Open cavity ▻▻▻
No matter how the US empire panicked and collapsed, their famous specialties there – Hollywood blockbusters – are still ok as always.
The hilarious and funny "Out of Control Player" is such a summer standard, which is the so-called "cool film".
However, any Hollywood commercial film is not as simple as it seems: in the case of "Runaway Player", on the surface, this is still the old trick of the white hero to defeat the black-hearted capitalists to save the world, but if you dig deeper, you will find that it actually hides a lot of new ideas.
——Xu Yuan, editor-in-chief of gun manuscripts
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="9" > imagine another outcome</h1>
Wen/Zi Ge
About the Author: The main writer of the gun manuscript. A centrist who is not gentle enough. Not watching movies, just writing film reviews
1
In my opinion, the biggest highlight of Runaway Player is not the visual effects and imagination, but the fact that it has an equal attitude towards the virtual world.
Most movies think that virtual worlds are dangerous, addictive and empty. For example, those movies that have been compared with "Runaway Player", "Truman's World", "Extreme Space", "The Matrix"... Without exception, they are using the "false" of the virtual (fictional, illusory) world to contrast the "truth" of the real world.
Runaway Player does the opposite, telling us that the virtual world is another kind of reality. People who live in it can also live very well.
This also coincides with the "post-AlphaGo" era, where people have a deeper reverence for technology.
"Out of Control Player" is widely believed to borrow from films such as Truman's World
The first protagonist of the film, Guy, is an NPC in the game. He originally lived a coded life, until one day, he fell in love with a female player named Millie, in order to follow Millie, Guy changed the established trajectory of action, and gradually understood love and freedom.
The whole film actually tells Guy's "adult" path, which is an existential awakening that radiates from love in the face of the world of nothingness.
And that's the most different thing about Runaway Player.
In this science fiction film, there is no "technology phobia" and "AI rebellion" drama, what you see is the harmonious coexistence of virtual and reality, and a near-homogeneous emotion of the "Creator (human)" for "created (AI)".
It is a life celebration about "AI adults".
In "Out of Control Player", Guy wakes up and has no ambition to compete for the real world, and the people in the real world do not have the fear of destroying AI
2
If the film can be executed along this line of thought to the end, it will be a work that expresses completeness and novelty. But unfortunately, the ending was timid.
After a vigorous cybertale, Millie finally chooses to return to reality and hug and kiss her startup keyboard. This ending is not difficult to guess, although the film lacks enough foreshadowing, but from some sporadic details, it can be seen that Millie and the keyboard have long been fond of each other, and it is only a matter of time before they fall in love.
However, this seemingly full moon arrangement has become the biggest failure of the movie.
In order to make Millie's choice seem more reasonable, the creators also deliberately designed a reversal: the reason why Guy fell in love with Millie at first sight, it seems to be an awakening of love, in fact, is because the keyboard encodes his love for Millie on Guy's body. As Guy put it, "I'm just a digital love letter sent to you, and the person who wrote it is in your world." ”
At first glance, it sounds romantic, but when you think about it, it's extremely cruel. Because while writing a sweet ending, it also erases Guy's path to adulthood.
Was Guy's behavior spontaneous or programmed after his awakening?
This tool man originally thought that he had escaped the fate of the tool man, but in the end he found that he was still just a tool man; his so-called autonomous consciousness was just a series of prescribed actions given by the programmer; he went to the soup in the virtual world and almost lost his "life", in exchange for a gentle kiss from a couple in the real world.
It's frustrating.
3
So is there a more desirable ending?
Of course.
The ideal ending in my mind would be: Millie chooses to be with Guy in the virtual world.
This is not only very romantic, but also more in line with the logic of the whole play. Because this movie is about Guy waking up in love with Millie, wouldn't it be the best of both worlds if Millie could finally respond with love and thus complete Guy's path to adulthood?
You may feel that real people and AI cross-border love, which is a bit unreliable.
But the essence of love, or its moving thing, is that it can transcend worldly obstacles and prejudices to achieve its own achievements.
Real people and AI love each other, is the real bold ending
Those classic loves are no different. Romeo and Juliet cross the feud between the two major families; Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai cross the ritual confinement of "the fate of the parents and the words of the matchmaker"; and Jack and Rose cross the class difference between the poor boy and the rich woman...
Now love movies are becoming more and more difficult to make, also because with the increasing independence of modern people's economy and consciousness, the above obstacles have no longer become obstacles. This also partly explains why same-sex romance films are still popular, precisely because same-sex love is still an untouchable pain in many countries.
So, why can't love cross the line between virtual and reality?
In fact, Hollywood ghost director Spike Jones has already filmed in "Her". Through the story of a man falling in love with AI, "She" tells the story of modern people's social incompetence and doomed loneliness. What it actually expresses is that AI is not human after all, and it can neither satisfy people's exclusive desire for love, nor can it provide physical intimacy below the spirit, so this cyber-platonic love has to fail.
"She" is about people who can't fall in love with an AI that can't be seen or touched
"Out of Control Player" originally had a good chance to make a negative "She", it can boldly admit that when an AI has the ability to love people, then the obstacle in front of this love is no longer "man-machine difference", but only secular prejudice.
If Millie could break through the prejudices, bravely walk up to Guy and say to him, "No, you're not a love letter." The person I love is you. ”
Isn't this more of a defiant romance?
Unfortunately, "Out of Control" is about to reach the end, but it has turned back to the old way.
4
After all, it is still too conservative.
Not just "Runaway Player", but in the last few Hollywood blockbusters, we can see this creative conservatism. Obviously, there is a very subversive, even somewhat offensive idea, but it will still be pulled back to a traditional, safe ending.
"Black and White Witch Kuila" is about the growth history of a female demon head, telling how Kuila was occupied by her inner demonic personality. But in the end, the creators still wanted her to say to her friends pitifully: "You are my family, you are my whole." In the end, she really returned to "family".
"X Task Force" created a group of villains formed by a group of villains, but after the bloody storm of an R-rated plasma film, this group of evil people somehow suddenly "changed from evil to righteousness", and Dayi became a hero of salvation.
The villain becomes the protagonist of the movie, so the villain has to become a positive hero
It's not that I can't see the happy ending and can't appreciate the positive energy. It's just that these films are obviously dressed in strange costumes and pose a maverick posture, but they are timid at the last moment and become three good students. It's a bit divisive.
In the final analysis, it is because the creators are not bold enough. They are worried that the steps are too big for the audience to accept, so they only dare to give a surprise to start, and then accept it when they see it.
This is a kind of "left-right fighting" embarrassment. Just like the bridge section in "Out of Control Player", the creators have just been ridiculing the conservative thinking of "Hollywood manufacturers rely on IP to survive", turning their heads and can't help but move Captain America's shield and Hulk's fist out, and then consume a wave of IP dividends.
In fact, it doesn't have to be so.
The audience is already ready, and the creators may wish to be bold, ahead of the audience's expectations, to imagine another ending.
However, we can go further.
Although "Runaway Player" still makes compromises under the constraints of the market and creative inertia, its breakthroughs in the framework of science fiction may be more valuable than that.
This value lies in the fact that it is the first work to regard AI and human life as equally important, and it really completes this more thorough and modern expression of "equality of all beings" through a virtual character to establish empathy with the audience.
Although there are regrets, but the flaws are not hidden.
Editor/Xu Yuan
Typesetting/manual vending machines
THE END