READY PLAYER ONE - Spielberg - 2018 - Trailer

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jkholm
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Re: READY PLAYER ONE - Spielberg - 2018 - Trailer

#16 Post by jkholm »

Minor spoilers for the book...(and maybe the movie?) below
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It's one thing to have references to things like Back to the Future and Star Wars in a movie. Even people who didn't grow up in the 80's know those, but the book has some obscure references as major plot points. The main character goes on scavenger hunt like quests to find clues to win the game. One of those clues involves a D&D module and another is for the text-adventure game Zork I. That's pretty nerdy. Will that be in the movie? I'm not sure mainstream audiences will appreciate that (or find it amusing).

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AndyDursin
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Re: READY PLAYER ONE - Spielberg - 2018 - Trailer

#17 Post by AndyDursin »

I'm all in for anything that has a ZORK reference! :D

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Monterey Jack
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Re: READY PLAYER ONE - Spielberg - 2018 - Trailer

#18 Post by Monterey Jack »

That's the thing...Ready Player One has a reason for everyone picking apart obscure pop-culture stuff from the 80's. It's Willy Wonka for a digital age, so the fact that today's kids might not "get it" with some of the really obscure references is kind of built into the entire premise. This near-future (2040s, I think) dystopia where the teens and twentysomethings of that era busy themselves marathoning Charles In Charge and making fun of the drum-machine soundtrack for Ladyhawke because, somewhere in that morass of movie and TV stuff is the key to the biggest fortune on the planet. Hell, this could easily play into the film's marketing, a contest to visit the world premiere or something by watching 80's stuff and boning up on trivia. It may be "fanservice" for people of our generation who experienced all of this stuff the first time around, but the book does not paint a flattering portrait of these dead-end future kids.

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AndyDursin
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Re: READY PLAYER ONE - Spielberg - 2018 - Trailer

#19 Post by AndyDursin »

I gotcha. I'm just telling you what it looked like to me. As long as there's a story there, fine, but I've also heard from a friend who stopped reading the book because (he said) the early portion of it, supposedly, had nothing more than a list of pop-culture references.

Maybe I should just read the book, but my time is limited these days!

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Re: READY PLAYER ONE - Spielberg - 2018 - Trailer

#20 Post by AndyDursin »

Ouch....this does not compel me to read the book!

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/ready- ... 497066/amp

jkholm
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Re: READY PLAYER ONE - Spielberg - 2018 - Trailer

#21 Post by jkholm »

Way back at the beginning of this thread I mentioned that I enjoyed the book. I am now re-evaluating that opinion, especially in light of a podcast I've been listening to called 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back. It's hosted by Mike Nelson and one of his colleagues at Rifftrax. They go through the book a few chapters at a time completely ripping it to shreds. Now obviously, they're going for laughs, but the points they make are valid. The plot does not hold up to close scrutiny at all and the prose is awful. I guess I just went along with it when I listened to the audio book a few years ago. Not sure how Spielberg is going to make this entertaining.

http://372pages.com/

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Re: READY PLAYER ONE - Spielberg - 2018 - Trailer

#22 Post by AndyDursin »

I never read it and, at this point, I'm guessing I'm probably better off if I don't with comments like yours John.

The movie looks like "Spielberg's MATRIX", though a lot of the pop-culture things seem all over the place as opposed to being 80s centric. I'm mildly interested in seeing it but modern day Spielberg just isn't my bag lately.

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Re: READY PLAYER ONE - Spielberg - 2018 - Trailer

#23 Post by AndyDursin »

Crazy that not even the movie's poster lists the acting credits for this film. Weird.

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Paul MacLean
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Re: READY PLAYER ONE - Spielberg - 2018 - Trailer

#24 Post by Paul MacLean »

AndyDursin wrote: Sat Mar 24, 2018 2:59 pm Crazy that not even the movie's poster lists the acting credits for this film. Weird.
Maybe they were right about stars no longer being what people come to see!

The soundtrack is a 2-CD set too. I'm not sure if it is all Alan Silvestri (though the downloadable mp3 album has 22 tracks).

