Showing posts with label VR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label VR. Show all posts

Thursday, 1 July 2021

The blurring of real and reel life!

Wandavision (Miniseries, Season 1; 2021)
Disney + (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

Now that memory and brain activity can theoretically be digitised and stored, and our cinematic presentation, (i.e. movies and TV shows) are essentially data that can be modulated and transmitted from port to port, nothing will stop these two forms of data (series of 1's and 0's) from intermingling. 

With our fixation with Tinseltown and penchant to immerse into instant visual gratification added with the obsession with having our TV/computer displays on 24/7, we may want to run our lives like they do on the silver screen. But, unfortunately, nothing will stop what is real and what is fake, fuelled by a fetish for hyper-reality, virtual reality, and obsession to experience in 3D and VR imaging.

How often have we seen children expecting their parents to be like those depicted on American sitcoms? How they wished their parents were cool like them too? When the hard knocks of life hit them hard at their tender spots, how they would have yearned for real life to be as easy as in the reel life? If only the script of our lives is written to our liking and draw to a conclusion at the end of the preset screening times, they would like to have. With the relevant technology at their disposal, it is only a matter of time, if they only could, that they would transform their worldly existence into the make-believe world of filmdom.

Elizabeth Olsen as
Scarlet Witch / Wanda
This must have been the premise to Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch turned to after her defeat in Avengers: Endgame, and she lost the love of her life, Vision. With her telekinetic and reality-altering abilities, she recreated her comfort zone that she remembered watching all through her formative years in Sokovia when love was in the air, and her family was intact. She took over a suburban town named Westview, turned its occupants into TV sitcom characters. She created a robust electromagnetic fence around the perimeter to ward off the FBI and SWORD. Wanda wrote the script of a narrative where she and Vision lead a man-and-wife life in a setting ala sitcom like 'Dick Van Dyke Show', 'Bewitched', 'Mary Tyler Show', 'I Love Lucy', and many more. As time went on, the setting changed to fit shows of the 70s and 80s - 'Brady Bunch', 'Full House', "Malcolm in the Middle', etc.

All the while, the FBI and SWORD teams are cracking their minds trying to infiltrate the perimeter. Then, finally, Wanda world of make-believe slowly crumbled, ending with a spectacular display of pyrotechnics and prowess of computer graphic imaging. 

Even though the series is labelled as the first season, it appears to have a nice ending at Ep #9 and segue nicely to fit Marvel's upcoming superhero offering 'Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness'. A second season is unlikely.

“Be afraid. Be very afraid.”*