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Brainstorm
Film poster
Directed by	Douglas Trumbull
Produced by	Douglas Trumbull
Written by	Philip Frank Messina Robert Stitzel from a story by Bruce Joel Rubin
Starring	Christopher Walken Natalie Wood Louise Fletcher Cliff Robertson
Music by	James Horner
Cinematography	Richard Yuricich
Editing by	Dennis Freeman Edward Warschilka
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s)	September 30, 1983
Running time	106 min.
Language	English
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Brainstorm is a 1983 science fiction film directed by Douglas Trumbull and starring Christopher Walken and Natalie Wood (in her last film appearance).

The story involves a team of scientists which includes estranged husband-and-wife, Michael and Karen Brace (played by Walken and Wood) and Michael's research colleague, Lillian Reynolds (played by Louise Fletcher) who co-invent a special recorder and player device which allows sensations and higher brain functions to be scanned directly from the brain, taped and reproduced, allowing another person to experience them. The device that read thoughts was called "The Hat". Memories and experiences are stored on a very wide iridescent laser tape recorder/player. Along with the team there is always some rather industrial robot arm as a side research topic and some repeating point of entertainment in the scientists works.

Over some longer period of time it gets feasible the hat gets shrinked from a heavy instrument down to a really light weight and portable format, and the surrounding techology also evolves by the joint forces of the involved team. Recording gets possible for much more locations and situations, and the team just starts to experiment with those new possibilities. With this step even some first computer generated virtual reality got interlinked and access to the system widened to the son of Micheal and Karen. After even a sex tape got produced and spread to others a team member gots banned from the project - i first deep cut into the overall much promising and enthusiastic atmosphere. The robot arm technology gets for example integrated into a remote controlled tape archive serving unit thus making the recordings availabel to even remote places over some networking.

When Reynolds suffers a fatal heart attack, she manages to record her own death. Michael attempts to play back the tape, but is nearly killed doing so but then rescued. After a while modifying the output of his local playback console to prevent the lethal effect, he tries it again. A third party scientist group from the same location, that is close to the military, was monitoring this activities via security cameras. It commands a person to tap the playback of Michaels tape and a second person to inspect the contents by viewing the same contents live. As the contents were feed unfiltered to that person, the person quickly died from it. As a consequence of this Michael gets interrupted from his viewing and the tape gets locked away. Furthermore Michael and Karen are kicked off the team.

Michael, now obsessed with the wish seeing the tape to the end, makes several attempts to hack into the lab's computers, and discovers the quite closely related project "Brainstorm" - which includes such applications of the device as torture and brainwashing. Michael's son is inadvertently exposed to one of the "toxic" tapes that had been developed as part of the project, and suffers severe mental trauma as a result. This is also much of stress for the relation of his parents. Not only that Karen was in conflict with Michael due to his very friendly relation to the almost dead Dr. Reynolds and the sheer fact that he is quite addicted to the whole project, this all splits the couple quite far apart.

Now more determined than ever, Michael enlists the help of his ex-wife, as well as a friend who had been part of the original project team, so that he can finally view the tape of Reynolds' death, even at the cost of his own life, and destroy project Brainstorm. Some short contact with the original father and founder of the project get established that unveils that even this outstanding project never would have been gone that far without having some very powerfull finance funding in the back, and in this case the funding was unveiled as originating from military industries that were looking for application cases of their very own. No sorrys in that, just the somewhat tired and emotion less delivery of some hidden facts.

In the end Michael gets the chance for viewing the death tape, gets aware that the his restless efforts have come to an end and now gets able to find back to himselves and to mentally get aware of the meanwhile established distance to his wive. Together with Karen they spent effort on cleaning up their relation barriers resulting in the rediscovering of their love and understanding for each another. A joint plot on how to put an end to their unpleasant past got was made.

