[alabastervlog]

The end shows us the entirety of anything real happening: it’s a modern day pharaoh’s tomb. Nothing’s alive, just pantomiming at life. Hieroglyphs and organs in jars, but even less human.

What you see is the only real thing. Caretaker machines swapping hard drives or whatever it is they were doing (it’s been a while since I watched it)

That’s why it shows us that, when it does.

[disconcision]

i think it's both, and more. i didn't read the ending as particularly opinionated about how 'real' the depicted emulation was, though i do think it had a decidedly hopeful tinge. the idea that we might somehow, in some way get the opportunity to do it over, to do it right, even if weird/contingent/incomplete, has i think a mythic resonance that transcends strict bounds of realism. even in a fully fantastic utopian afterlife unmediated by technology there would still be the question of whether this is 'really real': ontological, psychologically, etc. nonetheless, there are levels of unreality many seem willing to accept, the ending of 'inception' being another paradigmatic film example. i guess my perspective is that many aspects of 'real life' also abut artifice and pantomime (a phenomena not unrelated to the feelings of regret inspiring desire for strictly-impossible second chances), and the decision to accept anything as 'real' is always contains an element of tenuousness, uncertainty, and faith.

[goatlover]

I disagree, because they show the characters inside the computer simulation experiencing the world. They're conscious beings, and there's a big fight between the two main characters related to that existence, with both deciding to mind upload at the end for starting a new life together. You might disagree that simulated characters can ever be conscious in the real world, but there's plenty of fictional stories where the simulated characters are conscious, this being one of them.

As such, it doesn't matter what the substrate is for this story. The technology allows a kind of conscious life after death where people can choose to live life differently than they previously did.

[thesongtho]

It ends with the song "Heaven on Earth" with no distortions or long fade out.

The final scene has, imo, no inherent negative connotation. It seems intended as an hopeful outcome.