Talk:The Thirteenth Floor

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The idea of a virtual being discovering that he is not real, is only a step away from fully understanding that your nature in the real world as a biological being is very close to being unreal, that is are you really your dreams, fears, pains or are you that energetic process taking place in an area of your left toe. This dichotomy makes human beings really very unreal.

Uh, let's see, that would be the opposite of existentialism (see 13th floor article). Wikipedia - you get what you pay for.

Response: Fixed the summary, but I'm not qualified to deal with those philosophical positions. Upon reading the entry existentialism, however, I found that it matches with most in the list of traits of existentialism mentioned therein. --Daddysmutantkid 21:16, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For millenia, human beings have found comfort in the belief that the randomness, absurdity, suffering, and death which we experience in our reality is given meaning and purpose in another "higher" realm, afterlife, or level of reality. My understanding is that existentialism deals with the assertion that we have no way of knowing the truth of such matters, neither logically nor empirically. Because our appeals to any unseen creator, designer, or manager are never definitively answered, the reality which we do experience is the only one which can hold any meaning to its inhabitants — life is only what we make it, and the influence of any such architects is irrelevant to our experiences.

So, this film deals with existentialism, but does so through portrayal of its logical opposite — awakening to find that perceived reality is actually a construct within another reality does not happen to us — it happens to the characters in this film. However, the protagonists do respond to this realization with an existentialist reaction, rejecting the idea that any one reality holds more meaning than another. Then again, it could all just be bunch of filmmaking mumbo jumbo.

- Tobogganoggin ^talk 08:29, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This was a movie WAY AHEAD of its time- so to speak. Today science theory of the Universe being nothing more then a Holograph like creation,with even the possibility of the cosmos actually being the creation of higher beings. SO,rather then this being "existential" its really modern science as computers become quantum computers and using entanglements to create a world in a machine no different then ours. I liked this movie just seeing it for the first time two days ago..in 2014. -S — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.207.116.55 (talk) 03:35, 11 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yada Yada Yada. The film is about Artificial Intelligence being self aware. This whole long-winded discussion of existentialism is an irrelevant exercise in futility. It is beyond the intended scope of a talk page for a movie. 2602:306:24DE:CF69:BD3D:96C7:3AAA:529C (talk) 00:27, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Is it really as necessary as claimed to begin the plot synopsis with an explanation of the movie's surprise ending? If the film's story can be followed by the average viewer without having a character show up to explain it all from the start, then it should be possible to write a synopsis without doing the same. Sure, there is a spoiler warning on the synopsis, but it just seems more than a little gratuitous to spell out the movie's end before spelling out the movie. It's like a synopsis for The Sixth Sense beginning with "Before we get into the plot, you should know that Bruce Willis' character dies in the opening scene and is a ghost the rest of the time."--MythicFox 04:01, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. — Omegatron 03:12, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Probably not, but it seems like a good idea in a movie with three interfering layers of reality and two / three different roles for each actor in a film that a good deal of average viewers don't even understand. It's still tricky to understand even now. The summary supposedly is meant for people who have not seen the film and still may want to know what it's about. I think this can be achieved best by explaining the world-view of 13F. A person who doesn't like spoilers likely won't read a summary before watching the film. In the previous summary, it was not clear which version of reality was referred to and that's why it became one big mess. - --Daddysmutantkid 15:42, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

NB: a summary of a movie need not spoil it's entire plot! I came to read this because I wanted to know what the movie was about. This article should have a synopsis and perhaps summary of themes perhaps but not the treatment it's given here. As someone who HASN'T seen the movie the level explanation probably just spoils it if I were to watch yet WITHOUT revealing any useful insight into the film for me who hasn't yet. If the movies got a non-linear plot just say that. *** One of the poorest wiki articles IMHO ***

The section does deserve a rewrite, but

spoilers

are part of Wikipedia, and this film does not have a nonlinear plot. It involves "parallel dimensions", if you will, with different time settings. However, they all march through time simultaneously, and we never see a scene unfold before it fits into the quite linear plot structure.

- Tobogganoggin ^talk 08:29, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]