This 7-Year-Old Sci-fi Movie Deserved Better (And at Least a Sequel)

Every day, humanity and technology become further intertwined. Just the way we require various mechanical gizmos (including the device you’re reading this piece on right now) to navigate any job in the modern world reflects our dependency on technology. Automation overtaking certain jobs once occupied by humans, meanwhile, also reflects the ominous and towering role technology plays in 2020s America. There’s no escaping this reality, and our art shouldn’t evade that inevitability either. After all, art is how humans cope with the unthinkable.

Before he became a go-to director for modern Universal Monsters movies like Wolf Man, writer/director Leigh Whannell explored this concept in his one directorial effort that wasn’t based on pre-existing material. Man and machine collided in Whannell’s 2018 feature Upgrade, which proved to be an excitingly gnarly piece of action cinema. What a shame it didn’t get a high-profile release in 2018 nor did it get its fullest potential explored further in a sequel.

What is Upgrade?

Set in the year 2046, Upgrade chronicles Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green), whose life is thrown into chaos when events stemming from a self-driving car crashing leave his wife dead and Trace paralyzed. The high-tech company Cobalt offers Trace a chip named STEM that takes control of a person’s movements. With this technology allowing him to walk again, Grey begins seeking out the men who killed his wife and allows STEM to turn his body into a killing machine. Turns out, with this mechanism controlling him, Grey can basically become John Wick.

Shot in early 2017, Upgrade was largely financed by Blumhouse Productions, which worked with Whannell on the Insidious movies. Though Blumhouse has a long-term distribution agreement with Universal Pictures, this major studio declined to theatrically release Upgrade. This led to Blumhouse releasing the feature itself through its scrappy Blumhouse Tilt division, which inherently limited the amount of theaters (1,457) it could play on. The film did a solid $16.97 million worldwide on a $3 million budget, but it could’ve gone even higher (and scored an even greater fanbase) with a more pronounced theatrical push.

Those technical behind-the-scenes details, though, are far less important than the qualities that make Upgrade a lot of fun to watch. There are tremendously fun and creative fight scenes scattered throughout the feature. Even better, they’re well-shot by Whannell and his team. Those skirmishes punctuate a world littered with dark humor that gently balances being amusing but not self-satirical. This is one movie clearly channeling Paul Verhoeven’s work in realizing the grim comedic potential of just showcasing an inevitable technological dystopia.

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What Happened to Upgrade’s Franchise Plans?

A few months after Whannell expressed excitement over the idea of further exploring Upgrade’s world, a TV show sequel was announced in May 2020. This production promised to turn Upgrade into a full-fledged franchise and dig into the nitty-gritty details of its universe through multiple hours of televised storytelling. This prospect sure sounded exciting, especially since Upgrade’s universe was fertile enough to support narratives beyond just Grey Trace’s plight.

However, this TV show never materialized. In hindsight, Upgrade’s TV sequel was announced in the heyday of small-screen programming from 2017 to 2022. This was when every network/streamer and production company was announcing a deluge of fresh TV shows to keep up with Netflix’s output and the creation of streamers like Peacock and Apple TV+. In this era, so many TV show extensions of various movies (like Fast Color and Waterworld) were announced, only for the productions to never actually get made. Upgrade turned out to be one such project. Now that everyone in television is tightening their belts, it’s doubtful an Upgrade TV show is a priority for anyone.

That’s a shame given that Upgrade’s universe totally could’ve sustained more stories, whether in movie or TV show form. This planned small-screen expansion is just another way Upgrade has been unfortunately suppressed in the years since its theatrical debut. Still, that does make the discovery of Upgrade’s many (and increasingly relevant) charms especially juicy for those who stumble upon it. Plus, sagas about technology and humanity intersecting to disastrous results will never go out of style. So long as people share these kinds of stories, a delightfully gnarly action film like Upgrade will always be relevant, sequel or no sequel.

Upgrade is now streaming on Netflix.