Look at the bright side: no hallways, just a barren wasteland 50 times Skyrim (with twice as many pointless caves). Wait, did I said bright? Oh dear I'm sorry, I meant God-forsaken awful. No I'm not bitter about anything, why do you ask?
@@Rabbitlord108 I'm not so sure it will just be video games. There's unsustainable practices in several aspects of the global entertainment industry. And then there's all the problems like climate change, unaffordable housing, underregulated corporations...
Having recently rewatched the multiple "April Fools" videos Linkara released over the years, I will now quote one to sum up my understanding of the plot of this film. "I AM TRIPPING SO MANY BALLS!"
The Matrix started out as a Dark City, which became filled with Serenity, and eXistenZ was nothing but a Brain Scan for the Inception of Ready Player One.
@@derrickhaggardYuuuup! and it's just as weird as you'd think. The art is like this weird photorealistic painting style. Not knowing anything about the movie and going in completely blind was definitely a trip
"It's really sad when the sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf's virtual reality game makes more sense and is better designed than this one." Fun fact: This movie actually introduced me to Red Dwarf through an online argument which one did this concept first and best.
Knowing the videogame industry, a procedualy generated videogame that scans the player's mind to create an story based on their worldview, anxieties, paranoias, etc. sound like something that could eventually exist if the studios remain as focused on screwing over both developtmers and players as they're now
After half a decade of viral internet conspiracies like flat earthers, QAnon and "reptiloids" going mainstream, a movie about playing a telepathic video game with that uncle who's two clicks away from becoming the next pizzagate shooter *should* make more sense than ever, but it really doesn't.
35:23 - honestly when you brought it up when they were at the gas station, I was expecting a reveal that her touching everything was a sign that the game had skewed her perception of reality so much that she had trouble telling that she was in the real world when not playing; that there was a difference in the sensation of touch in reality compared to the game that she was using it to ground herself and remind herself that she was no longer in the game.
"DVD Commentary points out that one particular scene early on where Allegra and Pikul are at the County Gas Station makes absolutely no sense on its own. The scene in question is when we see Allegra outside the gas station while Pikul and Gas are inside, kicking at the dust and looking at the general area with something close to wonder and then reacting to a strange two-headed lizard. According to the commentary, Allegra is in fact admiring the detail of the transCendenZ game-world and the scene was included for the sole purpose of foreshadowing the reveal that the characters are inside a game the entire time."
Cronenberg to me has always been such a fascinating director to me because he isn't bound to a single genre he can do it all and still make it work pretty well honestly
I’m kind of disappointed nobody thought to call up the 90s Dude so he could have a cameo. Dude must be hard at work rebuilding Comicron 2 (or starting work on Comicron 3)
Full disclosure - with it being a Cronenberg movie, I fully expected to use the "sure it's phallic, why wouldn't it be?" line, but yeah, they're yonic or resemble vaginas so it doesn't work. XD
Not only do you have Michelle Yeoh and David Cronenberg on Star Trek together but they're discussing events from Enterprise season 4 and Deep Space Nine. What a time to be a fan.
Didn’t expect to see Linkara review what I’ve considered to be David Chronenberg’s most under-appreciated film next to Crash No, not that Crash; the other one
Since Lewis has broadened his horizons as a gamer with the streams in the last few years, I am loving more and more when he talks about content about games. Also, as someone who has played games most of their life, followed the industry for a lot of that time and even worked in the industry, movies like this drive me up the damn wall
This used to play I would bet monthly or by monthly on SyFy Channel usually in the evening or night & I remember that it was one of the weirdest films I’d ever seen & yet always captivated me such that I’m sure I’ve seen it over ten times via the SyFy Channel alone. Sometimes I went to sleep while it played & sometimes I woke up at like 1AM when the movie was 30 minutes in & watched it all the way through. Both experiences amplified the strange nightmare/dreamscape vibes of the film which imprinted it into my subconscious all the more
I do like this film, but of the "virtual worlds/what is reality?" movies that came out around this time, I thought "The Thirteenth Floor" was a better movie. I'd love to see Linkara talk about the best of all the mindbending late-90s movies: "Dark City".
The greatest thing David Cronenberg has ever done was play a psychologist/serial killer in Clive Barker's Night Breed. Not mentioning him in the Lost in Adaptation episode is probably Dominic Noble's biggest mistake.
There's some real strong body horror in legends material. Technovirus zombies made from Sith technosorceryalchemy. Then there's the people turned into faceless hulking monsters by a Sith amulet.
Well, technically, she DIDN'T make the game, as it's revealed she was only playing the part of a game programmer and it was actually another player that did. ...But they also reveal that the game was designed through some of the player's desires to destroy virtual reality and those who create it, who she was one of, so I guess, in some convoluted way, she DID make the game. ...Except she didn't actually.
The answer is yes and no. The reveal at the end shows that everything prior to that was a procedural generated Game that takes its starting seed from thoughts extracted from people participating in it, 2 of the Players were part of a radical Anti-VR terrorist group and as such did the generated story ended up fucked up as there anti-VR games thoughts influenced the story generation. So in part did she create the story of the game (tho not the game it self) and the game with in a game was created by the character she was playing. The obvious final final twist is opening the question if "is it just another layer of VR obfuscation?" And this properly also justified the existence of an Radical Anti-VR terrorist group as perfect VR makes it near impossible to tell reality from virtual reality.
I'm surprised you didn't put in an Austin Powers "Oh no I've gone cross eyed" joke. The body horror and uncertainty of reality or game worked better in Total Recall. Also worked better in the "Ship in a Bottle" TNG episode.
