''CyberWorld'' is a 2000 American
3D animated
Animation is a filmmaking technique whereby image, still images are manipulated to create Motion picture, moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on cel, transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and e ...
anthology film
An anthology film (also known as an omnibus film or a portmanteau film) is a single film consisting of three or more shorter films, each complete in itself and distinguished from the other, though frequently tied together by a single theme, premise ...
shown in
IMAX
IMAX is a proprietary system of High-definition video, high-resolution cameras, film formats, film projectors, and movie theater, theaters known for having very large screens with a tall aspect ratio (image), aspect ratio (approximately ei ...
and
IMAX 3D
IMAX is a proprietary system of high-resolution cameras, film formats, film projectors, and theaters known for having very large screens with a tall aspect ratio (approximately either 1.43:1 or 1.90:1) and steep stadium seating, with ...
, presented by Intel. Several segments originally filmed in 2D were converted to 3D format by IMAX. As presented on its website, it was labelled the first 3D animated film in IMAX.
Plot
A guide named Phig commences the movie by showing the audience the "CyberWorld", a futuristic museum of infinite possibilities. Meanwhile, three computer bugs (Buzzed, Wired, and Frazzled) try to eat the CyberWorld through its number coding. When Phig learns about them, she goes on the hunt for the destructive computer bugs while presenting various short premade clips of computer-animated productions, such as scenes from ''
Antz
''Antz'' is a 1998 American animated adventure comedy film directed by Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson from a screenplay written by Todd Alcott and the writing team of Chris and Paul Weitz. It was produced by DreamWorks Pictures, DreamWorks An ...
'' and "
Homer³" from ''
The Simpsons
''The Simpsons'' is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening and developed by Groening, James L. Brooks and Sam Simon for the Fox Broadcasting Company. It is a Satire (film and television), satirical depiction of American life ...
''.
In the end, Buzzed, Wired and Frazzled create a
black hole
A black hole is a massive, compact astronomical object so dense that its gravity prevents anything from escaping, even light. Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will form a black hole. Th ...
(the one seen in "Homer³"), which kills them. Phig got almost swallowed up in the hole, but not before her "knight in cyber armour," technician Hank, reboots the entire system just as she gets sucked up into the vortex. Phig concludes the movie by explaining to the audience that none of the events caused by the bugs ever occurred. She attempts to summon her battle gear to prove her point, only to receive a pink bunny outfit in return (a similar trick the bugs played on her in the film's midsection).
Selected segments
* The dance sequence from the animated feature ''
Antz
''Antz'' is a 1998 American animated adventure comedy film directed by Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson from a screenplay written by Todd Alcott and the writing team of Chris and Paul Weitz. It was produced by DreamWorks Pictures, DreamWorks An ...
''
* The CGI parts of the "Homer³" segment from ''
The Simpsons
''The Simpsons'' is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening and developed by Groening, James L. Brooks and Sam Simon for the Fox Broadcasting Company. It is a Satire (film and television), satirical depiction of American life ...
'' episode "
Treehouse of Horror VI"
* The music video of the
Pet Shop Boys
Pet Shop Boys are an English synth-pop duo formed in London in 1981. Consisting of vocalist Neil Tennant and keyboardist Chris Lowe, they have sold more than 100 million records worldwide and were listed as the most successful duo in UK music h ...
song "
Liberation"
* "Monkey Brain Sushi", a short film created by
Brummbaer
Brummbaer was a German digital artist who has done work as an art director, designer, graphic artist, and 3D modeling software, 3D modeler. As an actor, he has appeared in various German TV movies, and also produced and directed. In the latter pa ...
at
Sony Pictures Imageworks
Sony Pictures Imageworks Inc. (simply known as Imageworks) is a visual effects and computer animation studio headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia and Montreal, Quebec, with an additional office on the Sony Pictures Studios lot in Culver C ...
* ''KraKKen: Adventure of Future Ocean'', a short film created by ExMachina
* "Joe Fly", a short film created By Spans & Partner
* "Flipbook and Waterfall City", a short film created by Satoshi Kitahara
* "Tonight's Performance", a short film created by REZN8 specifically for the film
Cast
*
Jenna Elfman
Jenna Elfman (née Butala, born September 30, 1971) is an American actress. She is best known for her leading role as Dharma on the American Broadcasting Company, ABC sitcom ''Dharma & Greg'' (1997–2002), for which she received the Golden Glob ...
as Phig
*
Matt Frewer
Matthew George Frewer (born January 4, 1958) is an American-Canadian actor and comedian. He portrayed the 1980s icon Max Headroom in the 1985 TV film and 1987 Max Headroom (TV series), television series of the same name.
He became prominent when ...
as Frazzled
*
Robert Smith as Buzzed and Wired
*
Dave Foley
David Foley (born January 4, 1963) is a Canadian actor, stand-up comedian, director, producer, and writer. He is known as a co-founder of the comedy group The Kids in the Hall, who have appeared together in a number of television, stage and fil ...
as Hank the Technician
*
Cara Pifko
Cara Pifko is a Canadians, Canadian actress known primarily for her work on television shows produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Life and career
Pifko was born in Toronto to Esther Pifko (née Taub). Her older brother is Andrew Pi ...
as Computer
Archive audio
*
Woody Allen
Heywood Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; November 30, 1935) is an American filmmaker, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades. Allen has received many List of awards and nominations received by Woody Allen, accolade ...
,
Sharon Stone
Sharon Vonne Stone (born March 10, 1958) is an American actress and film producer. Known for primarily playing femmes fatales and women of mystery on film and television, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1990s. She is the ...
