I think the movie’s concept is why these references were purely that. Since everything is under the premise of a video game, it’s hard to maintain character purity within the references as they are really just people with unlockable content in the plot of the movie. & In Kong’s case, he’s just serving as an obstacle in the game. If you can overlook all these references & not desire character preservation & simply appreciate it for how plot uses them, I still think it’s a good movie.
I was looking for something similar too. Sure it doesn't give each icon the depth or preservations of their originals, but it does accurately reflect modern gaming culture, and painfully so. Just look at how Fortnite is milking other creative content to the point where kids go "look, it's the thing from Fortnite", making anyone that gets the actual reference facepalm as a result. This way of unlocking and using nostalgic content according to your own desire IS for many gamers a motivation they'll happily enter their credit card details for. So as previous comments mentioned, I don't see the movie trying to preserve characters, and I think that fits with the plot, and thus it's critique is somewhat missing the point I think.
It disappeared because it was more of a style over substance movie. In terms of visual effects and imagery, it’s freaking amazing. In terms of story and characters, it’s very generic and derivative and meh, at least in my personal opinion.
@@edwardmartinezrodriguez8627 I’m not going to say the book is some masterpiece of our time but it was a good young adult sci-fi novel for a kid with a mom who showed him everything about the 80’s
I like it and it has been a gateway to introduce my son to all the references. He already loved back to the future so the trailer with delorean started his interest. Now he seeks out movies like King Kong and the Kong/godzilla/mecha godzilla movie. My kids also now associate some cool 80's music with the movie.
I think that you approached the movie in a more sentimental and dramatic way than you should have. I am the biggest fan of Iron Giant, The Shining etc and the depth and meaning of these stories and characters. But Ready Player One was something else, and its intention was not to honor these stories but just to make the audience have fun, seeing references to their favorite movies in a new Spielberg story. I personally just had fun watching DeLorean in a race, Iron Giant using that laser from his eyes in a war against an evil corporation or King Kong as an obstacle. It is meant to be just fun and it is fun. And The Shining sequence... Honestly I loved that experience of reliving that atmosphere but in a different story. It is nostalgia, it is familiarity, it is all the fun we had and it is used in another good story by Spielberg. Trying to go deeper is not relevant imo. I can see the Iron Giant as what he really is in his own movie. In this one he is frying bad guys in a virtual battlefield! Hell yeah! I think it is a good story with a good conclusion, fun all the way through and just because it is not as great as Spielberg's other films that doesnt make it bad or not memorable. It has its weak points just as any "not a classic" movie has. But I would recommend this to any of my friends for a good time and that amazing The Shining sequence!
refusing to think about the meaning of things, bravo 👏👏🤦 but no, you are wrong, and art works are there to think about. Ready Player One is not a mere entertainment, it's in fact a movie about entertainment. It's meaningful when its meaning surpass the entertainment, when it's something more than people's opium. And for one moment that a blockbuster tries to not be opium of the people, people chose to be drugged and dumb? some people have what they deserve
The thing about the misused older characters such as the Iron Giant and ing Kong is: That is completely accurate and correct about how those entities would be treated in a place like the Oasis. That is precisely how multimedia corporations operate, especially in gaming. Basically on the level of having Pyramid Head in a kart racer. So this works for the setting. Because of the setting, this should be the only movie able to get away with this stuff.
True. And the Iron Giant in RPO isn't the character. It's a creation of a player who may or may not understand the character, or care about how he's using it. It's like any of the examples of modding Thomas the Tank Engine into a game and having him either attack as an enemy, or tear shit up as the player character. If there if any issue to take here it is with the player choosing to fight a battle using the Iron GIant.
Yeah, the reason this movie failed was because it was a little TOO much happening at once. The people crying out about how they ruined the Iron Giant, or, the Gundam v Mechagodzilla scene, are extremely small percentage that went to go see the movie. The general audience liked the movie, but, it doesn't do anything crazy that cause repeat ticket sales. It was also a March movie release, and, like Jan and Feb, movies historically don't do well this early in the year. The movie had a big budget, popcorn flick, summer movie vibe, but I just don't think many people went out of their way to see it.
This is my love/hate relationship with the advent of advanced CGI. It's so beautiful to look at and I'm sure the animators work really hard to create that amount of detail and smooth movement. But when not woven into well written stories, they feel like tasty, albeit unhealthy meals.
I would actually argue this is why video games have exploded as a medium. You get the high-fidelity effects, but there's still so many good options in the way of good storytelling and worldbuilding. The trade off is, video games and their hardware are more expensive.
yeah screw the SFX personel. their hard work conditions and wages is the absolute comeuppance they deserve for contribuiting on ruining quality cinema narrative
@@khaimk4r4su I'm pretty sure the CG is the only thing of any value in this movie. Even Spielberg couldn't farm any substance out of that excuse for a 'novel'..
The book was amazing! Well written, exciting, and thought-provoking. The movie was a sheer disappointment, when compared to the storyline of the book. Yes the visuals were an eye-catching spectacle, but the storyline was watered right down.
This is EXACTLY how an MMO would use these properties, visuals for players to act like they have that "skin" or "powers" of the franchises...so maybe the point was done too well in the context of the Oasis itself (and expanded upon in the book)..maybe it doesnt work in the movie sense, but it is CERTAINLY how an MMO would "use these references" as in game objects
I had the exact thought, RP1 Kong doesn't need to have a deep character, it was coded to do 1 thing in the Oasis and reset. There's only so much a virtual world can fit in! Having said that, I do get the point.
Exactly why do the characters have to felate the powers they are using just because they are beloved IP. I mean have you not seen vr chat and just how down right trollish people are with those IPs. This video just didnt quite understand that.
RP1 was actually spot on with how the common online arena player sees these ip's. Naruto and other characters that never use firearms be gun clappers in fortnite, removing them eons away from their original context. Also, the lego movie is not a (very) good comparison bc those characters are really supposed to be themselves (albeit hyper parody), whereas RP1 players just use the skin. Example, most kids never watched jaws, but they know it's a killer shark, tho. And I don't know or care how bruno mars feels about point blank shotgun blasts, but I look hella smooth putting somebody on they ass with one. Speilberg knew what he was doing. You pay (or do your own) for pop culture character skins to run around online with so many others that it turns into an ocean of references that you struggle to keep track of.
Bingo, and Spielberg understands games. Zach Galligan from Gremlins says Spielberg's office was full of arcade games in 1983, and Spielberg even sent him a Centipede standup as a gift after they filmed Gremlins. Spielberg is not some Hollywood suit trying to figure out what a video game is, he has been a lifelong gamer in one form or another. This movie was about respecting video games, not about respecting the original purpose of the movie character "skins" it uses.
I first read the book in 2016, alternative school. Instead of doing my actual work I would sneak in reading as much of this book as I could and it changed my life. I finished the book and just needed more so I Googled the name. Found out there was a movie in production scheduled to be released years from then. Fast forward to the release of the movie, I watched it, it was amazing.
@@jedijones Ah yes, the before times. Also, it wasn't particularly memorable to begin with. Even without the pandemic, it would likely have faded more quickly than other films did. Topical movies and ones that make excessive use of references don't typically age very well when compared to ones that aren't so tied to references of the day.
I thought this movie was good and I think paying this much attention to the references alone is entirely missing the point. The movie is about exploring the past of Halliday, finding out why he made the oasis and what he stands for within the world, which we come to find out is that he found it very inportsnt to balance your love of pop culture/the oasis with your love for real life. Like you discussed in the sequence regarding the shining, the whole scene was set up based on the premise that Halliday valued pop culture MORE than going on a date with that girl. That was his mistake, and the whole point was that the sequence ISNT about the shining, but about his regret in the moment. So, sure. The movie is throwing a bunch of pop culture at you. But the sheer amount of it was not pointless, rather an accurate depiction of how over-exposed we are and how you need to see through all of it to get to the heart.
I read a brilliant review of the movie that underlined how so many Spielberg films are popcorn entertainments on the outside but sad tragedies on the inside. This movie truly fits that mold. What happened to Halliday and his regret over it was heartbreaking. Unfortunately I identify more with Halliday than Wade.
@@jedijones well wade is a complete goof and an empty character in the movie. They changed too much from the source material on the character development, probably due to the movie format. Hopefully they remake as a series at some point and follow the source material.
Saw the movie, then decided to read the book. I grew up playing the games referenced in the book - and I think Speilberg made the right choice on the three challenges. I don't think the challenges in the book would have appealed to a large audience and probably have been a snooze fest. On the other hand, I wish the loyalty center thread had been closer to the original. (I think changing who went into the loyalty center and how they got in and out, dumbed down the story a bit too much.)
@@Memelord1117 I think the first challenge was Wade playing an arcade game, Joust, against a demi-lich from D&D, Then he had to reenact the movie War Games. The second challenge was to complete the game Zork on a planet based on the game, then win a game of Black Tiger from Edge Runner. And the final challenge was to beat the game Tempest and then reenact the movie Monty Python and The Holy Grail.
The challenges didn't need to be the same, but certainly could have been closer to the originals. Instead of playing "Joust" against Acererak, Wade could be transported into the game and actually joust riding a giant bird. Or just fight the archlich in the dungeon somehow. I was disappointed that there was no kind of dungeon crawling in the movie.
Considering all the recognizable characters in the game are simply other players using skins of their favorite characters I can understand why they dont behave like the actual characters that we know. When you see Batman in Ready Player One you know its just somebody in their basement with VR goggles so we don't expect to see the dark night himself or behave in a certain way.
I think you’re right that many of Ready Player One’s references are just “thing exists“ and don’t try to reinvent or reimagine them in a meaningful way. The Iron Giant is a particularly notable example of that. But I disagree about The Shining sequence. I think it is a nice tribute to Spielberg’s friendship with Kubric that ties into the friendship between Halliday and his friend who helped him design The Oasis. Halliday’s biggest regret was losing his friend, and Spielberg’s allusions to Kubric offer a metacommentary on that
As i just said somewhere, it would have made zero sense for the Iron Giant to have compassion, when in the context of the movie all it was, was a skin. We don't become our avatars. I think a movie where all these characters got together would require an entirely different premise.
