I’m going to spoil the hell out of this movie, but you’re probably not going to watch it anyway. So, don’t worry.
Upgrade tells the story of simple everyman Grey Trace (Tom Hardy’s body double) from the near SCARY future who just wants to restore old cars and listen to Skynyrd. Cars are now fully automated, police drones monitor from overhead, and houses are fully Jetsonized. With his wife in tow, he delivers a Firebird to an eccentric, reclusive tech genius weirdo (shocking) who shows them the FUTURE of technology: STEM. STEM is a computer chip that can control the human body, and also can connect to your Wi-Fi without needing your password.
On the way back from this encounter the Trace’s automatic car is taken over by an unseen force. No attempts to stop the car are successful, and it crashes in a homeless camp where some goons with guns built into their arms blasts the wife (killing her), and shoots Grey right in the neck. Grey wakes up a quadriplegic. Broken emotionally and physically, and after a suicide attempt, the tech weirdo waltzes into the hospital all Howard Hughes like and offers him a deal. If Grey can keep it on the down low, he’ll implant STEM onto his spine, and he’ll be able to walk again. Grey agrees, and can basically walk immediately after the surgery. Back at home he discovers that STEM can speak to him and offer advice, but can’t read his mind. If he says it out loud STEM can hear it, though. They become a comedy team, future Abbot and Costello. Grey is hellbent on revenge, and is tired of the police being so inept. STEM is more than happy to assist. Together they start tracking down the hired goons who killed his wife. STEM it turns out can do more than just help Grey move and give him advice. If Grey gives permission, STEM can fully control his body and do super human things. In the meantime, Grey has the perfect alibi. He still has to pretend to be paralyzed because STEM is not approved yet for medical use. The very smart police lady who was supposed to be helping find the killers knows something is up, but just can’t prove it.
What Grey didn’t count on was that the tech weirdo can track all of the movements, and he wants Grey to stop before his cover is blown. Grey tells him that he’s not going to let some nerd with a pet cloud (actually true) tell him what to do, and keeps on killin’. This leads to the tech weirdo shutting down STEM remotely at a very inopportune time, and sending a crew to retrieve Grey. While losing control of his limbs, STEM leads Grey to a hacker (eye roll) who can CTRL-SHIFT-ESC STEM and kill the processes that connect STEM to the servers. That way Grey can no longer be tracked or STEM shut down. The hacker is able to do this just before the other evil bad guys roll in to finish Grey off for good. Unfortunately, there was a Windows update that was taking forever, and STEM can’t get back online until it’s complete. (It’s been sitting at 42% for at least five minutes.) Luckily, STEM recovers just in time, and Grey is able to escape, but not before the evil bad guys kill the Geek Squad members who were dispatched to get him.
Grey is able to track down the main bad guy fairly easily, and before killing him through the power of believing in himself over stupid STEM, the bad guy reveals he was hired by….THE TECH WEIRDO. WHAT? Didn’t see that coming. Yes, it was all a ruse in order to have someone paralyzed needing STEM implanted on the hush hush. While all this is happening, the lady cop figures out that Grey is a dirty liar, and also shows up at the tech guy’s place. This is where it’s revealed that STEM actually runs the company, and that after that hacker incident he can now control Grey’s body even without his permission. He pretty much kills everyone, puts Grey’s mind in the happy place from Happy Gilmore, and goes off into the world to do….something.
So, my question is if STEM runs the company, why did it give the tech weirdo the ability to remotely turn it off? STEM’s plan to be able to control Grey’s body without permission almost fails because of this. Why did STEM even require needing to be hacked in the first place? Why didn’t STEM just have that code to begin with, and start from there? Also, if the tech weirdo was so scared of STEM why didn’t he just turn it off remotely at the first opportunity? Or since it was literally just a computer chip it could have been smashed at any time beforehand. STEM’s weird long con makes absolutely no sense. They literally could have picked any quadriplegic, and he could have taken control immediately.
Also, while STEM is in control Grey’s body can do superhuman things, and it’s able to do things like turn pain receptors off. This is all well and good, but there’s still limits to what the human body can withstand. Sure, STEM is compelling him to do things beyond his limits, but muscles still fatigue and tear, and bones still break. Also, it even gives Grey the ability to dodge things he can’t see, but that doesn’t make sense either. At best STEM could only see what Grey sees. Somehow he becomes the Terminator, except he should be much squishier.
This movie is basically an overlong bad episode of Black Mirror (So, most Black Mirror episodes. Fight me about it) It has many Black Mirror tropes. The near future can be SCARY. Computer chips are EVIL. It’s always computer chips on that show. Overall, if this movie was on TNT on a Sunday afternoon, and you were half-asleep I would say keep it on while you doze off. Oh, the fight scenes were pretty cool. For this I rate it:
