Favourite movie of the summer - The Thirteenth Floor

The thirteenth Floor (1999)

The film opens on a quote from the famous French philosopher Rene Descartes. “I think therefore I am” this proves to be the overarching theme of the film. The film takes place in a world like our own however technology has advanced to the point where scientists have created virtual worlds with sentient inhabitants. These virtual ‘people’ are not aware of the fact that their worlds are virtual creation. This fact is the main cause of moral dilemma for the protagonists and engineers of the virtual world and the point which the plot revolves around. Personally I enjoyed this movie on many levels, firstly the genre of the movie is sci-fi which is one of my favourite film genres. As a sci-fi film you would expect the technology featured to look light years ahead of our times current technology and this it did excellently. The technology used within the film looked realistic as well as futuristic, as though this very technology could exist within our own universe any day soon. This makes the moral issues raised by the film even more relevant as it invites the viewer to ponder what they would do in the same situation as the characters and where you would stand on the moral issues presented to the characters. This aids the connection you feel with the characters and how deeply you care about their plight as they battle the issue of if they have the right to be the ‘gods’ of this universe they have created, this links back to the quote at the start of the movie “I think therefore I am” as this idea of a created world is easily applicable back to our own universe back again, what is there to say our own universe isn’t some virtual creation which could just as easily be shut down by its creators as those in the film. The film is extremely poignant in its telling of the story and even after the film was over I found myself experiencing a minor existential crisis as a result of the issues raised in the film. I was also left to consider what it was that makes a person ‘real’ after all and if it is simply just the ability to recognise your own existence within your world, as suggested by the plot of the movie and the “I think therefore I am” quote yet again. In our own world where technology is advancing more rapidly than ever before and more and more of these moral questions about how much of a right we have to dabble in areas previously left to nature such as in the areas of medicine with recent debate over issues such as cloning and the ability to grow organs and so on, this debate over what rights we have to do with the technology now available to us as a race makes this film and the questions raised by it increasingly more relevant as time goes on.