Absolutely hilarious. This is literal how the internet exists. Thing exists how people wish them to exist. Are we fucking logging into different chat VR rooms and telling people they're missing using the avatars they're using? Or going and telling people they're playing games wrong? I highly fuckong doubt it
I read that Kubric and Spielberg had a major falling out because of Shining. Spielberg wanted to direct the movie, then wanted the movie to go in a different direction, and was upset when Kubric’s vision was such a smashing success. Spielberg said he didn’t like the movie at the time. So it kind of makes no sense to put it in. It’s not in the book.
@@TheLemonKiller The movie turned out the way it did because of the monumental nightmare of licensing everything. An authentic version would just never happen, or be so costly as to make it impractical to film.
The book is also chocked full of references to 80s culture, but they all seem to be more genuine references/homages to nerd culture many younger people won't know about. I felt encouraged to join in and learn about all of the references I hadn't heard of. On the other hand, more obscure references won't play as well for a more general audience, so I understand why they couldn't follow the book.
The thing that I think is important about the book is that the book has these characters interacting in a pop culture obsessed world, the pop culture icons are almost celebrities, you go to the Batman world to interact with Batman and to live out his adventures with him but you weren't Batman, at the end of the adventure you might get some of Batman's gear or his car and maybe you would even get a bat suit of your own but you still weren't Batman you were a character wearing Batman's stuff, can you end up as a character wearing Batman's stuff with a lightsaber flying around the universe in a Klingon bird of prey. And of course you would have gotten each of those from going to the respective zones for those fan bases and completing adventures and quests to unlock those items. The fact that the movie just had all the characters other than the main characters just being pop culture characters I think missed the mark pretty significantly because again to me the point of playing in The Oasis was not to be Batman or even pretend you're Batman unless you are pretending to be Batman in the Batman experience area. There's also the other things that I thought was really clever for what they did with the universe where it was a way to have snapshots of people's Memories by recreating their hometowns or their favorite hangout places. And the fact that it was being used as an educational tool with having the characters go to VR Recreations of like World War I to learn about things in a more engaging way
Just my two cents, all of what you brought up near the end about the nostalgia and homage of the references is absolutely true, Iron Giant is indeed acting very different from how he is originally portrayed, among many others. However, I think that's exactly the point here. That's not THE Iron Giant, it's AN Iron Giant, a commission piece that is being piloted by H. (Or like, puppeted... controlled? Anyways) The point being that in all these scenarios these are pretty surface level homages because that's all they are in the world of Ready Player One and the Oasis. Parzivel may drive an awesome DeLorean Time Machine with some custom adjustments here and there, but that's not the Time Machine Marty Mcfly dives headfirst into time and time again. Gundam is fantastically realized and works more or less how it it established to, but it's not really the RX-78-2, it's just an awesome and functional robot that looks like it, Amuro never touched those controls. (If it even has controls? Was Daito just controlling it like H did with the Iron Giant?) Getting back on topic, your criticism is valid, and I agree with quite a few of your points, however in regards to the wild video game world these characters reside in, I think thematically it makes sense that as amazing as these toys are, they are not original nor do they share any true meaning with their real world counterparts. They may be "rare" or "unique" or even custom built like H with the Iron Giant, but as much as they can pull off they are just meant to function and look cool at the end of the day. Not just for the film and its narrative decisions, but for the characters owning and interacting with them as well. All that being said, still a great video, just wanted to share my thoughts on why H wasn't considering the lore of Iron Giant during a massive pop culture war lol. As amazing as these things are, especially during such an important and decisive battle, they are all just tools. Beloved, incredible, iconic tools; but still just tools. Absolutely loved this movie when it first came out, finding every reference I could took so much of my time, and re-watching it recently with a friend in Bigscreen via the Quest 2 was oh so deliciously ironic while providing a great time once again. I don't think I'll ever stop thinking about this movie, or watching it for that matter. It's not the deepest thing in the world but the attention to detail in every frame of every brilliantly realized reference as well as the amazing wish fulfillment of seeing it all, it will keep me coming back for a long time. Thank you coming to my TedTalk, you may now move on with your life. Have a good one! 👍👌🖐
This should have more likes. This is a good movie. The endless part of people who opine about the “uncharacteristic nature” of the character; while it seems they are defending them, comes across to me like the girl from IOI who knows the facts by mind and tries to win the game; failing to see the heart of the movie, in that the real players here are not the Iron Giant, Gundam or Kong... but the people living in the squalors, trying to make it in “the real world”. While people will continue to disect the movie to its smallest details - on how this is not it, or this is not that, this comment thread will be akin to that movie theater you and your mate went to see and had a good time - the laughs, maybe a meal at a diner after, knowing full well, I too will have a life to go back to; my lover, my friends and a place I can call home, once I close this app. This is a good movie. Overanalyzing it, not so good. Ps: I love Disney’s Treaaure Planet too.
as someone who gets very little references , this was a family favourite which we all enjoyed watching together on the tv. It was fun and entertaining and memorable.
My problem with the movie is how much of the book was discarded, both in content and style/heart. A lot of the references in Ready Player one in the book actually tied back to Halliday and his personality. The references were obviously a love letter to the 80s and everything they stood for, but they also defined who Halliday was as a person. While some of the referenes were made for the audience/reader in specific, a lot of them were explaining the interests, the mind and the personality of who Halliday was. You made a brief mention of how a scene was different in the book around the 5:00 mark in the video. Much of the book was like this. We missed Dungeon's and Dragons references, Zork, the perfect game of pacman, and so on. Many of the keys were different, and they all actually lead to a gate rather than the story being "Collect 3 items you win" story. Each of these were tied back to a moment in Halliday's life and showed meaning to why he liked them and enjoyed them. Halliday at the end of the day wanted to share his love for the things he grew up with, the way his life was shaped and moulded around them, and where he was in life. He only wanted to pass his company on to someone who embodied and understood him and his love for everything. Think back to some of your favorite pieces of media through out your life, or anything you really enjoyed. I'm sure you can really remember where you were in life, and how you were feeling, and why they were important to you. Much of that was lost in the movie, and I feel the book captured it perfectly. The book isn't perfect itself no, but the movie is far off from what the book achieved. I feel thats why it faded from the public. People liked it for the references that were ultimately just thrown in, and fans of the book moved on as it lost its meaning from what they remembered. While there's suppose to be a second movie. I can be almost certain its also not going to live up to what was written in the book.
Spielberg tried to get as many of the references in the books as he could, but there were licensing and rights issues. So sadly changes had to be made. However, I still feel it’s a great adaptation to the book.
I also think that Ready Player Two (the sequel to the book) went back on a lot of the things that made the book good, so I have zero expectations for the second movie.
It's impossible to jam EVERYTHING from a book into 2 hours that's why a lot of things are missing in other book to movie adaptations like Harry Potter or The Hunger games. You can only get so close. Unless you wanna watch a (most likely) 12 hour long movie. Just be happy it even happened at all. Same thing goes for pretty much anything else turned into something else.
Exactly. The movie was a fun way to spend a couple of hours but it didn't make me feel anything, while the book was completely different in that regard. I wasn't alive in the 80s and didn't recognise 90% of the references in the book, but I felt Halliday's love and nostalgia and through that I connected with him as a person.
I feel like part of the problem here is that you are looking at this movie through the lens of someone who cares and knows things about the properties in this movie. If you look at it from the point of view of your average player, these are just skins that look cool, nobody cares that the Iron Giant (which is a great movie btw) was anti-gun, to a gamer he looks cool and kicks ass. As a child of the 80s I loved all the pop references and after watching this and reading the comments I realize I NEED to read this book.
I think the problem with this movie is that it feels like the only point is "insert reference here." It's cool to see references, but it feels like the entire movie is built on that premise alone which is pretty shallow. It's like superhero movies that shove in more superheroes simply because they know fans will think "wow I know that character!" The challenges are also so simple that it's ridiculous to think that the millions of people playing this game didn't think about it sooner
@@inyrui it feels like a lot of "Insert this" but this movie had to make due with what it could use due to licensing. Going back to the Iron Giant, it was used as a substitute for Ultraman due to Licensing.
I agree with the lens thing. For someone to whom those references do not mean a whole lot, this movie is ok but certainly not great. And I don't think it has the makings of a movie for the masses in any day or age.
You completely misunderstood something. They're just a bunch of teenagers playing video games. Kong is just a cool obstacle, who cares about the deep meaning? 😂
The second book wasn’t that great. There were, of course, many changes between the first book and the movie. But I think they would have to make a lot of changes to make a second movie interesting enough to be profitable.
To me it looked and felt like pure nostalgia baiting and riding. It beats you with the nostialgia fists in your face every couple of seconds and screams "REMEMBER THAT? DO YOU LIKE IT? LIKE IT NOW!" This was pure incompetence.
@@Aves_1 that's also a flaw in the book it seems. Pop culture without actual deconstruction and analysis. You could swap out 99% of the characters for other random pop culture or original deigns without issue, because there's no depth
@@dannyboy4682 youre missing it as well. The references arent there to be those characters. They are there because gamers wanna look like their favorite characters in game, not to behave like them
J.J. Abrams is largely responsible for this line of thinking in the industry. Into Darkness and The Force Awakens paved the way for RP1 and all these movies and shows that expect praise for reminding us of something we like.
Don't necessarily love the whole movie and story but I can't deny the Gundam scene is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Didn't hurt that I'd recently gotten into gundam when the movie came out
The book has even more stuff referenced/used in the battle with MechaGodzilla(specifically identified as Kiryu from the Millennium series). But a lot of those references/items are not in Warner Brothers wheelhouse, thus is one of the reasons why Iron Giant is there.
I'm sorry, I loved this movie and all the nostalgia in it. The Shinning reference was a great twist. Things aren't always what they seem. I've watched this movie a few times and I will watch it again!
I think of this movie as an 8-year old's battlefield. He may not care what the symbolism of The Iron Giant or King Kong. For him to get an army of hundreds of pop culture icons is a dream come true. Yes it could have gone better, but it isn't bad by any means. I love this movie.
