Re: Movie:Thirteenth Floor

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
29 Nov 1999 16:04:18 +0100

EvMick@aol.com writes:

> I just this minute finished watching "Thirteenth Floor". If anyone hasn't
> seen it yet I strongly advise that you do so.
>
> It "out-matrixs" ...Matrix.

Yes, it is a very nice movie. I love when a film dealing with ontological trickery actually manages to remain *consistent* (even if it needs some slightly odd boundary conditions). The only other film I can remember with the same level of trickery and consistency (but a very different mood) was _Army of the Twelve Monkeys_.

We saw "Thirteenth Floor" at the Halloween meeting here in Stockholm, and had some fun discussions about it, sf films in general and the world described. A few interesting thughts: the description of technology was, unlike the Matrix and I guess ExistenZ, neutral or even positive. This kind of ontological movies have gone from irrational explanations (dreams/madness/drugs) to rational ones (VR/uploading/nanotech) where the shift between "realities" is done in a replicable way. Did the movie end with a murder, and was it a crime?

Another fun movie (slightly related) is the french _Nirvana_, a good implementation of cyberpunk a few years too late with some buddhist imagery, which gave me the idea for the Snowflake Cult in my game - by erasing AI, we can bring them to Nirvana.

-- 
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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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