Midweek Mention... eXistenZ

eXistenZ

Sidey: This is the start of X Week. and the film in, that we're talking about now is called Existenz. It has an X.

Dan: got the X in it, right?

Sidey: capitalized. It's massive.

Dan: That's why it is massive.

Sidey: is Yeah, it is. We'll get straight into trivia if you like. The word in between there is

I'm going for God.

God. Yeah.

Dan: Oh, very clever if you're Hungarian and know that.

Sidey: Yeah. And like the word existence. Yes, exactly. This is David Cronenberg's film. We've reviewed the fly of his

Dan: does a good beer as well, doesn't he,

Sidey: Yeah, it does. And we've spoken about this, I think, in various top fives.

But I hadn't seen it since it came out in 1999. I saw this one at the local multiplex. Yeah. Cine de France, as it happens. It was long since gone let's just get into it.

Dan: Why not? That's what we're here for. Let's do that. I'd never seen this before.

Sidey: I remember really liking it

Dan: I never even it was just off my radar. I didn't know who was in it what it was about

Reegs: movies?

Dan: Yes. yeah,

i've seen the fly.

Reegs: On

Dan: I've seen video drone a while back as well. But not the others I

Reegs: Not the others I think. Yeah.

Sidey: it starts off as a kind of like a demo slash focus group thing for a new kind of video

Dan: Yeah, we're in the near future, aren't

Sidey: Well, okay. So when I was researching it, it says what year. It's set, but I didn't see that in the film

Reegs: No, I didn't. So what,

Cris: Yeah, I was gonna

Sidey: 2030, it's supposed to be set. So 31 years in the future when this film came out, but it,

nothing looks that futuristic. Things are weird. Like the game consoles

Reegs: we can get, yeah, well, cause this, cause this is David Cronenberg because they said to him, we'll make a movie about video games.

He's like, okay, but it's going to be a lump of sort of flesh that you operate with your hands

And it's going to attach umbilical cords to a, like a sort of new fuck hole in the base of your spine. So, and occasionally you're going to have to leave that thing and maybe lick

Dan: and maybe lick it. So, it's

Sidey: going to need volunteers to come up on stage and then we've got this Allegra lady coming in who's you know this incredible game designer and she's going to be demonstrating her new game is called Existence.

It's Christopher Eccleston who's doing all the intros at this point. Very as well. Yeah. And so she comes in and she's very, she seems very introvert. She's not, she's obviously a games designer, but I guess in the IT world, not necessarily brilliant at presenting that. So she comes on stage and she's not super dynamic about

Reegs: have

Dan: and they have a little kind of mumble in their audience and they say, look, she, she's just one of those computer geeks, locks herself in a room. She

Sidey: guy's so enthusiastic he just gets up and shouting Allegra Allegra and he's still standing yeah

Dan: Yeah, huge fans. While

Sidey: that's going on Jude Law is just sat on a chair and he's doing some sort of security type job for scanning people that are coming in and one guy turns up late

He's called Fritz, I think.

Reegs: Is it? He's immediately pretty

Sidey: He looks really shifty and Dr. Law is not really paying attention. He's more interested with what's going on up there. And he scans the guy.

Reegs: Well, cause she's generally they're all sitting on stage now, all like,

Sidey: a ski boot, which is never,

Reegs: Never talked about, but she carries it everywhere. I think the game

Dan: part of her armor, though, isn't it? She gets that. She had the late one. She had that thing. I think they're going to kick her all out.

Eventually, if she gets enough bits, that's why I was looking at it. But in this particular. Part in the hall. This guy, he has his bag searched by Jude Law. He asks him a few questions. As you say, he is a bit distracted, but, and this guy goes through and joins the audience.

Sidey: first he just sits down, and then they, they

Reegs: got this massive, like, flesh controller.

And they're all like, oh, it's like retro games. Oh, wow, that's one of the, like, AX300s or something. It's like this horrible pink mound of

Dan: is like the original SN he's got and they've got you know, an Xbox or something.

