Steven Spielberg Thinks VR Technology Could Be Dangerous

Virtual reality technology has been making a comeback in a big way with the Oculus VR hitting shelves along with Samsung and PlayStation creating their own devices for the immersive innovation in entertainment. Slowly but surely, the technology is starting to make its way into filmmaking as VR movies have been playing at various film festivals recently.

However, director Steven Spielberg doesn’t sound too keen on the technology making its way into cinemas and he believes it could be dangerous to the nature of storytelling. Read the Steven Spielberg’s remarks on virtual reality movies remarks after the jump. While appearing at the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of The BFG Spielberg was asked about the advancement of virtual reality by The Guardian, and he thinks it poses a risk to how filmmakers tell a story. He said “I think we’re moving into a dangerous medium with virtual reality. The only reason I say it is dangerous is because it gives the viewer a lot of latitude not to take direction from the storytellers but make their own choices of where to look. I just hope it doesn’t forget the story when it starts enveloping us in a world that we can see all around us and make our own choices to look at”

This is definitely something that could pose a problem with VR filmmaking. How difficult will it be to tell a story that keeps a viewer’s focus when they have a whole environment surrounding them that they can check out at their leisure. Even though virtual reality is becoming a bigger component of entertainment, I think films that effectively play out in virtual reality are going to be few and far between.