I feel like this is the movie Mark Zuckerberg watched when he began his path on being obsessed with the metaverse lol. Jokes aside though I was so sucked into this movie that to me it was believable that all these ips would be in the game, and didn't feel like a nostalgia cash grab at all. I mean, look at the "metaverses" that we have now. Things like roblox and fortnite have whole worlds dedicated to different brands and ips, and in games like Garry's mod people constantly use avatars from different ips. I think that if there was a metaverse this advanced there would be a ton of things that play on your nostalgia so they can keep you in the meta and keep advertising to you. So seeing tracer and masterchief on screen was just cool. seemed like something that would actually happen and there was no reason to suspend my disbelief.
I read the book a long time ago, and I thought it was amazing. You can see that Ernest Cline (the author) really cared about the references that he placed in, and made them work in the context of the book. When I heard about a movie adaptation, I was a bit worried, because most of the scenes in the book worked better in book format. It's a decent adaptation, but it lacks the soul that the original book had in exchange for more mindless pop culture references.
That's often the case with books, the limitations are purely what the writer can convey to the reader. It's one of the reasons why Kubrick should have ended 2001 earlier than he did as that last sequence makes basically no sense without having read the book. Even if you have read the book, it still makes little sense. I respect that he tried anyways, but it does do a bunch of damage to the story he was telling to shoe horn that in. In general, books that focus more on action and dialog are more likely to work as movies without having to extensively rewrite them. That's not to say that books that are more about characters thinking can't work as movies, but it does require a lot more effort to figure out how to turn that into something that shows up on camera.
Suprised that he didn't mention that Space Jam: A New Legacy was Ready Player One 2.0 but with Warner Bros. characters, which was the influence of the platform fighter Multiversus.
I don't think the show is forgettable, It actually is one of the inspirations behind on of my sci-fi worlds I've been creating, the other half of the inspiration if the Mortality Doctrine by James Dashner who made Maze Runner, it has a similar concept which I've been enjoying.
That’s fair. I have a similar relationship with the Angelina Jolie Tomb Raider movies. Are they objectively masterpieces? Uhhhh, probably not. Will I rewatch them and have a great time every time? Yes, absolutely. 😁
The books are far better. The characters are actual people, the Oasis is done far better, and books are unique. They are very grounded and are very brutal, mentally and physically on the characters.
I watched it in theaters with my dad(a man who grew up in the 70s and 80s), and we both enjoyed it thoroughly... and forgot it thoroughly. Everything you said in this video is absolutely true, nostalgic cues for the sake of nostalgic cues get stale and overused after a while if not done in taste. And it's absolutely wild to think so many of these references were originally done by Spielberg himself, its like some sort of cinema inception. So the uninspired nature of these allusions makes sense, but it doesn't make it any less intriguing to think how the man who made the original references is making a movie referring to them.
If anybody has played VRChat, it's the same thing: people using other characters/avatars to represent themselves, and do whatever they want in whatever worlds they can find. That's what I think ReadyPlayerOne did an excellent job with
I've seen this argument made before. Frankly, I don't remember if the book was much better since I felt like many of the pop culture references were still rather shallow, often describing what the various properties were rather than why Halliday appreciated them and why he was right to have valued them. One issue I had with the movie versus the book was the pool of references. The book's collection of references is relatively limited, but that is because Ernest Cline built a fictional world based on his own nerdy Gen-X nostalgia, which is why the book resonated so much with other Gen-X nerds. The movie had a much wider pool of references to appease Spielberg's own Baby Boomer nostalgia, to pander to the expected MIllennial and Gen-Z audience, and to nod to the production companies' other valuable properties. This broader pool of references diluted the film. Additionally, the Shining sequence, in particular, makes no sense, as Halliday would have been too young to have seen the movie in its original theatrical run if he were as old in the film as he is in the book.
Ehh personally I’d rather have a wider timescale of references, that’s more realistic and you could pick stuff that actually fits better than just every cultural icon from a short period in the 80’s. The movie didn’t pull it off well but that’s for different reasons. Plus The Shining is like one of the most well known movies of all time, there’s no reason he had to have seen it in theaters to enjoy it
I am a Gen-x who tries to show my kids things I liked when I was their age. Usually they don't care :-). But I didn't care either when I was their age: movies and books my parents used to like when they were young seemed super outdated to me. This obsession with nostalgia we had in the movie doesn''t really exist among young adults. Usually they are busy creating and worshipping their own subculture.
@@seresimarta4436 Not totally true. In the 1980s, I liked a lot of 1950s and 1960s music, and watched older shows from the 1950s and 1960s on TV like Gilligan's Island and Get Smart. Certainly some Disney cartoons and movies like Willy Wonka were still popular in the 1980s. When I read comic books, I definitely had an interest in the older comics with the first appearances of Spider-Man, Batman, etc. We know kids today still love stuff like Star Wars. Also, the movie tries to explain some of the '80s obsession with Halliday's quest. The kids are trying to learn about the old stuff because it will help them in the quest. Although Wade knew about Atari Adventure, it definitely seemed like he knew because he had researched Atari games to help solve Halliday's riddles.
The movie removed all the study of the source references and just threw in the references as fast and as much as they could while making the entire movie a race story. The original book actually breathes and has a lot more depth and reverence for its member-berries.
🙏 With great respect , the moral story of Ready Player One is to defend the freedom to use the internet from being charge by Mega Tech with heartless business people! Not much Studios & Directors can rendered this movie as Enjoyable to Watch as Steven Spielberg & his Studios ... 🌷🌿🌏💜🕊
This is so true. A big Hollywood production that protests against microtransactions and advertising in video games! That is such an unexpected cause for them to take up, and a good one.
As someone who read the book initially, I had high hopes for the movie, not crazy expectations as we know every movie adaptation of a book never quite hits right with few exceptions. After reading the book the only thing I could think of was "this needs to be a movie" and when I saw Spielberg was behind the direction I became hopeful. When I first saw the movie I didn't hate it, and still don't, there are aspects of the movie that truly capture what was happening in my head as I was reading the book, but overall the movie doesn't have anywhere near the same magic the book was able to encapsulate. I'm sure others who read the book can agree with me but overall the movie didn't have anywhere near the magic the book had. Not a bad movie, but the book was too incredible.
@@justmemememe3354 Yeah fact's, can't disagree with that. Reading the book - I couldn't put it down, watching the movie - I couldn't wait til the end lmao
The movie does as much as the book does. Neither go deep into understanding or deconstructing any og character. Neither are a homage and that's fine. It is a nostalgia trip which relies mostly on name dropping them and losely tying it to situations. Spielberg went out of his way to avoid using as many references to him as there were in the book which was full of them. This was fun movie. End of story.
As a 71 year old flower child of the 60s, I was able to "buckle up " and just enjoy the ride and take the references I knew about in stride. Never having been a gamer I could just go with it and not have to fret over the cultural references I've missed. I enjoyed it immensely
There’s absolutely no way that someone along the way didn’t bring this up with Spielberg. Who knows exactly what he was intending it to mean but like it’s so blatant clearly a bunch of people on the production were aware.
Spielberg is much shallower than you think. I have read the actual book. It is way better than the film - and it does not contain most of the vapid cultural references crammed into the film for no good reason, other than nostalgia-baiting.
In general, I'd personally recommend DVD as you can store a ton of them on an affordable HDD. The main exception I personally have to that is for movies like this that are so jam packed with detail that you really need the extra pixels. Most of the time, you're better off just sitting a few feet further back.
@@CYDAmity Which is bad enough, but we're at a point where they can effectively edit in and out elements from those movies without really saying anything. Then there's things where they edit out scenes because they're creepy af. James Bond's For Your Eyes Only is a good example. They edited out much of the scene where he goes to the jailbait figure skaters room and she's barely wearing any clothes and throws herself at him. They added the rest of the hockey fight scene. It was a good decision as that's how it should have been over 40 years ago when it was screened, but it is as lightly different movie as a result. (The hotel scene was rather gratuitous as the film had already rather explicitly stated that he wasn't comfortable with her advances and she had the hots for him, but the hockey scene was inexplicable as much of it had been cut) Other instances may or may not be so lucky as to serve the story. Expect more product placements to be edited in and new scenes that weren't shot for a reason to be later added.
Imo, just because a lot of his work was in the source, I don’t think he was the right choice for the movie. It’s own language would have a been a nice change. Like most book adaptations tho it completely missed the mark I think
It's evident that when filmmakers truly respect and understand a character, they leverage that character's potential to their advantage in the film. For example, the utilization of the Iron Giant in "Ready Player One" could have been more impactful. Ideally, the Iron Giant would initially emerge as an imposing force on the adversaries' side, serving as a formidable 'power-up'. This would set the stage for an epic clash, during which the protagonists manage to incapacitate the Iron Giant. Upon its reawakening, we could have seen a transformative moment where the familiar, beloved Iron Giant emerges, aiding the good guys or, at the very least, ceases to fight against them. This approach would not only have added layers to the narrative, but also honored the essence of the character we know from the original "The Iron Giant".
These fantastic bite sized essays feel like an introduction to a much larger discussion. Ever considered longer format content, to dive deeper into these topics? Love your work, thanks for the reflective inspiration.
I really enjoyed this movie because it represents to me a highly possible future we’re the Internet will evolve into a virtual reality world where everyone will participate, whether for work or personal enjoyment to live out their fantasies. The inclusion of popular icons to me only represents the actual desire of those who logged on to be who they fantasize about being.
The fact that we got even as much as we did is a minor miracle. The number of properties mentioned in the book are rather staggering. The only way to have filmed it the way it was written would be to get more than a dozen IP holders to agree to work together or license their properties for the making of said movie. So, they worked with the properties they could and replaced what they couldn't. The book is definitely better thematically, which tends to be the case in movie adaptations.
@@StefanBoeykens He did, the writers had to sneak a gremlin in somewhere without him knowing. Spielberg felt, rightly or wrongly, that he would look egomaniacal if he filled RP1 with Spielberg movie references. Frankly, I think the movie is a near failure for me when it comes to putting in references I care about. But I didn't care at all because I loved the original characters, the plot, the futuristic vision for games, the themes of friendship and moderation. The movie was not at all about its "references" for me.