Reegs: And from this thing, he pulls out a gun that's constructed of, like, gristle,

Sidey: at first it just looks weird. It's not till we see it afterwards. Yeah.

Dan: Looks like something that's come out of the sea. Like it's got barnacles and in fact

Sidey: it So

Yeah. And

Dan: they've made a gun out of human parts using teeth as a bullet.

Which is clever

Sidey: 12 disciples and her have ported into the game. Yeah. And they're, they're all, they refer to 'em as slaves.

I'm like, sounds dodgy. Anyway. And that they're in a kind of. Sort of trancey. Yeah, zombie-like state almost. And it's where your physical

Dan: is left

Reegs: And

Sidey: And as they're doing that, this fella stands up and screams death to Allegra, the,

the the goddess of blah. What was it? He says

Dan: or whatever, yeah.

Cris: Doesn't matter

Dan: He,

shoots her in the shoulder with a tooth.

Sidey: Yeah, he shoots there. Then

Dan: Really, point blank range, he misses and shoots her. Point blank? Yeah. I don't know, maybe there's something wrong with

the gun.

Cris: Yeah, but the teeth, the teeth trajectory is not the same as a bullet. It

Dan: That's what it'll be,

Chris.

Sidey: Yeah, he's taken down. But he does get two, I think, into Christopher Eccleston, one in the gut, who's able to say a few words. But then we do get to see the gun afterwards, because he says, you've got to get her out, you've got to get her away.

Reegs: away.

Even though he's clearly the security guard, they didn't

Dan: story. He, he is, even though he's clearly the security guard that didn't do a very good job in the first place. Because, although this thing, he scanned it, didn't he? He scanned his bag, but he didn't bring up any metal or

Reegs: Yeah, it's all organic.

Dan: of the, the way that they smuggled

Sidey: weapons in.

Ludicrously fake backgrounds. Yeah.

Reegs: ludicrously fake background

Sidey: And they go off and then you get a little exposition about what's going on and then they, later on they do examine the gun and he pulls out the clip and like I say, its teeth and she goes, Hmm. Smaller caliber gun would've needed baby ticket.

Reegs: that's what I've got here. Yeah, me too.

Dan: got

Sidey: learned is that he's just a sort of PR guy.

Reegs: Yeah, exactly,

Sidey: He's a junior learning the ropes. Somehow he's he's got on the road with her and they find out through their chat that he is actually a normie.

He hasn't even been bioported. Yeah. And he's like, oh, I don't like it. You know, something injecting into his spine

and all that and we learn. He's

Reegs: all that. So that has

Sidey: So that has to happen and she takes him to meet Willem Dafoe's G. A. S. S. character who eventually is convinced that he's got to have this port because they're going to need to go into the game, and he says, well, I've done it before, yeah, and it doesn't look like the kind of place you'd want to have an operation.

Dan: keeps talking about how dirty everything is and is it gonna be sterile? Am I not gonna get infected? And he's asking these very sensible questions in and around a medical procedure. Whereas everybody else is just very blase about, oh, we've had it done. He just, he's dusting off old bits of metal from drawers and things and going, oh, this will do.

And Jude law's, characters looking less and less convinced. It's going to be a good idea.

Reegs: and less convinced it's gonna be a good idea. like lizard thing

Sidey: Two heads, amphibious thing that's

Reegs: going to come back through different layers all that stuff so yeah they're going to settle down to have this operation it looks like he's going to use it like it's like a

Sidey: like the big pneumatic kind of

Reegs: bolt gun thing that goes straight into your spine

Sidey: looks like it would hurt

Reegs: instantly paralyzes him as well

Sidey: He's, well, it's sort of like given an epidural, isn't he?

Yeah. And he has it put in and then gas turns out to be, but he finds out that there's a reward For allegra.

