Dollar Baby (also starring Hilary Swank)
The Film Board: 
The Hunt (also starring Hilary Swank)
The Creator (another compelling AI story)
 
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