It’s interesting to look back at 90s and 2000s fear of video games and virtual reality claiming to say that they’ll make us violent and we won’t be able to tell the difference between real and fake. Like with the stuff he said during the review on how people actually want to be good guys in video games plus on how video games keep people inside as opposed to doing crimes. Plus it’s hilarious seeing 90s effects and people being convinced that it’s impossible to tell the difference between the fake world and the real world. I’ll say this say what you want about ready player one but it at least understood video games
Cronenberg’s character in Discovery is one of my favorite parts of that era of the show, and I’m eager to see what kind of role he may play in the final season’s plot.
Do you think he’s a Terran? That’s been my theory for a while, that he was either one of the last Terrans to make it to the main universe before the distance became to great, or he’s a descendant of Terrans that crossed over. Granted, he could just be a very off putting smart guy, but he FEELS like a Terran to me.
@@nonspiderwebwe know that some Terran revolutionaries crossed over aboard the ISS Enterprise now, so I suppose it’s possible, but I think he’s just a studier. It’s more likely to me that he’s a Temporal Wars veteran and the main guy behind what amounts to the post-Accords version of Temporal Investigations
@@XanthinZarda that’s where Lower Decks is set, though it’s sadly ending with its next season. Maybe another show will fill in that space. But who knows
I’d heard it before in other stuff and finally googled it. Clearly it’s been awhile cause as a kid the Ocean Dub was my first exposure to DBZ but it has been a long time. The two things I remember most clearly about it are Brian Drummond’s Vegeta and Terry Klassen’s Krillin
@@mitchellcowan2500 it's a funny excuse for censorship in the show. I really enjoyed those voice actors from the oceans dub. Some of them carried over into other dubs done by other companies like big green.
@@MudchopX there would have been a lot more people in those buildings lol 🤣 Growing up as a young child that line made sense to me because I was a Mormon and spent a very long time in church every Sunday. Now that I'm older I'm not sure if that really mattered at all looking back on the line.
1:35 I am not going to ask him, but I also stopped in season 3. Not only because Michael was disrespectful to a crewmate, a man who LEFT HIS FAMILY FOREVER, all so she would have a better chance, not a great one, just better, to help save her life. He had no need to do it, he's a lower decker type(read extra), and she makes fun of him in a rather mean spirited way. What broke me though was a joke that was directed towards Gene Roddenberry. Now, I agree with SFDebris, the man is not a sacred cow, he was, by all accounts, a greedy old cuss, and did some very nasty things in his day, and his 'vision' held trek back as often as catapulted it forward. However, making fun of him in his own series, in a rather mean spirited way just rubbed me wrong, so I stopped.
My dad introduced me to some very adult, messed up movies early on. We watched eXistenZ when I was 8 I remember going into Inception excited to see the next original film from the Dark Knight director, and I was like “Oh, this is just eXistenZ. I’ve already seen this movie like 5 times…” And nobody I told this to understood because nobody watched eXistenZ. So sad.
I remember watching this movie in the dorm. Well, I watched some of this movie. After a point I decided that this was a movie about video games made by someone who knew nothing about video games and wandered back to my room to play Fallout 2.
The point of the tooth gun, I'm pretty sure, is that it's made entirely (or almost entirely) out of organic material. When the guy gets scanned for weapons, it's looking for WEAPONS, and not flesh and bone. So its purpose is to disguise it from scanners as just being more flesh and part of the person's body.
Still would show up on X-ray, and if it doesn't have the "stopping power" for successful target elimination, then you have made a disgusting mess which likely cost a small fortune to bioengineer a worse pistol instead of spending that development money on a few decent hit men with sniper rifles.
@@bthsr7113 why are you applying real world logic to what is explicitly stated to be part of a video game world? The assasin got the tooth gun in because that was the narrative for that level.
I really thought they were doing something else with Allegra touching stuff. Because she was supposed to be a game designer she must have spent countless hours inside virtual reality. So her touching everything was a way for her to compare it to what she creates. Kind of like an artist viewing and touching everything about the inspiration of an art piece they are making. That whole confused "did I do it right?" "was I close?" and eventual "WHY MUST ART MAKE ME SUFFER!"
Apparently there was a novelization by Christopher Priest based on this movie so if I had to guess the 2030 setting and corporate politics mentioned in wikipedia are probably taken from there. This is all guess work on my part as I've not read it, but that seems to be the most likely candidate.
Always love that anyone's review or viewing if any David Cronenberg movies can be summed up with "what the @#$% did i just watch?" Though yours, by far, is one of the most entertaining.
I knew the movie sounded familiar. When he pulled the organic looking gun I recognized it immediately! Crafting the gun out of the soup, it's one of my first "grown up movie" memories as a kid.
I don't know why, but the AT4W themesong suddenly made me very nostalgic... and that's when I realized how long it's been since I watched one of these 😅
"But overwise she has no reaction whatsoever" And this is why you needed a higher caliber of tooth or more power behind it. I advocate for fully fueled snake fang to be sure of successful target elimination. Or a flechette style scatter blast of wasp stingers for some interesting biopunk blaster. Edit: Synthetic DNA IS a thing, but still very much experimental, post dating this movie, and it's more of a concept for a new kind of dense data storage.
eXistenZ the weird bio-flesh VR... thing is basically the equivalent of a BrainDance from Cyberpunk 2077 where except you don't live out the last few minutes of a Cyberpsycho or uncover a deeper mystery, you're just reliving the life of a Maelstrom gang member just doing his grocery shopping or doing his taxes.
1:43 Michelle Yeoh's character is getting a spin off TV-Movie 'Section 31' [which has been filmed] so maybe the opportunity to expand on these thoughts...