@@jedijones It's fun with all the references, but the main story arc is not that inventive. The puzzles in the book were also of a very different nature than in the movie. What annoyed me in the book was the over the top adoration of the creator Halliday and the fact that most puzzles were solved through an exceptional game performance. That was largely avoided in the movie, but we got the fairly traditional kid against corporation battle... though that is not only the fault of the movie.
@@StefanBoeykens Well, an action movie tends to have the good guys fighting terrorists, Nazis or thieves. Fighting a traditional villain is not a dealbreaker for a movie.
I wasn’t particularly happy with the breakdown of this movie in the video, but I’m very happy the overall opposite support by everyone in the comments. This was a great movie!
Nah. The writers likely would have started injecting politics like every other writers room that has too many hours of content to produce. This story couldn’t have gone much further. Maybe mini series at best...
It has nothing to say and what it does have to say is really unsettling: don't worry if reality is a dystopian nightmare because you can always escape into a fictional realm while reality crumbles.
Also the protagonist your meant to route for is some weired incel gatekeeping insecure arshole with no redeeming qualities you would think you were meant to route against
I disagree, one of today's biggest problems, is how woke politics is making all to aware with real world problems. There's nothing wrong with a little escapism.
All of the important symbolism in Ready Player One relates to Kubrick and a couple of other directors who are referenced early in the film. That's how you sort out what's important to the subtext and what isn't, and that's why The Shining was featured along with "42" aka "the answer ultimate" which is an important clue in The Shining. First example - Kong in the race sequences. Kong, like Major Kong in Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove represents lust, which is one of the things holding Wade back at the beginning of the story. The Batman reference isn't really a Batman reference - it's a Tim Burton reference. When you see Pee-wee's bike just inside the doorway of Aech's garage after Kong stops Z and Art3mis, you're supposed to put those references together subliminally to understand that Wade is a greedy little horn-dog - a man child like Pee-wee, which is why Art3mis doesn't think much of him at that point in the film. The T-Rex from Jurassic Park, the other big obstacle in the race, represents greed, since greed is the sin that drives the plot in that film. Many of the other Kubrick references in Ready Player One are shape based, like the hexagon and cube, and you really have to know Kubrick's pattern of symbolism to recognize them, but some of the others are fairly straight forward allusions, like the spinning house we see just after Wade enters the OASIS for the first time - a pretty good hint at what the three keys represent. ;)
I watched the movie with my girlfriend, she found it cool and read the book After reading she said "it seems like the movie was made by the IOI guys" 😆😆😆
i disagree with you. the iron giant was used as a tool of resistance against a force that would enslave the oasis, and thus was very much like it's original purpose
I actually liked this movie. Sure it didn't give justice to some of those reference materials, but I think you're forgetting that this virtual world of theirs was something the developer and the players created for themselves. If I am to include astroboy in my fictional virtual world, I don't really have to give it the same backstory and character, do I? Pretty much how some details about the icons used in the movie didn't necessarily follow the background of each. I think this is taking it way seriously. I'm just saying, for me, it served it's purpose good enough.
I was a massive fan of the book and ended up watching the movie in theater, only later to be gifted a shirt and DVD of the movie. So, while it has dissapeared from the public's mind, it is constantly at the back of mine.
Dude the Iron Giant being a weapon to fight Meca-Godzilla is a perfect example of both chars.. Mans diabolical war machine created to kill the living version going against a war machine turned peaceful giant nails it.
I liked it. Preferred it to Alita. It was low impact though. I can't remember much about it. Maybe the book leaves more of an impression on those that read it.
i remember this film it was pretty awesome and giving some nostalgia from other pop culture 90s and 80s genre and Video games too Steven Spielberg film is a masterpiece and it doesn't need a sequel actually because if they're gonna ruined what's movie is it but I would always rewatch this film anytime I would like.
I see where you're coming from and it highlighted something for me - I loved the film, but it's a popcorn flick. Now I have thought more about it the film stripped out a lot of the non-nostalgia plot elements - Wade's physical journey, his apartment and most of the IOI infiltration plot. The oasis was given a lot more structure in the book too, including the financially limited ability to explore it. There was far more on how it impacted society and how society adapted to use VR with the school sequences etc. I understand the switch of the challenges, but the puzzles felt easily achieved in the film and a definite struggle in the books - both in working out what the challenges are and in the solving. Several characters felt watered down too... but overall it probably needed multi-film or series length room to flesh out the plot and character stories.
honestly i still love this movie. to me the little cultural nods are just there for fun and it would have cost too much time to deconstruct even a few of the characters who weren't directly relevant to the plot. also i do truly love that exchange at the end where wade asks the halliday ai/avatar if halliday is really dead. i think the implication is that the soul of halliday lives on in the thing he's created. just imagine how much that thought must have resonated with an artist like speilberg.
wait... the movie is only 4 years old? holy crap... usually I'm shocked to hear how much older something is than I thought, but this time around I'm shocked that this movie isn't already 10 years old... it feels way older to me...
I personally loved watching "Ready Player One"! I agree with you on the fact that it's not the best representation of some of the properties, but it works as a one off. Peace and love y'all 🤟
I get what you’re saying but everyone watched Godzilla and iron giant thinking we were gonna see them f*^% shit up and we wondered what they’d look like if they had. I thought it was a great movie as long as you just take it for what it is. A nostalgia inducing action movie with amazing graphics and a decent storyline. 🤷♂️
I actually liked this movie. Bought it from RedBox even. However I would argue it has been forgotten largely because it paints a very dark picture to the future of humanity that basically VR will lower our real life standards and that we will behave in cyber in a way that is worse than real life. Not exactly a happy ending although people working together beat the corporations in the movie but yeah some of it was very random.
You make an excellent point. Futuristic dystopian sci-fi has a very bad track record at the box office. Blade Runner bombed on release. Spielberg didn't have a huge hit with Minority Report either. Strange Days flopped badly with another virtual reality plot. Matrix was a rare hit in the genre, but its sequels faded away fast.
@@jedijones There were no Matrix sequels other than the Animatrix. I refuse to go looking to see if they did a follow up to any of that. Those other films though over time have become classics, whereas a lot of people forgot this movie was even made and I don't see any reason for that to change any time soon.
Great video, but I don’t agree. This movie brought us nostalgia in a way that made us smile and took us back to the memories we had of those properties. Idk how old you are but it was balanced and enjoyable. Sometimes I think when people critique things they sometimes go too deep. Enjoyable movie all around.
This movie was created as a love letter to the gamers who have been here from the start and any open minded person along the way. Needing any sort of explanation to any Cameo characters sorta eliminates the point of the virtual world they all enter into everyday.
It's based off of actual people playing the characters in a video game and not based off of the characters themselves, that's why it works! Think of it as GTA but modded, people do that all the time with characters and use them in ways the actual character would never be portrayed, same thing when it comes to basics.
Exactly- it’s movie about a VR world where you can do anything thus references in the Oasis are purposely over the top because that’s the kind of stuff players in a game do to up the fun factor. Like when you try to fly the Dodo plane in GTA, it’s a goof on purpose. The guy ripping the movie doesn’t get the joke. I thought it was brilliant to have all these crazy throwback things mixed up and totally out of context.
@@johnmoore3504 Yeah, judging by the comments here, the OP is just about the only one who didn't understand the point of the movie. He's probably just trying to rile up the interwebs for clickbait.
Look, I understand that the challenges needed to be changed, because none of them really adapted well to a movie and wouldn't be fun to watch at all, so I was really behind that (also keeps the experience fresh for someone who read the book) but where I disagree is the changes to the story that happened. While I understand the need to cut some things down because of sheer length and I guess some things don't really work out the same on screen I guess, some things have been cut that I do miss. And I am not really that happy with how they changed that first challenge because here everyone knew where it took place and had an idea that something needed to be done there, they just didn't get what the right course of action would be, while in the original nearly no one even had an idea what to do or where to begin looking. I still enjoyed it a lot btw, just missed some things.
Every single movie can be improved upon. The problem when you've read the book first is that you have another copy of the story sitting right there in plain view to compare it to. It's a giant handicap to a movie. I'm sure some guy could do a rewrite of the plot of Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark that you would like better too. The only difference is you haven't read that potential rewrite yet when you watch those movies. It's only fair to NOT hold the existence of a book against a movie, and to watch the movie as if you never knew the book existed, and to not make any attempts to compare the two. The movie needs to be judged on its own merits.
I love this movie. All the nostalgic references made my heart happy, as I was instantly transported to my childhood. I watch it every time it plays on T.V.
About the Iron Giant part, in the book it was originally supposed to be the Japanese superhero Ultraman that got used. But Tsuburaya Productions, the company who own Ultraman series, got a legal battle with UM Corporation around that time so it was hard to include the character. Tsuburaya eventually wins but it was too late to include Ultraman in the movie. Although by watching your video, I think they're gonna missing the point of Ultraman character too if he got included.
That's not how it works. The Marvel movies are big in the culture and they absolutely freaking suck compared to Ready Player One. The culture is not an accurate measure of quality AT ALL.
For real, this movie is exactly the same genre as Wreck It Ralph, Space Jam 2, and the Emoji movie - a character journeys through various intellectual properties and you’re supposed to like it because “hey, didn’t you like those IPs too?”. The only difference is that Wreck It Ralph actually paid attention to its plot and characters.
I think you overlook one big factor here - this is absolutely how real life players would use characters in a game. Taking your Iron Giant example, normal people/fans would either 1) not understand the deeper meaning of what he stood for, 2) not care what he stood for and just want to play as him b/c they like him, or 3) intentionally use him in a completely flipped around manner b/c that, in itself, is a statement. Plus I don't agree that it's slipped from public consciousness. I personally think about this movie anytime I see someone wearing a VR headset.
Ready Player One is basically a modern 80s movie. It takes all the tropes from a classic 80s film and modernizes them with its references and visuals. It was dumb, but I loved it so much.