Reegs: Yeah, well basically, but as soon as he's like paralyzed she starts like basically coming on to him She's like, oh, I want to put my game port in you and like literally as soon as he's been done

Dan: Yeah,

Reegs: And she like sprays a bit of like WD 40 on him or something and he's still paralyzed and all that It's like real fucking freaky sexy shit

Sidey: Yeah,

Reegs: And then she does actually plug herself like straight away after his operation her umbilical cord into his thing, and then it blows up, doesn't it?

It goes on the frizz.

Dan: said you, you've kind of nerve surged or something. In, in other words, you've got so scared.

This is blown

Sidey: Yeah. We haven't mentioned it, but the, the game machine itself is a living organism

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: Of some kind. They, they explain that it's been made from mutated

Reegs: mutated Later, that'll come out.

Dan: Mutated

Reegs: amphibians and And she

Sidey: And she just kind of waxs this knob on it. It,

Dan: so weird looking, it's, it's kind of like a, a, a pink, it, it looks like a game controller that you would have with the joystick and the four buttons like you were playing the old Playstation or something, but in fact it's about, I don't know, ten times the size of that, and it's this pink blobby,

Sidey: it's a

li it's a living creature and she is very maternal to it.

Yeah. And it's the only copy of this game that she spent six years developing exists exactly within this creature. So she's very attached to it. Yeah.

Reegs: it. Yeah.

Sidey: So she freaks out when it kind of

Reegs: She doesn't

have a lot of time to freak out because gas emerges with a shotgun. He's like, Oh, I deliberately installed that faulty bioport. Because there's like a bounty on her head. So it's like a dead or alive and he's quite happy with dead. So, this is when Pykel's legs, I think, come back to him.

He kills him with the compressed.

Dan: Well, No, it's not his legs come

Sidey: he just holds it

Reegs: Oh yeah. He pulls

Dan: just, he just manages to yeah,

Sidey: It's the, it's the first good bit of real violence we get because it goes right through his neck and blows out the side of his neck and he dies from that

Dan: Yeah.

Wilm Dafoe is gone, but,

Reegs: we have a little bit had already the concept if of like NPCs and like non player characters in video games and like characters you were sort of talking about it They do talk have a little reference to it in the car like Intrinsic motivations that are implanted by the game in people for them to say certain lines or take certain actions

Dan: so that the game can advance into a particular way

Sidey: Yeah, because now they go to a motel. Yeah and it's time to Exactly. Well,

Reegs: Exactly. Well, the

game's going right. They need to find the only working copy of exist. And she needs to get a pod fixed. So yeah. They go to the ski lodge of her mentor, which is he in home. Isn't it?

Sidey: isn't it?

Reegs: Really bizarre. Yeah. And he's like, Oh, you know, we're in a popular ski resort. And she's like, well, don't worry.

Nobody physically goes skiing everybody just does it virtually. So, yeah. So. Is this where he repairs her?

Sidey: It, it'd have to have surgery, you know, it's like a living thing. So the, the getting, working fix is literally surgery.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: We see him sort of, sort of anatomy inside it.

It's got flesh and bone and blah, it's grim. Yeah. And he seems like a kind of savior character. He he helps them get the thing

Dan: a little bit older, isn't he? He's a father figure. It looks, he's one of those trusted people within her life. And, and she doesn't trust many people and she doesn't know many people out in her game kind of world.

So, This is a big deal for her to ask for help to give her hit this guy her pod everything is in there the whole kind of career and her life and everything so she gives it him to to work under the knife

Reegs: So they do do it, they do, and they repair the game pod and they fix his bioport and then they do start playing the game, right? They have, I think she like licks her finger and puts it in the hole first, we get a bit of

that

Dan: Yeah,

Reegs: then she plugs herself in and we get our first like transition, a wipe from one kind of reality to another.

Dan: They're in kind of a, on a street, aren't they? In like a market area

thing?

Sidey: a

Reegs: game and comic shop, isn't it? And their hair is, it's a bit like that scene in the matrix. Their hair is subtly different and clothes are different and that sort of thing. And they have a conversation about, oh, is it always so smooth when you go in and out?

