Post by Doomsday on Mar 12, 2018 13:34:24 GMT -5
Ready Player One
I still can't get over that leg.
I'm not sure what the general consensus is; are people looking forward to Ready Player One or are people laughing at Ready Player One? For every person I find who's genuinely excited about seeing a movie based on the very popular nostalgia-fest novel, there's someone who hates the pop culture-bait gimmicks and acknowledges that the book, while fun and breezy, isn't exactly the pinnacle of western literature. When it was announced that Steven Spielberg would be directing it made a lot of sense. Arguably the biggest director in film history, he pretty much conquered the 1980s (and 1990s for that matter) with some of the most iconic and memorable movies ever made. Why not have him helm a movie focused on the decade he helped shape? It's a story with action, suspense and offers readers/viewers an opportunity to revisit some old characters they might not have considered in a long time. The real question was how would it translate on screen? You can't just throw a bunch of 80s pop references up there while having characters recite movie lines and play arcade games like they did in the book. It's a story that had to make some very clear changes and making changes to something that people are so passionate about could lead to some problems.
One of the big questions fans of the book will have is just how similar is the movie to the source material? The general plot remains the same; Wade Watts is a poor kid living in the Stacks, trailers stacked on top of each other. Like everyone else in society, he spends his time in the OASIS, a virtual world where you can do just about anything you want. One day a video is released of the creator of the OASIS, James Halliday. The video is Halliday's will where he states that an easter egg has been hidden in the OASIS and the person who finds the clues, completes the challenges and finds the egg will win total control over the entire system and inherit Halliday's fortune of half a trillion dollars. Unfortunately, the dastardly IOI corporation led by Nolan Sorrento will stop at nothing to get the egg first including offing people in the 'real world.' So if you're wondering if there's any deviation from that general storyline, no there isn't. The main theme carries over from the book but that's about where the similarities end. While I'm someone who admires a faithful adaptation as much as the next guy you have to admit that a lot of what happens in the novel really wouldn't translate well on-screen. How could you film a character playing Joust while making it suspenseful? How could you have that same character reciting War Games verbatim? It would be tough which is why it was probably a good idea to change up the challenges, and by change I mean the challenges are completely different from the book with the exception of the final, final one. If that's what you're looking for you might be disappointed but if you agree that some of the stuff would be pretty lame to watch then they will most likely be welcome changes. You've probably seen from the commercial that there's a big race with King Kong and a T-Rex. If that's your thing, more power to you. There are some pretty neat easter eggs for the audience too, a few of which gave me a little chuckle but then again that’s the whole point of the movie. That doesn't mean though that all of them are good because they aren't. Some are bad, really bad. Groan-inducing bad. The Distracted Globe dance club, while a really cool looking set piece, is blown to hell because someone thought it would be a good idea to put a Stayin' Alive dance number into it. Aside from the fact that Stayin' Alive is one of the most overused, overplayed and over-imitated songs of all time, it's just a corny and useless reference that nobody will enjoy and everyone will think is really lame. The final battle, one of the climaxes of the movie, is almost shot in the knee with 'We're Not Gonna Take It' playing over the fighting, not to mention starting with Parzival holding up a boom box to signal the troops. Because Say Anything, get it? Oh crap, now I'm starting to do it too.
From what I gather through my observations, one of the main selling points for Ready Player One has also resulted in some hefty backlash. The over-reliance on all things 80s and nostalgia and 'remember this thing?' made the book an entertaining ride but it wasn't anything particularly deep and people didn't give it a pass just because it mentioned some stuff from their past, they started to criticize it because it felt shallow. The exact same can be said of the film in that there are many instances of characters literally saying 'Remember (some 80s reference)?' or 'It's (another 80s reference)!' What's funny is that there's enough but there probably isn't as much as you'd expect. Ernest Cline could pepper it throughout a novel over a few hundred pages thanks to narration and the character's POV. Cinematically, it's a little harder to keep putting references in without shoehorning them onto you all the time. So the main selling point of Ready Player One, the overload of reference upon reference, is kind of dropped after a while. Instead the movie swings into story-mode and that's when its stock starts dropping. There's a lot of Ready Player One that's severely under developed or not even developed at all. There are a lot of throw away plot points and things that audiences are just expected to go along with. There's a really stupid line from the trailer where Artemis says 'Welcome to the rebellion.' You might have thought 'Rebellion eh? Well it's not in the book so it must be something new.' No, it isn't anything new. There is no rebellion. It's a place where Wade hides for a scene, he escapes and that's that. No setup, no explanation, no closure, no nothing. For a movie that's based on world building they sure seem to ignore some of the key details. IOI for example is a major corporation that seems to run amok with impunity, whether it's blowing up houses or conducting fully armed raids, that is until they're stopped by the police at the end of the movie because there were some IOI cars chasing some other cars. So I guess you’re allowed to do anything in the future so long as you obey traffic laws. Later on it's time to complete the third challenge. The problem is that it's not really explained how it was discovered aside from another throwaway expository line that 'IOI discovered it.' Half the fun was breaking down the clues and finding out how they located these challenges. Why take that away? What makes these little faults worse though is that critics will use them as proof that Ready Player One is all flash without much underneath and the sad truth of it is they're right. In my BFG thread I said that it's a nice movie to look at but there isn't much glue holding it together. The characters are weak, there's no chemistry, everyone just goes along and no one really reacts to what’s happening. Once again it's like someone forgot the first lesson from their Characters 101 class; it's hard to care about something when the audience isn't given anything to care about. At no point are you invested in Wade. You don't have any reason to root for him other than he's the person we’re following. There's no reason to feel like he somehow deserves or has earned the prize that he's seeking. There's no reason Artemis should be attracted to him or want to follow him around. You never feel like IOI is a threat to anybody, even when they are. Instead your investment is in the challenges but your interest in that only goes as far as your first viewing of the movie.
