Ever since bringing his first documentary, Room 237, to the Sundance Film Festival back in 2012, filmmaker Rodney Asher has been a staple of the annual event, with this year’s festivities seeing Ascher bringing his latest documentary, A Glitch in the Matrix, to the slate of exciting premieres at the virtual event. To celebrate the debut of the complex and compelling subject matter, ComicBook.com is bringing you an exclusive look at the film’s poster, which was illustrated by Chris Burnham (Officer Downe, Batman Inc.). Check out the new poster for A Glitch in the Matrix below ahead of its premiere in the Sundance Film Festival’s Midnight Section this weekend and before it lands in theaters and On Demand on February 5th.
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What if we are living in a simulation, and the world as we know it is not real? To tackle this mind-bending idea, acclaimed filmmaker Rodney Ascher (Room 237, The Nightmare) uses a noted speech from Philip K. Dick to dive down the rabbit hole of science, philosophy, and conspiracy theory. Leaving no stone unturned in exploring the unprovable, the film uses contemporary cultural touchstones like The Matrix, interviews with real people shrouded in digital avatars, and a wide array of voices, expert and amateur alike. If simulation theory is not science fiction but fact, and life is a video game being played by some unknowable entity, then who are we, really? A Glitch in the Matrix attempts to find out.
More than being lauded for its special effects, the debut of The Matrix in 1999 brought with it a number of philosophical themes that hadn’t fully been explored in films before, which helped put a name to the concept that humans might not be living in reality. While this is understandably a heady concept to tackle, even SpaceX founder Elon Musk has weighed in on the possibility that we’re living in a simulation.
“40 years ago, we had Pong, two rectangles and a dot…That is what games were,” Musk shared at a conference in 2016. “Now, 40 years later, we have photorealistic 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously, and it’s getting better every year. And soon we’ll have virtual reality, augmented reality. If you assume any rate of improvement at all, the games will become indistinguishable from reality.”
Check out A Glitch in the Matrix in theaters and On Demand on February 5th.
Will you be checking out the new film? Let us know in the comments below!
