Ready Player One

[mattycsi]

Not to mention, in the book, it's stalkerish in the same way as Say Anything, which a few people had an issue with.


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I liked that he actually tried the boombox move outside her Oasis stronghold in the book!

 

[CB2001]

I liked that he actually tried the boombox move outside her Oasis stronghold in the book!

Fun fact: Ernest Cline has stated he modeled their relationship after Lloyd and Diane from Say Anything, so trying the boom box thing pretty much fits. XD


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[Victor3]

Yeah, it just...didn't feel "right" in the film. If it's meant to play awkwardly, and that Arty doesn't like it and isn't actually into him, and it's just a thing Spielberg tacked on, that would make a TON of sense.

To my way of thinking, either have them go on a first date in the real world, or have her reject him, but he finds meaning in his own life and isn't so fixated on a person who isn't real.

IIRC, that’s pretty much what happened in the book. They didn’t even meet IRL until the end of the book, and both were ready to give it a try.

While that part of the movie was cliche, I felt like the narrative structure of the movie was also an homage to 80’s films. And makin’ out with the girl at the end is a requirement of all light teen/action movies from the 80’s.

 

[Nismo]

I enjoyed it - wasn't expecting a big think piece.

When I was a kid my GI-JOES played right along with my star wars figures and Ninja Turtles ...so really that's what I enjoyed seeing a blend of stuff I like all together.

 

[GirlyGothicGeek]

3. I watched Sword Art Online before I saw this, so I felt more like "Meh. Seen it already." Can anyone say which came out first in terms of source material?

I know that the Sword Art Online light novels started being published in 2009, while Ready Player One was published in 2011. They didn't really feel the same to me. I think my subconscious might compare both to Tron though, so I get the connecting similarities.

 

[matty matt]

Finally caught this on HBO the other night. I had lowered my expectations and I'm glad I did. It was...ok. I won't get into detail because it's pretty much been covered, but the whole thing felt very generic and watered down to me. Oh well.

 

[Richard Baker]

Saw it last night on HBO as well.
It reminds me a bit of TS Elliot's 'The Wasteland' & South Park's 'Imaginationland'- not due to content but as something that seems specifically created to give people something to study. Every single frame in that virtual world is packed with hundreds (if not thousands) of pop culture references, icons and easter eggs. The story is OK but the film seems to be designs for repeated viewings jsut so you can catch all the stuff that is packed in there.
I like it, but I feel I have been handed a big college work assignment

 

[Solo4114]

Saw it last night on HBO as well.
It reminds me a bit of TS Elliot's 'The Wasteland' & South Park's 'Imaginationland'- not due to content but as something that seems specifically created to give people something to study. Every single frame in that virtual world is packed with hundreds (if not thousands) of pop culture references, icons and easter eggs. The story is OK but the film seems to be designs for repeated viewings jsut so you can catch all the stuff that is packed in there.
I like it, but I feel I have been handed a big college work assignment

Yeah, in that sense, it kind of feels like Avatar, where the meta-story aspects take over in importance from the story itself. The story itself (as with Avatar) is really nothing all that special. You've seen it before, you know how it'll play out, and it's not all that exciting to watch but, you know, it's fun.

But what makes it fun? Is it the story itself, or is it something that isn't really the story?

In Avatar, the meta-story thing that hooked people, that had them raving, was the 3D technology, which was (at the time) fairly impressive. But then, so was the CGI in that Final Fantasy movie that came out in the early 2000s, and now it looks...well, like a crappy videogame (and honestly, I wasn't that impressed with it when it first came out). And as technology ages, it loses its ability to mask an otherwise "meh" story in the "wow" of the tech itself.

In Ready Player One, the "meta-story" thing was the interaction between the audience and the film with respect to the pop culture references. The story ends up becoming a vehicle by which the audience can play a kind of 70s/80s "Photo Hunt" for pop culture references, or so that the film can say "Hey, remember this? Isn't it cool? Yeah, we think so too."

I loved the scene where the Gundam shows up to fight mecha-godzilla. That was really cool. But that basically was the movie in a nutshell: a cool sequence featuring cool pop-culture references which didn't have a huge narrative impact. It's cool for the sake of cool, rather than cool for the sake of furthering the story.

There's...nothing really wrong with that, it just doesn't interest me a ton. I had fun playing 80s photo hunt. I thought the story was decently entertaining. But beyond that...meh.

 

[The Brahma Bull]

Watched it with my wife last week. Saw the trailer in the theatre and wasn't really on it. But I really liked it. Good movie for a relaxed evening. Plot was way better than expected and I loved the details.