I think the movie’s concept is why these references were purely that. Since everything is under the premise of a video game, it’s hard to maintain character purity within the references as they are really just people with unlockable content in the plot of the movie. & In Kong’s case, he’s just serving as an obstacle in the game. If you can overlook all these references & not desire character preservation & simply appreciate it for how plot uses them, I still think it’s a good movie.
This is exactly what I thought the direction was too, they weren’t really homages or references, they were part of the in-universe game
I was looking for something similar too. Sure it doesn't give each icon the depth or preservations of their originals, but it does accurately reflect modern gaming culture, and painfully so. Just look at how Fortnite is milking other creative content to the point where kids go "look, it's the thing from Fortnite", making anyone that gets the actual reference facepalm as a result. This way of unlocking and using nostalgic content according to your own desire IS for many gamers a motivation they'll happily enter their credit card details for. So as previous comments mentioned, I don't see the movie trying to preserve characters, and I think that fits with the plot, and thus it's critique is somewhat missing the point I think.
well said.. exactly what i was going to say.
Well said
I agree
As someone who is generally not exactly rushing to see the next sci fi film, I thought this movie was incredible.
I loved it. And I thought I would hate it.
I loved it when i watched it, then I read the book and now like the movie much less because the book is so much better
The book is much better
@@TruthJuice the movie didn't get the nuance. the book is a deep layered puzzle and the movie is a aaa tactical shooter
Super incredible
It disappeared because it was more of a style over substance movie. In terms of visual effects and imagery, it’s freaking amazing. In terms of story and characters, it’s very generic and derivative and meh, at least in my personal opinion.
Was going to comment something along these lines but you said it very well :)
It’s too bad because the book was really good.
On the point
@@sceptical8694 the book was terribly written and weird
@@edwardmartinezrodriguez8627 I’m not going to say the book is some masterpiece of our time but it was a good young adult sci-fi novel for a kid with a mom who showed him everything about the 80’s
I love this movie. It’s in my top 10. I rewatch it all the time.
I've seen it way too many times.
I like it and it has been a gateway to introduce my son to all the references. He already loved back to the future so the trailer with delorean started his interest. Now he seeks out movies like King Kong and the Kong/godzilla/mecha godzilla movie. My kids also now associate some cool 80's music with the movie.
Same!!!
Definitely in my top 10
Lol, typical soyjack.
I think that you approached the movie in a more sentimental and dramatic way than you should have. I am the biggest fan of Iron Giant, The Shining etc and the depth and meaning of these stories and characters. But Ready Player One was something else, and its intention was not to honor these stories but just to make the audience have fun, seeing references to their favorite movies in a new Spielberg story. I personally just had fun watching DeLorean in a race, Iron Giant using that laser from his eyes in a war against an evil corporation or King Kong as an obstacle. It is meant to be just fun and it is fun. And The Shining sequence... Honestly I loved that experience of reliving that atmosphere but in a different story. It is nostalgia, it is familiarity, it is all the fun we had and it is used in another good story by Spielberg. Trying to go deeper is not relevant imo. I can see the Iron Giant as what he really is in his own movie. In this one he is frying bad guys in a virtual battlefield! Hell yeah! I think it is a good story with a good conclusion, fun all the way through and just because it is not as great as Spielberg's other films that doesnt make it bad or not memorable. It has its weak points just as any "not a classic" movie has. But I would recommend this to any of my friends for a good time and that amazing The Shining sequence!
100% agree!
Yes 👍 agree!!!!👍👍👍👍
Funny I Came to say agreed and it seems I'm not the only one lol 😂 💯
well said
refusing to think about the meaning of things, bravo 👏👏🤦
but no, you are wrong, and art works are there to think about.
Ready Player One is not a mere entertainment, it's in fact a movie about entertainment. It's meaningful when its meaning surpass the entertainment, when it's something more than people's opium.
And for one moment that a blockbuster tries to not be opium of the people, people chose to be drugged and dumb?
some people have what they deserve
The thing about the misused older characters such as the Iron Giant and ing Kong is: That is completely accurate and correct about how those entities would be treated in a place like the Oasis. That is precisely how multimedia corporations operate, especially in gaming. Basically on the level of having Pyramid Head in a kart racer. So this works for the setting. Because of the setting, this should be the only movie able to get away with this stuff.
Well put! I came here to say exactly this. You put it way better than I could have though!
True. And the Iron Giant in RPO isn't the character. It's a creation of a player who may or may not understand the character, or care about how he's using it. It's like any of the examples of modding Thomas the Tank Engine into a game and having him either attack as an enemy, or tear shit up as the player character. If there if any issue to take here it is with the player choosing to fight a battle using the Iron GIant.
I don't disagree with this as the idea, but the movie failed spectacularly at making that point.
Yeah, the reason this movie failed was because it was a little TOO much happening at once. The people crying out about how they ruined the Iron Giant, or, the Gundam v Mechagodzilla scene, are extremely small percentage that went to go see the movie. The general audience liked the movie, but, it doesn't do anything crazy that cause repeat ticket sales. It was also a March movie release, and, like Jan and Feb, movies historically don't do well this early in the year. The movie had a big budget, popcorn flick, summer movie vibe, but I just don't think many people went out of their way to see it.
@@vivaeljason I don't think that is the point it's making, I just see it as a worldbuiling detail.
This is my love/hate relationship with the advent of advanced CGI. It's so beautiful to look at and I'm sure the animators work really hard to create that amount of detail and smooth movement. But when not woven into well written stories, they feel like tasty, albeit unhealthy meals.
It's more to do with the business driving creative decisions. And businesses have not been kind to the visual effects people lately.
I would actually argue this is why video games have exploded as a medium. You get the high-fidelity effects, but there's still so many good options in the way of good storytelling and worldbuilding. The trade off is, video games and their hardware are more expensive.
yeah screw the SFX personel. their hard work conditions and wages is the absolute comeuppance they deserve for contribuiting on ruining quality cinema narrative
@@khaimk4r4su I'm pretty sure the CG is the only thing of any value in this movie. Even Spielberg couldn't farm any substance out of that excuse for a 'novel'..
The book was amazing! Well written, exciting, and thought-provoking. The movie was a sheer disappointment, when compared to the storyline of the book. Yes the visuals were an eye-catching spectacle, but the storyline was watered right down.
This is EXACTLY how an MMO would use these properties, visuals for players to act like they have that "skin" or "powers" of the franchises...so maybe the point was done too well in the context of the Oasis itself (and expanded upon in the book)..maybe it doesnt work in the movie sense, but it is CERTAINLY how an MMO would "use these references" as in game objects
Then maybe they should have made a point of it. Had the heroes show the properties explicitly greater respect than the game itself had.
so Fortnite as it is now pretty much.
I had the exact thought, RP1 Kong doesn't need to have a deep character, it was coded to do 1 thing in the Oasis and reset. There's only so much a virtual world can fit in! Having said that, I do get the point.
Exactly why do the characters have to felate the powers they are using just because they are beloved IP. I mean have you not seen vr chat and just how down right trollish people are with those IPs.
This video just didnt quite understand that.
Exactly
RP1 was actually spot on with how the common online arena player sees these ip's. Naruto and other characters that never use firearms be gun clappers in fortnite, removing them eons away from their original context.
Also, the lego movie is not a (very) good comparison bc those characters are really supposed to be themselves (albeit hyper parody), whereas RP1 players just use the skin.
Example, most kids never watched jaws, but they know it's a killer shark, tho. And I don't know or care how bruno mars feels about point blank shotgun blasts, but I look hella smooth putting somebody on they ass with one.
Speilberg knew what he was doing. You pay (or do your own) for pop culture character skins to run around online with so many others that it turns into an ocean of references that you struggle to keep track of.
Bingo, and Spielberg understands games. Zach Galligan from Gremlins says Spielberg's office was full of arcade games in 1983, and Spielberg even sent him a Centipede standup as a gift after they filmed Gremlins. Spielberg is not some Hollywood suit trying to figure out what a video game is, he has been a lifelong gamer in one form or another. This movie was about respecting video games, not about respecting the original purpose of the movie character "skins" it uses.
I first read the book in 2016, alternative school. Instead of doing my actual work I would sneak in reading as much of this book as I could and it changed my life. I finished the book and just needed more so I Googled the name. Found out there was a movie in production scheduled to be released years from then. Fast forward to the release of the movie, I watched it, it was amazing.
I legitimately can’t believe RP1 came out just 4 years ago. It feels like it came out in 2012
The pandemic took years off our lives.
@@jedijones Ah yes, the before times. Also, it wasn't particularly memorable to begin with. Even without the pandemic, it would likely have faded more quickly than other films did. Topical movies and ones that make excessive use of references don't typically age very well when compared to ones that aren't so tied to references of the day.
Coming to think about it, it does feel like it came out a long time ago.
same. i rewatched it yesterday and saw the date on the movie and was confused, it legit felt like it was way older than it is.
I can’t believe how bad it is compared to the books. The main problem with the movie is that it isn’t even unique in tone or characters.
I thought this movie was good and I think paying this much attention to the references alone is entirely missing the point. The movie is about exploring the past of Halliday, finding out why he made the oasis and what he stands for within the world, which we come to find out is that he found it very inportsnt to balance your love of pop culture/the oasis with your love for real life.
Like you discussed in the sequence regarding the shining, the whole scene was set up based on the premise that Halliday valued pop culture MORE than going on a date with that girl. That was his mistake, and the whole point was that the sequence ISNT about the shining, but about his regret in the moment.
So, sure. The movie is throwing a bunch of pop culture at you. But the sheer amount of it was not pointless, rather an accurate depiction of how over-exposed we are and how you need to see through all of it to get to the heart.
I read a brilliant review of the movie that underlined how so many Spielberg films are popcorn entertainments on the outside but sad tragedies on the inside. This movie truly fits that mold. What happened to Halliday and his regret over it was heartbreaking. Unfortunately I identify more with Halliday than Wade.
@@jedijones well wade is a complete goof and an empty character in the movie. They changed too much from the source material on the character development, probably due to the movie format. Hopefully they remake as a series at some point and follow the source material.
