Thinking about it when they were there, about to blow it up, I thought "huh...great, so now they will be out of contact with friends and family for 8 solid years, just because these two twits wanted to prove it was virtual?!?".

After considering the need to "prove the point", it's a horribly cruel thing to do to hundreds of thousands of people, "virtual world" or not. Even judges can't prevent serial killer inmates from being visited by family members...but these two "hero" twits are going to decide that for ALL those people.

If they'd had time, and tech knowledge, they could have instead just put a shutdown timer on the array, say have it block all traffic for a month. But that wouldn't prove the people weren't on the planet living lives, just that the array was broken/destroyed, just as blowing it up wouldn't actually prove that either: a radio broadcast is a radio broadcast, and if it breaks, just means the comms is down, not that the world is virtual or not!

The home reaction won't be "oh noes! they live in a virtual world!", but instead "when are the pr1cks gonna fix the antenna so I can chat with my niece again?!?".

Otherwise a good movie though! And that shortsightedness demonstrates that even heroes aren't perfect...maybe writers too, but maybe it was intentional? Perhaps they feel regret on the ride home?!

I kept thinking Alien all the way through the film but without the shock/horror. There were a few continuity errors through it as well eg. Laura's Desert Eagle became a Browning HP at one point. While I enjoyed it I'm also glad it was only Ģ6 for the Bluray.