Movie Details
| Title: | Ready Player One | |
| Director: | Steven Spielberg | |
| Year: | 2018 | |
| Genre: | Adventure | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 04.02.18 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (12)
- Bridge of Spies
- The Fabelmans
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
- Jaws
- Jurassic Park
- The Lost World: Jurassic Park
- Minority Report
- Munich
- The Post
- Raiders of the Lost Ark
- War of the Worlds
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 04.02.18 | Alamo Mueller | SPOILERS Gosh I was so apprehensive about this movie. I liked the book a lot but felt that Spielberg was really old and might not get what's good about it because the book trades on nostalgia for a time where Spielberg was producing what Ernest Cline and his characters are loving. How do you have that kind of perspective and really understand this fan thing if you've always been the subject of it rather than a participant? So, I was wrong. I really like this movie. I thought it was a great adaptation, in many ways better than the book. I'm a little sad to not see the arcade planet visualized but other than that I thought they did a great job of bringing the Wonka-esque plot to screen and reveling in the references and callbacks to 80s and 90s stuff like the book did. Furthermore, I felt like Spielberg's way into this movie was to also explore things that he himself is a fanboy for. One of the most solid and successful changes from the book is choosing the step inside The Shining rather than War Games or Monty Python and The Holy Grail. You can tell what fun it was for Spielberg to recreate some of those iconic sets and scenes from the film as well as have a lot of fun gamify-ing it and making it enjoyable to an audience. So maybe you see less Star Wars and Indy stuff in there but there is still a shit ton to find. I'm sure I missed or didn't get the majority of references but the various OASIS scenes are chock full of stuff that we're all waiting for a blu-ray release to frame by frame and pick out everything. I know I saw TMNT, Battletoads, and Marvin the Martian, which are extraordinary. That brings me to my favorite aspect of the movie. The book's critics call it nothing more than a nostalgia-fest or checklist of geek references. It's kind of true in the book, where, if you're not familiar with the reference, you have no mental imagery to paint the complete picture. But this movie does that whether you know the references or not, and the result is an overwhelming wave of celebration for a whole generation's worth of creativity and ideas. Seeing all of this Intellectual Property rubbing shoulders with one another puts a spotlight on how much cool stuff exists out in the world and how much the world enjoys it. To cheer for the particular character or item or whatever that you recognize evokes that whole universe and pulls it into this one. It's just so cool. It's every "who would win in a fight between X and Y" debate, every toy line or fan fiction or saturday morning cartoon... everything you like about enjoying entertainment on display in one big frame. For me, it was the promise of LEGO Movie and Wreck-It Ralph and the South Park Cartoon Wars and Who Framed Roger Rabbit delivered by perhaps the one guy who could get approvals from the entire world. Although... the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were the Michael Bay designs instead of the 90s live-action suits, which is not cool. But oh well. So all of the Oasis stuff had a very overwhelming effect on me. The beginning race, where every fictional New York Movie Thing gets thrown at them, to the club where Harley Quinn dances with The Joker to Planet Doom (which needed just a tad of id software's Doom to be complete but again - oh well) where who knows what fights against each other. All of that, like, almost took my breath away. The other stuff.. the real world stuff... i think I still have some minor problems with. I don't get people in VR goggles running down streets... I wish the actual actors weren't quite so pretty... I found all the characters living in the same city to be stretching the boundaries of my willing suspension of disbelief... but it's all ok because that CG stuff is so great. Also, I actually liked TJ Miller's character because he connects a few dots which the books just gloss over. I am still sad to not get a glimpse of that arcade planet though. but oh well. |
