General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Her (2013 film)

Her is a 2013 American romantic science-fiction film written, directed, and produced by Spike Jonze, in which a lonely letter writer in near-future Los Angeles falls in love with an artificially intelligent computer operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson¹^•². It was Jonze's first solo screenwriting effort for a feature film¹.

Key fact	Detail
Written and directed by	Spike Jonze; produced by Megan Ellison, Jonze, and Vincent Landay¹
Principal cast	Joaquin Phoenix (Theodore), Amy Adams (Amy), Rooney Mara (Catherine), Olivia Wilde (Blind Date), Chris Pratt (Paul), Scarlett Johansson (voice of Samantha)¹
Release	World premiere as Closing Night of the 51st New York Film Festival, October 12, 2013; theatrical release December 18, 2013²^•³
Runtime and rating	119 minutes, rated R³
Production company	Annapurna Pictures; a Warner Bros. Pictures release³^•²
Key crew	Cinematography Hoyte van Hoytema; production design K.K. Barrett; costume design Casey Storm; music Arcade Fire¹^•⁴
Academy Awards	Won Best Original Screenplay; nominated for four more awards, including Best Picture and Production Design¹
Critical reception	94% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer⁵

Spoilers

Plot and premise

The film is set in Los Angeles in the near future, described by the Film Society of Lincoln Center as a place that "could be next year, or next month"². Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) is a lonely, recently separated man nursing a broken heart who makes his living writing touching, personal letters for other people²^•⁶.

He upgrades to OS1, a new artificially intelligent operating system produced by a company called Element Software. Its selling point is the ability to learn and mature through experience, growing more sophisticated with use, and its tagline is "It's not just an OS. It's a consciousness"⁷. The system names itself Samantha (voiced by Johansson) and is described as "several steps beyond Siri"²^•⁷. She reads his emails, edits his work, and reminds him of appointments, and the relationship deepens from friendship into love⁷. Meanwhile the film depicts a world in which every sensitive man in Los Angeles is dating his OS². Theodore's continuing entanglement with his ex-wife Catherine (Rooney Mara) and his friendship with Amy (Amy Adams) frame the relationship's complications¹^•⁸.

Development and casting

Jonze has said he had the film's initial idea about ten years before release, spurred by his "conversation" with a proto-artificial intelligence, and began thinking of it in deeper terms about five years later: "Had the idea just stopped at a guy having a relationship with an artificially intelligent program, I probably wouldn't have continued developing the story. I realized it could be a means for me to write about relationships, as complexly as I could pull off"⁹. A 2013 report stated he took inspiration from an encounter in the early 2000s in which he interacted with an "artificial-intelligence computer program" that seemed almost human for thirty seconds before he saw through its "tricks"³.

A late recasting. While the film was well into production, Jonze worried about timing: "In the middle of writing it, Siri came out, and we were like, 'Oh, that sucks, they stole our thunder!'"¹⁰. After wrapping shooting with British actress Samantha Morton in the starring voice role, Jonze decided she was not the right fit, and Johansson was brought on to voice Samantha; Morton is credited as an associate producer, and Jonze said her work profoundly influenced the film's final form¹¹^•¹². During production, Jonze also discouraged Phoenix and Morton from interacting in person³. Carey Mulligan was initially set to play Catherine but fell out due to scheduling conflicts and was replaced by Rooney Mara³.

The film builds on themes from Jonze's 2010 short film I'm Here¹.

Design and photography

Jonze and his longtime production designer K.K. Barrett aimed to portray near-future Los Angeles as a "utopian environment" with beautiful weather, comfortable living standards, and a world where "everything is easy and comfortable, accessible and warm, and yet there's still this loneliness and longing and need for connection"³^•⁹. Barrett considered Dubai, Hong Kong, and Beijing before selecting Shanghai's Pudong business district as inspiration, and production digitally melded the skylines of Los Angeles and Pudong into a single distinctive city³^•¹. Most principal photography took place in Los Angeles, including the Pacific Design Center and Santa Monica Pier, with two weeks of exterior shooting in Pudong³. Barrett deliberately kept the technology spare: the team rejected fancier device designs because gadgets that made audiences wonder how they worked would distract from the characters¹³.

Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, the Swiss-Dutch shooter of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, described the approach as "chasing the sun" to capture gentle light on the city, and said the film avoided stereotypically futuristic visual cues; the production even followed a "no blue" rule⁴. Much of the film holds Phoenix's face in extreme close-up, a choice van Hoytema attributed partly to necessity: with Samantha only a voice and Phoenix often alone on screen, the film had to rely on his expressions, and wider framings lost the intimacy⁴. He called the film "a period piece too. It's just a period that hasn't happened yet"⁴.

Music

The score is by the band Arcade Fire¹. Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who had collaborated with Jonze on Where the Wild Things Are (2009), co-wrote the ballad "The Moon Song" with Jonze for a scene in which Theodore and Samantha improvise a tune together; she wrote and recorded the ukulele song at her dining room table, citing the ukulele duet "Tonight You Belong to Me" from The Jerk as a reference⁹. The song was nominated for the Academy Award⁹.

Reception and interpretation

Rotten Tomatoes records a 94% Tomatometer score, with the critics consensus calling the film "sweet, soulful, and smart" and praising its "just-barely-sci-fi scenario"⁵. Roger Ebert's review called it "one of the most engaging and genuinely provocative movies" of its year, noting Samantha's data-processing speed and the film's painful honesty about Theodore's failed marriage⁸.

At the 86th Academy Awards, Jonze won Best Original Screenplay, and the film received four additional nominations, including Best Picture and Production Design¹.

Scholarly readings have been varied. A sociological study by Sascha Oswald and Holger Herma of Stiftung Universität Hildesheim treats the film as an anticipation of a near future in which romantic bonds between humans and artificial intelligence are possible, and asks how the film stages and authenticates romantic intimacy between a human and a machine¹⁴. A religious-studies essay by Jesse Barker of the University of Aberdeen finds Buddhist ideas in Samantha's character, an artificial consciousness that transcends ego-based thought¹⁵. A New Republic essay took the opposite view of the film's tone, arguing that beneath its generous portrayal of technology's emotional power lies "a horror story dissembling as a romance"⁷.

A 2024 retrospective in WIRED observed that ten years on, the film's world reads as a time capsule of an optimistic era, with AI itself the one part that no longer feels like fantasy¹⁶.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026