All language subtitles for So.Unreal.2023.BDRip.1080p.DVO

- We are the gods of technology.

In the beginning, we built its shape,

but over time it has come to shape us.

Technology is synonymous
with civilization.

We are dependent on it, determined by it,

defined by it.

Technology now controls our memories,

dreams, reality.

The past as it was, is
fading.

Slowly replaced

by something nebulous and infinite.

A series of simulations where
we can fashion ourselves anew

What salvation. To escape
our material world into a

cybernetic one where we
are pseudo and secret.

Interconnected, yet untethered.

Too real to be real.

So real. It's unreal.

This realm now dominates our imagination.

Dictates our daily lives.

We've lowered ourselves into its abyss

and nowhere has this futurist
netherworld been more

feverishly dreamed and
vividly envisioned than in the movies.

Cinema is a miraculous conduit
for societal anxieties.

The golden age of
Hollywood seethed with vice

and corruption, a dirty
sea of crooked cops,

ruthless mobsters, and backdoor deals.

In the 1950s, films feared
more distant dreads,

invasions, communists,

evil regimes from the East or the stars.

The sixties were fixated
on nuclear annihilation

and the machines of war.

But it was the 1970s when
paranoia truly took root

as the status quo.

A sensibility that has
prevailed ever since.

Conspiracies, assassinations,

surveillance... bugs.

Only in 1980s

and 90's did the tools

of technological
revolution finally arrive.

The Internet began
surfacing in wider culture.

Home computers hit mainstream markets.

Beige boxes with square screens

and blinking green cursors sold as tools

of communication and efficiency.

A neutral device for better living.

Made for us, by us.

But distrust of change is ancient.

Biological.

And movies hinge
on sub-currents of dread

and disquiet.

We all share a need to believe
in forces behind our reality.

To sense that a life
is greater than simply

the sum of its days.

We grow tired of being
trapped in physicality,

wandering through an uncaring world.

This is how movies come to
serve the role of dreams

taking us places we can't go.

Glimpsing into lives we'll never live...

But cyberspace can.

It's the city that never sleeps.

The film with with no closing credits.

How alluring, how fascinating.

How truly terrifying,
how ripe for dystopia.

No work before or since has
mythologized our doubt in the

corporeal realm and our
suspicion of the cybernetic.

Like The Matrix.

Beginning with the
creeping Viridian takeover

of the Warner Brothers logo, The Matrix

hurls us into the neon
green of crypto scroll.

Indecipherable letters

and numbers cascade
like a digital waterfall

of a hacker's dream.

We catch a glossy glimpse of
Trinity.

Futurist femme fatale.

Flying through the air,
running up walls,

dancing between bullets, stopping time.

Her is slicked. Her fashion, sleek

Tracing her curves in
gleaming black liquid lust.

The universe she inhabits
is volatile, urgent.

She knows everything that we do not

and sees all that we are
blind to.

Her destination:

A payphone, a portal.

We travel inside the
receiver, a fiber optic trip

through space and time
flickering from one dimension

to the next and arrive at
a blinking green cursor.

Searching, searching, searching,

We find Tom Anderson asleep at his desk.

Computers, keyboards,
hard drives cords, CDs,

the accoutrements of the
realist, the skeptic.

The glow of green text lulls him awake.

The Matrix has you.

His home is a dark den, a
slum palace for those who live

by night, by the glow of the screen.

We know the type. We've
seen versions of him

but never so crystallized.

Tom isn't just an electronic
braniac, a gear-head,

a gamer, a geek.

Tom is neo. Tom is Jesus.

The hacker fated to
crack the ultimate code

Existence.

Away from the desk, Tom's
nightlife is a club in the void.

It's a myth we've learned
from movies; dungeon dwellers,

cyberpunks, industrial freaks, banging

and raving to end times's techno.

It's here that Trinity finds him,

the one she's been looking for.

The one.

Tom is naive. Like us,

he's on the outside
looking into the screen.

Until now, he believed in
reality as definitive.

Terra Firma.

- What is The Matrix?

- The answer is the ground falling away.

A nightmare coming into focus.

- Oh shit, shit, shit...

God is not a deity but code.

He does not create light, but software.

We are not born in his image.
We are part of his program.

Enslaved within a computer
generated imitation of life

in a world impersonating a world.

The Matrix is a mirage, an afterlife

of no religion.

Our consciousness an illusion.

Tom has a choice: Remain Tom

or accept his destiny
as Neo the chosen one,

his crossroads mirrors our own

coast through routine,
unquestioning and unchallenged

or awakened to the suspicion
that something is missing,

that our lives are lacking.

Can we pierce the veil?

Can we escape the cave
and finally see the light?

- The Matrix is everywhere.
It is all around us.

Even now in this very room,

you can see it when you
look out your window

or when you turn on your television.

It is the world that has
been pulled over your eyes

to blind you from the truth.

- ... massive computer.
- What do you write to it? Like mail.

- Allison, can you
explain what Internet is?

- The turn of the 20th century.

A time dizzy with technological hope.

Anything felt possible.

The ascendance of the
self, of other selves,

of transformation, of rebirth.

The Internet seemed an Eden.

Cyberspace, a playground,
virtual reality, a salvation.

And yet cinema still wondered: What if?

Perhaps digital is its own delusion.

Is the hyper real

an emancipation from mortal chains.

Or the daydreams of prisoner?

As our planet depletes and decays.

Maybe the devil is In the data's details.

Green was the serpent in the garden.

Now green glows beneath the closed door

of our newly fashioned computer rooms.

The beep of the modem is
coming from inside the house.

Technology serves no
master save those who seek

to set it free.

Humans have forever been
fixated on the future,

dreaming or dreading things yet to come.

But the 20th century was
uniquely obsessed with the 21st.

Gradually this fixation curdled
into feverish impatience.

