S1m0ne 2002

Pfft, maybe it was green screen footage matted onto an old photo, hmm? The hotel really isn't that big of a tell.

Gotta love how Simone's character editor conveniently hides all the right spots, when a real character editor hides nothing. Hollywood… Gotta keep those PG ratings, huh? Especially funny considering the in-dialogue comments about Simone doing nudity in her films.

Why does the trunk sink? That's not how physics, not unless it has holes in it (computer disks aren't that heavy.

I am 95% certain that floppy drives can't be ejected through software that way—especially the older type shown on this particular computer. Granted, I'm too young to have used floppies much (though my first laptop had a floppy drive built in), but that kind of physical turn-switch? Nah, that's not getting ejected by anything but the physical action of turning the lever back. (Also, Lainey pulled the ejected disk from the gap between a filler panel and the case, not a floppy drive slot.)

Also, apparently Lainey is a Wesley Crusher–level whiz kid. What a deus ex Lainey that was.

Goodness knows I can be critical of technical errors in visual media—maybe even overly so. But I'm certainly not unaware of the other elements. Though the execution of S1m0ne's premise might require suspending one's disbelief rather more than usual, from a technical-accuracy standpoint, the premise itself is interesting.

True, the characters tend toward flat caricatures—but ultimately, S1m0ne is a comedy. Comedies frequently take shortcuts instead of creating truly realized characters. This wholly expected shortcoming is worth a half-point deduction at most.

My nitpicks (above the break) aside, exploring society's attitudes toward celebrities in this way is perhaps even more thought-provoking now than it was when S1m0ne came out nearly 18 years ago. Since then, Yamaha's VOCALOID product line (initially released in 2004) has given us virtual singers. The popularity of many music producers' works using VOCALOID gave rise to entire concert tours featuring 3D-animated, pseudo-holographic avatars of the VOCALOID voice cast, played to thousands of fans at a time.

More recently, a number of "Virtual YouTubers" have gained popularity. While these animated characters are usually based on a real voice actor, and often take advantage of how much cheaper motion-capture technology has become—they amass fans in much the same way Simone does. The speed with which the production outfits behind such VTubers churn out new content would be difficult (or even impossible) to maintain if they aimed for photorealistic characters instead—character models and their costumes/props clipping through each other would break that illusion immediately for most current channels—but we definitely have the tech right now to pull it off in slow-paced environments like film production. Heck, we've had the tech for at least a decade. It's just a lot cheaper now than when James Cameron made Avatar (2009).

We must also note the fast evolution of deepfake video manipulation, real-time performance capture, video performance mapping, limited-sample voice synthesis, virtual reality, and so many more techniques & technologies based on machine learning. Niccol simply got some of the details wrong. The fundamental thesis of S1m0ne is sound, and we're closer to it than ever.