Saw the movie, then decided to read the book. I grew up playing the games referenced in the book - and I think Speilberg made the right choice on the three challenges. I don't think the challenges in the book would have appealed to a large audience and probably have been a snooze fest. On the other hand, I wish the loyalty center thread had been closer to the original. (I think changing who went into the loyalty center and how they got in and out, dumbed down the story a bit too much.)
agree 100% good point
What was the loyalty center like in the novel?
Oh, and what were the original 3 challenges?
@@Memelord1117 Wade is the one who goes to the loyalty center in the book
@@Memelord1117 I think the first challenge was Wade playing an arcade game, Joust, against a demi-lich from D&D, Then he had to reenact the movie War Games. The second challenge was to complete the game Zork on a planet based on the game, then win a game of Black Tiger from Edge Runner. And the final challenge was to beat the game Tempest and then reenact the movie Monty Python and The Holy Grail.
The challenges didn't need to be the same, but certainly could have been closer to the originals. Instead of playing "Joust" against Acererak, Wade could be transported into the game and actually joust riding a giant bird. Or just fight the archlich in the dungeon somehow. I was disappointed that there was no kind of dungeon crawling in the movie.
I Honestly loved the movie and wish they do another one.
They are planning on it.
Considering all the recognizable characters in the game are simply other players using skins of their favorite characters I can understand why they dont behave like the actual characters that we know. When you see Batman in Ready Player One you know its just somebody in their basement with VR goggles so we don't expect to see the dark night himself or behave in a certain way.
I think you’re right that many of Ready Player One’s references are just “thing exists“ and don’t try to reinvent or reimagine them in a meaningful way. The Iron Giant is a particularly notable example of that. But I disagree about The Shining sequence. I think it is a nice tribute to Spielberg’s friendship with Kubric that ties into the friendship between Halliday and his friend who helped him design The Oasis. Halliday’s biggest regret was losing his friend, and Spielberg’s allusions to Kubric offer a metacommentary on that
As i just said somewhere, it would have made zero sense for the Iron Giant to have compassion, when in the context of the movie all it was, was a skin. We don't become our avatars. I think a movie where all these characters got together would require an entirely different premise.
Absolutely hilarious.
This is literal how the internet exists. Thing exists how people wish them to exist.
Are we fucking logging into different chat VR rooms and telling people they're missing using the avatars they're using?
Or going and telling people they're playing games wrong? I highly fuckong doubt it
I read that Kubric and Spielberg had a major falling out because of Shining. Spielberg wanted to direct the movie, then wanted the movie to go in a different direction, and was upset when Kubric’s vision was such a smashing success. Spielberg said he didn’t like the movie at the time. So it kind of makes no sense to put it in. It’s not in the book.
@datasciY As apposed to the entire plot in the movie being played out not being how it was in the book?
But the Kubrik Spielberg thing is the issue?
@@TheLemonKiller The movie turned out the way it did because of the monumental nightmare of licensing everything. An authentic version would just never happen, or be so costly as to make it impractical to film.
It wasn’t supposed to be the iron giant, it was a classic anime mech. Which makes a lot more sense in the context than the iron giant did.
Except they called it the Iron Giant in the movie. (Just sayin...)
@@celticfox6712 I suspect what Julia is saying is that it was an anime mech in the novel.
If anyone owned a iron giant in the oasis, it would not be a tool to promote an anti gun message.
@@celticfox6712 yeah dumb ass it's just a skin to the players, that it. A cool property to own
The book is also chocked full of references to 80s culture, but they all seem to be more genuine references/homages to nerd culture many younger people won't know about. I felt encouraged to join in and learn about all of the references I hadn't heard of. On the other hand, more obscure references won't play as well for a more general audience, so I understand why they couldn't follow the book.
The movie was 100% true to the book. The difference between the book and the movie is actually explained in the books first chapter.
@@aarongallaway7005 100% accurate? 😂 you didn’t read the book
The thing that I think is important about the book is that the book has these characters interacting in a pop culture obsessed world, the pop culture icons are almost celebrities, you go to the Batman world to interact with Batman and to live out his adventures with him but you weren't Batman, at the end of the adventure you might get some of Batman's gear or his car and maybe you would even get a bat suit of your own but you still weren't Batman you were a character wearing Batman's stuff, can you end up as a character wearing Batman's stuff with a lightsaber flying around the universe in a Klingon bird of prey. And of course you would have gotten each of those from going to the respective zones for those fan bases and completing adventures and quests to unlock those items.
The fact that the movie just had all the characters other than the main characters just being pop culture characters I think missed the mark pretty significantly because again to me the point of playing in The Oasis was not to be Batman or even pretend you're Batman unless you are pretending to be Batman in the Batman experience area.
There's also the other things that I thought was really clever for what they did with the universe where it was a way to have snapshots of people's Memories by recreating their hometowns or their favorite hangout places. And the fact that it was being used as an educational tool with having the characters go to VR Recreations of like World War I to learn about things in a more engaging way
@@thebrianconran Cliff Notes? ;)
@@aarongallaway7005 it did change some of the events, there was no race in the book, and also the movie changed some plot point to make it more pg
Just my two cents, all of what you brought up near the end about the nostalgia and homage of the references is absolutely true, Iron Giant is indeed acting very different from how he is originally portrayed, among many others. However, I think that's exactly the point here. That's not THE Iron Giant, it's AN Iron Giant, a commission piece that is being piloted by H. (Or like, puppeted... controlled? Anyways) The point being that in all these scenarios these are pretty surface level homages because that's all they are in the world of Ready Player One and the Oasis. Parzivel may drive an awesome DeLorean Time Machine with some custom adjustments here and there, but that's not the Time Machine Marty Mcfly dives headfirst into time and time again. Gundam is fantastically realized and works more or less how it it established to, but it's not really the RX-78-2, it's just an awesome and functional robot that looks like it, Amuro never touched those controls. (If it even has controls? Was Daito just controlling it like H did with the Iron Giant?) Getting back on topic, your criticism is valid, and I agree with quite a few of your points, however in regards to the wild video game world these characters reside in, I think thematically it makes sense that as amazing as these toys are, they are not original nor do they share any true meaning with their real world counterparts. They may be "rare" or "unique" or even custom built like H with the Iron Giant, but as much as they can pull off they are just meant to function and look cool at the end of the day. Not just for the film and its narrative decisions, but for the characters owning and interacting with them as well. All that being said, still a great video, just wanted to share my thoughts on why H wasn't considering the lore of Iron Giant during a massive pop culture war lol. As amazing as these things are, especially during such an important and decisive battle, they are all just tools. Beloved, incredible, iconic tools; but still just tools. Absolutely loved this movie when it first came out, finding every reference I could took so much of my time, and re-watching it recently with a friend in Bigscreen via the Quest 2 was oh so deliciously ironic while providing a great time once again. I don't think I'll ever stop thinking about this movie, or watching it for that matter. It's not the deepest thing in the world but the attention to detail in every frame of every brilliantly realized reference as well as the amazing wish fulfillment of seeing it all, it will keep me coming back for a long time. Thank you coming to my TedTalk, you may now move on with your life. Have a good one! 👍👌🖐
This should have more likes. This is a good movie. The endless part of people who opine about the “uncharacteristic nature” of the character; while it seems they are defending them, comes across to me like the girl from IOI who knows the facts by mind and tries to win the game; failing to see the heart of the movie, in that the real players here are not the Iron Giant, Gundam or Kong... but the people living in the squalors, trying to make it in “the real world”.
While people will continue to disect the movie to its smallest details - on how this is not it, or this is not that, this comment thread will be akin to that movie theater you and your mate went to see and had a good time - the laughs, maybe a meal at a diner after, knowing full well, I too will have a life to go back to; my lover, my friends and a place I can call home, once I close this app.
This is a good movie. Overanalyzing it, not so good.
Ps: I love Disney’s Treaaure Planet too.
as someone who gets very little references , this was a family favourite which we all enjoyed watching together on the tv. It was fun and entertaining and memorable.
My problem with the movie is how much of the book was discarded, both in content and style/heart. A lot of the references in Ready Player one in the book actually tied back to Halliday and his personality. The references were obviously a love letter to the 80s and everything they stood for, but they also defined who Halliday was as a person. While some of the referenes were made for the audience/reader in specific, a lot of them were explaining the interests, the mind and the personality of who Halliday was.
You made a brief mention of how a scene was different in the book around the 5:00 mark in the video. Much of the book was like this. We missed Dungeon's and Dragons references, Zork, the perfect game of pacman, and so on. Many of the keys were different, and they all actually lead to a gate rather than the story being "Collect 3 items you win" story. Each of these were tied back to a moment in Halliday's life and showed meaning to why he liked them and enjoyed them.
Halliday at the end of the day wanted to share his love for the things he grew up with, the way his life was shaped and moulded around them, and where he was in life. He only wanted to pass his company on to someone who embodied and understood him and his love for everything. Think back to some of your favorite pieces of media through out your life, or anything you really enjoyed. I'm sure you can really remember where you were in life, and how you were feeling, and why they were important to you. Much of that was lost in the movie, and I feel the book captured it perfectly.
The book isn't perfect itself no, but the movie is far off from what the book achieved. I feel thats why it faded from the public. People liked it for the references that were ultimately just thrown in, and fans of the book moved on as it lost its meaning from what they remembered.
While there's suppose to be a second movie. I can be almost certain its also not going to live up to what was written in the book.
Spielberg tried to get as many of the references in the books as he could, but there were licensing and rights issues. So sadly changes had to be made. However, I still feel it’s a great adaptation to the book.
I also think that Ready Player Two (the sequel to the book) went back on a lot of the things that made the book good, so I have zero expectations for the second movie.
Took the words right out of my mouth
It's impossible to jam EVERYTHING from a book into 2 hours that's why a lot of things are missing in other book to movie adaptations like Harry Potter or The Hunger games. You can only get so close. Unless you wanna watch a (most likely) 12 hour long movie. Just be happy it even happened at all. Same thing goes for pretty much anything else turned into something else.