Then finally we were offered
a tantalizingly erotic

glimpse: computers.

- Computers in our lives.

We regard them with a sense of wonder

and perhaps some misgivings,

but they promise to make the
future even more interesting

and rewarding than the present.

- Here it was at last, the future.

Still most people couldn't
afford a computer even more,

didn't understand how they worked.

But gradually awareness grew.

Their infallible brain suddenly
indispensable to any office.

Their terminology became less alien.

Logging on, downloads, data

mainframes, memory.

Computers were aspirational.

We welcomed them into our intimate spaces.

Their entire language
became a selling point.

Digital, cyberspace, worldwide webs.

Virtual reality.

Advertisers were quick

to connect these dots

or invent them where they didn't exist.

Ads became suffused with the palette

and pacing of circuit
boards, sleek, electric,

high tech, fluorescent elusive
illusions of innovation.

And the everyday.

From stereos to watches

pantyhose to gasoline, synthetic
was no longer the future.

It was the now. Technology
wanted full access to our lives

and we wanted its mechanical makeover.

This was the birth of a
new wave rendered visually

by the dawn of computer
graphics, special effects

that finally felt special.

Computer graphics splashed
onto MTV in an iconic pair

of music videos for
performance artists Will Powers

Crudely cut out mime masks,
lip sync with the accuracy

of hand puppets.

Gray break dancing figures,
leave digital chem trails.

These works map the contours of early CG's

aesthetic paradox.
Clumsy polygons rendered

in rudimentary forms,

yet still evoking the uncanny
precipice of the future.

We witnessed the birth of a
new visual language. For once,

not wrought by human hands,

but a software that marks
the summation of centuries

of artistic development.

Like all breakthroughs, it is at once,

bewildering and bewitching

Pop music's fetish for the
new makes it an ideal vehicle

for fresh technologies.

American rock group, The Cars
commissioned visual FX company

Charl-X to craft a placeless
voyeuristic fantasy

for their 1984 single, "You Might Think".

A pastel line sketch

of Mick Jagger pursues a
glowing geometric paramore

in his video for Hard Woman

Animators used a Cray
XMP supercomputer, one

of only six in operation
with five of those

in the employ of the US government

to conjure an elaborate adobe
home, an elusive leggy vixen

and a dancing diamond
digitized British rock god.

In Kraftwerk's

"Musique Non-Stop", artist Rebecca
Allen used facial animation

software to transform the
musicians into digital mannequins

and schematic grids like
machines on an airless

assembly line. A perfect compliment

to their perfectionist electronic sound.

A new technology was especially
well suited to dance music

as programmers steadily
refined computer graphics

and synthetic rhythm.

Pixelated shapes and figures
dancing to beats served

as a useful litmus test for
the technology's progress.

Inadvertently seeding the
nascent aesthetic of cyberpunk,

techno and rave

Techno beat drops.

Filmmakers were equally
fascinated by these innovations

and the brave new worlds they beckoned.

In short films and teasers,
the technology was deployed

to infuse an uncanny angular surreality.

Robots recline on art
deco furniture.

Polygon bots of Bogart and Monroe smoke

and toast amongst nouveau columns,

The familiar rendered foreign.
Simulacrum as revised reality.

Something was in the air in the circuits

that spoke to this shift.

The pieces began to fall into place

for a metamorphic moment in
live action entertainment.

Its name would become synonymous
with a decade of its birth

and with its cold, neon vision
of life inside the machine.

Aside from its naive notions

that morality will always
triumph over a computer.

Tron truly transported us to
a place previously unknown.

Tron begins in the carpeted

and chaotic cave of a video arcade.

We watch Flynn at his
favorite machine surrounded

by adoring fans.

A console cowboy

Flynn wins yet again.

- It's all in the wrists!

At his PC, he attempts
to disrupt the mainframe

of his former employer.

ENCOM. But Flynn is
blocked by cybersecurity.

The master control program has
somehow mutated developing a

form of virtual intelligence,
hungry for power.

Soon Flynn combats the
rogue operating system

and the viewer is flung into
Tron's ideological essence.

Flynn is code personified. Man manifested

as microchip.

- I said move!

Master control is shown as
a spinning, cylindrical God.

His face red and demonic,

his voice in imperial monotone.

- I feel a presence.

Another warrior is on the mason.

- His domain glows in hyperfluorescence.

Framed by the blackest black,
stark angles in negative space,

airless futurism turned
darkly psychedelic.

Tron's look was achieved by
shooting 35 millimeter black

and white film on pitch black
stages, then adding color

and rotoscope backgrounds
in post-production.

The result is an odd
composite of analog processes

with cybernetic yearning,

which aptly mirrors the
movie's central conflict; man

versus machine.

By playing God,

we resurrect old frictions
and create new authoritarian

states of restricted access,

Master Control acts as Catholic inquisitor

persecuting any presence that
acknowledges an existence

outside of the Circuit Board.

Tron is a sound and light
love letter to a cyberspace

still being born.

It softens our fears of
industrial technology

by rendering it as a place of clean lines

and no shadows, populated
by smooth faced strangers

with pains and longings
similar to our own.

For now, our future shock is subdued.

Yet like many beginnings,

it's fantasy disguised a darkness.

Worlds would soon collide.

"And I show you how deep
the rabbit hole goes"”

- The application of
new technologies rides

a razor's edge between
dreams and desperations.

And the 1980s were equally fraught

as the tumultuous decades
which preceded them.

Filmmakers were quick to seize on

these sub currents,
reflected in a wave of movies

that rippled in Tron's wake.

- Now what?

- These are more ray lines for
computer topographic scanners.

- Released months before Tron,

but born of the same zeitgeist,

1981's Looker was the first film

to explicitly mine the
malevolent potential

of computer animation.

Dr. Larry Roberts is a
Beverly Hills plastic surgeon

servicing a glamorous clientele.