And she's like, well, no, it's different sometimes. Like, you know, yeah.

Dan: But he, he's, he's kind of waxing lyrical about this instant effect that he's, he's had. And they soon start speaking to a Well, they

Sidey: Well, they pick up a game, they pick up a mini version of their game pod.

Dan: Yeah. The

Sidey: And then this guy from the shop comes over to speak to them, this When they don't say the right thing to him, he just stops and his head just kind of bobs around. Like you see in old computer games. And she explains to him certain things and he Michael says something to me because I don't know what happened there and said oh sometimes you'll just say things that you're forced to to progress the game you'll be forced to say something and if you don't say the guy's name he won't know that you're talking to him so he'll just carry on doing this like head sway thing it's weird

Dan: That's right, so they have, which is just like the computer games you used to play, isn't it? You know, they would, you would get to a certain stage and you had to go and speak to somebody or ask the thing and sometimes you'd come out the room, you'd go back to get a different answer or whatever it was and, and so it's copied that kind of element of games, gaming into this real life

Sidey: The

bear bigger pod is a cable that goes into an umbilical cord that goes into what this one the entire thing goes in

Reegs: It just sucks

Cris: the one where she, where he lick her whole and

Sidey: so she should be let's see it at first she puts and she goes oh my god It's gone straight in and he goes. Okay. Shall I put yours in? Because it

Cris: so,

Sidey: like an asshole

Reegs: asshole Yeah.

Sidey: she's like what's going

Dan: And then

Cris: she kisses him that straight away.

Sidey: get freaky yeah

Dan: sexy time.

Reegs: But they're going into

Sidey: I really, really, really fancied I saw it.

Did you? Yeah. At this scene. Yeah. The outfit, everything. That was amazing.

Reegs: Yeah,

Dan: Yeah, well she's looking fine.

And

Reegs: But they're going into another

Sidey: It's Inception now, isn't it? Yeah.

Reegs: it? Yeah, is this where they go to the trout farm

Sidey: Yes. They, they, he just appears on a production line cutting gutting trout for parts for these machines.

Yeah.

Cris: And the guy with the weird hair speaks to

them,

Reegs: guy with the weird hair speaks to them,

Dan: we are all

Sidey: all that

Dan: stuff

we we are, we are down into Pandora's kind of. Box here or whatever, aren't we?

Reegs: Because I don't even

Dan: inside and then there's another layer as you say So they've already gone into a computer game and within the computer game.

They've gone into another computer game or another

Sidey: We'd seen in the computer shop There's a game called Chinese restaurant and they're told in there when they go to the trout farm Oh, you should go to the Chinese restaurant for lunch. That's where you need to be

Dan: And ask for the special, insist

Sidey: Yeah, and so they go down there this guy straight away this waiter looks fucking weird.

Yeah and he's like, well

Cris: she's chinese.

Sidey: Yeah, he's Cheery. Yeah, and he's like, well, I'll just get you blah. They're like no no we've come for the special and everyone stops and looks around like

Dan: That's

Reegs: Like half the restaurant gets up and walks out, don't

Dan: Yeah, they're on a, on a huge table and, and you're right.

Oh, the table gets out as he explains. No, it's a, is a special occasion. It's a birthday. Oh, in that case, I'll get you the special. And, and that's where this, again, this non playing character, or this, this This role, this character within him within Jude Law starts taking over and making,

Sidey: It's the two headed thing they've seen before this mutant amphibian

Dan: of the special.

Sidey: like this is like where you said this is where he makes the gun from the parts of it and he doesn't know how he knows but the game is sort of making him do it.

Dan: of making him do

Reegs: as he's, he keeps going back up and down the levels, talking to Allegra, going, I don't really know what's real

Dan: He stands up, doesn't he And

Sidey: stands up, doesn't he? And he screams exist ends, pause. Yeah. And they, he goes back out where she's still like monged out on the bed.

