10 minutes of plot stretched to over 3,5 hours

(( I am not going to warn about spoilers, because you had DECADES to watch this piece of.. something - so you can hardly blame anyone for spoiling it for ya - and of course you don't have to be reading this before watching.. ))

Basically, that's all this 'TV Movie' is.

It has pretty close to 10 minutes of plot that has been artificially stretched to an enormous length for no apparent (or non-apparent) reason.

You take a clichéic premise (I don't mean that it had been done in movies that much by 1973, I just mean that it's one of the very basic sci-fi premises that have 'always been around', in the group-consciousness of the Universe/humanity/whatever), and then you don't add much plot to it, and your 'twist' is that the premise has more layers than one - and then you inject all kinds of nonsensical romances and irrelevant subplots about corporatism and such, and there you go:

An overly-long TV movie.

I guess they knew this would never be a success in theaters, and since VCR systems were not common yet, it couldn't go 'straight to video', so it had to become a 'TV Movie'.

Just as a sidenote, I have to wonder now - ARE there any actually good 'TV movies'? I think those words together spell a certain inevitable stink.

There's so much to complain about this atrocity, besides the unnecessary boring scenes, the awful acting, the monotonous and robotic performances (which contrast too much with the childish and stupid expressions in the very end - deliberately, I suppose, but that doesn't make it any better), but I am not going to do that right now.

It's just amazing, how monotonously everyone speaks, and how little the makers of this (and this kind of) movie(s) know about the human psyche, spirit, and the body systems.

You can't just artificially create another human being, a program code is -never- alive, and you can't just "switch minds" with an artificial entity, unless it's the kind that can actually support living human souls, like our biological bodies do.


-- A more detailed explanation of why it isn't possible (not necessary for my point, so the reader may skip this part without signifigant loss):

But even then, it wouldn't be just MINDS that you are switching, you would have to switch
- the astral body
- the etheric body
- the soul
- the chakra and energy systems (which an artificial entity wouldn't have)
- the informational pathways (would it truly be an identical one - I mean, even if you could switch to another human body, it might not obey your commands at first, because it could function informationally differently than yours, and you would have to get used to using it like the previous owner did all his/her life and so on)

AND make sure that the 'silver cord' gets REattached in the same way that it does during a regular incarnation, or the soul will just go away.

AND you would have to do it in such a way that the soul would keep attached to the astral body (which the artificial being wouldn't even have) and that to the etheric body, that the chakras and energy systems would stay perfectly aligned and no OOBE or dream states would be evoked more than necessary.

AND you would now have a completely different brain, because surely the artificial being's brain couldn't be a 100% identical replica of the actual human's (with '70s tech especially)? How does your etheric-astral-brain (which is the only thing that the biological brain has support for, and which the artificial being wouldn't have) suddenly command a completely different brain that someone else has used for decades, with different energies, vibes, and so on?

AND you would have to make sure it wouldn't mess up the "subject" (what a word to use, freemen on the land know the dangers of this one) psychologically - think about the psychological consequences of such an event! It would be bigger than misusing salvia and recklessly practicing kundalini yoga for years!

AND you would have to make sure his psyche would remain completely intact..

I mean, the whole idea becomes so ludicrous when you ponder it for a few seconds, taking all that the eastern wisdom knows about the true nature of human beings into account.. there's just NO WAY you could do all that with 1970s' technology, no matter what kind of an 'Einstein' you are!

Sidenote: I wish this movie was about the astral world instead, at least then we would see some real differences and contrast between the physical world and the non-physical world.)

-- More detailed explanation ends ------------


(You may resume reading here)


But the point of this message is just to point out that this is a very tiny plot stretched into the timescope of a movie with actually thick and compelling plot.

Especially when you know the premise and concept, it's agonizing to plod through the first part, just to slowly and boringly come to the 'shocking' conclusion that you already know. You want to tell them to get on with it and hurry up the plot a bit, instead of just dwelling on the tiniest irrelevant details for minutes on end.

It's hard to even grasp that a movie this boring, monotonous, humorless and serious can be also so silly and very stupid in many ways that it would be a good contender for "a movie that induces the most groans in a random audience" category in Guinness Book of Records, if such a category existed.

Even The Matrix did the same premise a lot better, and they didn't even have to resort to the ridiculous "we are also building our virtual reality simulation, so we will have a parallel to compare to" gimmick, and the real world and the virtual world are actually very different, and in addition, the people in the virtual world are actually real people from the real world, they just don't know where their physical bodies actually are, because they 'experience' their bodies being somewhere else.

(Spoiler about the awful sequels, if anyone is interested)

Though I must add that Agent Smith suddenly coming to the real world is just as ridiculous as 'Einstein' coming back to the simulated 'real world' from the simulated 'simulation world'.

This plot absolutely didn't need 212 minutes to be told. It could have been condensed probably to 5 minutes with ease, but I give it 10 minutes just to be flexible. Look, I can type the plot in less than a minute:

A guy finds out the world isn't real, and draws parallels to his own virtual reality creation. He then proceeds to be framed for murder, and escapes to the real world, although he is entirely fabricated, and not real, by 'switching minds' with a real, live human being, who then for some reason becomes trapped to a 'virtual body' that is 'virtually dying'.

Yeah, really clever plot.

Not.

(I know that using the Wayne's World "not" is not clever either, but compared to this movie, it's an ingenious and sophisticated concept, so I threw it in for comparison)

It would be possible to add how an artificial being would have the knowledge and experience of using REAL muscles (like they had to program the simulation THAT perfectly? Completely unnecessary to do it in such detail, and a huge amount of work for almost no gain - it's enough if the simulated human acts, talks, thinks the way actual humans do - and maybe even moves - but there would be NO POINT in simulating the INNER MECHANISMS of how a human being makes their muscles move for so many artificial people - how much CPU power would that consume for almost no gain? How many extra years would it take to learn to do that?), and a plethora of other awful things about this piece of turd that I hate more every second that I think about it for all of it's childish, unexplained absurdity and stupidity.

But nah, this oddly masonic-symbolism-filled movie is definitely not worth it. Nihilists probably love this movie, as it really does give a very boring and dull picture of reality.

The very least they could have done is to show that the real world is much more advanced than the simulated one (wouldn't it HAVE to be?), flying cars, cities in the clouds, all of it happening on another planet or a spaceship or something.. but no.

No imagination whatsoever.

A movie without imagination is like a toilet without paper - it may be promising and look good on the surface, but if you try to get a bigger satisfaction, you are going to be experience a painful realization, and end up with a handful of shít.