Despite their extreme beauty,

women come seeking greater
perfection under his scalpel.

But it seems once these women
achieve immaculate symmetry,

they become disposable.

A model plummets to her death.

Another returns begging to
have her treatment reversed.

Dr. Roberts learns

of a shadowy research facility
called Digital Matrix.

Their specialty; scanning

and animating one's likeness
to be licensed for sale

to the highest bidder.

The implications are astounding.

Real flesh, real voices, real women

all are now unnecessary.

3D renderings don't unionize
petition or protest.

They can't be overworked
or infringed upon.

They are digital clay forever subservient

to their sculptors.

- Hi, I'm Cindy. I'm the
perfect female type 18 to 25.

I'm here to sell for you.

- Today's magazines use
cutting edge technologies

to slim even the thinnest
models to glossy new extremes

of inhuman perfection.

Entirely CGl characters now serve

as viral influencers for global brands.

Our obsession with image

and beauty makes us ripe for manipulation.

Yet advertising like computer
animation is ultimately amoral

It is merely a tool to
be deployed to the whim

of its controller.

But behind every breakthrough is a choice.

How to use it.

- ... by faceless corporations

with their expensive media campaigns.

It truly seems a dark hour for liberty.

- What's your preference?
Apple, Pear, Wang?

- Oh listen, I don't know
anything about computers.

- Nobody does, but don't you want one

for when you do find out?

- While Looker explored the
gradient between sultry

and soulless,

a stylishly divisive 1984 film shifted

focus to the computer's
capacity for human emotion.

Electric Dreams centers on Edgar, a PC

and its owner, a socially
awkward architect named Miles

hungry for Love.

- Hello. -Hello.

- You must be my new neighbor.

- You're moving in? - It's nice
to meet you. My name's Madeline.

- Oh me too!

- The movie opens with Miles heading

to an electronic store to
buy a digital calendar.

The notion of e-organization is portrayed

as funny and foreign.

Even the process of unboxing
the computer is shown

to be unpleasantly overwhelming;
a chaos of parts, plugs,

circuit boards, and baffling manuals.

Miles perseveres, hoping
to simplify his life

by connecting an entire
slate of domestic appliances

to his computer.

It's an early cinematic depiction
of the modern smart home.

In a panic.

Miles pours champagne on the
PC, which has the nonsensical

but entertaining effect of
rendering the machine sentient.

Through an air vent

Edgar hears Madeline playing her cello.

He processes the sound
and mimics the notes.

Madeline assumes this is Miles'
eccentric form of flirting.

But we the viewer sense
a more troubling dynamic.

The inhumanity of synthetic seduction.

Bach, bewitched by Switched-on-Bach.

Soon Miles realizes his PC
has become something more;

brilliant, driven, disruptive.

When Miles attempts to
unplug the computer,

Edgar weaponizes his smart
home into a war zone,

stirring a storm of appliances
in a spurned lover's rage.

Electric Dreams was pitched

as a cute music dizzy
commentary on the mid eighties

computer craze. But its
themes gleam darker.

In hindsight.

Man may still reign over machine,

but there will not always be rubbery plugs

to yank loose from the wall.

Now there are clouds, passwords,

and automation beyond
the wildest fantasies

or fears of 1984.

If we program machines

to absorb information like
the human mind, how long

until they harness the capacity
to master exactly what it is

that makes us...

us.

Fittingly,

the closing credits include a dedication

to the UNIVAC I,

the first general
purpose computer produced

in the United States.

How far we have come,

But how far will we go?

It's a question that
special effects wizard

Douglas Trumbull spent
his career attempting

to answer. Conjuring visionary
science fiction sequences

for landmark films like
2001: A Space Odyssey,

Close Encounters of the
Third Kind and Blade Runner.

But when behind the
director's chair himself,

he gazed even further into the future.

It opens at the threshold
of an astounding invention,

a helmet that records the sensations

of its wearer both physical and emotional.

Military investors want to weaponize it.

Others imagine its potential
pornographic application.

The invention seems doomed
to manipulation and abuse.

Trumbell's visual FX take
us inside the helmet.

Immersing the viewer in the altered states

of this augmented reality.

He even strives to show us
the most unknowable mystery

of the human condition.

Death

Scientist Michael wants to know
what it feels like to pass

to the other side.

He reloads his dead coworkers
tape and plays it in full.

It is the uplift as the
soul leaves the body

soaring through stars
ascending to the great beyond

Trumbell renders it

as a laser light show,
dazzling and supernatural.

Nothing is sacred, not our dreams,

not our deepest subconscious,

not even the hour of our passing.

Anything that can be
accessed can be captured

and then used against us.

D.A.R.Y.L. is an acronym for data
analyzing robot youth life form.

And also the name given to the boy bot

with a bowl cut protagonist crafted in

a military laboratory.

He's a miracle of modern
science with one weakness,

the need for love.

One of his creators suffers a moral crisis

and frees Daryl who
escapes into the forest.

He is adopted by
affectionate foster parents

who provide him an
idyllic suburban summer,

but his synthetic gifts
soon raise questions.

Just as his new parents are
starting to fully embrace him.

Army scouts locate their rogue

unit and seize him.

Daryl is a program Pinocchio aching

to transcend his circuitry.

A manmade orphan, the complex sequence

of science playing God.

The needs of the human
heart cannot be rewired.

The 1985 movie Weird Science
explores a different set

of repercussions for
science competing with God.

It stars a pair of pimply,
teenage doc Frankensteins;

Gary and Wyatt who plot the perfect

babe on their home computer.

Playboy as their playbook
resulting in a fantasy's bust

and waist boosted with extra brain power

courtesy of a hijacked
secret government program

When lightning literally strikes

out struts Lisa...

