Ready Player One (2018)

[Sgt Brutus]

W

U

 

[chf]

Heh.

S

 

[Sgt Brutus]

S

 

[ill]

saw it yesterday. I was unimpressed. I knew I was going to have a problem essentially watching a video game cut scene for 2+ hours, but the movie just didn't do anything for me.

Also, the chick they got to play Aech was terrible.

I may have to reread the book to remember how much I liked it because the movie left me feeling unfulfilled.

 

[Clayton]

I feel like this is this generations Hackers. Cheesy, awkward, cliche, out of touch and instantly dated. Hackers had a better soundtrack and a more interesting cast.

The amount of nostalgia is just sad commentary and the movie is a collection of impossible, dumb events that would never happen and are designed to give purpose to a video game that would just end up being a PVP dead zone like the Division.

Maybe I need to read the source material because the movie stunk.

D+

 

[Roy Munson]

I feel like this is this generations Hackers. Cheesy, awkward, cliche, out of touch and instantly dated. Hackers had a better soundtrack and a more interesting cast.

The amount of nostalgia is just sad commentary and the movie is a collection of impossible, dumb events that would never happen and are designed to give purpose to a video game that would just end up being a PVP dead zone like the Division.

Maybe I need to read the source material because the movie stunk.

D+

I wouldn't exactly call the source material anything different than what you described in the movie... the movie is just a different version of the same thing.

One thing that felt better in the book was the closeness of the online relationships that seemed all but cartoon in the movie.

 

[Clayton]

One thing that felt better in the book was the closeness of the online relationships that seemed all but cartoon in the movie.

I think that would've helped the movie a lot.

Spoiler: Character spoilers

Literally after the initial description of the main characters black friend and the reliance on terms like 'bro' I told my wife 'thats going to be a woman' which is a sad kind of predictable. My biggest complaint with the characters and the weakest part of the movie the sequence where the main character says his real name in the Oasis, the bad guys find him, they kill the main characters Aunt and BF and then the main character meets his love interest and shes pretty normal all in the span of a couple of minutes. The movie seriously didn't even build up the characters that died as meaningful and didn't even really care when they did. Once the romantic lead came in, it seemed like almost every other relationship in the movie became meaningless.

I think part of the problem with me watching the movie was that I was watching the Futurama episode 'Attack of the Killer App' right before I saw this and thats a ten year old TV show that was able to give me everything that Ready Player One couldn't deliver in 2 1/2 hours.

Ready Player One seemed like it was a movie for thirtysomethings that also tried to put just enough in for kids to care. Maybe it was more successful as a movie for kids because I think it failed for me.

The evil company would already know who you are. There is no privacy online. That plot point makes no sense.

The gamers not 'clanning up' doesn't make sense. Solo players get demolished online in team-based PVE and PVP. If you lost all of your stuff when you died then EVERYONE would clan up. And I'm not sure anyone would play your game after awhile.

The world with the Oasis was already awful. Who cares if someone came in and made the Oasis worse?

Can't kids have their own movies without our nostalgia lording over them?

I think the only thing I like about this was the cheesiness of the third act reminding me of a lot of older movies. Thats about the best thing I can say about the movie.

 

[Roy Munson]

I think that would've helped the movie a lot.

Spoiler: Character spoilers

Literally after the initial description of the main characters black friend and the reliance on terms like 'bro' I told my wife 'thats going to be a woman' which is a sad kind of predictable. My biggest complaint with the characters and the weakest part of the movie the sequence where the main character says his real name in the Oasis, the bad guys find him, they kill the main characters Aunt and BF and then the main character meets his love interest and shes pretty normal all in the span of a couple of minutes. The movie seriously didn't even build up the characters that died as meaningful and didn't even really care when they did. Once the romantic lead came in, it seemed like almost every other relationship in the movie became meaningless.

I think part of the problem with me watching the movie was that I was watching the Futurama episode 'Attack of the Killer App' right before I saw this and thats a ten year old TV show that was able to give me everything that Ready Player One couldn't deliver in 2 1/2 hours.

Ready Player One seemed like it was a movie for thirtysomethings that also tried to put just enough in for kids to care. Maybe it was more successful as a movie for kids because I think it failed for me.

The evil company would already know who you are. There is no privacy online. That plot point makes no sense.

The gamers not 'clanning up' doesn't make sense. Solo players get demolished online in team-based PVE and PVP. If you lost all of your stuff when you died then EVERYONE would clan up. And I'm not sure anyone would play your game after awhile.

The world with the Oasis was already awful. Who cares if someone came in and made the Oasis worse?

Can't kids have their own movies without our nostalgia lording over them?

I think the only thing I like about this was the cheesiness of the third act reminding me of a lot of older movies. Thats about the best thing I can say about the movie.

I hate it when people say this, but the book covers many of these points way better than the movie.

 

[night]

I liked it. For what it is, which is a movie aimed at a younger demographic it was worth at least one watch.

I didn't read the book or come in with high expectations which probably helps as far as not being too over-critical about it.

 

[theboardref]

They gutted the book. Film ripped the heart and soul out of the story. Felt like a cheap knock off initation instead of a genuine attempt. Relationships all had a phony feel to them. I think I fast-forwarded through a solid 25 minutes just to be able to say I finished it. So glad I waited till it was on HBO.