DIS still has problems overall but much like VOY and ENT I felt that it’s at least getting better with each season. While Season 3 and 4 are pretty varied, Season 5 has been pretty consistent as not bad so far.
The main thing I got from this back in the day was an unsettling discomfort matched with a feeling that there was something interesting in there somewhere but it didn't 100% come across.
BTW, the earliest production to showcase mind-uploading was in episode 8 of Harlan Ellison's The Starlost (1973), which guest starred Percy Rodriguez, where the main characters had to plug their brains into a 1970s computer to defuse a self-destruct device.
Honestly when Linkara said he couldn't do a convincing British accent, I expected him to either actually do one or dub over himself with someone who was British.
Honestly, I'd rather watch SAO before this movie and I'm not just say that because SAO is one of my favorite anime. Cause SAO is A LOT more interesting and easier to understand than this movie.
@@TheMiraculousVillain Not really. SAO, while a bad game design, at least delivers a fantasy that you know is a fantasy. It gives you direction to know what you're working towards. The UI is junk, and the lack of diversity in playstyle is terrible for an MMO, but it has better understanding and doesn't fall on procedurally generated content that fails to generate a narrative or substantial entertainment.
04:31 You joke but a few years before the movie was released there was a console called the LaserActive that had games priced at *$120* Yeah, in case you're wondering why you probably never heard of it, it's because it *BOMBED* less than a year after it was released.
I said this when I first saw him on Star Trek: Discovery: David Cronenberg did not have the body type I expected of him. The phrase “scrawny little shit” has come to mind but I could probably put it kinder.
Alright, I will try and make sense of this from what I am gathering from this review: First, the Realists appear to be extremists based very much in the "Videogames make people violent"-kind of vain taken to the extreme as they think Virtual Reality gaming is so real that it has an extremely strong bleed. Whether you agree with this or not is irrelevant, it's what they believe regardless of how wrong they may or may not be. (and they are) This is contrasted with the game dev always saying "try going along with it" which is the exact opposed idea, to give into the bleed from the game fully aware that it's just a game... right? Ultimately, it's very similar to LARPing or role-playing in general where the truth is more individual, some people can handle bleed very well while others.... REALLY can't. The bleeding effect in Assassin's Creed is actually also based on this concept of make-believe/unreality of sorts influencing our true selfs. Now next, the game and it's world, tech, characters and even plot are indeed procedurally generated. Think of it like a Roguelike on steroids. Which I can absolutely see appealing to people. That's why she keeps saying "the only way to find out why you are playing the game is to play it." Simply speaking, you don't know if your next gaming session is going to be more cyberpunky with a heist or more body-horror-espionage-based like we see in the movie or anything else. The fleshy-version of the VR game interface might be a direct reflection of how our extremist-anti-gamer sees gaming, as a perverse kind of self-pleasure. If she has coded the game in such a way as to cascade the SEED used for the procedural generation, it is very possible that it could create scenarios she would never expect or find the algorithmic character generation lacking in testing. The movie's multiple-layer reality scenario was, as revealed by the end, created out of the SEEDs created from the players minds, incorporating subjective reality into the virtual reality. The appeal to me personally would be that the "game" rewards flexibility and adaptability to be successful, you don't know what you will get so you need to be well rounded. There's also a level of gambling to it since you're likely hoping for a certain kind of scenario which you may or may not get as the game system siphons the creation SEED from your mind. (and from every player). One of the main characters actually being an extremist who hates videogames being unfamiliar with the tropes of a game like forced dialogue choices is actually fairly clever in my opinion, especially since he directly expresses his disgust with games doing that without understanding the medium in question since he has likely never engaged with it before and doesn't do it in good faith during the movie either, indeed, only finding confirmation of his believes in the experience, dismissing the alternate viewpoints and the fact that on the first layer of the game, choices felt far less forced than they did in the sub-game created from his viewpoint. Overall I have to say it seems to be quite clever for a movie about virtual reality once all the pieces fall into place by the end. It certainly requires multiple viewings and retrospection to make sense out of it but much like a Kingdom Hearts game, I do think there's value to be found in the confusion of a first viewing and the clarity and understanding on a second viewing/retrospection. There is more I could point out (like the MC's SEED equating buying a game system to buying something illegal at a gas station ect.) But this comment is getting too long as it is. P.S.: Since, except for the final scene everything is in the game, game logic applies... including the teeth weapon. I have used weirder stuff in games.... looking at you Bloodborne and Destroy all Humans!
As someone who really admires the film, one question that just came to mind is, what if the RPG itself is a type of sandbox VR game? Especially as the rules, actions, and effects are randomized?
I hear ya. It really should have differentiated itself more from the film, such as adding in deleted scenes such as the original ending where the Waiter gets shot at the end.
24:59 Sometimes, I’ll deliberately pick the evil option just to see what happens, but that usually after a first playthrough where I pick the option that best represents my morality
Whoa, I remember seeing this movie as it went on. God, I came in like in the half way point while it was on the old tv channel, TV3, which is now virgin one. Which meant there were ad breaks. I was so confused.
