DAC Episode 368 - Upgrade (2018)

a dead lion and a live dog

Upgrading. It’s all anyone’s talking about these days. Some people say you should upgrade, others say you should downgrade. The other day I heard someone make a convincing case that we should all degrade. How about that? People are wild these days, with all the talk about different styles of grading and the most appropriate prefix for the word. Someone came up to me the other day and said, “Mr. Destroyallculture, I like anterograde the best. I can’t help it”. And you know what? I respect someone who enjoys moving forward through time.

I prefer to leave it to the movies to tell me if I should upgrade or not. And let me tell you, Leigh Whannell’s 2018 cyberthriller Upgrade makes a pretty convincing case for not grading at all. Sure, it seems like a pretty good bet at first when you have full control of your body and a voice in your head helping you solve the mystery of your wife’s murder - hell, maybe you’re the protagonist in one of those revenge thrillers that have been so popular over the last decade - but soon you’re made to witness your own body perform a series of horrifically violent acts in the name of satisfying your desires. Maybe, you reflect, you haven’t been upgraded at all. Maybe you’ve been downgraded and consigned to a kind of obsolescence. Darn. Should have stuck to fixing vintage cars and looking like Tom Hardy.

Listen to Adam and Aidan discuss Upgrade below, or find us on your podmachine of choice.