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Ready Player One (2018) (1 Viewer)

Johnny Angell

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Something else that struck me. The main character shows more emotion when the bad guy tries to evoke digital emotion from him than he does when his relatives and many of the people in his community are murdered. The emotions of this movie just didn't ring true; even for a lighthearted adventure it largely played false to me.
I actually admired him when he tried to save his aunt and the others. He had no love for his aunt and her boyfriend was a jerk. He still tried to save them and others in the stacks.
 

Carabimero

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I actually admired him when he tried to save his aunt and the others. He had no love for his aunt and her boyfriend was a jerk. He still tried to save them and others in the stacks.
This a plot point. I liked it too. But it has little to do with the lack of interpersonal authenticity in this movie. I'm talking about the lack of reaction to the unfortunate outcome of this plot point. And that's just the easy example of how this movie rings hollow.

I don't believe the younger Spielberg would have let this script stand with these kinds of deficiencies in it. Writing has never been his strong suit, but sniffing out flaws used to be.

No doubt this movie will make a ton of money. I just wish the screenplay was better. The fix would have been relatively easy.
 
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Blimpoy06

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I don't believe the younger Spielberg would have let this script stand with these kinds of deficiencies in it. Writing has never been his strong suit, but sniffing out flaws used to be.
I always felt Spielberg's strong suit was retaining Michael Kahn as his editor. That's his secret weapon. The man is a genius.
 

Carabimero

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The screenplay for RPO should have everything going for it. Structurally it evolves from slavery to freedom. That's fantastic. People are enslaved by the system at the beginning and the stakes are nothing less than the highest stakes any story can possibly offer--visionary stakes, that is, a chance to set up a new and better system of living. Wow. You just don't see that a lot. What a great opportunity. It's incredibly exciting. Granted, this movie is intended to be a thrill ride and a fun peek back at 80s nostalgia. And I think it largely succeeds at that. But when you set up visionary stakes, promising a new system of living, and what you get in the end is that we're now simply turning off the system on Tuesdays and Thursdays, well, yes, that might get a laugh from the audience, but it's laughable in a much deeper (and sadder way). The movie's message about the value of the real world could never be more crucial or timely, but IMHO it is not dramatized in a thought-provoking or inspiring way. It's given superficial treatment, at best. And that's one of many reasons why, for me, this movie was such a missed opportunity.
 
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MielR

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No doubt this movie will make a ton of money. I just wish the screenplay was better. The fix would have been relatively easy.

You could cut-and-paste that into the reviews for a lot of recent blockbusters, unfortunately.

It will be interesting to see how this film does in the next few weeks, and the demographics of the people seeing it (GenXers taking their kids, mostly?) I was a teen in the 80's, so this is apparently targeting my generation with all the nostalgic pop-culture references, but it doesn't particularly look like a film that many people of my generation would want to see. I'll see it on video, most likely.
 

Johnny Angell

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This a plot point. I liked it too. But it has little to do with the lack of interpersonal authenticity in this movie. I'm talking about the lack of reaction to the unfortunate outcome of this plot point. And that's just the easy example of how this movie rings hollow.

I don't believe the younger Spielberg would have let this script stand with these kinds of deficiencies in it. Writing has never been his strong suit, but sniffing out flaws used to be.

No doubt this movie will make a ton of money. I just wish the screenplay was better. The fix would have been relatively easy.
My reaction to the movie is 180 degrees opposite yours. We’ll have to agree to disagree on this.
 

Carabimero

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My reaction to the movie is 180 degrees opposite yours. We’ll have to agree to disagree on this.
I haven't disagreed with you on anything. The whole point of our original exchange was that you were disagreeing with me about something I never said and, in fact, about something we both agree on.

If you think it's a great movie, we can certainly disagree on that. It's a fun movie, but as to great, I don't think it's even close. I reserve the word "great" for very few movies.
 
