I Talk About the Depiction of the Metaverse in Movies/TV on the CBC -- What Are Your Favorite Versions?

Pretty fun article. Unfortunately, my favorite metaverse-meets-the-movies story didn't make the cut: When a rising tech CTO watched The Matrix for the first time in 1999 with his friends, he left the theater somewhat bummed.

"That," he told them, "is what I wanted to make."

And that man's name? Philip Rosedale.

My favorite lines for the CBC article:

A common trope in these properties is that they are set in dystopias...

"Part of it is a cautionary response that so much of our life is becoming online and digital," said Au. "There's a concern that writers and filmmakers want to express, that we might lose too much of our humanity in the digitization of everything."

But the all-encompassing potential of a metaverse — both good and bad — has yet to be fully explored on the big and small screen, Au said.

"Every depiction of the metaverse I've seen so far only kind of touches the surface of what using the platforms are like."

I mean, you could turn The War of the Jessie Wall into a whole-ass movie or a mini-series! But most (all?) movies and TV shows depicting metaverse-like technology are still at the elementary stage.

That said, I do think Free Guy was a pretty smart (and fun!) advance in the genre, impressively depicting the evolution of AI-powered NPCs in a virtual world. And without spoiling things, it also got around the core challenge this movie subgenre faces: If none of what we're seeing is real, why should the audience care? (Spoiler below.)

I've heard the Amazon series Upload does a pretty good job with depicting the Metaverse, as does Black Mirror episode "San Junipero". Any others we should add to our viewing library?

* Free Guy spoiler:

 

The movie's final conflict is less about what happens to Guy, and more about what becomes of the two desperate game developers who made Guy "real".

Comments

[Gwenette Sinclair]

Great post. Added some new movies to my watch list. Last night just happened across old (2013) episode of "Perception" that explored a virtual world, Calaidoscope (obviously SL inspired).

The script contained some relatively accurate conversations about the what and why of the avatar experience with some very diverse avatars/rl characters. Running on Amazon Prime and here free https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3fywf8