For the casual movie fans who are looking for a quick and fun way to kill two hours, Ready Player One is as good a way as any to do it. For some of us though, I think we were looking to see if Spielberg was able to recapture that magic that seems to have been missing from his movies for quite some time. I think maybe the simplest way to put it is whether or not Ready Player One has any heart to it. That isn't to say that Spielberg movies have been failures. In the past 7 years the man has directed 4 movies to Best Picture nominations. Granted none of them are overly memorable with the exception of perhaps Lincoln but it's not like he's throwing bombs left and right. I think most people would agree though that the spark that would elicit our emotions in his earlier films just isn't there nor has it been for a long, long time. You can give movies as many nominations as you want but 10 years from now people aren't going to be talking about Tintin, War Horse, The BFG or The Post. There's that heart, that thing that makes you care about what's happening, that's gone. It's also one of the reasons people rewatch movies again and again. It's not hard to find someone who has seen E.T. or Close Encounters several times. I would wager you'd have to look for weeks to find someone who's seen War Horse more than once. Unfortunately I think Ready Player One is going to be one-and-done for most people who don't want to sift through the movie looking for each and every reference squeezed into it. It has a lot of flash and action and you won't be bored. At the same time it's not going to be a movie that you'll look back on 20 years from now like the movies this one uses as a crutch.
Changing my score to a B- after a second viewing. It's probably the most entertaining movie Spielberg has directed in a long time but it's not anything that will stay with you after too long.
I still can't get over that leg.
I'm not sure what the general consensus is; are people looking forward to Ready Player One or are people laughing at Ready Player One? For every person I find who's genuinely excited about seeing a movie based on the very popular nostalgia-fest novel, there's someone who hates the pop culture-bait gimmicks and acknowledges that the book, while fun and breezy, isn't exactly the pinnacle of western literature. When it was announced that Steven Spielberg would be directing it made a lot of sense. Arguably the biggest director in film history, he pretty much conquered the 1980s (and 1990s for that matter) with some of the most iconic and memorable movies ever made. Why not have him helm a movie focused on the decade he helped shape? It's a story with action, suspense and offers readers/viewers an opportunity to revisit some old characters they might not have considered in a long time. The real question was how would it translate on screen? You can't just throw a bunch of 80s pop references up there while having characters recite movie lines and play arcade games like they did in the book. It's a story that had to make some very clear changes and making changes to something that people are so passionate about could lead to some problems.
One of the big questions fans of the book will have is just how similar is the movie to the source material? The general plot remains the same; Wade Watts is a poor kid living in the Stacks, trailers stacked on top of each other. Like everyone else in society, he spends his time in the OASIS, a virtual world where you can do just about anything you want. One day a video is released of the creator of the OASIS, James Halliday. The video is Halliday's will where he states that an easter egg has been hidden in the OASIS and the person who finds the clues, completes the challenges and finds the egg will win total control over the entire system and inherit Halliday's fortune of half a trillion dollars. Unfortunately, the dastardly IOI corporation led by Nolan Sorrento will stop at nothing to get the egg first including offing people in the 'real world.' So if you're wondering if there's any deviation from that general storyline, no there isn't. The main theme carries over from the book but that's about where the similarities end. While I'm someone who admires a faithful adaptation as much as the next guy you have to admit that a lot of what happens in the novel really wouldn't translate well on-screen. How could you film a character playing Joust while making it suspenseful? How could you have that same character reciting War Games verbatim? It would be tough which is why it was probably a good idea to change up the challenges, and by change I mean the challenges are completely different from the book with the exception of the final, final one. If that's what you're looking for you might be disappointed but if you agree that some of the stuff would be pretty lame to watch then they will most likely be welcome changes. You've probably seen from the commercial that there's a big race with King Kong and a T-Rex. If that's your thing, more power to you. There are some pretty neat easter eggs for the audience too, a few of which gave me a little chuckle but then again that’s the whole point of the movie. That doesn't mean though that all of them are good because they aren't. Some are bad, really bad. Groan-inducing bad. The Distracted Globe dance club, while a really cool looking set piece, is blown to hell because someone thought it would be a good idea to put a Stayin' Alive dance number into it. Aside from the fact that Stayin' Alive is one of the most overused, overplayed and over-imitated songs of all time, it's just a corny and useless reference that nobody will enjoy and everyone will think is really lame. The final battle, one of the climaxes of the movie, is almost shot in the knee with 'We're Not Gonna Take It' playing over the fighting, not to mention starting with Parzival holding up a boom box to signal the troops. Because Say Anything, get it? Oh crap, now I'm starting to do it too.