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Re: READY PLAYER ONE - Spielberg - 2018 - Trailer

#25 Post by AndyDursin »

The easiest way to sum up my reaction to Steven Spielberg’s READY PLAYER ONE in a manner apropos to its internet world would be ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Nearly 2½ hours long – but disappointingly threadbare in terms of character development and the “human touch” Spielberg was once so renowned for – this watchable adaptation of Ernest Cline’s bestselling novel ultimately never gels.

Like Cline’s novel, Spielberg’s film is set in a future Ohio where a series of vague disasters have resulted in a somewhat dilapidated world where most humans are content to spend time in the “Oasis” – an internet community filled with all kinds of interactive worlds. One group of gamers utilize the Oasis to try and find Easter Eggs left by the system’s late designer (Mark Rylance), including a young man (Tye Sheridan) who spends time rewatching the genius’ recorded life and times, hoping to find clues to the whereabouts of three magical keys that will unlock the entire kingdom to the person who retrieves them. In hot pursuit are both Sheridan’s friends – including a sassy female cohort (Olivia Cooke) – and foes, the latter in the form of a vile corporation presided over by a ruthless suit (Ben Mendelsohn) who wants the Oasis for his own greedy desires (of course).

Cline infused “Ready Player One” with endless references to ‘80s pop culture that, I’ve been told from several friends, at times read more like a catalog than a novel. Spielberg retains this device through plenty of pop music and appearances by a variety of familiar faces from “nerd culture” – yet the novelty of this wears off quickly, with neither Spielberg nor the credited screenwriters (Zak Penn and Cline himself) utilizing the likes of Batman, or Chucky, or Mechagodzilla to any tangible effect in terms of the overall drama. They’re just “there,” ultimately functioning as background filler with Alan Silvestri’s score incorporating a couple of bars of, say, Ikafube’s “Godzilla” theme or his own “Back to the Future” motif – but there’s no actual development of this component, which feels like it was more important to sell the movie’s marketing than the picture itself.

In fact, shorn of its references (“listen, it’s a line from ‘Excalbur!’”, “they’re playing Atari’s Adventure!”), what you’re left with in “Ready Player One” is a lightweight hybrid of “The Matrix” and “Avatar” that’s just not that interesting. Spielberg toys with a romance between Sheridan and Cooke – but because most of the duo’s scenes come in the guise of their cartoony CGI alter-egos, there’s no real attachment the viewer feels towards them. Nor is there a convincing articulation of the overall future environment that Cline apparently portrayed as a far darker place – by contrast, Spielberg doesn’t seem to have a good handle on the story’s backdrop or the film’s overall tone, which offers a fleeting glimpse at Sheridan’s rough extended family (who seem to pop up only to get killed off) that plays in stark opposition to an increasingly lightweight, virtually kid-friendly tone that becomes more prevalent as the picture progresses.

Spielberg has had problems trying to recapture the magic of his early genre pictures over the last 20 years, and while “Ready Player One” would seem to be right up his alley, the movie’s script simply isn’t there – you can just sense the writers struggling to give some structure to it all, adding in a flurry of peripheral characters who aren’t developed, not to mention several false endings. Throw in a bloated running time (yet another Spielberg turn from Rylance with his…deliberately….slow….line…readings doesn’t help) and you’re left with a movie that manages to be glitzy but ultimately as hollow as the artificial experience the Oasis provides to its inhabitants.

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Re: READY PLAYER ONE - Spielberg - 2018 - Trailer

#26 Post by BobaMike »

I got a free ticket to see Ready Player One last night, and I totally agree with your assessment, Andy. Even though I would presumably be the target audience for this (I grew up in the 80's, love video games, etc), I basically just rolled my eyes at the entire movie. I must be getting old.

6/10.

-The oasis CGI segments are going to be as dated in 10 years as the Final Fantasy CGI movie is now. I wasn't invested in the car chase, the shoot-outs or the big battle at the end, because we already know it's not real people. So what if their car crashes? It's not real (yes I know all movies aren't real, but there is a difference). I felt like I was watching a video game cutscene. I didn't mind Tintin, but the CGI segments here took me right out of the film.