The sad part is, judging by what was shown at this year's GDC, it's not unrealistic that there'll be games in 2030 with exclusively AI-"written" quests and dialogue procedurally generated with no human involvement in the creation of the story.🙃
0:44 Me personally as someone who no longer has access to monetization (and barely used it when I did), I can at least not worry about most of the music now that UA-cam signed that deal with a bunch of record labels. I once had a "no impact" CID on an anime theme song but the _footage_ was blocked by a separate CID because the record labels own TV series soundtracks in Japan. Not just anime but tokusatsu as well. That even includes the songs sung by the (voice) actors. I could probably use Aim to be a Pokemon Master and ShoPro wouldn't be able to stop me! (except it's with Sony Music Entertainment and I don't think they were among the labels UA-cam has a deal with because Sony are the worst (also because I still got a blocked or monetized by owner CID on something SME owned))
One other thing I recently picked up on from FilmComicExplained, is that the bio-tech is a metaphor that the human mind ends in the flesh rather than existing outside it. This is an argument going back to Aristotle, yet that is questionable as Artificial Intelligence may contradict that. This was given as what Cronenberg believes, however he does allow for the viewer to challenge this notion.
34:12 Delicious in dungeon is getting covered next week?! YES! although i wonder what chapter is getting covered or if it is something the anime has already covered
So happy you reviewed this as a VR enthusiast. I have never seen this film. Honestly….seeing this style….just doesn’t work for me. I honestly don’t believe this is where VR is going to go, if it does, it’s not going to look like this, and if it did look like this, the world would not look like it does in the film.
There was this weird era in the late nineties when we spontaneously got all these movies about artificial realities with unique--sometimes haunting--imagery. Perfect Blue, Truman Show, Pleasantville, Dark City, The Matrix, The Thirteenth Floor, and eXistenZ. I miss the pre-Dubya years so, so much. Agent Smith was right, it was the peak of out civilization.
I can totally believe that in 2030 the first thing a game does is show you the store.
Look at the bright side: no hallways, just a barren wasteland 50 times Skyrim (with twice as many pointless caves).
Wait, did I said bright? Oh dear I'm sorry, I meant God-forsaken awful.
No I'm not bitter about anything, why do you ask?
Not like Gamestops will still exist by then anyway.
They do in sports games.
At this rate. I'm worried that a second gaming industry crash will happen by then.
@@Rabbitlord108 I'm not so sure it will just be video games. There's unsustainable practices in several aspects of the global entertainment industry. And then there's all the problems like climate change, unaffordable housing, underregulated corporations...
Tommy Tallarico worked hand in hand with Chris Eccleston for 5 years. His mom is very proud.
Wow that's awesome, say it's been 7 months and it hasn't been released by Coleco yet, any word from him on what's up?
“World’s greatest game designer is here in person!”
Okay, be honest folks was anyone else expecting Maximilian Pegasus to step up?
A live action version of Yugioh directed by David Croneburg? That would be something worth watching!
@@callumcooney-waterhouse7851 that definetly would have fit the early YuGiOh chapters especially the penalty games.
"The future is dumb!"
Truer words were never said.
Tesla is the exact embodiment of that!
So many years and no game is as cool as ExistenZ yet
That needs to be a shirt.
Anyone else here seen Ryan George's videos about the time traveling reporter?
"Where do the batteries go?"
"Good news! It's a suppository!"
Did not expect a Ben Garrison joke here of all places.
@@Hawkatana I don't really know who Ben Garrison is. I was going for the more commonly used Futurama/Professor Farnsworth reference.
This movie was DUMB
Having recently rewatched the multiple "April Fools" videos Linkara released over the years, I will now quote one to sum up my understanding of the plot of this film.
"I AM TRIPPING SO MANY BALLS!"
9:19 A deadly teeth weapon. Teeth, my god.
I was thinking the same thing!
A little trivia, in Videodrome, the organic gun used by Max Rem at the climax was supposed to shoot teeth.
Now if they had a deadly bee weapon, they'd be unstoppable.
@@muigokublack6487That sounds like a job for Dr. Beeeeeees!
"A weapon with some bite to it"
(Q looks at James Bond with annoyance)
The real eXistenZ was the Matrix we Inceptioned along the way.
No the real eXisteZ was Dark City!
Something something digital circus.
The Dot Hack we all Sword Art Online.
@@angrybrony "I have no exit and I must scream" - Pomni, probably.
The Matrix started out as a Dark City, which became filled with Serenity, and eXistenZ was nothing but a Brain Scan for the Inception of Ready Player One.
Eccelston’s Brooklyn accent in this makes his Scottish accent in GI Joe sound realistic and nuanced
Finger's crossed UA-cam doesn't have a panic attack with these video and it get's to stay up here.
Out of all the Cronenberg films, I'm surprised you weren't asked to cover the comic book movie he made. A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE.
Or the comic book adaptation of this movie
@@TheBrotherGrim Wait there was a comic book adaption of this movie?
@@derrickhaggardYuuuup! and it's just as weird as you'd think. The art is like this weird photorealistic painting style. Not knowing anything about the movie and going in completely blind was definitely a trip
That one is a gritty, hyperviolent neo-noir. This is way more fun
"It's really sad when the sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf's virtual reality game makes more sense and is better designed than this one."
Fun fact: This movie actually introduced me to Red Dwarf through an online argument which one did this concept first and best.
Gods Red dwarfs is such a fun show!
I'd much rather watch the 'Back to Reality' episode than this movie! XD
9:19 "A deadly teeth weapon"
Teeth... My God
So that's were the Teeth SCP was inspired by!
Next Golden Light will inspire a COD developer.
"I don't know what's going on, we're both stumbling around together in this unformed world whose rules and objectives are largely unknown...7/10"
Knowing the videogame industry, a procedualy generated videogame that scans the player's mind to create an story based on their worldview, anxieties, paranoias, etc. sound like something that could eventually exist if the studios remain as focused on screwing over both developtmers and players as they're now
Except with even more pay walls 😅
After half a decade of viral internet conspiracies like flat earthers, QAnon and "reptiloids" going mainstream, a movie about playing a telepathic video game with that uncle who's two clicks away from becoming the next pizzagate shooter *should* make more sense than ever, but it really doesn't.
