Don't forget the Murder, She Wrote episode "A Virtual Murder" (from 1993):
Films about virtual reality
11–20 of 56 posts
Re: Films about virtual reality
#12Love this post. Adding a whole bunch of things to my watch list.
One thing I don't see mentioned is the TV mini series "Wild Palms". I remember watching that as it debuted on TV back in '93. Haven't seen it since though. I remember Kim Cattrall being in it and I remember VR being a big part of the plot.
In looking it up I had no idea that Ryuichi Sakamoto created the music for it.
Here's a trailer for it. It looks so bad now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJMPCGo42cE
Re: Films about virtual reality
#13> The big breakthrough work was The Lawnmower Man (1992), a conceptually absurd film where scientist Pierce Brosnan uses VR to somehow turn an intellectually handicapped gardener into a psychic genius. What made The Lawnmower Man a hit was the ground-breaking computer graphic effects used to depict the virtual environment. An even sillier work was the sequel Lawnmower Man II: Beyond Cyberspace/Lawnmower Man II: Jobe’…
Lawnmower Man is probably the strangest license ever. IIUC the story is licensed from Stephen King. That story has absolutely nothing to do with what happens in the movie. It's entirely about some person who morphs into a lawnmower. Has zero VR. There's a like 3 second VR scene in the movie of Jobe becoming a lawnmower but otherwise, zero connection. I guess the director or the producer just used it as an excuse to get funding then made whatever they wanted to make
Re: Films about virtual reality
#14And I just came back from the Berlinale, with another noteworthy addition to this genre: "Another End"
https://letterboxd.com/film/another-end/
Re: Films about virtual reality
#15The blog is pure gold
Re: Films about virtual reality
#16This post brings back memories about the Johnny Mnemonic "interactive action movie" game, back in the 90s!
Re: Films about virtual reality
#17> The big breakthrough work was The Lawnmower Man (1992), a conceptually absurd film where scientist Pierce Brosnan uses VR to somehow turn an intellectually handicapped gardener into a psychic genius. What made The Lawnmower Man a hit was the ground-breaking computer graphic effects used to depict the virtual environment. An even sillier work was the sequel Lawnmower Man II: Beyond Cyberspace/Lawnmower Man II: Jobe’…
I think the trigger for that is that 1992 was around the time of the first commercial VR headsets. They were hugely cumbersome and low res but they worked. I remember playing Dactyl Nightmare with my family circa 1991. It was probably in the mainstream press and some Hollywood executive got overly excited and decided to insert it into whatever project was on hand.
Re: Films about virtual reality
#18> The striking Japanese film Avalon (2001) had players gradually becoming aware that the environment they are inside is a videogame simulation. This film was made by Mamoru Oshii, director of Ghost in the Shell. It was the next film he did right after it. I loved this movie when came out. He filmed this movie in Poland and all the actors in it are Polish. Highly recommend it if you haven't seen it.
Probably not the most important anecdote, but IIRC his dog (Basset hound) also features in this film, like he did in Ghost in the Shell (inserted as Batou's dog I think). It seems he has a thing for adding it to every film.
EDIT: apparently the dog is called Gabriel.
Re: Films about virtual reality
#19Not VR, but I really enjoyed Devs : "The box contains us. The box contains everything. And inside the box, there's another box."
The Sora announcement had me recall Devs.
Re: Films about virtual reality
#20> The striking Japanese film Avalon (2001) had players gradually becoming aware that the environment they are inside is a videogame simulation. This film was made by Mamoru Oshii, director of Ghost in the Shell. It was the next film he did right after it. I loved this movie when came out. He filmed this movie in Poland and all the actors in it are Polish. Highly recommend it if you haven't seen it.
It's on Prime Video:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.93cb12a5...