-The pop-culture references...I noticed the 'missing' characters more than anything. Where was Star Wars (other than a few lines), Ghostbusters, Transformers, Mario, Indiana Jones, etc. Not to mention the fact that the most recent character in a movie set in 2045 was an Overwatch character. Did pop culture cease to exist after 2018?

-ALL five of the heroes just HAPPENED to be living with a few miles of each other? That only know each from a worldwide VR world? That alone made me raise an eyebrow. Not one of them was playing from another country?

-"You killed my mother's sister!" What an awful line. We didn't care about his aunt! I laughed out loud in the theater.

-I don't understand the economy/world they live in. How did the main character earn a living? Did he go to school? For the longest time I assumed their was no government, then they are driving around in a futuristic post office truck and the police show up at the end. Where were the police for the rest of the movie?

-The bad guy has one pistol and everyone in a slum is scared? I think half of those people would own a gun.

-TJ Miller's bad guy was funny, but totally did not fit with the rest of the film.

---the good---

It was nice to hear a decent orchestral score for once. I liked the Back to the Future, King Kong, and Godzilla references, and part of one of Silvestri's themes is basically the title theme to Amazing Stories.

-uh, I guess that's it. The Shining recreation was interesting. Too bad they didn't have Jack Nicholson.

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Re: READY PLAYER ONE - Spielberg - 2018 - Trailer

#27 Post by Monterey Jack »

8/10

It's "shallow", certainly, but I had a good deal of fun with this.

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Re: READY PLAYER ONE - Spielberg - 2018 - Trailer

#28 Post by AndyDursin »

BM all outstanding points. I thought exactly the same when the police showed up at the end...and if this is such a stifling world, how is there a nice rooftop overlooking the city? That's why I felt Spielberg did such a poor job filling in the gaps of what this world is. Who are these people, why do they need the Oasis...you have to do a better job explaining it because otherwise you're left, as we were, struggling to reconcile logical elements about the police, the kids schooling, etc.

As for the look, the soon to be dated itself CGI world like you said, the lack of context for the whole 80s thing...I think it speaks to Spielberg really missing a golden opportunity with this movie to make something special. How amazing would've it been if he used the backdrop to produce a movie that really did not just pay tribute but speak to the kinds of viewing experiences we enjoyed growing up in the 80s? And have various "meta" moments musically and otherwise, with those various aspects being an actual part of the drama?

Instead of going that route, Spielberg just made another basic modern movie with "shoutouts" to the past that really have no bearing on what we're watching. Very disappointing.

i admit also the mo cap stuff irritates me. Olivia Cooke is cute and a capable actress, I'd rather watch her than a cartoon version of her running around for most of the movie. I just don't think the animation adds anything to the picture, it takes you out of it and detracts from the actors performance. It's like how in the LAST JEDI supplements, you can see Andy Serkis acting out Snoke...and it's far better and more effective than the lame computerized animation they threw on top of him!

On THE SHINING sequence, it was okay but was a replacement for a WARGAMES set piece that would have made more sense given the whole video game vibe (and I've never thought of The Shining as an "80s movie" either). Could have been one of those situations where Warner Bros. Didn't want to pay to license Wargames from MGM...thinking more about it they did very little to license out characters beyond the WB stable. I was surprised there wasn't more of Spielbergs own stuff in the movie given how important his contributions were to the decade and it's pop culture, obviously.

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Re: READY PLAYER ONE - Spielberg - 2018 - Trailer

#29 Post by BobaMike »

Andy, I didn't read the book, but a Wargames sequence would have been neat. Someone I saw the movie with said how different the book was, she also said that one of the characters was fat, instead of everyone looking fit.

I agree, nothing about The Shining screams 80's to me. If they had gone slasher movie with Freddy or Jason (I think I saw Freddy K in one scene) that would have made more sense.

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Re: READY PLAYER ONE - Spielberg - 2018 - Trailer

#30 Post by AndyDursin »

I saw it with a friend of mine who read the book and was shaking his head through most of it. He didn't remember it all but thought the movie was much, much lighter in tone and execution (thought one of the kids got killed in the original book) and he mentioned the WARGAMES bit.

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