, and
Sylvester Stallone
Sylvester Gardenzio "Sly" Stallone (; born July 6, 1946) is an American actor and filmmaker. In a Sylvester Stallone filmography, film career spanning more than fifty years, Stallone has received List of awards and nominations received by Syl ...
(''
Antz
''Antz'' is a 1998 American animated adventure comedy film directed by Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson from a screenplay written by Todd Alcott and the writing team of Chris and Paul Weitz. It was produced by DreamWorks Pictures, DreamWorks An ...
'')
*
Hank Azaria
Henry Albert Azaria ( ; born April 25, 1964) is an American actor and producer. He is known for voicing many characters in the long-running animated sitcom ''The Simpsons'' since 1989, including Moe Szyslak, Chief Wiggum, Superintendent Chalmer ...
,
Nancy Cartwright
Nancy Jean Cartwright (born October 25, 1957) is an American actress, best known as the long-time voice of Bart Simpson on ''The Simpsons'', for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance and an Annie Award f ...
,
Dan Castellaneta
Daniel Louis Castellaneta ( ; born October 29, 1957) is an American actor. He is best known for voicing Homer Simpson on the animated series ''The Simpsons'' (as well as other characters on the show such as Grampa Simpson, Krusty the Clown, ...
,
Julie Kavner
Julie Deborah Kavner (born September 7, 1950) is an American actress. Before becoming well known for her voice role as Marge Simpson on the animated television series ''The Simpsons'', Kavner attracted notice for her role as Brenda Morgenstern, ...
,
Harry Shearer
Harry Julius Shearer (born December 23, 1943) is an American actor, comedian, musician, radio host, writer, and producer. Born in Los Angeles, California, Shearer began his career as a child actor. From 1969 to 1976, Shearer was a member of The ...
, and
Yeardley Smith
Martha Maria Yeardley Smith ( ; born July 3, 1964) is an American actress. She stars as the voice of Lisa Simpson on the animated television series ''The Simpsons''.
Smith began acting in 1982 after graduating from drama school. She moved to ...
of ''
The Simpsons
''The Simpsons'' is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening and developed by Groening, James L. Brooks and Sam Simon for the Fox Broadcasting Company. It is a Satire (film and television), satirical depiction of American life ...
''
*
Chris Lowe and
Neil Tennant
Neil Francis Tennant (born 10 July 1954) is an English singer, songwriter and music journalist, and co-founder of the synth-pop duo the Pet Shop Boys, which he formed with Chris Lowe in 1981. He was a journalist for '' Smash Hits'', and assist ...
of
Pet Shop Boys
Pet Shop Boys are an English synth-pop duo formed in London in 1981. Consisting of vocalist Neil Tennant and keyboardist Chris Lowe, they have sold more than 100 million records worldwide and were listed as the most successful duo in UK music h ...
* David Geldart as Pete
*
Richard Pearce as Joe Fly
* Ned Irving as Sanchez
* Mark Lyndon as The
Praying Mantis
Mantises are an order (Mantodea) of insects that contains over 2,400 species in about 460 genera in 33 families. The largest family is the Mantidae ("mantids"). Mantises are distributed worldwide in temperate ...
* Georg Hahn as The
Mite
Mites are small arachnids (eight-legged arthropods) of two large orders, the Acariformes and the Parasitiformes, which were historically grouped together in the subclass Acari. However, most recent genetic analyses do not recover the two as eac ...
s
*
Frank Welker
Franklin Wendell Welker (born March 12, 1946) is an American actor who specializes in voice acting. He began his career in the 1960s, and held around 850 film, television, and video game credits as of 2020, making him one of the most prolific v ...
as The
Firefly
The Lampyridae are a family of elateroid beetles with more than 2,000 described species, many of which are light-emitting. They are soft-bodied beetles commonly called fireflies, lightning bugs, or glowworms for their conspicuous production ...
Release
''CyberWorld'' premiered at the
Universal Citywalk IMAX Theater on October 1, 2000. It is the first IMAX film with a PG rating (some language from the ''Antz'' and ''Simpsons'' segments).
Reception
Box office
''CyberWorld'' was a box office success, grossing $11,253,900 in the domestic box office and $5,400,000 overseas for a worldwide total of $16,653,900.
Critical response
On
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
, it has an approval rating of 55% based on 11 reviews, with an average rating of 6.18/10. On
Metacritic
Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...
, the film has a weighted average score of 53/100 based on 13 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert ( ; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American Film criticism, film critic, film historian, journalist, essayist, screenwriter and author. He wrote for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. Eber ...
, writing for the ''
Chicago Sun-Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily nonprofit newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has long held the second largest circulation among Chicago newspaper ...
'', praised the film for accurately presenting what 3D technology is capable of. He particularly singled out the size of the IMAX screens the film was projected on. He wrote, "(The film) takes advantage of the squarish six-story screen to envelop us in the images; the edges of the frame don't have the same kind of distracting cutoff power they possess in the smaller rectangles of conventional theatres."
Contrarily, Paul Tatara of
CNN.com was displeased with the film's over-reliance on 3D effects, continuing to say, "Unfortunately, you can't escape the sensation that you might end up wearing the contents of your stomach while you watch it."
References
External links
*
*
*
*
*
CYBERWORLD
{{DEFAULTSORT:CyberWorld
2000 3D films
2000 comedy films
2000 animated short films
American 3D films
2000s English-language films
Antz
American anthology films
Animated crossover films
IMAX films
American comedy films
3D animated short films
Films scored by Paul Haslinger
Films scored by Hummie Mann
2000s American films
Pet Shop Boys
The Simpsons
Films produced by Steve Hoban
Animated films set in museums
Films about black holes
Films with screenplays by Steve Hoban
American computer-animated films
2000 computer-animated films