Although Alex Garland’s directorial debut has received a lot of acclaim for its intelligent take on issues of privacy, mass surveillance and artificial intelligence, it’s also been leveled with some soberingly harsh criticism for its depiction of women.

All the negative archetypes are there, from silent Asian sex toy in the form of Nathan’s assistant, Kyoko, to the virginal Mary figure, in Ava with her doe eyes and knit stockings. Later, we even get Ava the femme fatale, who only manages to escape her male captors through devious flirtation, as if that were the only way a woman can get what she wants.

In an interview with Salon, Garland chooses to view it differently: “In the end, what [Ava] does from my point of view, is that she is resourceful, not in terms of feminine duplicity but in terms of human interaction, and she gets out. When she gets out, I’m with her.”

But as we have seen, whether you’re “with her” when she gets out really depends on who you view as the central character of the film: Ava or Caleb. Although Garland’s with Ava, an audience who’s invested in Caleb as the young protagonist might still hold a grudge against the fembot for leaving him behind. Garland’s argument is perhaps not as convincing as it could be, maybe because he fails to acknowledge Hollywood’s troubled history with female robots, from its first iteration to its most recent.