From what I gather through my observations, one of the main selling points for Ready Player One has also resulted in some hefty backlash. The over-reliance on all things 80s and nostalgia and 'remember this thing?' made the book an entertaining ride but it wasn't anything particularly deep and people didn't give it a pass just because it mentioned some stuff from their past, they started to criticize it because it felt shallow. The exact same can be said of the film in that there are many instances of characters literally saying 'Remember (some 80s reference)?' or 'It's (another 80s reference)!' What's funny is that there's enough but there probably isn't as much as you'd expect. Ernest Cline could pepper it throughout a novel over a few hundred pages thanks to narration and the character's POV. Cinematically, it's a little harder to keep putting references in without shoehorning them onto you all the time. So the main selling point of Ready Player One, the overload of reference upon reference, is kind of dropped after a while. Instead the movie swings into story-mode and that's when its stock starts dropping. There's a lot of Ready Player One that's severely under developed or not even developed at all. There are a lot of throw away plot points and things that audiences are just expected to go along with. There's a really stupid line from the trailer where Artemis says 'Welcome to the rebellion.' You might have thought 'Rebellion eh? Well it's not in the book so it must be something new.' No, it isn't anything new. There is no rebellion. It's a place where Wade hides for a scene, he escapes and that's that. No setup, no explanation, no closure, no nothing. For a movie that's based on world building they sure seem to ignore some of the key details. IOI for example is a major corporation that seems to run amok with impunity, whether it's blowing up houses or conducting fully armed raids, that is until they're stopped by the police at the end of the movie because there were some IOI cars chasing some other cars. So I guess you’re allowed to do anything in the future so long as you obey traffic laws. Later on it's time to complete the third challenge. The problem is that it's not really explained how it was discovered aside from another throwaway expository line that 'IOI discovered it.' Half the fun was breaking down the clues and finding out how they located these challenges. Why take that away? What makes these little faults worse though is that critics will use them as proof that Ready Player One is all flash without much underneath and the sad truth of it is they're right. In my BFG thread I said that it's a nice movie to look at but there isn't much glue holding it together. The characters are weak, there's no chemistry, everyone just goes along and no one really reacts to what’s happening. Once again it's like someone forgot the first lesson from their Characters 101 class; it's hard to care about something when the audience isn't given anything to care about. At no point are you invested in Wade. You don't have any reason to root for him other than he's the person we’re following. There's no reason to feel like he somehow deserves or has earned the prize that he's seeking. There's no reason Artemis should be attracted to him or want to follow him around. You never feel like IOI is a threat to anybody, even when they are. Instead your investment is in the challenges but your interest in that only goes as far as your first viewing of the movie.
For the casual movie fans who are looking for a quick and fun way to kill two hours, Ready Player One is as good a way as any to do it. For some of us though, I think we were looking to see if Spielberg was able to recapture that magic that seems to have been missing from his movies for quite some time. I think maybe the simplest way to put it is whether or not Ready Player One has any heart to it. That isn't to say that Spielberg movies have been failures. In the past 7 years the man has directed 4 movies to Best Picture nominations. Granted none of them are overly memorable with the exception of perhaps Lincoln but it's not like he's throwing bombs left and right. I think most people would agree though that the spark that would elicit our emotions in his earlier films just isn't there nor has it been for a long, long time. You can give movies as many nominations as you want but 10 years from now people aren't going to be talking about Tintin, War Horse, The BFG or The Post. There's that heart, that thing that makes you care about what's happening, that's gone. It's also one of the reasons people rewatch movies again and again. It's not hard to find someone who has seen E.T. or Close Encounters several times. I would wager you'd have to look for weeks to find someone who's seen War Horse more than once. Unfortunately I think Ready Player One is going to be one-and-done for most people who don't want to sift through the movie looking for each and every reference squeezed into it. It has a lot of flash and action and you won't be bored. At the same time it's not going to be a movie that you'll look back on 20 years from now like the movies this one uses as a crutch.
Changing my score to a B- after a second viewing. It's probably the most entertaining movie Spielberg has directed in a long time but it's not anything that will stay with you after too long.
