The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Simulation refers to any kind of attempts to construct a replica or likeness of the real world or some part thereof. Specific versions of these are dealt with under Virtual Reality, while the implantation of artificial memories is covered under Altered Memory.
Other examples can include the recurrent idea that we are all living in a virtual simulation a la The Matrix (1999), which has become a real world conspiracy theory in recent years; the construction and manipulation of lifelike versions of parts of the real world by aliens (usually as an experiment); worlds built with the use of actors or android replicas such as the amusement parks in Westworld (1973) and Westworld (2016-); and the holodecks that appear in the various incarnations of Star Trek.
This highly charged work about race issues received a very mixed critical reception but I liked it for its clever M. Night Shyamalan-esque twistiness that messes with storytelling convention
Blade Runner is a landmark classic but this is well worthwhile sequel from Denis Villeneuve that recreates the fascinating Cyberpunk world in more detail and expands out on the themes laid down in the original. Made with impeccably beautiful detail
Arthur C. Clarke’s book is one of the all-time SF classics; this mini-series adaptation counts as one of the biggest book-to-film abortions in the SF genre handled by people who know nothing about SF
Carl Sagan’s novel about SETI is inflated into a big budget film determined to impress even though the story did not need it. Sagan’s interesting debate about religion and science is emasculated so as not to offend any religious groups
From Alex Proyas and David S. Goyer, this has an astonishing conceptual audacity in its plot dealing with shifting realities and transplanted memories, making it arguably the finest science-fiction film of the 1990s
Alex Garland directed-written tv mini-series that grasps at big ideas about the meaning of it all concerning a computer that can track every particle and predict past and future. This emerges as one of the finest SF work of the last few years
A model maker is hired to build a miniature of a famous actress’s house but then finds the model is capable of influencing reality. An ingenious premise that plays out with near-perfection
A sequel to the original Westworld. Here the cleverness of Michael Crichton’s film is rehashed as a B movie plot about the amusement park now hosting android takeover conspiracies
Rodney Ascher, who made the wacko Room 237, makes another fascinating documentary that discusses the theory that we might all be living in a virtual simulation
Another of the animated DC Comics films in which various of their regular characters find themselves incarnated in simulated combat arenas
Michael Crichton’s works are about fears of science and technology going amok. Here he attempts to address tv and advertising in a film about virtual models but the ideas in his script are muddled
Dramatised film based on the popular conspiracy theory that people are living in an alternate timeline where their memories have been edited and that we are all living in a simulation a la The Matrix
From the always interesting Michael Almereyda, an adaptation of a Pulitzer-nominated play set in a future where people replace their departed loved ones with holograms
Ray Bradbury’s book about the human colonisation of Mars is an SF classic for its wistful, nostalgic poetry. This tv mini-series adaptation is killed by a lumbering director who over-explains Bradbury’s imagery in the most literal ways
A film that was as groundbreaking when it came out as Star Wars was in its day. The Wachowskis create a defining work on Virtual Reality themes and do so with a sublime cool and a series of breathtaking action moves that blew everybody away
The first of the sequels to The Matrix inevitably disappointed on the massive build-up. The Wachowskis leave more questions than answers, while the new action scenes are often jaw-dropping they also feel boiler-plated on
One of The Wachowskis returns to the world of The Matrix and rather wittily turns it into an anti-blockbuster about her reluctance to do so
Third of The Matrix sequels and the weakest of the series. This offers one showstopping effects sequence, on the other hand it also leaves a host of unanswered questions dangling
An anthology made up of three short films all adapted from the works of Katsihiro Otomo of Akira fame, of which Otomo also directs one of the segments
This comes with an interestingly different premise wherein characters are abducted and wake up inside a simulation of Night of the Living Dead and realise they are meant to replay the roles of the people in the farmhouse at siege from the zombie onslaught
Roland Emmerich returns to mass destruction with a film about The Moon on a collision course with Earth, which heads in some conceptually challenging directions
Australian SF film about the development of a set of eyedrops that allow the recipient to experience a set of preprogrammed virtual memories. The film does nothing with the idea beyond rehashing Total Recall-like reality games
Low-budget film that steals the premise of Westworld in the story of an amusement park that recreates the world of 1940s film noir with androids, which proceed to go amok
Gimmick master William Castle makes an SF films about scientists engaged in simulations and mental probing to obtain secrets from a man’s mind
Another unnecessary entry in a creativity-handicapped series, the continuing popularity of which is baffles. This shuffles through the familiar moves, brings back several familiar characters but only leaves me asking why I have invested some nine hours of time following this series
A Hunger Games wannabe with elderly people forced to eliminate one another while inhabiting young avatar bodies inside a virtual simulation. It is a long time since I have encountered a film where the fundamental premise makes no sense whatsoever when you look at it logically
A film ostensibly about alien abductees that has rather pleasurably been construed as a series of wild head-spinning twists that are constantly pulling everything we think we know is going on from under the audience, even if it eventually provides more questions than it ever does answers
The second of the Star Trek: The Next Generation films where series regular Jonathan Frakes takes the director’s chair and delivers an exciting adventure, showing an excellent hand with the special effects. Far more satisfying than the previous film
The first of the Star Trek: The Next Generation films is an odd affair that seems like a routine episode of the series that accidentally gained a big-screen budget. This crosses over with Classic Trek where William Shatner mugs his way through a grand old airing of Captain Kirk
Third of the Star Trek: The Next Generation films has Jonathan Frakes back in the director’s seat where he again plays to his strengths with great visual effects scenes but the story feels like a filler episode
Ingenious film that predicted reality tv shows where Jim Carrey’s life has been a tv show since birth with him unaware of everything is staged
Bruce Willis is the CEO of a corporation that provides customers with androids to use for whatever vices they want. Very similar to tv’s recent Westworld but has a script so boneheaded you can almost imagine it acted as an example for Westworld to do the exact opposite
A sublimely funny comedy about a group in a habitat who have been selected to roleplay the astronauts on a Mars mission
Absolutely fascinating documentary that speculates what the likely reactions would be if aliens were to arrive on Earth where we get input from various scientists and UN spokespeople. The answers are compelling and completely different from anything that you usually get in SF cinema
A hit for novelist Michael Crichton who made his directorial debut here. Themes of machines going amok run throughout Crichton’s work and here he comes up with the ingenious idea of a Western simulation playground using androids that proceed to turn against the humans
Fascinating work from Rainer Werner Fassbinder, one of the earliest depictions of Virtual Reality on screen and one that sets most of the genre’s tropes in place