Dan: Well, he, he's

Reegs: starting to freak out about it, as he

Dan: Well, he's confused with the fact that a gun made of bones in a video game has made it into the real, the world that he knows is

Reegs: Yeah, exactly.

Dan: And, and so then he's starting to, to freak out a little bit about this and yeah, she's, she's an addict, isn't she into the game? She just, obviously she invented them all. She's. She can't wait just to keep porting in. She doesn't want the world in which we live in. She wants this kind of computer generated world to, to

do all that she needs to do.

Sidey: It doesn't look that great what they go

Dan: it doesn't. I mean.

Reegs: great.

Well no, it doesn't, I mean That.

Dan: just can't stay and

Reegs: And like, the flesh

Sidey: Never heard of call that before

Reegs: it

needs to keep her interested, otherwise the game doesn't exist as well, do you know what I

Dan: Yeah, there's, there's a,

Reegs: a lot, there's kind of a lot to it. Anyway, we end up back in the Chinese restaurant. He's killed with the gun that he assembles, doesn't he just

Sidey: well, he said he's told you need to kill him and don't hesitate

Dan: the chinese

Sidey: And so he comes over and he shoots him through the side of the, again, it's like another neck room,

Reegs: know, when you're playing Grand Theft Auto and you're just running around like killing grannies with dildos, that's what he wants to do, isn't it? And he's just,

Sidey: well, he shoots 'cause this is the only really good bit of body horror we get. Yeah. In the, well say really good. He shoots him through this. You see a bit of bone and stuff and then the guy picks up his massive fucking meat cleaver and screaming at them and they shoot him through the face. And it's very evident that I know they didn't shoot a real person in the face, but it's quite disappointing.

I thought to see it this time. It's so

Reegs: this time. Yeah, obviously it's quite

Sidey: obviously it's a fake head and the camera lingers on it just maybe a fraction too long.

Reegs: Wish they'd shot him for real. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

Sidey: It's snuff,

Reegs: But then the dog runs off with the hideous gristle gun

That was amazing. And I, the dog comes back like inception style through the levels as well, doesn't it? There's, there's a few things like that.

Dan: Yeah, there's, there's plenty of weirdness going on. As you say, they've, they've shot him, but he doesn't really care 'cause he is playing a video game.

Reegs: well and then it becomes more

Sidey: a video game.

Reegs: Well,

because then the, the trout farm guy comes back in and he's like, right, this is the lay of the land. There's actually this rival game company that you work for or whatever. Is that what they start saying?

Dan: It's,

Sidey: He's an, he's an

Reegs: they're like, he's an agent for the realists, the real world.

And then there's some like antenna research, which is Jennifer, Jason Lee's company, and this other one, cortical systems are both fighting a war essentially for reality. And

Dan: Yeah. and

Reegs: who the

Dan: and of the, the, the kind of video world as well. And to protect that. So they're on different sides of, of this, aren't they? They, they want the power. People themselves are the one again, again, Kind of not to the matrix of the batteries for all the reality and everything all the games.

And yeah, it it Jude Law is still no clearer at this point. In fact more confused than ever as to what kind of world he's living

Reegs: But she's motivated they go back to the trout farm and they find this like hideous game pod It's all like fucking diseased and like pussy and all that and she's like i'm definitely gonna

port

Dan: brown and and kind of dark and Gray, and doesn't look that bad Healthy pink fleshy kind of color she's got so she plugs it in there and

Reegs: her plan is something to do with like infecting the other pods and getting rid of it or

Dan: Yeah, well that that's kind of what

Sidey: She kind of effectively ODs, doesn't she? We cut back to the port and you can't get it out. It's kind of like swelled and gone hideous. So he has to cut it with this rusty old knife.

Dan: with some knives. She's

And then there's a load of guns and fire that come in isn't in there after that because the

Sidey: kicks off. He comes in with a flamethrower.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: And then flames the, the port and then all this soot spores start coming out and it all goes weird. It's infecting all the the

trout, mutant parts that they've

Dan: all the kind of animal parts that are going to make into a new pork factory and things like that is covered in all these black spores, isn't

Sidey: It's all ruined, I think.