When Michael finally views Dr. Reynolds' deathtape he discovers that has recorded the big wealth of her last thoughts. It is filled with some time memory bubbles, each with its own memory and story. As she actually died, she rememberd a hilarious meeting with Michael and the robot that knocked down stacked up soda cans; She remembers a potential suitor at her lab, attempting to woo and flatter her; She also remembers being devastated, when her boss told her that her private funding was lost, some former Project Triad was dead and the Pentagon would take over. Her last thought, recorded on the tape right before she died, was that of seeing stars, a heavenly chamber and hundreds of angels flying into a great central cosmic light. Then the tape ran out. Michael began crying, because Dr. Reynolds had seen Heaven and made it.

While Michael Brace views the tape, his wife Karen uses the same line in the opposite direction to hack, with his implicit approval, into the computer of the funding industry. There she issues commands that shall destroy the robotic factory that is manufacturing the mind recording helmets for the US Military.

Brainstorm was the second film Trumbull directed after Silent Running (1971).

The "Brainstorm" virtual reality sequences were photographed in Super Panavision 70 with a wide aspect ratio of 2.2:1, while the rest of the film was shot in standard 35 mm with an aspect ratio of 1.66:1. In the original 70 mm theatrical release, the brain-scan playback scenes appeared dramatically wider and much sharper than the 35 mm scenes, giving them a sense of heightened reality and excitement. Unfortunately, the video and DVD versions have the 35 mm and 70 mm sequences letterboxed in their respective aspect ratios, spoiling the intended effect. The laserdisc release, however, presents the movie as it should be seen: the brain-scan playbacks take the full width of the screen (with black bars on the top and bottom since the presentation is letterboxed) and other scenes are narrower, having black bars on the sides as well. In the theatre the curtain would have been opened to show the entire 2.2:1 sized image so brain-scan playbacks would fill the entire screen making quite an impression while other scenes would be narrower. The sound also changed dramatically between brain-scan playback and other scenes with playback scenes having enhanced surround effects and other scenes being predominantly centre-channel only.

Press reports at the time of production indicate that Trumbull's original intent was to shoot the brain recording sequences in the Showscan process that he had previously developed. The Showscan format uses 70 mm film (65mm negative stock) in the same format as conventional 65/70 processes but is shot and projected at 60 frames per second creating a greater sense of realism. If this plan had followed the other parts of the film would have been printed in a way to make them compatible with 60 fps projection so the entire film runs as a single 60 fps 70 mm strand but only the virtual reality sequences would convey the stark realism from the Showscan system. The plan was abandoned in light of the impracticality and expense of installing Showscan projection in large numbers of theatres. The difficulty in producing conventional 24 frame per second 35 mm prints for ordinary theatres may have also been a consideration.

James Horner composed and recorded the haunting musical score in Hollywood using a studio orchestra. The Varese Sarabande album/CD release is a re-recording with the London Symphony Orchestra, produced shortly before the original theatrical release.

Brainstorm was Natalie Wood's last film. Near the end of principal photography Wood was about to film a crucial, climactic scene for the movie when she drowned on November 29, 1981, leaving production in limbo for almost two years. MGM considered offering the rights to Paramount Pictures so the movie could be finished but ultimately Trumbull decided to create an ending using body doubles and Natalie Wood soundalikes along with already-shot footage, completing production for a 1983 release. Stories had Natalie's sister Lana Wood doing certain scenes, but it wasn't really needed. Most of the film had been shot.

While critically acclaimed, the film was a box-office disaster.

Brainstorm carries the dedication credit To Natalie (in honor of Wood's memory).

Brainstorm was an inspiration to early virtual reality work by Mike McGreevey and Scott Fisher (technologist) at the NASA Ames Research Center. McGreevey located the essential optics from Pop Optics in MA which combined with the data glove by Jaron Lanier and Polehemus motion tracking hardware cobbled with two Evans & Sutherland Picture Systems created their first head mounted "glasses" and later their first helmet mounted system using a pair of 100x100 LCD (B&W) arrays (one to each eye). It needs to be said that such simulation systems were of quite some interest for the milititary but its questionable to claim that if there is a thight relation in what ever direction between this and the basic idea behind films depiction.

• Brainstorm at the Internet Movie Database