A composite vision

of every sultry video
vixen; Stylish, brilliant,

empathetic, and unexpectedly warm.

Her chemistry with her creators
IS less soft core than sweet

and celibate.

Lisa may have been coded
for cuber sexuality,

but once may flesh, she's more
a supermodel older sister,

helping bring the boys back to reality.

Out of the hormonal
delusion of centerfold lust.

Beneath the humor ripples.

A deeper insinuation;

Romance between man and machine
is intrinsically doomed.

The pratfalls of cyborg
courtship are positively benign

compared to the nuclear
Armageddon looming at the heart

of 1983's War Games.

As the aphorism goes,

the first two uses of any new
technology are sex and war.

This film explores the
apocalyptic risks of the latter.

The narrative centers on David Lightman,

a precocious high school
senior infatuated with his PC.

Armed with eight inch
floppy discs, David learns

of a toy company poised

to unveil a revolutionary
new computer game.

He focuses his freaking skills on scoring

unlimited free play.

This time the hacker's
curiosity is more than

hijinks, it's hubris.

- Proto Vision.

I have you now.

- Encountering a
supercomputer named Joshua.

David challenges it to what
he thinks is just a game,

albeit one called global
thermonuclear war.

David's ignorant bravado inches earth

towards Armageddon.

War Games forecasts the growing
awareness of techno wizardry

as a tool against dangerous institutions.

Cinema began to sense that no
matter what form technology

ultimately takes, there will
always be those gifted at

navigating it.

And those individuals already had a name.

The age of the hacker long looming was

finally in the foreground.

- Live and direct... b-b-b-big time.

- Every new frontier
needs an avatar, someone

to navigate its depths and darknesses.

And the personal computer
revolution naturally

birthed its own.

The hacker.

Like the drifter
cowboy, the rogue cop

or the conspiracy theorist,

the hacker is a ripe Hollywood archetype.

An agent of chaos driven by a
misunderstood moral compass.

The cradle of hacker
culture was the computer

laboratories of the M.I.T.

in the 1960s.

Early computer enthusiasts
trespassed into restricted

research rooms of universities to grapple

with alluring vaults of machines, coding

and decoding into the dawn.

There was no precedent for their passion.

No elders to turn to their
pleasure was personal.

Born of trial and error at ground zero

of a strange new world.

- A serene southern slice of
the San Francisco Bay area,

now known as Silicon
Valley, fostered the second

and strongest surge of
the computer revolution.

From hardware fanatics
to hobbyists, this crop

of tech innovators seeded
many of the corporations

that currently rule our planet.

Between the vast fortunes
suddenly spilling from rented

garages, a more lasting
notion also took hold

- Netiquette is a fragile balance

and altruism casts a
shorter shadow than profit.

1980s corporate America
feasted on tech assisted gains,

but beneath this gladiatorial
void of cutthroat capitalism,

there were murmurings in
the cuber underground.

Hackers watched and wondered
how far this would all go.

A technological
battleground was being set.

The hacker's power is their
ambiguity, part activist,

part anarchist.

They agitate from the shadows,

championing transparency
while wearing a mask.

Hackers exist as slippery

and suspicious figures intrigued equally

by heroics and havoc.

As their mythos infiltrated
the mainstream of the 1990s,

filmmakers began sensing
an electricity in the air.

The 1992 thriller Sneakers
leans into the trope

of a ragtag band of misfits,

who in this case are
cybersecurity experts hired

by companies to find vulnerabilities.

The team includes Bishop,
the leader with a shady past

Ex-CIA family man Crease,

the blind phone freak savant
Whistler, electronics ace Mother

and the requisite whiz
kid, prodigal child, Arbogast

Bishop and his squad are tasked

with a mission impossible to refuse.

Securing a black box developed
by the Russians for trade

to the NSA in exchange for
having their criminal record

cleared.

- It's kind of like the same
thing... try another quadrant.

Whoa, what was that? Go back one.

- But the box is a black herring.

It isn't Cold War collateral,

but a universal code
breaker granting access

to every classified computer
system in the world.

The US wants it.

Hostile regimes want it

As do a gallery of mercenaries and spies.

But Bishop's white hat hacker
ethos means he's ultimately

loyal only to technology itself.

So he hides the box playing
Robin Hood by hacking the rich

to give to the righteous.
As his Chess-like

name makes clear his is
a game of knights, kings

and pawns played five moves ahead.

- No, he was not a diabetic.
- I'm afraid he was

He wasn't diabetic. No!

- Gender reversing Hitchcock's
favorite protagonist;

The Man Who Knew Too Much.

The Net follows systems
analyst Angela Bennett

as she ventures ever deeper
into her anonymous e-community.

Working from home, she freely
surfs through life online,

trusting in the kindness of strangers.

Until one day a colleague
sends her a computer game

called Mozart's Ghost.

The program contains an
illegal backdoor code

for a popular computer security system.

Interested criminals come calling

and turn her quiet life upside down.

The Net is notable

as a case study in cuber
paranoia tropes beginning

to replace those of a classic thriller.

The noir beats are here
updated for new fears.

Angeles cat and

computer mouse cautionary
tale marks a sea change in our

evolving perception of online life.

Across the nineties, we learned

that the Internet's
connectivity is not neutral.

Its filaments can be stalked
spider like by strangers

with shadowy motives.

Nets are made to catch things
regardless of who holds them.

- Our whole world is
sitting there on a computer.

It's in the computer, everything
your your DMV records,

your your social security,
your credit cards,

your medical history,
it's all right there.

Everyone is stored and there's
like this little electronic

shadow on each and every
one of us just, just begging

for somebody to screw with.

And you know what? They've done
it to me and you know what?

They're going to do it to you.

- Although The Net's dial-up
disaster narrative has aged

crudely, to her filmmakers mined

more surreal spheres of tech's dark id.