 

[theboardref]

Looks like they are ruining the book to be honest. Everything I have seen makes it look like they threw out the book and started from scratch. Not really happy with what I am seeing, even little details like him living in Columbus is a minor detail casually thrown to the side. I can just tell they are foing to be extremely unfaithful to the source material. Upsetting to say the least.

Because they are completely abandoning the source material.

Both statements were spot on.

 

[The Q]

They gutted the book. Film ripped the heart and soul out of the story. Felt like a cheap knock off initation instead of a genuine attempt. Relationships all had a phony feel to them. I think I fast-forwarded through a solid 25 minutes just to be able to say I finished it. So glad I waited till it was on HBO.

To be fair, there’s a lot of the book that would not fit in with a movie.

You can’t play joust or Pac-Man 500 times in a movie, nor act out full movies.

I was mostly disappointed in the night club scene

 

[theboardref]

To be fair, there’s a lot of the book that would not fit in with a movie.

You can’t play joust or Pac-Man 500 times in a movie, nor act out full movies.

I was mostly disappointed in the night club scene

You are right about the playing of the games but even that set aside, this movie is just a bad film. This is a prime example of how just because a book is great doesn’t mean the movie will be any good.

The whole race thing was so stupid. Your telling me only 5 people noticed someone going in reverse?

Also the clues etc, they are straight spoon fed to the audience. That is the only was to do it in a 2 hour film so I cut it slack there.

What I do not give it a break in is him meeting Artie way to early and the whole rebellion nonsense that did’t leave me feeling anything.

 

[Omar 382]

I feel like this is this generations Hackers. Cheesy, awkward, cliche, out of touch and instantly dated. Hackers had a better soundtrack and a more interesting cast.

The amount of nostalgia is just sad commentary and the movie is a collection of impossible, dumb events that would never happen and are designed to give purpose to a video game that would just end up being a PVP dead zone like the Division.

Maybe I need to read the source material because the movie stunk.

D+

I think that would've helped the movie a lot.

Spoiler: Character spoilers

Literally after the initial description of the main characters black friend and the reliance on terms like 'bro' I told my wife 'thats going to be a woman' which is a sad kind of predictable. My biggest complaint with the characters and the weakest part of the movie the sequence where the main character says his real name in the Oasis, the bad guys find him, they kill the main characters Aunt and BF and then the main character meets his love interest and shes pretty normal all in the span of a couple of minutes. The movie seriously didn't even build up the characters that died as meaningful and didn't even really care when they did. Once the romantic lead came in, it seemed like almost every other relationship in the movie became meaningless.

I think part of the problem with me watching the movie was that I was watching the Futurama episode 'Attack of the Killer App' right before I saw this and thats a ten year old TV show that was able to give me everything that Ready Player One couldn't deliver in 2 1/2 hours.

Ready Player One seemed like it was a movie for thirtysomethings that also tried to put just enough in for kids to care. Maybe it was more successful as a movie for kids because I think it failed for me.

The evil company would already know who you are. There is no privacy online. That plot point makes no sense.

The gamers not 'clanning up' doesn't make sense. Solo players get demolished online in team-based PVE and PVP. If you lost all of your stuff when you died then EVERYONE would clan up. And I'm not sure anyone would play your game after awhile.

The world with the Oasis was already awful. Who cares if someone came in and made the Oasis worse?

Can't kids have their own movies without our nostalgia lording over them?

I think the only thing I like about this was the cheesiness of the third act reminding me of a lot of older movies. Thats about the best thing I can say about the movie.

I could not agree more. Glad to see me and you are on the same page on this one.

Ready Player One: 0.5/5 stars. And just like that, Steven Spielberg becomes (unsurprisingly) the first director of all time to have two movies I've given 0.5/5 stars (the other being Close Encounters of the Third Kind).

Goddamn this movie is terrible, and outside of Minority Report (4/5 stars) and Jaws (3.5/5 stars), Spielberg is a complete no-talent hack. His movies are so artificial and so emotionally hollow and manipulative. He is easily my least favorite director (or at least prominent director) of all time.

I was never going to watch the movie given the director until my father watched it (and gave it 3.5/5 stars). It actually had a halfway decent premise, but the script and direction was (predictably) awful and ruined anything it had going for it.

Ben Mendelsohn's portrayal of Danny Rayburn in Netflix's Bloodline is in my top 10 favorite characters in a TV series, but his performance in this movie was so bad. It's not all his fault obviously; his character was completely unnecessary. You have a decent story about a virtual world- why do you need to add an evil capitalist CEO and make the movie about some sort of stupid revolution? The movie would have been way better had the protagonists been other characters.

The two biggest things that annoyed me about this movie were Lena Waithe (the black truck driver Aech) and the godawful 80s soundtrack. This soundtrack sounds like it was curated by someone whose never listened to nor lived through the 1980s and its music, and then Googled "1980s top songs" and made the playlist off the search. Both things were Spielberg pandering to the worst level imaginable.

 

[Omar 382]

There is more risk in the book. That's all I'll say. It can be more gruesome than even the stacks scene.

I tend to read non-fiction myself, but I read that reading fiction before bed can be good for you so I've been trying it out.

The stacks scene was gruesome?

 

[SDGuy73]

I liked it.