Gloomy future. Deserted streets. Media syndicates. Edison Carter is a hard-hitting reporter. One day he indirectly traces the existence of advertising, which has a dual impact on the subconscious of its consumers. On the one hand, they become addicted to watching it, on the other hand, like a drug, it is quite capable of killing some of those who happen to see it. The undesirable effect itself is not purposeful, but rather a specific by-product of a technical invention, but, as usual, ratings come first. The people standing behind the scenes are trying in vain to intimidate the reporter. Ultimately, a combination of circumstances will lead to the appearance of an alter ego - a computer version of himself with, at first glance, a strange call sign - Max Headroom. It is this digital form that will be destined to bring a little justice to the world. Where such a strange name came from can be understood in one of the scenes.
The action in this television film is presented primarily in the form of a vague, sometimes semi-documentary chronicle, with many screens, equipment, three-dimensional projections and faces in the frame. To some extent, this makes it similar to FMV quests, which became widespread with the onset of the nineties of the last century, both on the IBM PC and the 3DO console that appeared in 1993 in particular. The short running time, just under an hour, puts it on the same shelf as short films. Otherwise, it's difficult to say anything about the movie itself without obvious spoilers, so instead I'll focus on two other components.
First, in 1987-1988, an eponymous series was aired that lasted for two seasons and fourteen episodes, about an hour each. Secondly, the work, which is not particularly well known in our country, largely received cult status due to an incident on real television that occurred on November 22, 1987. An unidentified hacker managed to go on the evening live broadcast of the WGN-TV television channel, which was operating in Chicago, USA in those years. For about a minute and a half, the man hiding under the mask of Max Headroom was fooling around in a very unique way, at the same time essentially ridiculing both the TV channel itself and the media in general. The story that same evening was repeated on the consonant name WTTW. Today both the entry itself and the description in detail can be found in the same Wikipedia.