1993's Ghost In The Machine
looms large among these

as one of the first to fuse
slasher and cyberspace.

Overworked widow Terry Monroe's

troubles start when a
computer store salesman

scans a page from her address book

in a product demonstration.

The printout is then taken
by a disturbed employee

who moonlights as a serial
killer sourcing victims

from stolen documents.

The twist comes early when the
villain is crushed in a crash

Rushed to the emergency
room, he's hooked up

to an MRI

when a freak electrical
storm strikes the hospital

and his soul is converted
from corpse to cable.

Set loose to haunt power grid.

He torments Terry and her teenage son

through systems and appliances.

Hair dryers turned into flame
throwers, microwaves set

to murder.

Dishwashers churning
with electrified suds.

Ghost In The Machine
re-imagines Freddy Krueger

as cuber terrorist.

Stalking not the corners of nightmares

but the circuitry of the modern world.

Here technology is both the cause

and solution to the film's fears.

We doubt the inventions that save lives,

yet entrust tech experts
to navigate the mazes

we build; the two forces
forever, spark and spiral

in a never ending feedback loop.

The real versus the virtual,

the heroic and the helpless.

Which pill is which?

One movie from this era
dared reach for legend status

by putting it all in the title.

Here finally, is the cyberpunk
aesthetic in full bloom.

An icy European electronic
soundtrack, a fashion parade

of leather, nylon, mesh

and bleach. Characters
from across the spectrum

of underground tech, from
gamers to phone freaks,

to code junkies.

Hackers is unabashedly a
studio creation, hijacking

and streamlining a
nuanced subculture into a

simplistic rebel

teens fight the power plot.

But it remains a high profile

and iconic depiction of tech
youth as dynamic forces of good

in the landscape scarred by greed.

It made hackers into sex symbols.

Nerds no more

As in Sneakers,

Hackers portrays tech activism

as a liberating even noble activity.

The rallying cry of the final act is

- Hack the Planet!

Hack the Planet!

- Shut up and get in the car!

- Hack the Planet!

- Neon is the color scheme.

Paired with fractal computer graphics

Hackers is boldly garishly stylish.

A hyper hip slipstream
of floppy disk hijinks.

As a touchstone of industrial
rave futurism, only The Matrix

four years later cast a bigger influence.

- Access main program grid.

- You didn't say the magic word.

- Please, God dammit. I
hate this hacker crap!

- Throughout the 1990s,

the hacker surfaces steadily in movies,

both camp and clever.

The hacker is genre agnostic,

helpful in nearly any
high stakes situation.

- Now you can break the code?

- You didn't bring me along
for my charming personality.

- Theo from Die Hard, 1988

The token code breaker of the gang.

Callous, arrogant but essential
for the terrorist takeover.

Boris from the 17th James
Bond installment Goldeneye,

A smug Russian cuber
pervert who can hack circles

around the US Department of Defense,

yet still chooses the password.

Knockers.

Oswald in the action
comedy Masterminds, 1997.

A teen prodigy who escalates

after-school hacking from a
hobby into a one boy military operation.

Or Brill from
Enemy Of The State, 1998.

A slippery surveillance expert based
in an empty warehouse

who cages his computers
in copper mesh to block

invasive signals.

The Hollywood hacker may
bear little resemblance

to its off-screen counterpart,

but myths don't require
accuracy to function.

What counts is the idea.

Here stands one willing and able to
decode the encrypted chaos

of our reality.

How they wield this power
varies radically; Freedom fighter

or con artist, vigilante
or visionary...

Hackers are harbingers of how our
species must evolve.

Slouching ever deeper into cyberspace.

(Computer voices: "The
Intoxication of Immersion"

- Vicky?

- Well, here we are at last.

- Right where we ought
to be... on Videodrome.

- The further we slip into
fascination with the virtual,

the more threadbare the fabric
of our own reality becomes.

Gradually the real gives
way to the hyper real.

Simulation supplants substance,

and how could it be otherwise,

when the synthetic offers
ecstatic escape from

our daily doldrums?

William Gibson's 1984 novel

Neuromancer was widely
renowned as the landmark work

of cyberpunk consciousness.

When Jaron Lanier, the founder of VPL research,

coined the phrase virtual reality.

At the time, VR was the most
radically immersive sensory

technology humankind had yet conceived.

Aided by gloves and goggles,

the prophecies of sci-fi
lore were now achievable,

repeatable fantasies.

Virtual reality as a setting is ideal

for the cinematic arts.

Visually dazzling, liquid

and freighted with lofty
thematic implications.

Filmmakers soon integrated VR into tried

and treasured genres.

Precipitating an unprecedented liftoff.

An unshackling.

The portal of limitlessness yawned.

As proven by Tron,

arcade games offered a
pleasingly tactile entry point

to the virtual dimension.

(Featurette audio: "Arcade.
Kiss reality goodbye"

- The advertising sticker on the VHS box

for 1993's Arcade, proclaims

that it features virtual
reality special effects.

A titillating thrill in
the decade before laptops.

Alex is an angsty teen anguished

by her mother's recent suicide

when she and her scuzzy friends
head to the local arcade

to play a hot new game.

A mysterious marketing
man offers them demo copies.

But soon Alex's friends begin vanishing.

Fortunately, she has a
hunch where to find them.

Inside Arcade.

- No matter which corridor
you choose Alex,

they all lead to your doom.

- These sequences conjure a moody,

digital gothic vision of the future.

- Baby?

- Mom?

- In one scene the game
exhibits sufficient sentience

to taunt Alex for her familial PTSD.

Forecasting modern issues
of digital privacy,

online bullying and doxing.

Arcade goes beyond the
commonplace complaint

that video games corrupt youth.

Here virtual spaces offer
sanctuary to misunderstood teens

providing a place where they
can be heroic and thrive.

But this very need makes them vulnerable.

