... Okay, that's not the only reason.
For anyone not familiar with it, Sword Art Online is a book series, which got made into a TV anime series, which has spawned a truly ridiculous number of spin-off manga, anime, and games. It focuses on two gamers, Kirito and Asuna, who are some of the first players to join a virtual reality online game using a system that allows them to completely dive into the game's world... only to discover that they can't log out or shut down the system in order to return to the real world, and that dying in the game will cause the system to kill them in real life as well.
It has its problems; Kirito in particular often reaches Boring Invincible Hero levels of power for no apparent reason. But it's still one of my favorite series of all time, because I greatly enjoy the way it brings up issues and philosophical questions that are quite relevant to the world we live in.
The SAO movie - which is set after all of the currently released seasons of the anime, so spoilers not just for the movie but for the entire anime run may follow - certainly follows in the TV anime's footsteps in that regard. And that's not even the only reason to like it!
In its case, one of the major details driving the plot is the memories many of the characters have of the time they spent forced to remain in the original game world - and one of the justifications the villains use is that they dismiss the value of those memories and assume that everyone who was forced to risk their lives to try and clear the game would rather forget all of it because of the stress and fear involved. It builds nicely on one of the messages from the original anime; namely, that what we do in a virtual world - whether that's an actual game or anything else online - can still be a very real, significant part of who we are.
The movie also avoided a lot of the traps that the original anime fell into. The villains' plot was easily understandable; it made sense that they would want to do the things they did, even if they were evil. The advantages they had were telegraphed, but not so clearly as to ruin everything before the dramatic moment in which Kirito figures the problem out. And while it took a minute for me to understand why one of the final sequences was necessary for the main characters to win, it did become clear in the end why that needed to be a part of the plot.
Overall, I'm quite glad with the movie... now they just need to hurry up and get to the next seasons of the anime that they're planning to release.
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