Asil

VIRTUAL CELLUOID

Recently it was put upon me to research some of the new films involving 
Virtual Reality in order to get the scoop on what was being projected out to 
the great unwashed masses. Always game to subject myself to something new and 
possibly awful I went tripping off to movies such as: Johnny Mnemnonic, 
Virtuosity, and The Net. I also included Disclosure which, although it did
not market itself as a computer movie, addresses computers and VR in a manner
that actually brings out some very basic issues. 

The movies themselves vary widely in their plots, talent and special effects 
and in fact deal with VR in different ways. Johnny Mnemnonic deals with
Keanu Reeves appropriately cast as a man who, having given up a chunk of
memory in order to smuggle computer data, is somewhat flat in character. 
(Albeit desperate to get it back.) The heroes are a sort of underground
guerrilla group called the "LoTechs." They represent more of the general 
society, which is being plagued by a lethal disease called "NAS" for which
there is no cure. The plot thickens... The special effects portrayed as shown 
through the VR headsets are pretty dazzling. 

The storyline in Virtuosity is pretty engaging. It harks back to a more 
traditional "good cop been wronged" kind of drama that is crossed with some hi-
tech smaltchz. Denzel Washington plays a cop in jail who is given a chance 
at freedom. His Task -- to find a serial killer that was invented on the 
computer but then taken out and grown into a person out of silicon. (!?)  
Artificial life gone awry, ok, sure we'll buy it. Unfortunately, racial 
overtones (complete with Rodney King scene) come into play and squelch some of 
the story. Anyway the special effects are oddly weak even though interesting 
and obviously this was a low ball affair, because even though it is supposedly 
in the 21st century the Ford Broncos look amazingly familiar. 

The Net is a story about a modern day hacker (Sandra Bullock) who loses her
identity over the computer and is given a new unflattering profile by the 
people out to get her. Although not VR as we might normally think of it, it 
definitely plays into that world by examining people whose entire existence 
revolve around cyberspace. 

Again set in modern day times, Disclosure is a movie about reversed sexual 
harassment.Michael Douglas vs. Demi Moore (Enough to frighten me) 
However, the setting is done in a Hi-Tech company that deals with Virtual 
Reality Software and throughout the movie there are subtle and not so subtle 
references to a new world where gender and race are no longer an issue. With 
this being a key component to any talk about the Internet, VR etc., it is one 
of the more progressive notes in all of these of films. 

Something these movies have in common is that they all require a serious 
stretch of the imagination, and even then they have a few holes. Sandra 
Bullock(not the homeliest girl around) living in the same town for four 
years and having absolutely no one able to identify her is barely plausible. I 
highly suspect that even the most devout hackers have to go out for air sometime, 
along with somehow acquiring a very well-paying job with a computer company 
across the States without ever meeting anyone in person. It might happen. In
Virtuosity we have a man who is grown out of some very intelligent silicon 
that reads computer-generated DNA. Not to mention the VR graphics in 
Disclosure are coming from another planet way ahead of ours. If there are 
Virtual Reality headsets out there with those kind of visuals I 
want to know where.

Even though the stories are different, there are some themes about VR and
the cyberworld that are a common thread in all of them. Virtual 
reality is still being shown as something more for the elite group and 
typically, though not always, an evil brother is lurking right in there over 
our shoulder. Call it the need for Hollywood drama, but VR is 
providing us with an excellent Hi-Tech turn of the century villain.

This is not totally unlike the American sci-fi movies out of the 
50s when people were just becoming aware of new technologies and the 
exploration of the then unknown outerspace. Now we have cyperspace and a 
seemingly infinite number of frightening possibilities for the future. Between 
a virtual world, artificial life, and intelligence, will computers be able to 
evolve into their own personas? It seems that there is a general fear of the 
loss of identity (Johnny Mnemnonic), no identity (The Net), or a new 
computer-generated identity which could take on its own ugly life 
(Virtuosity, the Net). All in all there are some predictions being made 
about our future which will be interesting to follow.