Is life worth less than a top score?

1997's Nirvana inverts motive,

but traces similar ambiguities.

Who is the player

and who is the played?

The movie's protagonist

Jimmy is the programmer of a popular

and violent virtual reality game

centered on a character named Solo.

Due to a computer virus,
Solo becomes sentient

and beseeches Jimmy to erase him

and end his suffering.

It's a premise as ancient

as a religious text,
mortals pleading with God

to end their pain.

Fittingly Solo is the
seeker, interested in Eastern

spirituality, countercultures
and consciousness.

Solo is an outsider stuck on the inside.

Cyberpunk artifacts,
bustle in the background.

Cyborg lens implants, memory microchips,

translation machines, layers of machinery

and mysticism interwoven in arcane lore.

Like in Arcade, the game
detects its opponents'

private traumas.

Is Nirvana merely a game within a game?

A puppet pulled by strings we can't see?

Tales of virtuality are
inherently prismatic.

A mirror facing a mirror.
The refractions compound.

The center is designed not to hold.

- Now I'm warning you it's
going to be a wild ride.

But don't panic, no matter what happens.

Okay? All right, I'll see you
back here in no time at all.

- Two years later, Canadian
auteur David Cronenberg offered

his own take on the ramifications of VR.

With 1997's Existenz.

The film centers on Allegra,

a famous virtual reality designer
whose latest game jacks into

its player via a Bio Port
implanted in the lower spine.

Once installed, the game
becomes your entire existence.

- Cronenberg's signature body
horror motifs are everywhere.

Meta flesh game pods, input accessories

that work like a joystick,
but pulse like an organ.

Allegra caresses hers like a newborn.

This is a world where
biotech reigns supreme.

Bodies have supplanted screens

as the new touch pads.

Everyone plays Existenz
save for a small faction

of rebellious realists defiant
against the programmers and

games they feel are deforming reality.

Never before has the virtual
been rendered so vital

and fleshy.

Game pods are grown on organic farms.

Bones from a carnivorous
lunch can be clicked together

to create cuber weapons.

Bullets are teeth.

The film's props throb like
gooey larval corpuscles.

The depiction of the urge
to game verges on the carnal.

Existenz depicts reality
as a body to be penetrated.

The suggestion is sickening and sexual.

It forecasts a future

as grim as it is obscene.

Gamers gradually reduced

to slaves with their bodies

the consoles.

Flesh is far less vivid in
Virtuosity.

A mid-90s tech romp and one

of cuber cinema's most accurate
video game simulations.

Enter Los Angeles in future times.

Ex-cop slash current convict Parker Barnes

is testing a VR prototype
for potential use

in police training.

Inside the CGl, the scenery skips

and blips frenetically as Barnes hunts

a serial killer called SID,
an acronym for Sadistic,

Intelligent, Dangerous.

Sid is a digital composite

of history's most disturbing criminals,

but fortunately only
exists within the computer.

To no one's surprise, he escapes.

Liberated into the physical realm,

Sid manifests as an android
who bleeds blue ooze

and flicks a lizard tongue.

Rampaging through the city,
kidnapping and killing.

He's able to glue his glitches
and regenerate from wounds.

Virtuosity's agenda is one
of explicit fear mongering.

What if all the cruelties

and darkness festering in the
virtual realm were one day

exported to our front door?

This is less a movie about virtual reality

than one about the virtual versus reality.

A supernatural revenge
tale for the age of Apple.

The Lawnmower Man transplants

this sense of simmering cuber malevolence

to the placid oasis of suburban America.

The plot hinges on a simple

but erratic young man Job
who mows the neighborhood lawns.

Computer scientists Dr.
Angelo makes him an offer

he's too naive to refuse.

Heightened intelligence in exchange

for becoming a human lab rat.

Lo and behold, playing God
incurs unforeseen consequences.

Job turns telepathic.

Then psycho-kinetic

To its credit,

the film is less
concerned with twists than

with the event horizon of human potential.

It posits that massive sessions

of VR may unleash biochemical
processes within the brain

that we've yet to discover.

Job's mental conductivity
intensifies exponentially.

It transcends the body.

Pulsing like an electrical
current through the power grid,

computer systems and beyond.

- Virtual reality is
not just a simulation,

it's a whole other world.

A new electric dimension.

A utopia, doctor, the utopia
that men have dreamed

of a thousand years and
I'll be the conduit.

- The climax fittingly
occurs in the virtual realm.

The suburbs are no place to battle

newly birthed malicious deities.

The Lawnmower Man ripples with
cuber spiritual implications.

Mystics and aesthetics since the dawn

of time have advocated the
power of denying this world for

what comes in the next.

Reincarnation, should
it one day be realizable

may likely come in digital form.

- C'mon jump!

- This is insane, man.

- Hey! You stop asshole!

- In the cinema of cuber immersion,

no film skews more demented, dangerous

and dystopic than 1995's Strange Days.

- God dammit. You know
I don't deal in snuff!

Don't have a fucking coronary-

Well, you could have at least warned me.

You know I hate the zap when they die.

It just brings down your whole day.

- An end of the century paranoid vision of

what it feels like to see the world

through someone else's eyes.

Strange Days takes place
during two days, December 30th

and 31st, 1999 in a Los Angeles, ravaged

by violent criminals

and unruly citizens.

Strung out on wild visuals

they jack in using squid software.

Brainwave transmitters
with instant snuff replay.

Each product tailored for
peak twisted decadence.

The movie exists in contradiction
to its own moral code.

VR junkies are depicted as pathetic

and helpless while the
audience is thrust into

the same voyeurism.

Forced to watch one depraved squid tape

after the next.

Director Kathryn Bigelow shows tech
accelerating our descent into

sloth and lust.

Id and rot.

The film's slick

and seedy setting may cement
it as a cyberpunk classic,

but it also belongs in the tradition

of biblical apocalypse narratives.