Exactly. The movie was a fun way to spend a couple of hours but it didn't make me feel anything, while the book was completely different in that regard. I wasn't alive in the 80s and didn't recognise 90% of the references in the book, but I felt Halliday's love and nostalgia and through that I connected with him as a person.
It doesn't disappear, it's in my heart 💜
Mine too. I love this movie and watch it again every so often.
corny
Same
Mine too
Same
I feel like part of the problem here is that you are looking at this movie through the lens of someone who cares and knows things about the properties in this movie. If you look at it from the point of view of your average player, these are just skins that look cool, nobody cares that the Iron Giant (which is a great movie btw) was anti-gun, to a gamer he looks cool and kicks ass. As a child of the 80s I loved all the pop references and after watching this and reading the comments I realize I NEED to read this book.
I think the problem with this movie is that it feels like the only point is "insert reference here." It's cool to see references, but it feels like the entire movie is built on that premise alone which is pretty shallow. It's like superhero movies that shove in more superheroes simply because they know fans will think "wow I know that character!" The challenges are also so simple that it's ridiculous to think that the millions of people playing this game didn't think about it sooner
@@inyrui it feels like a lot of "Insert this" but this movie had to make due with what it could use due to licensing. Going back to the Iron Giant, it was used as a substitute for Ultraman due to Licensing.
I agree with the lens thing. For someone to whom those references do not mean a whole lot, this movie is ok but certainly not great. And I don't think it has the makings of a movie for the masses in any day or age.
I do recommend the book, though I guess technically I didn't read it; I listened to the audiobook as read by Wil Wheaton. Phenomenal!
@@jdonvance I did both and I agree WW is amazing. Try ready player two. He reads that as well.
You completely misunderstood something. They're just a bunch of teenagers playing video games. Kong is just a cool obstacle, who cares about the deep meaning? 😂
This movie was awesome. I wish there would be a second movie
There's word around the internet that there might be
The second book wasn’t that great. There were, of course, many changes between the first book and the movie. But I think they would have to make a lot of changes to make a second movie interesting enough to be profitable.
Ready player two reportably in development
@@paulbigsby2387 what happened in the second book? How different was the 1st book vs movie??
To me it looked and felt like pure nostalgia baiting and riding.
It beats you with the nostialgia fists in your face every couple of seconds and screams "REMEMBER THAT? DO YOU LIKE IT? LIKE IT NOW!"
This was pure incompetence.
Did you not read the book at all? This is how it was in the original to; tons of pop culture stuff
@@Aves_1 that's also a flaw in the book it seems. Pop culture without actual deconstruction and analysis. You could swap out 99% of the characters for other random pop culture or original deigns without issue, because there's no depth
@@dannyboy4682 youre missing it as well. The references arent there to be those characters. They are there because gamers wanna look like their favorite characters in game, not to behave like them
J.J. Abrams is largely responsible for this line of thinking in the industry. Into Darkness and The Force Awakens paved the way for RP1 and all these movies and shows that expect praise for reminding us of something we like.
J.J Abrams is such a meh director. All he does is pander to nostalgia and Fanservice and it’s really irritating and frustrating at this point.
His only decent contribution to the world was Lost, and even that's being generous.
@@erubin100 Mission: Impossible III is good, though.
Very generous I'd say. However lost was a disaster in which many others Abramslike douchebags contributed.
@@HMF47 It's the worst Mission film. The only one I never wanted to watch a second time.
Don't necessarily love the whole movie and story but I can't deny the Gundam scene is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Didn't hurt that I'd recently gotten into gundam when the movie came out
The book has even more stuff referenced/used in the battle with MechaGodzilla(specifically identified as Kiryu from the Millennium series).
But a lot of those references/items are not in Warner Brothers wheelhouse, thus is one of the reasons why Iron Giant is there.
@@dukeofluns I remember, I read the book before the movie
The movie is just fun, it's not supposed to challenge your views or change your life, it's just fun to watch
@@LuisSierra42 I can agree with that
I like how it did the same move on Mechagodzilla as the finishing move on the Big Zam
I'm sorry, I loved this movie and all the nostalgia in it. The Shinning reference was a great twist. Things aren't always what they seem. I've watched this movie a few times and I will watch it again!
I think of this movie as an 8-year old's battlefield. He may not care what the symbolism of The Iron Giant or King Kong. For him to get an army of hundreds of pop culture icons is a dream come true. Yes it could have gone better, but it isn't bad by any means. I love this movie.
I feel like this is the movie Mark Zuckerberg watched when he began his path on being obsessed with the metaverse lol. Jokes aside though I was so sucked into this movie that to me it was believable that all these ips would be in the game, and didn't feel like a nostalgia cash grab at all. I mean, look at the "metaverses" that we have now. Things like roblox and fortnite have whole worlds dedicated to different brands and ips, and in games like Garry's mod people constantly use avatars from different ips. I think that if there was a metaverse this advanced there would be a ton of things that play on your nostalgia so they can keep you in the meta and keep advertising to you. So seeing tracer and masterchief on screen was just cool. seemed like something that would actually happen and there was no reason to suspend my disbelief.
I read the book a long time ago, and I thought it was amazing. You can see that Ernest Cline (the author) really cared about the references that he placed in, and made them work in the context of the book. When I heard about a movie adaptation, I was a bit worried, because most of the scenes in the book worked better in book format. It's a decent adaptation, but it lacks the soul that the original book had in exchange for more mindless pop culture references.
That's often the case with books, the limitations are purely what the writer can convey to the reader. It's one of the reasons why Kubrick should have ended 2001 earlier than he did as that last sequence makes basically no sense without having read the book. Even if you have read the book, it still makes little sense. I respect that he tried anyways, but it does do a bunch of damage to the story he was telling to shoe horn that in. In general, books that focus more on action and dialog are more likely to work as movies without having to extensively rewrite them. That's not to say that books that are more about characters thinking can't work as movies, but it does require a lot more effort to figure out how to turn that into something that shows up on camera.
All the things in the book-video games, tv shows, and movies- are in the movie somewhere if you look for them.
Suprised that he didn't mention that Space Jam: A New Legacy was Ready Player One 2.0 but with Warner Bros. characters, which was the influence of the platform fighter Multiversus.
the shining sequence is more spielberg paying respect to one of his favorite film makers imo
I don't think the show is forgettable, It actually is one of the inspirations behind on of my sci-fi worlds I've been creating, the other half of the inspiration if the Mortality Doctrine by James Dashner who made Maze Runner, it has a similar concept which I've been enjoying.
I actually loved Ready Player One ever since it came out and still do
That’s fair. I have a similar relationship with the Angelina Jolie Tomb Raider movies. Are they objectively masterpieces? Uhhhh, probably not. Will I rewatch them and have a great time every time? Yes, absolutely. 😁
@@Pajali I absolutely love the first Tomb Raider. Never understood the criticism of it. It's got a fantastic energy to it.
The books are far better. The characters are actual people, the Oasis is done far better, and books are unique. They are very grounded and are very brutal, mentally and physically on the characters.
I still watch the movie regularly, and I'm active in the subreddit.
I don't think it's disappeared at all.
I watched it in theaters with my dad(a man who grew up in the 70s and 80s), and we both enjoyed it thoroughly... and forgot it thoroughly. Everything you said in this video is absolutely true, nostalgic cues for the sake of nostalgic cues get stale and overused after a while if not done in taste.
And it's absolutely wild to think so many of these references were originally done by Spielberg himself, its like some sort of cinema inception. So the uninspired nature of these allusions makes sense, but it doesn't make it any less intriguing to think how the man who made the original references is making a movie referring to them.
If anybody has played VRChat, it's the same thing: people using other characters/avatars to represent themselves, and do whatever they want in whatever worlds they can find. That's what I think ReadyPlayerOne did an excellent job with
I've seen this argument made before. Frankly, I don't remember if the book was much better since I felt like many of the pop culture references were still rather shallow, often describing what the various properties were rather than why Halliday appreciated them and why he was right to have valued them. One issue I had with the movie versus the book was the pool of references. The book's collection of references is relatively limited, but that is because Ernest Cline built a fictional world based on his own nerdy Gen-X nostalgia, which is why the book resonated so much with other Gen-X nerds. The movie had a much wider pool of references to appease Spielberg's own Baby Boomer nostalgia, to pander to the expected MIllennial and Gen-Z audience, and to nod to the production companies' other valuable properties. This broader pool of references diluted the film. Additionally, the Shining sequence, in particular, makes no sense, as Halliday would have been too young to have seen the movie in its original theatrical run if he were as old in the film as he is in the book.
The book wasn't very good IMO. Basically lots of nostalgia packed together.
Ehh personally I’d rather have a wider timescale of references, that’s more realistic and you could pick stuff that actually fits better than just every cultural icon from a short period in the 80’s. The movie didn’t pull it off well but that’s for different reasons. Plus The Shining is like one of the most well known movies of all time, there’s no reason he had to have seen it in theaters to enjoy it
I am a Gen-x who tries to show my kids things I liked when I was their age. Usually they don't care :-). But I didn't care either when I was their age: movies and books my parents used to like when they were young seemed super outdated to me. This obsession with nostalgia we had in the movie doesn''t really exist among young adults. Usually they are busy creating and worshipping their own subculture.
@@damunzy but the sequel’s ending plotwist tho…
@@seresimarta4436 Not totally true. In the 1980s, I liked a lot of 1950s and 1960s music, and watched older shows from the 1950s and 1960s on TV like Gilligan's Island and Get Smart. Certainly some Disney cartoons and movies like Willy Wonka were still popular in the 1980s. When I read comic books, I definitely had an interest in the older comics with the first appearances of Spider-Man, Batman, etc. We know kids today still love stuff like Star Wars. Also, the movie tries to explain some of the '80s obsession with Halliday's quest. The kids are trying to learn about the old stuff because it will help them in the quest. Although Wade knew about Atari Adventure, it definitely seemed like he knew because he had researched Atari games to help solve Halliday's riddles.
The movie removed all the study of the source references and just threw in the references as fast and as much as they could while making the entire movie a race story. The original book actually breathes and has a lot more depth and reverence for its member-berries.
