Existenz
Existenz (stylized as eXistenZ) is a 1999 Canadian science fiction body horror film, written, produced, and directed by Canadian director David Cronenberg. It stars Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jude Law.
As in Videodrome (1983), Cronenberg gives his psychological statement about how humans react and interact with the technologies that surround them, in this case, the world of video games.
Unlike Videodrome, the movie is somewhat lame in its execution and tame in what it implies about our future relations with reality-changing technology.
They say on other websites, they do, that the film's plot came about after director Cronenberg conducted an interview with Salman Rushdie for Shift magazine in 1995. At the time, Rushdie was in hiding due to a Fatwa being put on his life by Muslim extremists due to his controversial book The Satanic Verses. Rushdie's dilemma gave Cronenberg an idea of "a Fatwa against a virtual-reality game designer". Existenz was originally pitched to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but they did not green-light the film due to its complex structure.
Complex Structure
Sure, so we're not just turning up and insulting this film for the sake of it, especially since David Cronenberg is a favourite director and one of the good guys. But once you've worked your way through the canon and seen this film three times, as I have, it's OK to have an opinion.
The commentary on the games industry and the nature of games is all very transparent, and the bodily attachments, such as the ports that gamers have installed in their bodies in the future are fairly standard scientific fare. The suggesting that virtual reality will be indistinguishable from other realties is nothing new either, and it allows a series of 'game within a game' movie plot twists which are enough to keep the show on the road.
The trouble with the 'game within a game within a game etc' plot is that it lends itself to the making of a movie, and says more about the motion pictures than it does about the games being described. It's possible that such games within games would disorient users enough that they would forget which reality they were in, but it is much more useful as a movie plot device than it is as a commentary on video games themselves. The idea that in the future there would be a movement which would be 'pro-reality' is good, but it is not well figured out. This pro-reality counterculture will be an interesting adjunct when Virtual Reality really takes off and becomes as thoroughly mundane as it is presented here, or as the industry hopes it to be.
The best idea in the film is the notion of the 'trout farm' where organisms are hacked to make game pods. The game itself (which is called Trancendenz, not Existenz) mujst be fairly dull as some of the users get very little out of it, and can only play for a short while. They also have to play rather underdevloped characters, or at least some of them do. Most of what is presented in terms of either gaming or VR seems more or less achievable, and while it will not finally be necessary to make game-pods or gaming units out of biological material (as in the reality of the movie, which features headsets) this is a highly typical notion for director Cronenberg, and is the best fun aspect of the movie.
I think that when good ideas are moulded into mass market movies, lots of conventions find their way into unconventional ideas. It means that a film of ideas, such as eXistenZ becomes watererd down and overweight with romantic storylines, and disposable characters. The critique of the dullness of games characters and scenarios is presented but is very hard to buy, when artificial intelligence is so far advanced already. Also, users appear to be unable to make choices, which is another critique of the dull storylines of video games, but not an effective or in this scenario, accurate one.