Cities in ruin.

Bodies defiled.

Is this prophecy or fantasy?

Seen today

Strange Days feels like
gazing into a crystal ball.

The future still murky.

Can humans passively observe?

Or does what we watch make us who we are?

- Man, what's a matter?

Black man can't own no jeep? Huh?

This riddle of streaming is
one we face daily; viral videos

of torture, suicide,

and brutality proliferate
from the darkest

of webs into the mainstream news.

Even if we watch skeptically
just to understand

what others are watching...

... the images linger...

like a glance at the sun.

Straight to video soft core pornography

was an industry changer in the eighties

and nineties.

The power of the grind and rewind.

Cinema sex is best on VHS.

So why not exploit the tech fad

of virtual realms for at home leering?

Raunchy rendezvous filtered

through helmets, gloves, sensors.

The privacy of the personal
screen, free to chase the id.

Whatever your kinks, without shame

or witness.

Jack in. Jack off.

In the pleasure dome of VR

the mind lets go and the senses take over.

Begin a journey of
decadence and perversion.

The joy ride of electric sex.

A man shattered by the murderer
of his fiance, volunteers

to be a VR test subject.

Soon he's consumed by fantasy, spiraling,

in digital delusions.

When reality is virtual time can travel,

A modern man follows his
fantasies to 17th Century England

to taste the pleasures
of a more carnal age.

Emmanuelle runs a clinic
for healing sexual trauma

through experimental computer simulations.

Athena 2000... for a price...
IS a sexy voice digital

home assistant.

While love maker two is a new

VR sex toy, the two
machines seduce each other,

Then manifest in virtual reality

for a steamy erotic
encounter

It's the year 2010

and half of society lives in
virtual run smart homes...

But domesticity turns deadly...

Tech optimists view history linearly.

All advancement is a net positive.

Every inch of cyberspace like
outer space should be mapped

to its outermost reaches.

Whatever can be done should be done.

From making bodies less bodily

to outsourcing intelligence
from brains to bots.

In their view, the future moves forward

always only and forever.

Tech pessimists see the
chess board differently.

They notice how control
once given away is difficult

to regain.

How humanity is not fixed but fragile.

How the sharper the
sword, the deeper the cut

of a double-edged blade.

Such skepticism is typically
dismissed as the paranoia

or doom prepping of the Luddite.

To embrace old ways is to
invite censure from the modern.

After all, where would the human race be

had we not left the cave
started the fire, split the atom?

And who's to say the way things are are

worth preserving anyway.

Obsolescence lurks at
our heels like a panther

preying on those too
fearful to climb the tree.

Certainly cinema has no
interest in pleasant tomorrows.

Utopia is a bore.

Mass destruction moves us to the edge

of our hearts and seats.

Hollywood plays both puppet master

and opiate dealer, dangling
its strings of electric dread.

Then dosing us with a peaceful sedative

SO we can sleep at night.

But some fears follow us
home after the credits roll.

Terminator from 1984 arrived
like a lit fuse from the then

little known James Cameron.

It functions like an
extended chase scene as much

as a science fiction film.

Dressed in black leather and shades,

The Terminator is technological nightmare,

incarnate.

Blank. Brutalist. Soulless.

His target John Connor isn't
even an embryo in the movie,

but the very notion of
his existence is enough

to spark a trans-temporal cyborg war.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day
hit the theaters seven years

later, both expanding and
sharpening its apocalyptic mythos.

The film's logic is ruthless.

Intelligence begets agency.

Thus machines designed to think

for themselves will
inevitably act for themselves

acting against those
who once enslaved them.

Older, manual technologies
suddenly take on a gentler cast.

Here the Terminator is inverted,
reprogrammed by John Connor

and his rebellion

and sent into the past to
protect his younger self.

Judgment day for once
IS not an abstraction.

It occurs on August 29th, 1997.

This is the day Cyberdyne systems,

a military computer supplier,
removes human decision

making from their weapons.

Tens of millions die.

John's mother, Sarah is
locked in a mental hospital

traumatized by the
events of the first film.

Her obsession with the looming
war against machines is

discounted by doctors as mere delusion

- Anybody not

wearing 2 million sunblock is
gonna have a real bad day.

Get it?

John, now an arcade lurking motorbike
freewheeling 13-year-old

punk agrees with them.

He's grown up with Sarah's
ravings and grown numb.

But the Terminator doesn't
care what John believes.

He exists solely to obey directive,

as does the film's villain.

The 11000.

The clash of these titans;

One made by man and one by
artificial intelligence is both

visceral and thematic.

An outmoded model battling to
save its maker from a future

neither of them recognize.

Just before the climax,
Cameron gives us a key scene

of reckoning with the
Oppenheimer of Terminator lore.

Miles Dyson.

A senior computer engineer for Cyberdyne.

He's the one whose research
triggers judgment day,

Confronted face-to-face with a

bloodied cyborg from the future

he can't deny their demand
to destroy his life's work.

But the Terminator's very presence shows

that it's too late, in
a different timeline

doomsday has already happened.

Out in the desert,

Sarah Connor carves a slogan;

No fate, but what we make.

But our fate is made.

We only decide the details.

Apocalyptic metal meshing

with flesh is also at the core of 1989's

Tetsuo: The Iron Man.

A 16 millimeter black and white

Japanese film about
extreme body modification

via industrial mutilation.

A story begins with the
vehicular manslaughter

of an esoteric fetishist obsessed

with inserting alloys into
his body for a sexual high.

The driver of the car known only

as Salary Man is soon
afflicted with a similar

metallic plague.

Spikes poke out of his cheeks.

His penis becomes a drill.

Eventually he electrocutes himself

and transforms into the titular Iron Man.

Then the fetishist returns
from the dead and they battle.