Dan: it's all ruined. It's

Sidey: And they burn the place down as well.

Dan: Yeah.

Reegs: ruined. I wonder if anyone at home

Sidey: in the ski lodge.

Yeah.

Reegs: this?

Dan: I wonder if anyone at home is following this

because

Reegs: be. I don't

Sidey: Yeah, you definitely, it's not, I don't wanna say it's as confusing as we, as it sounds when we're describing it, when you Oh, it's

Really?

Dan: you have to have it. You have to have an open mind with it as much as anything else. I think just because there is so much going on, you have to go with these different realities

reality versus Yeah, I can imagine at the time

Reegs: Let's finish off this weirdness because we get, right, she has figured out that it's her old mentor basically. Ian Holm must have done it or whatever, infecting her and Ted's bioport and she, she puts this like butt plug in his port to clean him up. It's disgusting. And then there's a big explosion and sounds of like a war outside and it turns into like a, the first level of call of duty or whatever

Dan: Yeah

Well, sorry, I just saying ian home does admit that he has been fucking up He goes full like that bad bilbo baggins moment, doesn't

Reegs: Well, everybody has a heel turn in this, don't they? They all turn villain.

Sidey: Yeah, so he's done that. One of the guys, one of the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica comes in as a sort of leader of some sort of military resistance or whatever. And he just guns the The port thing. Yeah, the game console. Just fucking shoot it. Trying out.

Dan: they're running out

Sidey: She's, she's tried to, she's tried to give it like antibiotics to see if she can fix it, and he just fucking machine guns it into oblivion and she's beside herself.

And then he is killed. He

Reegs: yeah.

Sidey: Ian in actually killed him, didn't he? He does.

Reegs: yeah. And then he explains that Cause see, Ted's already like, Well, are we in the game or are we not? I don't really know anymore. And then he's like, Oh, in Home says, Oh, I copied the game. And now I've been trying to recruit her to work for the other side with me and all this stuff. So, She shoots him, doesn't she?

She then shoots, yeah. Her

Sidey: the

Reegs: and

Sidey: And then Pykel reveals all.

Reegs: Well,

first he's a bit like he's sure this isn't reality. 'cause you're not really supposed to do that stuff. You're not supposed to kill people. In

Sidey: As you said, that's just a computer game character.

Reegs: And then he's like, well, but will I be next?

Sort of thing.

Dan: Yeah. She's it. It wasn't all, because the realists have just come in, shot the port and he's just come in.

Again, it's not clear if you're in a reality or you're in this computer game. And even when she says, you can see in her face, she's not, she's, she's gone. She's all in here. She doesn't know whether she's actually just killed somebody real or

Reegs: doesn't care anymore, I don't

Dan: care anymore either. Yeah. She's just beyond.

Sidey: But then we get the reveal that we may have suspected. I don't know.

Reegs: I don't know. I didn't, well, only in the fact that everybody has a reveal and Ted says that, oh no, I was a realist all

Sidey: Yeah, that's why and he says, oh, that's why you never had the port and he pulls the gun on her and shouts the same phrase again.

Death to Allegra.

Reegs: Something like that, yeah.

Sidey: like that. And she says I fucking knew because he'd pulled the gun on her earlier on Giving away his motivation and she said I knew from that moment what you were And she just detonates this thing and it turns out that the butt plug she put in his bioport Is an explosive device and you see that his back just fucking explode

Reegs: put in his bioport is an explosive device, and you see that his bat just fucking explodes out.

Dan: and there's no kind of end credits rolling or

Reegs: She's got, like, a

Sidey: like a sort of purple tiara thing almost on her head

Yeah

Reegs: I thought that was maybe part of the ski

Dan: ski boat. Yeah, I

Reegs: but I don't know.

