Country: USA
Genre: Drama | Sci-Fi | Thriller
Direction: Peter Berg
Cast: Sienna Guillory, Clea DuVall, Joy Bryant, Ritchie Coster
Twelve extremely talented men and women have been chosen to be part of the Phaeton mission, a 10-year trek to explore a distant planetary system. In order to endure the stress of being confined to their high-tech vessel, the crew passes the time using advanced virtual reality modules that allow them to take on various identities. But as the ship approaches a critical phase of their journey, a deadly flaw is discovered in the virtual system, forcing them to question if someone onboard might be a killer.
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Movie Review:
Filmed as the pilot episode of a TV series that never saw the light of day, Virtuality was released by Fox on June 26, 2009, as a standalone film. Unsurprisingly, it lays the groundwork for something that will take a long time to play out, it opens some dramatic questions, and it leaves loose ends all over the place. The work itself provides little more than a handful of tense situations and a fallow premise.
The story takes place on a starship, the Phateon, with a crew on a ten-year mission to a star system called Epsilon Eridani, in an attempt to discover life. During the first few years of the mission, scientists back on Earth discovered that our planet will not survive the next century. The objective of the mission, therefore, has become to determine whether any planets there can sustain human life so that we have a place to live after Earth. The show adds some depth to the story with two additional plains of reality: the reality TV show-within-the-show, The Edge of Never, which broadcasts the happenings on board the ship, and the virtual reality computer program available to every crew member to provide escape from the redundancy of living on a starship for ten years. Then there's the seemingly uncontrollable rogue character roaming the virtual world, (virtually) raping and killing crew members in the midst of their fantasies. It's a fairly straightforward surface plot with some winding nuances beneath.
Of the two layers of sub-reality, the reality TV show is the most prominent. Not only do we get occasional "confession booth" scenes and "lipstick cam" shots, but there is also a television-appropriate proportion of characters who are prone to bickering. It may sound contrived for professionals of the caliber that would be required for a mission such as this to be arguing so frequently and, at times, childishly, but the film makes it clear that the conditions under which they are living are especially stressful, so the feeling is not artificial. The reality show element also adds a bit of drama, with the characters directly involved in the production of the show being often looked upon with suspicion by the crew proper. When certain things go wrong, one must wonder, Did the producer of the show plant this event? Given the nature of this episode, however, we never see whether this is used for clever pop-culture commentary or as a device merely for creating more plot twists.
The virtual reality is the film's most interesting and most fruitful element. The places visited by the characters in order to escape the enormous responsibilities of their current situation are occasionally serene, but more often the crew members choose to place their virtual selves in scenarios of conflict. There is also an adulterous relationship between two of the characters visiting each other on the virtual plain. They justify the act with that fact that it's not "really" happening. Also, the aforementioned rogue presents some dilemmas (not to mention mystery) himself, though the conflict that stems from it is forced. Take one dilemma stemming from the virtual rogue, for example: If one is raped while in a state of unreality but feels the full physical and emotional trauma of the assault, is it something to be upset about? I think most of us would agree that it is. It also seems that most acquaintances of a victim of such an assault would be sympathetic, despite their personal views on the matter and despite the fact that the attack took place in the virtual realm. Such is not the case here. This event is turned into a major point of contention, with many of the characters downplaying it, likening it to an assault in a dream or, even worse, suggesting that the rape may be a suppressed desire. It comes across as awfully unrealistic. However, the other questions presented by the technology of virtuality, such as those pertaining to the reality of the happenings in that world, are intriguing enough to make up for this hiccup in the writing.
The acting and the script provide enough drama to remain interesting even though the film's primary facets -- the "save the world" mission, a malfunctioning all-powerful computer, the virtual realm, and, to a lesser degree, the reality TV show -- are unoriginal. At the same time, however, I cannot help but feel that all of this drama is superficial. Some of the relationships and interactions between characters are intriguing and dynamic, and the verisimilitude of it all is often strong, but at the end of the day nothing special comes of it; it's nothing you can't find on any other TV show of adequate quality. This may very well have been going somewhere new or insightful in subsequent episodes, but without any continuation of the show, it's just pointless drama.
Speculating as to whether Virtuality would have been a good series would be pointless. I will say, however, that it had the potential to be good. It would have been interesting to see how the series' themes ultimately tied together and whether the characters' personal plights developed into something thought-provoking. Again, though, as the beginning of a series that never came to fruition, what we have is nothing more than a vastly incomplete work. If you view it as a film, it is one that ends eons before it should. If you view it as the pilot episode of a TV series, you will be left cold and, if you liked it, frustrated. It's best we let this one rest in peace.
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