When Mark Zuckerberg recently announced Facebook’s plans of creating a virtual reality – “The Metaverse” – to the world, I immediately thought of the online virtual parties that I “attended” during last year’s Sundance Film Festival. My user-created avatar mingled with other online avatars “at the bar” and “on the dance floor,” but in reality, I was simply navigating my character from the comfort of my couch.
I thought to myself, “This future is kind of a bummer.” But as the new movie Belle shows, maybe I just wasn’t in the “right” virtual reality.
In this new mesmerizing animated film, Academy Award-nominated director Mamoru Hosoda shows us that not all virtual societies are awkward fantasy lands. Distributed by legendary Anime production company GKids, Belle is a cautionary tale about the joys and dangers that can be experienced as we all continue to grow up using immersive social media.
Painfully shy schoolgirl Suzu is the embodiment of adolescent insecurity. Having lost her mother as a child, she has always struggled to live a fully secure life. That changes when she downloads the app “U,” a fully immersive virtual society that boasts over 5 billion users. Through “U’s” advanced technology, Suzu’s hidden strengths in the real world are used to create her online avatar. And so, she gets the confidence that she so desperately lacks in the real world to excel in an alternate, online one.
She creates the avatar “Belle”: a beautiful, fairy-esque woman with cotton candy hair and the voice of an angel. As Belle, Suzu dazzles everyone with her charm and talent. She makes the other avatars feel good about themselves, and in turn, she begins appreciating and embracing her individuality within the metaverse.
Her connection gets disrupted when a cyberbully known as “The Beast” begins trolling the other avatars and threatening her safety online. Determined to restore peace within “U,” Belle takes it upon herself to uncover the identity behind the Beast, hoping that by knowing that while second chances are hard to come by in reality, everyone can start over in “U.”
If you’re thinking this sounds like a hybrid of Beauty and the Beast meets The Matrix, you’re not wrong. Belle is a young woman in distress who is trying to comfort an unruly Beast, only to realize that it’s his pain that is masquerading as strength. And he’s not truly a horrible person after all.
Despite being an animated film, Belle is not necessarily a children’s movie. Director Mamoru Hosoda takes familiar childhood themes of bullying, friendship, and forgiveness and presents them through the lens of future-facing technology which feels like an optimistic, albeit slightly naive, view of the upcoming digital trends.
Having sat through the film completely enthralled with the complexity and beauty of this make believe virtual reality, I’m more open to giving avatar parties another chance. And with the news that this year’s Sundance Film Festival is going completely virtual this year, I may just have my chance.
Belle is in select IMAX theaters starting Wednesday, January 12, ahead of its nationwide theatrical release on Friday, January 14.