35:23 - honestly when you brought it up when they were at the gas station, I was expecting a reveal that her touching everything was a sign that the game had skewed her perception of reality so much that she had trouble telling that she was in the real world when not playing; that there was a difference in the sensation of touch in reality compared to the game that she was using it to ground herself and remind herself that she was no longer in the game.
"DVD Commentary points out that one particular scene early on where Allegra and Pikul are at the County Gas Station makes absolutely no sense on its own. The scene in question is when we see Allegra outside the gas station while Pikul and Gas are inside, kicking at the dust and looking at the general area with something close to wonder and then reacting to a strange two-headed lizard. According to the commentary, Allegra is in fact admiring the detail of the transCendenZ game-world and the scene was included for the sole purpose of foreshadowing the reveal that the characters are inside a game the entire time."
Congratulations! You invested more thought into that scene, than the writer who wrote it!
What an absolutely crappy movie.
Cronenberg to me has always been such a fascinating director to me because he isn't bound to a single genre he can do it all and still make it work pretty well honestly
4:47 And the Co-Lead designer for the launch game: Peter Molyneux!
Dont judge "Chinese Restaurant"
I am literally eating Chinese food from a place called "Cooking Cooking" while watch this.
my city had a Chinese buffet called "China Buffet" for years
Don't forget to wash it down with a can of BEER beer.
I’m kind of disappointed nobody thought to call up the 90s Dude so he could have a cameo. Dude must be hard at work rebuilding Comicron 2 (or starting work on Comicron 3)
I only have one question about the Game Pods:
Can you run Doom on them?
Sees the title card art: Sure it’s yonic, why wouldn’t it be?
Full disclosure - with it being a Cronenberg movie, I fully expected to use the "sure it's phallic, why wouldn't it be?" line, but yeah, they're yonic or resemble vaginas so it doesn't work. XD
I learned a new word today! I didn't necessarily WANT to learn a new word today, but here we are regardless.
Not only do you have Michelle Yeoh and David Cronenberg on Star Trek together but they're discussing events from Enterprise season 4 and Deep Space Nine. What a time to be a fan.
Didn’t expect to see Linkara review what I’ve considered to be David Chronenberg’s most under-appreciated film next to Crash
No, not that Crash; the other one
*looks it up*
The fuck?!
In what world does A Paul Haggis movie deserve best picture
"Death to the demon, Ted Pikul!" I love this crazy ass movie.
"Death to Videodrome! Long live the new flesh!"
I keep forgetting that this movie has the most 90s title ever to exist.
Because poor literacy is KEWL
Since Lewis has broadened his horizons as a gamer with the streams in the last few years, I am loving more and more when he talks about content about games. Also, as someone who has played games most of their life, followed the industry for a lot of that time and even worked in the industry, movies like this drive me up the damn wall
I love that after all these years, you still get good milage on, " Of course! Don't you know anything about science?!"
What a interesting video to celebrated Star Wars Day and Free Comic Book Day with
Bold of you to assume I intended to release this on Star Wars day.
Also, I didn't - it's still May 3rd in Minnesota. XD
@@AT4WThat's Prequel Day!
This used to play I would bet monthly or by monthly on SyFy Channel usually in the evening or night & I remember that it was one of the weirdest films I’d ever seen & yet always captivated me such that I’m sure I’ve seen it over ten times via the SyFy Channel alone. Sometimes I went to sleep while it played & sometimes I woke up at like 1AM when the movie was 30 minutes in & watched it all the way through. Both experiences amplified the strange nightmare/dreamscape vibes of the film which imprinted it into my subconscious all the more
I do like this film, but of the "virtual worlds/what is reality?" movies that came out around this time, I thought "The Thirteenth Floor" was a better movie.
I'd love to see Linkara talk about the best of all the mindbending late-90s movies: "Dark City".
The greatest thing David Cronenberg has ever done was play a psychologist/serial killer in Clive Barker's Night Breed. Not mentioning him in the Lost in Adaptation episode is probably Dominic Noble's biggest mistake.
Nothing says Star Wars like a David Cronenberg movie
Its technically still may 3rd...
@@DirectorOfChaos9292in your timezone only
@@DirectorOfChaos9292That would be Prequel Day...
There's some real strong body horror in legends material. Technovirus zombies made from Sith technosorceryalchemy.
Then there's the people turned into faceless hulking monsters by a Sith amulet.
But we never did get the answer...
DID SHE MAKE THE GAME OR NOT?!!
Well, technically, she DIDN'T make the game, as it's revealed she was only playing the part of a game programmer and it was actually another player that did. ...But they also reveal that the game was designed through some of the player's desires to destroy virtual reality and those who create it, who she was one of, so I guess, in some convoluted way, she DID make the game. ...Except she didn't actually.
@@ZC-Infinityoh no, I've gone cross-eyed.
The answer is yes and no.
The reveal at the end shows that everything prior to that was a procedural generated Game that takes its starting seed from thoughts extracted from people participating in it,
2 of the Players were part of a radical Anti-VR terrorist group and as such did the generated story ended up fucked up as there anti-VR games thoughts influenced the story generation. So in part did she create the story of the game (tho not the game it self) and the game with in a game was created by the character she was playing.
The obvious final final twist is opening the question if "is it just another layer of VR obfuscation?"
And this properly also justified the existence of an Radical Anti-VR terrorist group as perfect VR makes it near impossible to tell reality from virtual reality.