They are just carrying it around for most of the time. And if she sees, as she's got this thing on her head, she starts walking forward. I definitely thought it was about man and machine connecting, like, very obviously visually. She sees some church pews, doesn't she? And then as she looks at them, people start sitting on them.

And it sort of swells back up. back almost to a very similar type of reality that it was at the very beginning, but almost abstracted one level again, Christopher Eccleston in his like normal New York whatever his accent is. I'll probably just

Sidey: Because the acting, my missus commented on the acting at one point it's like, fucking acting, this is terrible, and we've had the really

Thing and it's all because it's meant to be reflective of what video game performances were like.

Yeah. But we go back and it is it's it's where we started off but it's all the people we've seen throughout the film that have either died or been part of it. Yeah. The twelve

Reegs: sitting in a horseshoe,

Sidey: and it's not a bioport thing. It's just it's like a VR thing that you might imagine. Yeah. But it's on their head.

It's a bit more advanced than a. Controller they wear on their hand and they're thanked and they're blah blah blah and Sarah Polly's there doing a sort of debrief and then the game designer comes along and he says you know it went well the you know the tech and all that but I'm concerned about the storyline of some very anti game game

game,

content within that and she's like oh right okay and then Jude Law or Paykel and Allegra walk over and they're a couple. And they ask some questions, but only like, it's only like one or two questions till they just say, like, They are the ones that are gonna be the death to Yeah. And they just, they've got the wolf hound there that the dog that we've seen a few times, it's got a fake like bit of fare that they pull back, get two guns, and they just fucking execute everyone

Reegs: Start gunning people down. And one of the, I think the confused, like, Korean kitchen guy or Chinese restaurant guy. He's like, are we still in the game or whatever as he's being gunned down and it just cuts to black.

yeah,

Dan: no, that's it. And you get the understanding that

It's

gone. World's gone mad. Nobody knows if they're in reality or not. They don't know if they're shooting real people or not real people. And, and I guess particularly in 1999, this would have been a complete spin out down at the cinema.

Sidey: Yeah. Yeah, I remember really, really liking it. Not so much this time, I have to say.

Reegs: I don't think it has, like, the intense, perverse weirdness of some of his work. It is a

Sidey: bit, no, it

Cris: still very weird. It

Reegs: weird.

It is still

Dan: it's it's a really kind of brave way to be thinking Back then before you've seen the matrix before you've

Sidey: I think Matrix was

Dan: was it same year around there I mean, he obviously wrote the book though a lot earlier than

than the film or He, wrote the

Reegs: I mean, I, I think what's good about it, what, where it works is it leaves you feeling very unsettled on an emotional level.

That whole thing of like, what reality am I watching? What is autonomy and what is free? Well, you know, it adds up a little bit to more than the sum of its parts, but it definitely isn't my very favorite Cronenberg. I don't

Sidey: No, it's got, I think I'm it's still okay. The ideas are good. But then you've seen it done in in Inception This multi layered reality thing probably quite a bit better I think and quite a lot of the time I go for Cronenberg because I want to see the like visceral horrible gore

Reegs: I think

Sidey: leaves you wanting a little bit in this

Reegs: before about like, the kind of stilted acting and the sort of weird plotting sometimes, and that is by design, but it takes you a little bit away to connect from it, the movie, a little bit, so, yeah, I know what you mean on that

Sidey: sense.

What do you think, Chris? Struggle with it?

Cris: This was a snoozefest.

Dan: yeah, Not here. I

Cris: and the beginning as well. Who gets excited? Oh, Allegra. Fuck off. You dork.

Sidey: that's what people are like now, aren't they?

Cris: no, no, no one knows any gamers. No one knows any, anyone that invented a game.

No one knows them.

Sidey: I think they

Dan: them. Honestly, it's crazy, Chris, but that shit's true. They're celebrities,

Reegs: Yeah,

Cris: And Willem Dafoe Caesar, Willem Dafoe Caesar. And he kissed, Oh my God, I kiss your feet. And then he wants to shoot her.

