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Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Ex Machina draws on stories about artificial life, familiar robot films and older tales of confinement. Alex Garland has named some of those influences and reference points; a Bluebeard connection, by contrast, is a scholarly interpretation. These are useful ways to read the film, not a definitive list of Easter eggs Garland says he planted.
How to read the references
Garland has said that audiences bring their own meanings to stories, and he has described his emotional perspective on Ava as alongside her. So a resemblance or critical reading should not automatically be treated as authorial intent. The seven references below distinguish between traditions Garland acknowledged, films he expected viewers to recognize, and a later scholarly interpretation.
Seven references that illuminate Ex Machina
1. Frankenstein: the creator and the created
Garland places Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in the tradition of creation stories that informed the film’s cultural background. In an interview with The Daily Wildcat, he described these stories as “just in the fabric for us.” Ex Machina is not a direct adaptation of Shelley’s novel; the connection is the enduring question of what a maker owes the life they bring into being.
2. Pygmalion: the impulse to shape a woman
Garland has named Pygmalion alongside Frankenstein and Metropolis, and told Salon that the more direct influences included Frankenstein mixed with Pygmalion. The classical myth centers on a sculptor whose fashioned woman comes to life; George Bernard Shaw later reworked the story in his play. That lineage offers a way to think about a maker shaping a female-coded being—and about the social meanings of that choice—without assigning a simple mythic role to any one character. In the Salon conversation, the interviewer raised a Lolita parallel; Garland’s response instead identified Pygmalion and Frankenstein as influences.
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3. Metropolis: Maria and the designed robot
Garland said the filmmakers wanted Ava’s design to avoid immediately calling another movie to mind. He allowed a limited resemblance to Maria, the robot in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, but qualified it as “a little bit of Maria from Metropolis, but not much else.” That caveat matters: it makes the connection a modest visual echo, not a claim that Ava is modeled on Maria. Garland discussed the design and reference in WIRED.
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey: HAL as shared AI vocabulary
Garland expected cinema audiences to recognize HAL and 2001: A Space Odyssey, saying “you can be pretty sure people know something about HAL and 2001.” HAL is a familiar point of comparison for an AI story, but Garland’s comment identifies audience literacy, not evidence that Ava was built as a version of HAL. The distinction is useful: a film can invite comparison with an established screen tradition without reproducing one of its characters.
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5. Blade Runner: manufactured identity and personhood
Garland also cited Blade Runner and its replicants as reference points viewers might bring to a film about robots and AI. The comparison opens questions of manufactured identity and personhood: what makes a being count as human, and who gets to decide? It is best understood as part of the genre’s shared vocabulary, not as a character blueprint for Ava. Garland discussed both Blade Runner and 2001 in the same WIRED interview.
6. Kurtz in Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now: one strand of Nathan
Garland has named Colonel Kurtz from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as one ingredient in Nathan’s characterization. The story is also widely encountered through Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, a version WIRED notes may be more familiar to audiences. Garland’s account gives Nathan a Kurtz-like strand, not a one-to-one retelling: he also discussed corporate friendliness and self-destruction as elements of the character. The reference is discussed in WIRED.
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7. Bluebeard: a scholarly reading of rooms, access and control
A Gender Forum article reads the secluded facility, confinement, forbidden access and earlier female models through the Bluebeard tale. This is a critical interpretation, not a confirmed direct adaptation. It connects with Garland’s own description of the film as “a prison-break movie,” offered in a Reel Reactions interview. Garland rejected a femme-fatale framing as his own reading while acknowledging that viewers may interpret the story differently. The Bluebeard lens brings gender and control into focus, while leaving open what the film’s unresolved details mean.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What these references add to the film
Taken together, the references point to several different questions rather than a single hidden key. Frankenstein and Pygmalion foreground creation and designed femininity; Metropolis, 2001 and Blade Runner place Ava in a cinematic history of artificial beings; Kurtz helps illuminate one element of Nathan’s character; and Bluebeard offers a critical lens on confinement.
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Garland’s comments about AI also caution against treating humanlike behavior as proof of consciousness. In a separate interview, he framed the “post-Turing” question around whether a visible machine seems sentient, while warning that passing the conventional Turing Test does not demonstrate self-awareness. That distinction helps keep the film’s philosophical questions separate from the references that inform its storytelling.
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