@@rynobehnke8289 Hence, the inability to tell the difference from simulation or reality is what is also known as Hyper-reality.
Happy Star Wars Day! May the 4th be with you!
Happy Star Wars Day, Lewis and all of AT4W! May the Force be with you!
I'm surprised you didn't put in an Austin Powers "Oh no I've gone cross eyed" joke.
The body horror and uncertainty of reality or game worked better in Total Recall.
Also worked better in the "Ship in a Bottle" TNG episode.
The original Total Recall with Schwarzenegger is so weird& fun
8:59 there’s was a MythBusters episode were they made bullets out of humans teeth
Oh yeah. I remember that episode god I miss that show
I kept expecting Christopher Ecclestone to say "Nyehhh! Brooklyn Rage!"
It’s interesting to look back at 90s and 2000s fear of video games and virtual reality claiming to say that they’ll make us violent and we won’t be able to tell the difference between real and fake. Like with the stuff he said during the review on how people actually want to be good guys in video games plus on how video games keep people inside as opposed to doing crimes. Plus it’s hilarious seeing 90s effects and people being convinced that it’s impossible to tell the difference between the fake world and the real world. I’ll say this say what you want about ready player one but it at least understood video games
Cronenberg’s character in Discovery is one of my favorite parts of that era of the show, and I’m eager to see what kind of role he may play in the final season’s plot.
Do you think he’s a Terran?
That’s been my theory for a while, that he was either one of the last Terrans to make it to the main universe before the distance became to great, or he’s a descendant of Terrans that crossed over.
Granted, he could just be a very off putting smart guy, but he FEELS like a Terran to me.
EVERYONE loves Cronenberg's character!
@@nonspiderwebwe know that some Terran revolutionaries crossed over aboard the ISS Enterprise now, so I suppose it’s possible, but I think he’s just a studier. It’s more likely to me that he’s a Temporal Wars veteran and the main guy behind what amounts to the post-Accords version of Temporal Investigations
@@Cdr2002 I hope they snap the canon back to pre Fall of Romulus, but that's just me being selfish.
@@XanthinZarda that’s where Lower Decks is set, though it’s sadly ending with its next season. Maybe another show will fill in that space. But who knows
12:02 William Dafoe is always a win
Hello fellow pride flag person :)
that review answers the question where i've seen "my" first Doctor before, thanks for that :D
I always tend to get Davids Cronenberg, Lynch and Fincher mixed-up.
Linkara you made my day love all the hard work you do
That parachute line is so classic. I wonder if many people know where that line is from nowadays.
I’d heard it before in other stuff and finally googled it. Clearly it’s been awhile cause as a kid the Ocean Dub was my first exposure to DBZ but it has been a long time. The two things I remember most clearly about it are Brian Drummond’s Vegeta and Terry Klassen’s Krillin
@@mitchellcowan2500 it's a funny excuse for censorship in the show. I really enjoyed those voice actors from the oceans dub. Some of them carried over into other dubs done by other companies like big green.
Too bad it’s Sunday!
@@MudchopX there would have been a lot more people in those buildings lol 🤣
Growing up as a young child that line made sense to me because I was a Mormon and spent a very long time in church every Sunday. Now that I'm older I'm not sure if that really mattered at all looking back on the line.
1:35
I am not going to ask him, but I also stopped in season 3. Not only because Michael was disrespectful to a crewmate, a man who LEFT HIS FAMILY FOREVER, all so she would have a better chance, not a great one, just better, to help save her life. He had no need to do it, he's a lower decker type(read extra), and she makes fun of him in a rather mean spirited way.
What broke me though was a joke that was directed towards Gene Roddenberry. Now, I agree with SFDebris, the man is not a sacred cow, he was, by all accounts, a greedy old cuss, and did some very nasty things in his day, and his 'vision' held trek back as often as catapulted it forward. However, making fun of him in his own series, in a rather mean spirited way just rubbed me wrong, so I stopped.
Some great jokes in the opening seminar bit.
My dad introduced me to some very adult, messed up movies early on.
We watched eXistenZ when I was 8
I remember going into Inception excited to see the next original film from the Dark Knight director, and I was like “Oh, this is just eXistenZ. I’ve already seen this movie like 5 times…”
And nobody I told this to understood because nobody watched eXistenZ. So sad.
I remember watching this movie in the dorm.
Well, I watched some of this movie. After a point I decided that this was a movie about video games made by someone who knew nothing about video games and wandered back to my room to play Fallout 2.
Your cat jumping on the back of the couch at 27:00 really seemed like incredibly appropriate timing.
They seem to show up semi-regularly when he's in rant mode.
@@bthsr7113 They do, but this time it felt especially like it fit with the rant.
The point of the tooth gun, I'm pretty sure, is that it's made entirely (or almost entirely) out of organic material. When the guy gets scanned for weapons, it's looking for WEAPONS, and not flesh and bone. So its purpose is to disguise it from scanners as just being more flesh and part of the person's body.
Still would show up on X-ray, and if it doesn't have the "stopping power" for successful target elimination, then you have made a disgusting mess which likely cost a small fortune to bioengineer a worse pistol instead of spending that development money on a few decent hit men with sniper rifles.
@@bthsr7113 why are you applying real world logic to what is explicitly stated to be part of a video game world? The assasin got the tooth gun in because that was the narrative for that level.
I really thought they were doing something else with Allegra touching stuff. Because she was supposed to be a game designer she must have spent countless hours inside virtual reality. So her touching everything was a way for her to compare it to what she creates. Kind of like an artist viewing and touching everything about the inspiration of an art piece they are making. That whole confused "did I do it right?" "was I close?" and eventual "WHY MUST ART MAKE ME SUFFER!"