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Jake Lipson

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It will be interesting to see how this film does in the next few weeks, and the demographics of the people seeing it (GenXers taking their kids, mostly?) I was a teen in the 80's, so this is apparently targeting my generation with all the nostalgic pop-culture references, but it doesn't particularly look like a film that many people of my generation would want to see. I'll see it on video, most likely.

I didn't love the movie -- I thought it was entertaining while it was on, but very empty in terms of emotional impact -- but I would say that the visual aspects of it are its strongest area. This film looks amazing, and (unless perhaps you have a high-end home theater system and a giant TV), I think it will inevitably lose some of its visual impact on video. The Blu-ray will probably look terrific, but I thought the big screen experience really added to this one.

As to demographics, I was born in the late '80s but my childhood was mostly in the '90s. I'm sure that some of the pop culture references sailed past me. I'm also not really a video gamer. But I went mostly because it was a Spielberg film. Since picking up the habit with Catch Me If You Can, I haven't missed any of his new films in theaters.
 

Tino

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Well I certainly loved the film. And I did think it was great!:P

Loved the book too. I thought the film captured the essence of the book wonderfully and also stands on its own as terrific entertainment.

I was entertained from beginning to end. Not one slow spot for me. It was technically amazing. I saw in in IMAX 3D and the presentation was tremendous as usual. Big screen 3D is the way to experience this film. Seeing it at home on any format will not do this awesome film any justice.

Loved all the references and not as 80’s centric as I thought. And that was absolutely the ‘33 Kong. I loved how the film flowed. It was a blast.

Imo It’s one of Spielberg’s Best and most entertaining films he has ever made.
 

Carabimero

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“Steven Spielberg’s 'Ready Player One' is not a video-game-centered dystopian teen adventure but a horror film, a movie of spiritual zombies whose souls have been consumed by the makers of generations of official cultural product and regurgitated in the form of pop nostalgia. The movie, framed as a story of resistance to corporate tyranny, is actually a tale of tyranny perpetuated by a cheerfully totalitarian predator who indoctrinates his victims by amusing them to death—and the movie’s stifled horror is doubled by Spielberg’s obliviousness to it.”

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/r...lgia-in-ready-player-one?mbid=social_facebook

My comment: Wade says at the beginning that it all started because people "gave up," so to me, that is what the conflict of the entire movie was going to be about, inspiring people not to give up. And while Wade did that during the movie, the long-term resolution didn't touch on that hardly at all (if it did, only in a superficial way). That's a big reason why the screenplay failed for me.
 
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Josh Steinberg

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I feel that by skipping the dystopia part of the novel, the movie can make it seem that everyone is just addicted to virtual reality and choose to ignore their real life surroundings. For better or worse (and I think better), the book makes it clear that our society has broken down substantially by this time. There are no more natural resources remaining. There's very little in terms of food, clean water, clean air. The infrastructure for physically traveling from one place to another is shot. Government has basically collapsed. People visit the Oasis because that's the only way most people are able to interact. For instance, in the book it's more clear that some of the people Wade knows in the Oasis, he met at a virtual "school" because there are no longer the resources to send people to an actual physical building to be educated.

And in the book, none of this is glossed over, none of this is swept aside. It's actually the motivation for everything that happens.

For instance, Wade's obsession with the pop culture loves of Halladay makes more sense in the context of, this is a dead society that no longer producers original work, so the only culture they have access to is things that have happened before. And Wade isn't just in love with the pop culture stuff Halladay liked, he's also in love with the idea that Halladay lived at a time when people created things, which they no longer do.

I think the movie's script misses how distressing living in this time is supposed to be.
 

Carabimero

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I haven't read the book. But I agree with the headlines of this article that Spielberg was unaware of the depth of his material, or simply didn't care. My own belief is that he *has* to make a certain number of movies like this to get financing for the important movies he cares about. When he says things like, "They tell me I am doing another Indiana Jones" well, that pretty much says it all.
 