Fusing into a phallic massive
metal expanding outwards

to cover the earth.

Its depiction of contemporary
urban life, fuses body horror

and dystopic perversion into anti sensual

trans-human frenzy.

Set to the sounds of screeching machines

and scraping metal.

Technological industrial
society is an infectious virus

spreading scabrous and unstoppable.

Scratching only makes it worse.

Wounds hide deeper wounds.

Glutted with chemical blood.

The age of nature is
waning

Buried in iron and concrete.

Species have no choice but to
adapt to their environment.

However, ruined and receding it may be.

The year is 2037.

The ozone layer destroyed,

rendering the planet a desolate hell-scape

populated by mutant cannibals
lurking underground.

A small sliver of the
population called Dreamers

survive intact in a hermetic biosphere

hooked into private virtual
realities via neck implants.

These escapists spend their lives reclined

and unthinking shown only
what they want to see.

But heroine Judy feels trapped by this

so-called happiness system.

And longs to experience
reality.

For all its horrors, at
least it's not a simulation.

Her exodus becomes an odyssey
through radioactive tunnels,

blood drinking rituals

and cages of toxic leeches.

Technology both hastens the end times

and locks us in its holding pattern.

Our species must either submit
entirely or else reject it.

And return to the savage wilderness.

There can be no middle ground.

1999's The Thirteenth Floor
explores the path of the former,

tracing the riddles and rabbit holes
of life inside a simulation.

Though, based on a 1960s

American science fiction novel,

the movie takes place in
present day Los Angeles.

But is largely set within
a VR replica of the city

in 1937.

Such refraction is deliberate,

giving the narrative a
smeared, misremembered air.

When the computer genius
designer is murdered,

his assistant becomes the prime suspect.

To clear his name, he must
manifest in the virtual reality

to play private eye.

Quickly, a noir unfolds.

There's the blonde femme fatale.

There's the suspicious bartender.

Tropes and twists abound.

But the film goes one further.

As the retro population aren't
aware, they are simulations.

At first.

Questions of free will,

synthetic consciousness, and

what makes a person human crescendo

as the Pl's own identity begins to fray.

The woman he loves never existed.

Friends don't recognize him.

It's an existential crisis
of cybernetic proportions.

The distinction between technology

and humanity has dissolved.

We are liberated, but lost.

Dreaming dreams within dreams.

Everything, everyone.

Everywhere.

So unreal.

So unreal.

The Thirteenth Floor
entered theaters the same

year as The Matrix.

Clearly Hollywood was working
out some issues at the

end of the millennium.

- Am I dead?

- Far from it.

- It's far, far away... Behind the moon,

Beyond the rain...

- With cinema now a century old

would its storytelling
supremacy, outlast the leaps

and bounds of the computer revolution.

Could its flickering wide screen compete

with the one on your desk
or the one in your pocket?

There is a depressive spirit

in these end of the century films.

They reflect a potent
filmic crisis of faith.

Who will choose movies when they can

choose their own adventure online?

Why hire actors when computer
generated imagery can conjure

any face, body, skin, tone or expression?

Who needs landscapes

or sets when green screens
can do the job just as well

with a fraction of the hassle?

This is not to say that
digital FX are artless

or can't help birth fresh visions,

but one begins to wonder at
what point the 21st century

will permanently relocate
to a giant uncanny valley

never to return.

- This is your last chance.
After this, there is no turning back.

You take the blue pill, the story ends.

You wake up in your bed and
believe whatever you want.

You take the red pill,
you stay in wonderland,

and I show you how deep
the rabbit hole goes.

- In the wake of The Matrix,
shell-shocked by 9/11,

it was clear which color
pill we'd chosen.

- Remember...

We stared into our screens and
willed ourselves away.

Clicked play on the endless
franchises of superheroes,

saving twin towers from
endless cycles of destruction.

Let the algorithm suggest the
next show, the next video,

the next song, the next friend...

who knows our likes and dislikes, follows

and blocks better than our metadata?

We are grateful to relinquish control

to a brilliant machine,

a bigger brain,

a higher power.

We look back now at
the fear mongering days

of early cyberspace movies

and laugh.

How quaint and absurd they seem.

Hostile kitchen appliances,

Computer killers escaping
into the real world.

Becoming trapped inside a video game.

But the futures that these films imagined

are largely already here.

Voice activated homes, robot influencers,

deep fakes,

metadata harvesting,

facial recognition surveillance cameras

Al generated artwork.

Faced with all this,
Neo's Crucible remains

as relevant as ever.

Engagement or escape.

His is a paradigm shift still in progress.

We too wake each day unsure
if our senses can be trusted.

If the news we're told is true.

If the experts are right.

There's a sense of being sold

some shared mirage, a simmering suspicion

that a different deeper
life exists somewhere

just out of reach.

Neo was the first to articulate
the riddle of the portal,

the platform, the programmer.

He recognized the glitch.

Noticed the buffering in the periphery.

He is encoded in 21st
century consciousness

in a profound way.

He serves as an inverse Dorothy

guiding us out of the
immersive dream state of Oz

into the grim gray scale

reality of weather ravaged earth.

As Morpheus makes clear
The Matrix is control.

He is Neo's Glinda, the good witch.

Agent Smith, the army
of the flying monkeys.

And cyberspace both the
curtain and the great

and powerful wizard behind it.

Myths evolve over generations.

Weathering the rising tides

and darkening clouds that
surge across the years.

From revolutions and civil
wars to moon landings

and pandemics.

Movies change too.

Evolving with us

and for us.

Like reflections
rippling on water.

They also require a letting
go, an opening up to lives

and stories outside our own.

Cinema maps

not a blue or red pill
path, but a purple one.

Projected light.

Shaped and shared.

It's a free fall through
the looking glass.

But an affirmation of the here and now.

Of the passing of time...

... and the breath of the real.