ROBOTS GOT GAME
Sep. 28th, 2009 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogSpeaking of robots, I’ve been to the movies again. And we actually have a theme this time: the near future!
Surrogates
In 2017, we will all stay at home and live our lives outside via lifelike robots controlled by virtual interfaces.
That’s the premise of this movie, where things start to go wrong after a surrogate is destroyed, killing the user by remote in the process. The film tries to make a commentary about people preferring artificial interaction to real people, but the premise itself is hard to get past – that realistic robots will somehow be so affordable within the next ten years that even low-income people will have them, and the 2% of people who don’t use them will secede from the US and live in sovereign machine-free zones.
Even if the movie was set in 2054 (as the original graphic novel is), there are plenty of inconsistencies and plot holes to derail the story. Either way, as imagined futures go, it’s not very convincing, even by Hollywood standards.
Gamer
In 2034, video games will feature live human avatars fitted with mind-control technology that allows gamers to control them.
That’s the premise of THIS movie from Neveldine/Taylor, the guys who brought you Crank. And it’s slightly more plausible in that the avatars are either volunteers (in the case of “Society”, which mimics Second Life via the cheesiest MTV videos you can think of) or death-row inmates (in the case of “Slayers”, a first-person shooter MMORPG). The actual technology to make this work is bonkers, but then Neveldine/Taylor have never really cared about technical accuracy about ... well, pretty much everything.
Anyway, the story is basically a mashup of The Running Man, Rollerball and Johnny Mnemonic with a video-game twist, with the hero of Slayers trying to fight his way to freedom from the game – which in turn threatens the IT CEO that invented the technology. Not that original, and the characters are pretty one-dimensional. And while I wouldn’t say replacing Gerard Butler with Jason Statham would have improved things, it wouldn’t have hurt.
On the bright side, the action is well done, and at least it’s a film with something to say, even if it isn’t always said that articulately. As B-level dystopian satires go, you could do worse (see above).
Games people play,
This is dF
Surrogates
In 2017, we will all stay at home and live our lives outside via lifelike robots controlled by virtual interfaces.
That’s the premise of this movie, where things start to go wrong after a surrogate is destroyed, killing the user by remote in the process. The film tries to make a commentary about people preferring artificial interaction to real people, but the premise itself is hard to get past – that realistic robots will somehow be so affordable within the next ten years that even low-income people will have them, and the 2% of people who don’t use them will secede from the US and live in sovereign machine-free zones.
Even if the movie was set in 2054 (as the original graphic novel is), there are plenty of inconsistencies and plot holes to derail the story. Either way, as imagined futures go, it’s not very convincing, even by Hollywood standards.
Gamer
In 2034, video games will feature live human avatars fitted with mind-control technology that allows gamers to control them.
That’s the premise of THIS movie from Neveldine/Taylor, the guys who brought you Crank. And it’s slightly more plausible in that the avatars are either volunteers (in the case of “Society”, which mimics Second Life via the cheesiest MTV videos you can think of) or death-row inmates (in the case of “Slayers”, a first-person shooter MMORPG). The actual technology to make this work is bonkers, but then Neveldine/Taylor have never really cared about technical accuracy about ... well, pretty much everything.
Anyway, the story is basically a mashup of The Running Man, Rollerball and Johnny Mnemonic with a video-game twist, with the hero of Slayers trying to fight his way to freedom from the game – which in turn threatens the IT CEO that invented the technology. Not that original, and the characters are pretty one-dimensional. And while I wouldn’t say replacing Gerard Butler with Jason Statham would have improved things, it wouldn’t have hurt.
On the bright side, the action is well done, and at least it’s a film with something to say, even if it isn’t always said that articulately. As B-level dystopian satires go, you could do worse (see above).
Games people play,
This is dF
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2009-09-28 05:08 pm (UTC)film makers always overlook that one. sooo important!
I am a sci fi snoot and as such, an incomplete picture of their vision of the future would bug the effing hell out of me. That is what makes the movie sci fi.
sci fi filmmakers(the great ones) understand that the meat and potatoes of a great sci fi movie is NOT in the plot, it's in the world you inject the plot into. film maker that do not grasp the genre just figure if the add a couple of space ships, some aliens, or time machine, that the movie is sci fi. it's backwards thinking.
recently i watched Serenity. it got pretty good reviews by geeks, so i figured 'what the hell'. i was soooo disappointed. not by the plot, the plot was, eh, ok, but their image of the future seemed so incomplete and unpolished. it was missing an ideology and a culture. there was no established moral framework/context that made you care about the characters.
i am guessing that that is the case with surrogates.
Serenity
on 2009-09-29 03:55 am (UTC)My apologies ahead of time if you do all of this and it still sucks. :)
(if you become a Firefly geek, let me know :) )
Re: Serenity
on 2009-09-29 05:32 am (UTC)i had no idea it was based on a tv show. that makes more sense. i really wanted to like it, but i couldn't get into it because i felt like i was thrown into the middle of something.
i guess my experience would be a little like if someone watched Star Trek the motion picture, without never viewing the actual show... hard to grasp what is going on, and who everyone is.
i'll have to netflix firefly. we'll see how it goes. : )