(upbeat electronic music)
- [Narrator] Nothing dates a film faster
than its attempt to depict
a not-so-distant future
through technology.
And that's especially
true of virtual reality,
which has yet to live up
to its exciting promise.
Here are nine unintentionally
ridiculous depictions
of virtual reality in movies and TV.
Arcade was a cheap attempt at
giving Tron a horror make-over
for the CD-ROM age.
With its obviously green-screen
virtual reality landscapes,
the movie follows a young heroine
who attempts to fight and skateboard
her way out of what looks like
a Windows 3.0-era screensaver.
- [Creepy Voice] You almost
made it to the final level.
(shrill scream)
(evil cackling)
- [Narrator] First and foremost,
the Michael Douglas-starring Disclosure
is distressingly misogynistic.
But further dating the thriller
is the fact that its cutting edge VR tech
amounts to nothing more than
an overblown filing cabinet
and features Demi Moore's
laughably nonthreatening
digital avatar.
- Oh my god, she's in the system.
(laser scanning)
- [Narrator] Edward Furlong stars
in this would-be horror franchise starter
about a flashy, new video game
that makes its players commit murder.
The actual game?
Staying one step ahead of the
cops investigating the case.
Whether it's all real or virtual
is the movie's central conceit,
but it's so dull, it's hard to care.
- It wasn't supposed to be real!
- Real, unreal, what's the difference
so long as you don't get caught?
- [Narrator] The virtual
world of David Cronenberg's
eXistenZ is sleek, futuristic,
and not too ridiculous.
What's truly weird though,
is the gameplay itself,
which requires players to plug
in via grotesque spinal ports
and control actions with
squishy pink controllers.
Leave it to Cronenberg to
turn even a video game console
into a nightmare
(eerie music)
- Hello, Owen?
(guns firing)
- [Narrator] Set in 2021, Johnny Mnemonic
imagines a future world
where even the simplest of virtual tests,
required tons of bulky tech equipment.
Take, for example, the scene
where Keanu Reeves' character
dons massive oven mitts
and circular tin eye covers
just to make a long-distance call.
- What are you doing?
- Making a long-distance phone call.
Beijing hotel.
(keypad tones beeping)
- [Automated Voice] Beijing.
- [Narrator] Even though the
NBC comedy, Mad About You,
played VR up for laughs,
its vision of a virtual world
still looks laughable in retrospect.
In an 1994 episode, Paul
and Jamie don VR goggles
for cyber dates with Christie
Brinkley and Andre Agassi
that looked more
cartoonish than high-tech.
- Everything you do is just right.
- That's what I think, thank you!
- [Narrator] Though
Stephen King would rather
you forgot about it,
in 1992's The Lawnmower Man adaptation
is memorable for just how different it is
from the author's source material.
It's also known for its garish cyber world
and its goofy central hook
that technology could turn
a bumbling groundskeeper
into a vengeful God.
- The Lawnmower Man's
in your head now, Jake.
There's no escape.
- [Narrator] Airing throughout the 90's,
many of the X-Files
episodes attempted to tackle
the emerging tech world of the time
and wound up looking immediately dated.
For example, the clunky
graphics of First-Person Shooter
make the episode an embarrassing document
of that adrenaline-jacked
era of video games.
- Well that's just cheating.
- [Narrator] Designed to
take the X-File's place
on Fox's Friday night schedule,
VR.5 is a paranoid cyber fantasy
with a muddled central concept.
It's imaginatively color
tinted VR sequences
aren't half-bad as eye candy,
but they're weighed down
by a moronic premise
built on the thrill of
the dial-up connection.
- You're really just like
any other woman, aren't you?
(sensual music)
- [Narrator] This has been
the AV Club's inventory
of nine unintentionally
ridiculous depictions
of virtual reality.
If you remember other
instances when pop culture
got future technology hilariously wrong,
let us know in the comments.
(upbeat electronic music)
