Gee, Sombody called Natalie Wood's and Chris Walken's sci-fi pursuit film, "Brainstorm" " . . .forgettable." Please, look again. For those of us who hope and pray [in vain it seems] for a meaningful breakthrough in the genre,"Storm" represented a nice step in the right direction, both in screen-writing and SFX production. "Storm" anticipated the arrival of "virtual reality" technology at a time when it seemed like a wild idea. It showed us the experiental benefits of VR as well as the dangers of symbolistic communication technologies in the hands of abusive organizations [shades of "The Manchurian Candidate"]. Not bad for a little sci-fi film . Most SF seems locked into into horror, blood and disfigured people, ala TOTAL RECALL or post-nuclear societies [omegaman/roadwarrior]. Storm gave us an "insider" who "built the bomb" and then tried to disarm it. Compare that to the "reluctant boy-hero vs. entire world" theme in WAR GAMES, which is REAL fantasy. But the most astonishing thing to me was the vision of how "modern" SFX [in its time] was used to take us through the death experience in a thoughtful, provoking way, in a most unique POV. It was a big screen spectacle, and most *un-forgettable*, both from a production and philosophical pov. [All the more ironic,as well, since one of it's stars died while making the film.]. We have the tek power now to give us visions beyond description, but all we get is techno-babble and radiation. The genre is under-developed, and studio abuse is common. I'd Like to think "Brainstorm" was different. Pat in WA.