Marjorie Prime’s Eerie Immersion Proves More Speculative Fiction Than Sci-Fi

Just a few seconds into Marjorie Prime, Marjorie tells Walter Prime, “I feel like I have to perform around you.” The irony is apparent: of the two, he is the performer. In the film’s indeterminate future, ‘Primes’ are a technological innovation: intelligent holograms of those lost that the bereaved can interact with. (The Primes learn who they were through stories and guidance given to them by the living.) Jon Hamm’s Walter Prime—a Prime of Marjorie&rsqu