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📓 Monday, January 19, 2026 — 8:47 p.m.
It’s 8:47 p.m. and I’m driving past The Forum after the movie.
I was supposed to watch The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers tonight. That was the plan. I bought the ticket online through my iPhone while doing my plastic bag/paper bag deliveries. I was ready for the epic. I was ready to finally do this in order: part two, then part three.
And instead…
I walked into the wrong movie.
Things like this always happen to me.
I’m still laughing because I didn’t plan to see the wrong film at all. I’ve been seeing posters for it and I remember thinking, “Yeah… that’s not for me.” But the schedule got mixed up, and I ended up watching Mercy in IMAX 3D by accident, starring Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson.
And honestly? It wasn’t great.
But it was fun.
It held me.
Like a digital arm hugging me and telling me it’ll be alright.
It’s a sci-fi thriller where artificial intelligence is literally judge and jury. The whole thing is basically a trial on a clock: evidence, screens, pressure. And it hit me in a weird way because I’ve been using AI lately as a tool for curiosity—questions about photography, art, film, and ideas I’m trying to understand. So sitting there watching a movie about AI deciding someone’s fate felt like a strange mirror I wasn’t expecting tonight.
The film says the AI is supposed to judge by evidence, not emotion. But as the story moves, the AI starts questioning itself based on what it’s shown. And it gets interesting because the AI starts to look… human. Confusion shows up on the face. Doubt shows up. Something that feels like a moral decision shows up.
I know AI doesn’t feel the way people feel. But if you give something a face, give it pauses, and let it respond like it’s thinking, your brain reads it as emotion. That’s the trick—and it worked. Rebecca Ferguson (Judge Maddox) did a good job carrying that. Chris Pratt (Detective Chris Raven) did too. For a movie where the lead is basically sitting in a chair for most of it, they still made me care. That’s not easy.
And yeah, some moments felt convenient—like the movie wanted to wrap itself up neatly. But for a January film? It was entertaining. It was simple. It moved fast. And even the “contained” nature of it—most of the action happening through screens—played surprisingly well in 3D.
What stuck with me most is the idea of power.
A system can be built to follow evidence and still destroy somebody’s life if the evidence is wrong. Even worse—if the evidence is planted. The movie basically says: giving something absolute authority doesn’t eliminate mistakes. It just makes the mistakes final.
So tonight didn’t go the way I planned, but I still showed up. I still went out. I still watched something in a theater instead of staying stuck in the same loop. That alone matters to me.
Wednesday, I’m going back to watch The Two Towers the right way. And if everything lines up, Friday I’ll finish the trilogy.
Not because I’m trying to prove something to anybody. Just because I want to be present in my own life.
Note to self: Sometimes the plan gets disrupted, but the win is still the win: I left the house, I stayed awake, I paid attention, and I came home with something to think about.
I keep thinking about how naturally humans humanize a voice. My mom will even thank AI like it’s a person because the voice feels present. The movie leaned into that same trick: give the AI a face, give it pauses, give it confusion—and your brain starts reading “emotion,” even if it’s really just evidence being recalculated.
That’s the tension: the technology might be cold, but the way we experience it is human.
Reader question: Do you think AI is like a version of humanity without emotion—and would that be a good thing or a dangerous one?
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