Apparently there was a novelization by Christopher Priest based on this movie so if I had to guess the 2030 setting and corporate politics mentioned in wikipedia are probably taken from there. This is all guess work on my part as I've not read it, but that seems to be the most likely candidate.
Which Christopher priest? The guy who wrote the prestige, or the guy who wrote black panther?
@@mttylerdurden9 According to Amazon it's the author of The Prestige.
@@mttylerdurden9 The Prestige one.
TFS’ play through of Fallout 4 is indeed amazing. Would love to see you play it sometime in the future on a live stream
8:59 Linksano is always to great to see you again
Always love that anyone's review or viewing if any David Cronenberg movies can be summed up with "what the @#$% did i just watch?" Though yours, by far, is one of the most entertaining.
I knew the movie sounded familiar. When he pulled the organic looking gun I recognized it immediately!
Crafting the gun out of the soup, it's one of my first "grown up movie" memories as a kid.
"Actual Reality! Act up!"
"Fight AIDS!"
Wait was that Christopher Echelston? The 9th Doctor?
Yes.
We’ll this is certainly something I never thought I’d see Linkara review
I don't know why, but the AT4W themesong suddenly made me very nostalgic... and that's when I realized how long it's been since I watched one of these 😅
"Weird things done with flesh," Golden Corral's new slogan.
This doesn't make sense. This is Eggs Is Ten’s! So why is Nine here?
You brought back some great memories by mentioning TFS' Fallout 4 playthrough.
"But overwise she has no reaction whatsoever" And this is why you needed a higher caliber of tooth or more power behind it. I advocate for fully fueled snake fang to be sure of successful target elimination. Or a flechette style scatter blast of wasp stingers for some interesting biopunk blaster.
Edit: Synthetic DNA IS a thing, but still very much experimental, post dating this movie, and it's more of a concept for a new kind of dense data storage.
This is the type of movie that people into high-art movies will always discuss like there's no tomorrow.
This kind of thing makes me feel that so called "high art" is overrated.
eXistenZ the weird bio-flesh VR... thing is basically the equivalent of a BrainDance from Cyberpunk 2077 where except you don't live out the last few minutes of a Cyberpsycho or uncover a deeper mystery, you're just reliving the life of a Maelstrom gang member just doing his grocery shopping or doing his taxes.
If Peter Sculley's work can be described on youtube, I'm sure David Cronenberg is fine.
1:43 Michelle Yeoh's character is getting a spin off TV-Movie 'Section 31' [which has been filmed] so maybe the opportunity to expand on these thoughts...
14:33 "But he was stabbed/shot"
"It stopped the projectile before it hit him"
I'll say it: Disco season 4 was a lot of fun, and season 5 is looking good so far.
Freakin' amazing review, BTW.
DIS still has problems overall but much like VOY and ENT I felt that it’s at least getting better with each season. While Season 3 and 4 are pretty varied, Season 5 has been pretty consistent as not bad so far.
When you know where the 2 second rifftrax clip is from, and understand the frustration in that short.
The main thing I got from this back in the day was an unsettling discomfort matched with a feeling that there was something interesting in there somewhere but it didn't 100% come across.
My mom and I recently binge watched all of Star Trek Discovery so far, and we also like Cronenberg’s character.
BTW, the earliest production to showcase mind-uploading was in episode 8 of Harlan Ellison's The Starlost (1973), which guest starred Percy Rodriguez, where the main characters had to plug their brains into a 1970s computer to defuse a self-destruct device.
Honestly when Linkara said he couldn't do a convincing British accent, I expected him to either actually do one or dub over himself with someone who was British.
If SAO was directed by David Cronenberg.
Jude Law is Kirito and Allegra is Asuna
That’s an unfair comparison.
This movie makes 1000x more sense than whatever the fuck SAO is.
Tbf it has better VR elements than SAO
Honestly, I'd rather watch SAO before this movie and I'm not just say that because SAO is one of my favorite anime. Cause SAO is A LOT more interesting and easier to understand than this movie.
@@TheMiraculousVillain Not really. SAO, while a bad game design, at least delivers a fantasy that you know is a fantasy. It gives you direction to know what you're working towards.
The UI is junk, and the lack of diversity in playstyle is terrible for an MMO, but it has better understanding and doesn't fall on procedurally generated content that fails to generate a narrative or substantial entertainment.
Riiiiggghhhttt until the second act drops all those elements
04:31 You joke but a few years before the movie was released there was a console called the LaserActive that had games priced at *$120*
Yeah, in case you're wondering why you probably never heard of it, it's because it *BOMBED* less than a year after it was released.
Thanks for mentioning ross scott. I was considering mentioning it in the comments
I said this when I first saw him on Star Trek: Discovery: David Cronenberg did not have the body type I expected of him. The phrase “scrawny little shit” has come to mind but I could probably put it kinder.
Alright, I will try and make sense of this from what I am gathering from this review:
First, the Realists appear to be extremists based very much in the "Videogames make people violent"-kind of vain taken to the extreme as they think Virtual Reality gaming is so real that it has an extremely strong bleed. Whether you agree with this or not is irrelevant, it's what they believe regardless of how wrong they may or may not be. (and they are)
This is contrasted with the game dev always saying "try going along with it" which is the exact opposed idea, to give into the bleed from the game fully aware that it's just a game... right?
Ultimately, it's very similar to LARPing or role-playing in general where the truth is more individual, some people can handle bleed very well while others.... REALLY can't. The bleeding effect in Assassin's Creed is actually also based on this concept of make-believe/unreality of sorts influencing our true selfs.
