Virtuality: Le voyage du Phaeton

This film is about the twelve astronauts who are on a spacecraft, going to a distant star that takes ten years to arrive. On board, things start to go wrong and yet they cannot turn back.

"Virtuality" seems good on paper. It is directed by a famous director, has several known (but not very famous) stars, and an intriguing plot. However, it does not seem to work well. The story might have been interesting, but the delivery of the plot is very confusing. There are many mystifying events on board the spacecraft, and these events are not explained well. I was hoping that the ending would bring some answers, but it brings even more unanswered questions. All the confusion annoys rather than being thought stimulating.

In addition, the film fails to grip viewers or to provide suspense for viewers to beg for me. "Virtuality" is a disappointingly confusing film.

For those of you complaining about how the show seemed to end right in the middle of its plot. Yes, it was supposed to be the pilot for a TV series. There's been plenty of speculation on websites that FOX has decided not to proceed with the full series, but it will proceed with the pilot since they already paid for it. So that's why the show was left in a cliffhanger.

FOX doesn't have a lot of confidence in this show, and I can't blame them for it; better to let it die quickly than to have a sci-fi fan base disappointed when it inevitably gets canceled in mid-season. It seems a bit inaccessible for non-sci-fi audiences, the pacing was a little slow most of the time. The virtual reality special effects seemed like bad CGI greenscreen, but perhaps that was on purpose, so that you'd know you're in a virtual reality setting. I started only getting interested when they started showing the special effects for the journey to the other star system, Epsilon Eridani. They did research their interstellar propulsion mechanisms well, and it looked like nuclear propulsion drives as described in various science fiction novels in the past.

I didn't think the idea behind the story was bad though. It was about a rogue virtual-reality character showing up within various crewmembers' holo-stories, and creating very scary havoc inside their stories. When things start going wrong in the holo-stories, a lot of finger pointing goes on between the crewmembers against each other. However, I don't think solving a new holographic mystery every week is enough to keep people's attention for a full-length series.

This TV movie or plot if it ever continues has a special touch to it that makes it really enjoyable and i have to say i really got stuck with it after watching a while.

Even though it may become an enjoyable series it still has it's flaws I'm afraid, this whole reality show thing they're trying to put in does not make any sense to me, kind of lowers the quality etc, and then we have the "The whole world is going to end" thing, we've all seen it to many times and it does not necessarily make a show more exciting, could have the opposite effect in fact.

If this actually continues as a series i'd for one want to see some changes for the better, at least i would hope that they could just remove this reality show thing because it makes me think of all the stupid reality shows out there which makes me want to puke a 100 times over, i think that reality shows should stick to reality shows, the same with fiction shows and not trying to put these together because the outcome would be obvious.

Anyhow, overall it was pretty decent, the sci-fi feeling about it made it to be worth watching, the ending here did its part and i hope for a following series

Virtuality is the pilot of yet another "Long voyage into space" series. It competes directly against Defying Gravity, another show in the same genre.

My first thought was that I would not want to trust my life into the hands of this crew. They're a bunch of wimps. I can not believe that they could possibly be the best that Earth would send on a trillion dollar space voyage. We have a crew of comfort junkies who are not even physically fit. The second officer and chief engineer is in a wheel chair. I am for affirmative action and reasonable accommodation as much as the next guy, but a space ship on a twelve year mission is not the place for a paraplegic. What if something goes wrong? So what are the "oh so lovey and oh so politically correct" cliché' gay couple doing on the ship? All I have seen them do is cook, cuddle and complain! And what about the girl who was using a video game on the ship's bridge while on duty? And that leads me to the next complaint. Our crew of futuristic video gamers clearly are having a major malfunction with their Nintendo WII. It's playing its own games with them, and those games involve their own deaths. As the Captain of the ship, I'd order everyone to surrender their 3D goggles and for the system to be used only for authorized and required functions that are directly related to furthering their mission. Instead, they keep on playing until I became oh so bored.

The problem with a science fiction movie/show based off human drama, is that on a mission of earth shattering importance, the crew are almost entirely antagonistic whiny incompetents, who have no business being responsible for a trillion dollar spaceship.

Quite early on it becomes obvious that the captain, who is the final decision maker on anything important, is of dangerously low intelligence, and would not be capable of managing an ice cream truck, let alone a 'world saving' space mission.

I think real astronauts would find this movie insulting.

But the visuals are nice.