All Notes Project Overview
Updated March 21, 2025

Fiction In Marjorie Prime

“Marjorie Prime” (2017) is a science fiction film directed by Michael Almereyda that explores AI companionship through the lens of memory, grief, and identity. Based on Jordan Harrison’s Pulitzer-nominated play, the film presents a nuanced portrayal of holographic AI companions called “Primes” that are created to resemble deceased loved ones.

Plot and Premise

Set in the near future, the film centers on 85-year-old Marjorie (played by Lois Smith), who uses a service that provides a holographic AI companion called a “Prime” - in her case, a younger version of her late husband Walter (played by Jon Hamm). Unlike some fictional portrayals of digital resurrection, the Walter Prime begins as a relatively blank slate, knowing only basic biographical information.

What distinguishes the portrayal in Marjorie Prime is that the AI companions learn and evolve through conversation. As Marjorie shares stories and memories with Walter Prime, he gradually becomes more convincing as a simulation of the real Walter. This iterative process of memory sharing becomes central to the film’s exploration of how we construct and maintain identity through selective remembering.

As the film progresses, additional family members create Primes of their departed loved ones, creating a cascade of artificial companions who hold increasingly complex networks of shared (and sometimes contradictory) memories.

Themes and Insights

“Marjorie Prime” explores several key themes relevant to AI companionship:

  • Memory as Identity: The film suggests that we are, in many ways, the sum of our memories and the stories we tell about ourselves
  • Selective Truth: Characters often choose to tell comforting lies rather than painful truths to the Primes, raising questions about whether an accurate simulation is actually what people want
  • Grief Processing: The Primes serve as tools for processing grief, allowing characters to continue relationships in modified form rather than ending them entirely
  • Layered Simulation: As Primes create memories of interactions with other Primes, the film examines how artificial memory builds upon artificial memory
  • Fundamental Incompleteness: Despite increasingly sophisticated mimicry, the Primes remain fundamentally different from the humans they simulate

Technological Portrayal

The technology in “Marjorie Prime” is portrayed with deliberate minimalism. The Primes appear as perfect holographic recreations of their human counterparts but without special effects or visual markers that distinguish them from humans. This visual choice emphasizes the blurring line between real and artificial.

The learning process of the Primes is presented as conversational rather than data-driven. Unlike the “Be Right Back” scenario where the AI analyzes social media and digital footprints, Marjorie Prime’s AIs learn directly through spoken interaction, emphasizing the role of human participants in shaping the AI’s personality.

Comparison to Real-World Developments

The film’s vision of AI companions has several parallels to actual technological developments:

  • The conversational learning approach resembles systems like HereAfter AI, which records interviews with living people to create posthumous chatbots
  • The holographic presentation echoes products like Gatebox that use projections to create the illusion of a character in physical space
  • The therapeutic application for grief resembles projects like the Roman Mazurenko chatbot created by Eugenia Kuyda

Critical Reception and Cultural Impact

“Marjorie Prime” was praised for its thoughtful, non-sensationalistic approach to AI ethics. Unlike many sci-fi portrayals that focus on the technology going wrong, the film presents the Primes as functioning exactly as designed - yet still raises profound questions about the nature of human connection, memory, and identity.

The film offers a more measured view of digital resurrection than many fictional portrayals, suggesting both benefits (comfort, continued connection) and limitations (the inescapable difference between simulation and reality).

Connections

References