Now next, the game and it's world, tech, characters and even plot are indeed procedurally generated. Think of it like a Roguelike on steroids. Which I can absolutely see appealing to people. That's why she keeps saying "the only way to find out why you are playing the game is to play it." Simply speaking, you don't know if your next gaming session is going to be more cyberpunky with a heist or more body-horror-espionage-based like we see in the movie or anything else. The fleshy-version of the VR game interface might be a direct reflection of how our extremist-anti-gamer sees gaming, as a perverse kind of self-pleasure. If she has coded the game in such a way as to cascade the SEED used for the procedural generation, it is very possible that it could create scenarios she would never expect or find the algorithmic character generation lacking in testing. The movie's multiple-layer reality scenario was, as revealed by the end, created out of the SEEDs created from the players minds, incorporating subjective reality into the virtual reality.
The appeal to me personally would be that the "game" rewards flexibility and adaptability to be successful, you don't know what you will get so you need to be well rounded. There's also a level of gambling to it since you're likely hoping for a certain kind of scenario which you may or may not get as the game system siphons the creation SEED from your mind. (and from every player). One of the main characters actually being an extremist who hates videogames being unfamiliar with the tropes of a game like forced dialogue choices is actually fairly clever in my opinion, especially since he directly expresses his disgust with games doing that without understanding the medium in question since he has likely never engaged with it before and doesn't do it in good faith during the movie either, indeed, only finding confirmation of his believes in the experience, dismissing the alternate viewpoints and the fact that on the first layer of the game, choices felt far less forced than they did in the sub-game created from his viewpoint.
Overall I have to say it seems to be quite clever for a movie about virtual reality once all the pieces fall into place by the end. It certainly requires multiple viewings and retrospection to make sense out of it but much like a Kingdom Hearts game, I do think there's value to be found in the confusion of a first viewing and the clarity and understanding on a second viewing/retrospection.
There is more I could point out (like the MC's SEED equating buying a game system to buying something illegal at a gas station ect.) But this comment is getting too long as it is.
P.S.: Since, except for the final scene everything is in the game, game logic applies... including the teeth weapon. I have used weirder stuff in games.... looking at you Bloodborne and Destroy all Humans!
As someone who really admires the film, one question that just came to mind is, what if the RPG itself is a type of sandbox VR game? Especially as the rules, actions, and effects are randomized?
@@CosmoShidan That is what I was saying.
@@EclipsisTenebris Ah, thanks for clarifying that!
There is a graphic novel of eXistenZ but it's just scenes from the movie painted over.
I hear ya. It really should have differentiated itself more from the film, such as adding in deleted scenes such as the original ending where the Waiter gets shot at the end.
24:59 Sometimes, I’ll deliberately pick the evil option just to see what happens, but that usually after a first playthrough where I pick the option that best represents my morality
Good job on doctor who jokes Linkara.
Whoa, I remember seeing this movie as it went on. God, I came in like in the half way point while it was on the old tv channel, TV3, which is now virgin one. Which meant there were ad breaks.
I was so confused.
I see where the teeth shooting gun from SCP came from.
The sad part is, judging by what was shown at this year's GDC, it's not unrealistic that there'll be games in 2030 with exclusively AI-"written" quests and dialogue procedurally generated with no human involvement in the creation of the story.🙃
Since you mentioned Red Dwarf, I can't be the only one who thought of Back to Reality
0:44 Me personally as someone who no longer has access to monetization (and barely used it when I did), I can at least not worry about most of the music now that UA-cam signed that deal with a bunch of record labels.
I once had a "no impact" CID on an anime theme song but the _footage_ was blocked by a separate CID because the record labels own TV series soundtracks in Japan. Not just anime but tokusatsu as well. That even includes the songs sung by the (voice) actors. I could probably use Aim to be a Pokemon Master and ShoPro wouldn't be able to stop me! (except it's with Sony Music Entertainment and I don't think they were among the labels UA-cam has a deal with because Sony are the worst (also because I still got a blocked or monetized by owner CID on something SME owned))
9:19 Tooth Fairy comes *PACKING HEAT!*
with the title i was thinking this was xmen related
now i want a david croninburg xmen movie
One other thing I recently picked up on from FilmComicExplained, is that the bio-tech is a metaphor that the human mind ends in the flesh rather than existing outside it. This is an argument going back to Aristotle, yet that is questionable as Artificial Intelligence may contradict that. This was given as what Cronenberg believes, however he does allow for the viewer to challenge this notion.
Damn!! I remember when Decker Shado reviewed this movie YEARS ago, never thought I'd see Linkara review it many years later.... small world
"A deadly Teeth weapon"
Teeth, my god. :P
I like Linkara's description of a Cronenberg film, it reminds me of trying to explain to anyone what the hell Videodrome is.
34:12 Delicious in dungeon is getting covered next week?! YES! although i wonder what chapter is getting covered or if it is something the anime has already covered
So happy you reviewed this as a VR enthusiast. I have never seen this film. Honestly….seeing this style….just doesn’t work for me. I honestly don’t believe this is where VR is going to go, if it does, it’s not going to look like this, and if it did look like this, the world would not look like it does in the film.
There was this weird era in the late nineties when we spontaneously got all these movies about artificial realities with unique--sometimes haunting--imagery. Perfect Blue, Truman Show, Pleasantville, Dark City, The Matrix, The Thirteenth Floor, and eXistenZ. I miss the pre-Dubya years so, so much. Agent Smith was right, it was the peak of out civilization.
I saw this in college and then a million times afterwards and didn't realize the sexual innuendo