Reeling in Reality: Wonderland as a Premise of the Future

Abstract

The 2024, South Korean, science fiction, romantic movie Wonderland offers viewers a glimpse into the future. In the movie, AI services are offered to those in mourning, to virtually continue seeing the deceased. Those who are comatose or dead, are recreated using AI in a pre-determined virtual world. The AI version communicates through simulated video calls. This commu-nication happens in the real world: we meet an archaeologist, an astronaut, a college student in UK, and a man relaxing in Hawaii. As the movie progresses, one begins to wonder about the prudence of such technology to help with bereavement. The AI also begins to take on a per-sonality of its own. The astronaut meets his real self, awakened from coma, and displays sadness onscreen. When the college student learns that his grandmother, who funded his expenses, has passed away and he will be ter-minated, he too displays sadness. When the archaeologist learns she is actu-ally dead and is being terminated, she tries to cross the borders of her virtual world to reach her daughter and mother. When she is allowed by her pro-grammer to do so, she reaches the airport virtually and reconnects with her daughter again online, communicating to her the truth of her actual passing, before returning to her previous boundaries. This leads one to the question: is grief-alleviating AI truly beneficial? One gets to see both sides of the use of such technology and question the effec-tiveness of it. The way AI can affect the future is also visible in this movie. One also gets to question the necessity for dependence on such technology. The movie Wonderland thus helps one visualize the possibilities of AI in the future and how it will affect humankind. It is such aspects that this paper will attempt to explore.