Hollywoodaholic

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Man, from these descriptions of the book, Spielberg really missed the boat (or ignored it) sanitizing this one for the masses. I saw the film as just a fairly enjoyable ride that you forgot seconds after it was over.
 

Josh Steinberg

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My own belief is that he *has* to make a certain number of movies like this to get financing for the important movies he cares about.

I don't know if I buy that for this particular film, just because of who is involved with making it. This is a Warner picture, a place where Spielberg doesn't usually work. His last picture to Warner prior to Ready Player One was Empire Of The Sun in 1987, and he doesn't have any future projects scheduled there either. I think Warner had the property, so if he wanted to make this film (and it appears that he did), it had to be done there. But since he hasn't done anything else there for thirty years, and doesn't have anything else on tap there, I don't think it's studio pressure that led him to directing this film.

Now, if this had been a Disney film or a Fox film, that might be a more valid argument since they've been distributing the bulk of his films in recent years.

But I agree with the headlines of this article that Spielberg was unaware of the depth of his material, or simply didn't care.

Spielberg really missed the boat (or ignored it) sanitizing this one for the masses.

I'm not sure Spielberg is entirely to blame. I think he joined this project after Zak Penn had been hired to rewrite Ernest Cline's original draft of the script. I do not think that Penn is a strong writer. He's responsible for scripting X-Men: The Last Stand, which is widely considered to be the worst of all of the X-Men films. He's responsible for scripting The Incredible Hulk, which is widely considered to be the worst of all of the Marvel Studios-MCU films. In fact, The Incredible Hulk (released in 2008) was Penn's most recent "screenplay by" credit prior to Ready Player One. What does that say that the guy hasn't had a screenplay credit in a decade? Probably nothing good. Penn's script for Ready Player One is functional, and retains the basic structure of the novel. It also does tone down the pop culture references, which was probably a necessary change. (The novel has long passages where Wade, as the first person narrator, simply recites lists of the best vintage video games and other such lists of 80s pop culture touchstones. In a book, you can get away with that, but in a film, that grinds the narrative to a halt.) So I think Penn did accomplish something in making a novel that didn't read to me as obviously cinematic into something that worked onscreen without tons of exposition. That is an achievement. But he threw away a lot of the novel's subtext in the process. One wonders how much of this was done with Ernest Cline's blessing (since Cline is credited as a co-screenwriter) and how much of this was done over Cline's concern.
 

Tino

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Man, from these descriptions of the book, Spielberg really missed the boat (or ignored it) sanitizing this one for the masses. I saw the film as just a fairly enjoyable ride that you forgot seconds after it was over.
So did you read the book? Or are you referring to others who have?
 

Tino

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Seeing this again tomorrow with the wife in IMAX 3D. Can’t wait. The more I think about it the more I love it. As great as the book was in different ways.

Spielberg’s most entertaining film for me in years. Probably since Raiders.
 

Colin Jacobson

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Seeing this again tomorrow with the wife in IMAX 3D. Can’t wait. The more I think about it the more I love it. As great as the book was in different ways.

Spielberg’s most entertaining film for me in years. Probably since Raiders.

:eek::eek::eek:

I thought "RPO" was enjoyable enough but his most entertaining since 1981? No - not even close!

Yes, I know you said "for you" - I still find it stunning that you or anyone else would prefer "RPO" to "ET" or "Last Crusade" or "Jurassic Park" or "War of the Worlds"!
 

Tino

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:eek::eek::eek:

I thought "RPO" was enjoyable enough but his most entertaining since 1981? No - not even close!

Yes, I know you said "for you" - I still find it stunning that you or anyone else would prefer "RPO" to "ET" or "Last Crusade" or "Jurassic Park" or "War of the Worlds"!
Maybe not ET but certainly more “entertaining” than the other films you mentioned.

And Last Crusade is one of his worst I thought. Ugh.
 

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