Oh, it's, oh,

Dan: There's a guy

Reegs: a video game

Dan: there's a guy in Sid John who's got like a 5 million followers, isn't he? What's his name?

Sidey: And

Dan: another guy called DanTDM

or something who's, and another guy called The Beast. They've got

Reegs: streamers, but there are proper the Hideo Kojima who does the Metal Gear Solid games and there Shigeru Miyamoto and all that. I mean, it's, you know, across the world there, they would have, Very big celebrity following and there are like e sports tournaments as well that showcase gaming to a huge level.

Sidey: not games like this, though,

Reegs: Not a lot of weird gristle

Dan: Full on you know, virtual reality. It does make you think how far we are away from a world in which people will, you know.

Put glasses on or wearable tech

Sidey: Oh, rigs and I used to play a bit of VR games together.

Dan: Really yeah, yeah, and then you can you imagine once it starts becoming as

Sidey: but there just aren't that many good ones. I think that's the problem. And the tech is still like hard work.

Dan: but I think you know, we already see how You know if you've got kids and things you'll see how much they're on computer games already and how much They just stare at that you can imagine once you start living your life in these

Sidey: Well, Elon started putting microchips in people's brains, hasn't he?

Reegs: Yeah, that's probably the next

Dan: Well, I honestly think that we're probably within our lifetimes

Sidey: be, this could be

a game right now.

Reegs: it

Dan: Well probably is

I don't know whether we're winning

Sidey: the

Reegs: Oh, the food, which looked good, didn't it? The food looked

Cris: To be fair, I did fall asleep a few times throughout the movie.

I didn't really understand what happened at the end, because I woke up and there was some gunfights, and then I've seen the thing with the dog, and I was like, alright, so this is all They're a couple and it's like so shit and also the the thing with the oh you do me Oh, you do me now and you think are they gonna get I just gonna start bombing each other or what?

Dan: it was, it was quite weird.

Sidey: I was disappointed when they were right close to shagging and it

Reegs: cut It's always that thing with Cronenberg where it's like, it's like really hot and fucking disgusting at the same time. Like, yeah, good

Sidey: It was thrown together for 15 million US dollars.

Cris: Okay, that's good it

Sidey: How much do you think it made? 10

Dan: time?

Oh, 10 times that

Cris: 18 million

Reegs: Yeah, it's probably a bit of a bust. I

Dan: No, probably

Reegs: it's hard for it's

Sidey: 18 million. You are 15 million over. It made 2. 8. Big floppy.

Cris: Wow, okay. Well, I mean, I'm not surprised.

Dan: Yeah.

so 10 times that

Sidey: Jennifer Jason Leigh had filmed a video And finished filming for her role in Eyes Wide Shut,

which was then required her to be called back for reshoots.

And it clashed with this and she thought, nah, fuck off. So she gunned the whole cubic thing and just did this instead.

Reegs: Wow. What a decision.

Sidey: success. I know. Yeah. Well done. What originally it was at the MGM studio and, or that's where they were pitching it. And they, Cronenberg left that studio and took the project elsewhere because when he wanted to cast Jennifer Jason Lee The exec said that no, she just makes little art movies that don't make any money.

So they were probably bang on that but I think this is Six out of ten for me

Dan: me I love

the idea Of and the the theory of it all and particularly that it was Clearly an older sci fi film taken on you know almost Prophecy in in kind of what it's predicting to come out of the future which which is what really? Impressed me with it all I must admit.

I don't i'm not a massive gamer. So to watch a film about Computer

Reegs: I don't reckon david cronenberg's ever played a computer game either to

Dan: I mean like those and, and the acting then, you know, because they are, as I probably picked up the same thing as, as, as Kay is in understanding.

This doesn't seem to be, I mean, with the cast that we've got there, it didn't seem to be fabulous acting and their best work.

So for me, similar to you side, I, I watched it, I think it's a, a six out of 10. Although the potential for the idea and given how early it came out and everything really impressed me

Sidey: strong recommend.

Cris: Yes, very.