Tbh, I feel like the plot didn’t stand the test of the 15 years they spent making it, and that was sort of understood in its reception/people’s watching experience.

Story-wise, it was just “Dances With Wolves Aliens” meets “The Last Samurai Alien” in the VR age.

Visually, it was an inspiring demonstration of technology. The fate of any work with those priorities is to become historically important and notably dated. The technology displayed is no longer bleeding edge; anyone watching it for the first time in 2024 will miss the novelty that made the visuals so arresting to 2009 viewers–they’ve seen equally impressive things in friends’ living rooms now. The experience now is about something that was impressive for the time rather than impressive for this time, and I think everyone was ok with that being the future of the project.