Brainstorm: Difference between revisions

 

Dr. Michael Brace ([[Christopher Walken]]), Lillian Reynolds (Louis Fletcher), and Michael's wife/co-worker Karen Brace (Natalie Wood), develop a device called "The Hat", which can videotape one's experiences while you're having them, then play the tape back to anyone.

A few scenes of the film had to be re-shot because Wood died before the film was finished. It's a really good film, even if the idea that they can do a full virtual-reality experience, video, sound, touch, smell, taste and even ''sex'', over the bandwidth available ''on a telephone'' was a big stretch of the willing suspension of disbelief.

 

* [[Applied Phlebotinum]]: The video "tape" used to record a full virtual reality experience, like an optical film, about four inches wide.

* [[Armies Are Evil]]: The military is very interested in the technology for use in defense and training programs -- [[Mind Probe|as also a means of psychological torture.]]

* {{spoiler|[[Go Into the Light]]}}

* [[Foreign Queasine]]: When the mind-recording device is first being tested, one of the people wearing it orders up a "stake sundae" to test the sensation of taste, which tastes rather disgusting to Michael on the receiving end of the device.

* [[In Memoriam]]: The film has the dedication "To Natalie" at the end of the credits in honor of Wood.

* [[Mental Picture Projector]]

* [[Mental World]]

* [[Must Have Nicotine]]: Lillian is a rabid chain smoker who almost always has a cigarette in hand. Unfortunately this lifestyle choice of hers, combined with the stress of work, causes her to have a fatal heart attack while working alone one night.

* {{spoiler|[[My Life Flashed Before My Eyes]]: Well, Lillian's life to Michael that is.}}

* [[Technology Porn]]: Oodles of shots of instrument panels, blinking lights, and spools of "tape" winding around.

* [[The Rule of First Adopters]]: As mentioned above, one of the first non-scientific uses for the technology was to record sex acts and replay them as full-body experiences.

* {{spoiler|[[To Hell and Back]]}}

* [[Troubled Production]]: The film was nearly canned by the studio as a result of Natalie Wood's death, but director Douglas Trumbull said the film could still be completed, and it took about two more years to work things out and finish the movie before it was finally released in 1983. The stress of finishing the film after Wood's death pushed the director away from moviemaking as well.

* [[What Could Have Been]]: Brainstorm was supposed to be the debut of the director's new film technology called Showscan, which can record and project 70mm film at 60 frames per second (compared to the industry standard of 24fps), in order to make make the film more realistic and exciting during the "virtual reality" segments. But unfortunately the plans fell though to use this new film process, so the director made a compromise by filming said segments in 24fps but with 70mm and adding surround sound effects, while everything else was filmed in normal 35mm with mono sound and a less-wide aspect ratio.

* [[Your Mind Makes It Real]]: Lillian dies while hooked up to the machine. Someone else "watches" the recording, and has the exact same heart attack, dying in the process. The tape records all brainwaves and some physical indicators, so playing that tape unmodified would literally give the watcher the same heart arrhythmia.

[[Category:Films of the 1980s]]

[[Category:Brainstorm]]