Ready Player One

[Hashi Lebwohl]

If you want your overdose of 80s indulgence then go see Ready Player One. Good luck spotting all the references--you won't be able to find them all and watch the movie at the same time.

Criticisms of RPO are mostly "it doesn't follow the book". You don't say? No movie ever follows the book exactly, otherwise most movies would be 4.5 hours long and bore the audience to death. Besides, the book is a Young Adult novel--not the best literature available...but Liebeschoen really wants to read it now.

Anyway, the acting is decent but this is not a movie where you are going to be inspired by the actors. No, the star of this movie is the OASIS itself, the world in which the story (most of it, anyway) takes place. It is sort of like The Grid from Tron except you aren't physically transported there and it is sort of like The Matrix except it isn't wired into your central nervous system and it won't kill you here if you die there--the OASIS avoids both of those problems, allowing you to drop out by removing your VR equipment (unless you zero out, in which case all you lose is your in-game loot). The true beauty of the OASIS, though, is all those wonderful 80s references--nostalgia overload. This is a world which definitely needs a lot more exploration.

Later on we can discuss the deeper ramifications of the OASIS and how it could easily become more real than the real world, which could cause significant problems in your personal life. Some people already have this problem--being online virtually every waking moment. The darker sides of the OASIS aren't really explored--the character of I-R0k should be menacing but he (she?) just comes off as weak and almost isn't even needed in the plot. The main villain, on the other hand, doesn't seem very villainous in either world even though he is regularly violating people's human rights.

If you want a highly enjoyable movie then go see Ready Player One.

[wayfriend]

The whole movie was basically Goonies + Snow Crash. But that's a good thing.

I thought that Mark Rylance's eighties-nerd character was acted brilliantly. It made the movie.

[Avatar]

Hmm, maybe will watch it.

--A

[wayfriend]

(Yeah. The more I think about it, the more Goonies connections I see.

Spoiler

Group of kids find the treasure no one believes can be found to save the town from the mean corporation who wants to change it. Leader is a boy who solves the puzzles because he learned so much about the Pirate's life. One of his friends is an ogre. One of his friends is clever with gadgets. He makes an impassioned speech about not giving up. And he gets to kiss a girl.

Any others?

[peter]

Hard to believe WF - but I've never seen The Goonies........ but I have now seen RPO and enjoyed it very much (albeit in a guilty sort of throwback to the eighties way). Need to look into the Parsifal character of the Arthurian romances to get more of a handle on the lead character's naming (don't think the casual reason given in the film probably gets to the bottom of it at all) and would also be interested to know to what extent the snippets of computer gaming history are accurate. I wonder if in some ways this is not as much a warning of where gaming could actually go and the risks of 'real life' and gaming becoming confused as the experience becomes ever increasingly immersive.

Spoiler

A bigger point I believe, than the film's cursory references at the end to the need to 'spend time away' in the real world.

Last week in the UK, a seventeen year old coloured girl was killed in a 'drive by' shooting incident that bore all of the hall-marks of a GTA San Andreas questline (a similarity not noted in the reporting - but I somehow doubt many of the commentator's were familiar with that end of the cultural spectrum.......but I digress), and I wonder if the book does perhaps not delve a little deeper into these questions.

I am definitely going to have to see the time again in order to spot some more of the referencing - and I'm looking very much forward to doing so. It's not Spielberg's finest cinematic offering, but he makes a damn good fist of 'doing his thing' in a field where it is very hard to show us anything truly groundbreaking.

[Avatar]

Wait, you've never seen Goonies?

Hahaha, after your time I guess.

--A

[peter]

Ouch Av!! Truth hurts - always!

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Perceval from the Camelot Project.

Perceval is notable not so much for finding the Grail--in many stories that person is actually Galahad--but that the Grail is given to him for safe keeping.

[wayfriend]

[Skyweir]