This is one of those movies I wanted to like SO much more than I did. You really nailed how & why it was such a missed opportunity.
🙏 With great respect , the moral story of Ready Player One is to defend the freedom to use the internet from being charge by Mega Tech with heartless business people! Not much Studios & Directors can rendered this movie as Enjoyable to Watch as Steven Spielberg & his Studios ... 🌷🌿🌏💜🕊
This is so true. A big Hollywood production that protests against microtransactions and advertising in video games! That is such an unexpected cause for them to take up, and a good one.
As someone who read the book initially, I had high hopes for the movie, not crazy expectations as we know every movie adaptation of a book never quite hits right with few exceptions. After reading the book the only thing I could think of was "this needs to be a movie" and when I saw Spielberg was behind the direction I became hopeful. When I first saw the movie I didn't hate it, and still don't, there are aspects of the movie that truly capture what was happening in my head as I was reading the book, but overall the movie doesn't have anywhere near the same magic the book was able to encapsulate. I'm sure others who read the book can agree with me but overall the movie didn't have anywhere near the magic the book had. Not a bad movie, but the book was too incredible.
the movie stripped the heart and soul out of the book and just made it a race film.
@@justmemememe3354 Yeah fact's, can't disagree with that. Reading the book - I couldn't put it down, watching the movie - I couldn't wait til the end lmao
The movie does as much as the book does. Neither go deep into understanding or deconstructing any og character. Neither are a homage and that's fine. It is a nostalgia trip which relies mostly on name dropping them and losely tying it to situations. Spielberg went out of his way to avoid using as many references to him as there were in the book which was full of them. This was fun movie. End of story.
I thought they did a great job and did not share any of the criticisms this guy has
I really liked this movie, it was a shame it wasn't a bigger hit.
it felt like a video game movie, and all those cameos felt as if they were just souless cgi
@@greenrobot5 Good, it WAS a video game movie. One that understands and loves video games.
this dude wants to get to know the soul of king kong with 45 seconds of screen time in a movie that's about something else
As a 71 year old flower child of the 60s, I was able to "buckle up " and just enjoy the ride and take the references I knew about in stride. Never having been a gamer I could just go with it and not have to fret over the cultural references I've missed. I enjoyed it immensely
They turned the Iron Giant, a symbol of pacifism, into a war machine.
Yeah, Spielberg had no idea what they symbols he was scooping up meant.
There’s absolutely no way that someone along the way didn’t bring this up with Spielberg. Who knows exactly what he was intending it to mean but like it’s so blatant clearly a bunch of people on the production were aware.
I agree. He probably just didn't care.
Steven could only do so much with such shallow source material. He's a filmmaker, not a miracle worker.
Spielberg is much shallower than you think. I have read the actual book. It is way better than the film - and it does not contain most of the vapid cultural references crammed into the film for no good reason, other than nostalgia-baiting.
@@neuro.weaver exactly - - the hype for the movie came from those who enjoyed the book. What wound up on screen lost that.
This is exactly why you need a Blu-ray Disc of all the good movies you love
on-demand streaming services pulling material off of their catalog (even when you bought it) is not what this video is about.
In general, I'd personally recommend DVD as you can store a ton of them on an affordable HDD. The main exception I personally have to that is for movies like this that are so jam packed with detail that you really need the extra pixels. Most of the time, you're better off just sitting a few feet further back.
@@CYDAmity Which is bad enough, but we're at a point where they can effectively edit in and out elements from those movies without really saying anything. Then there's things where they edit out scenes because they're creepy af. James Bond's For Your Eyes Only is a good example. They edited out much of the scene where he goes to the jailbait figure skaters room and she's barely wearing any clothes and throws herself at him. They added the rest of the hockey fight scene. It was a good decision as that's how it should have been over 40 years ago when it was screened, but it is as lightly different movie as a result. (The hotel scene was rather gratuitous as the film had already rather explicitly stated that he wasn't comfortable with her advances and she had the hots for him, but the hockey scene was inexplicable as much of it had been cut)
Other instances may or may not be so lucky as to serve the story. Expect more product placements to be edited in and new scenes that weren't shot for a reason to be later added.
Filmmakers like Spielberg are in a very short supply nowadays
He’s an awesome director
Imo, just because a lot of his work was in the source, I don’t think he was the right choice for the movie. It’s own language would have a been a nice change. Like most book adaptations tho it completely missed the mark I think
Even Spielberg!
Spielberg is a goblin
@@meowphasa I can bet you that no other director would have made a better adaptation
Saw this in IMAX 3D and it was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve had in a theater but that’s all due to its visuals
It's evident that when filmmakers truly respect and understand a character, they leverage that character's potential to their advantage in the film. For example, the utilization of the Iron Giant in "Ready Player One" could have been more impactful. Ideally, the Iron Giant would initially emerge as an imposing force on the adversaries' side, serving as a formidable 'power-up'. This would set the stage for an epic clash, during which the protagonists manage to incapacitate the Iron Giant. Upon its reawakening, we could have seen a transformative moment where the familiar, beloved Iron Giant emerges, aiding the good guys or, at the very least, ceases to fight against them. This approach would not only have added layers to the narrative, but also honored the essence of the character we know from the original "The Iron Giant".
These fantastic bite sized essays feel like an introduction to a much larger discussion. Ever considered longer format content, to dive deeper into these topics? Love your work, thanks for the reflective inspiration.
I really enjoyed this movie because it represents to me a highly possible future we’re the Internet will evolve into a virtual reality world where everyone will participate, whether for work or personal enjoyment to live out their fantasies. The inclusion of popular icons to me only represents the actual desire of those who logged on to be who they fantasize about being.
The fact that we got even as much as we did is a minor miracle. The number of properties mentioned in the book are rather staggering. The only way to have filmed it the way it was written would be to get more than a dozen IP holders to agree to work together or license their properties for the making of said movie. So, they worked with the properties they could and replaced what they couldn't. The book is definitely better thematically, which tends to be the case in movie adaptations.
I also heard that Spielberg toned down references to his own movies considerably. In the book, it was more explicit.
@@StefanBoeykens He did, the writers had to sneak a gremlin in somewhere without him knowing. Spielberg felt, rightly or wrongly, that he would look egomaniacal if he filled RP1 with Spielberg movie references. Frankly, I think the movie is a near failure for me when it comes to putting in references I care about. But I didn't care at all because I loved the original characters, the plot, the futuristic vision for games, the themes of friendship and moderation. The movie was not at all about its "references" for me.
@@jedijones It's fun with all the references, but the main story arc is not that inventive. The puzzles in the book were also of a very different nature than in the movie. What annoyed me in the book was the over the top adoration of the creator Halliday and the fact that most puzzles were solved through an exceptional game performance. That was largely avoided in the movie, but we got the fairly traditional kid against corporation battle... though that is not only the fault of the movie.
@@StefanBoeykens Well, an action movie tends to have the good guys fighting terrorists, Nazis or thieves. Fighting a traditional villain is not a dealbreaker for a movie.
It's a crime Ready Player 2 hasn't been made yet!
Search it up
I wasn’t particularly happy with the breakdown of this movie in the video, but I’m very happy the overall opposite support by everyone in the comments. This was a great movie!
Imma say what I've said before, ready player one should've been a TV show
Nah. The writers likely would have started injecting politics like every other writers room that has too many hours of content to produce.
This story couldn’t have gone much further. Maybe mini series at best...
Also production value would have been shot big time which will affect the visuals if it was a TV Series
I love Ready Player One, 10/10. I love all of Spielberg’s scifi films.
@@seanthegrizz3983 Haha, I understand. It all depends on what you care about in a movie.
It has nothing to say and what it does have to say is really unsettling: don't worry if reality is a dystopian nightmare because you can always escape into a fictional realm while reality crumbles.
Also the protagonist your meant to route for is some weired incel gatekeeping insecure arshole with no redeeming qualities you would think you were meant to route against
I disagree, one of today's biggest problems, is how woke politics is making all to aware with real world problems. There's nothing wrong with a little escapism.
All of the important symbolism in Ready Player One relates to Kubrick and a couple of other directors who are referenced early in the film. That's how you sort out what's important to the subtext and what isn't, and that's why The Shining was featured along with "42" aka "the answer ultimate" which is an important clue in The Shining. First example - Kong in the race sequences. Kong, like Major Kong in Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove represents lust, which is one of the things holding Wade back at the beginning of the story.
The Batman reference isn't really a Batman reference - it's a Tim Burton reference. When you see Pee-wee's bike just inside the doorway of Aech's garage after Kong stops Z and Art3mis, you're supposed to put those references together subliminally to understand that Wade is a greedy little horn-dog - a man child like Pee-wee, which is why Art3mis doesn't think much of him at that point in the film. The T-Rex from Jurassic Park, the other big obstacle in the race, represents greed, since greed is the sin that drives the plot in that film.
Many of the other Kubrick references in Ready Player One are shape based, like the hexagon and cube, and you really have to know Kubrick's pattern of symbolism to recognize them, but some of the others are fairly straight forward allusions, like the spinning house we see just after Wade enters the OASIS for the first time - a pretty good hint at what the three keys represent. ;)
Spielberg: "Remember that cool movie I made?"
Audience: "Yes, but you sure don't."
I absolutely loved Ready Player One. It’s one of my favorite movies. 👌🏻👌🏻🙌🏻
Well you’re a huge geek then
It was my favorite Spielberg movie since 1989's Indiana Jones flick.
The movie is nothing like the book. The book is phenomenal.
I watched the movie with my girlfriend, she found it cool and read the book
After reading she said "it seems like the movie was made by the IOI guys" 😆😆😆
I love how, halfway through the video, you learned how to pronounce "homage". LOL!
i disagree with you. the iron giant was used as a tool of resistance against a force that would enslave the oasis, and thus was very much like it's original purpose
I actually liked this movie. Sure it didn't give justice to some of those reference materials, but I think you're forgetting that this virtual world of theirs was something the developer and the players created for themselves. If I am to include astroboy in my fictional virtual world, I don't really have to give it the same backstory and character, do I? Pretty much how some details about the icons used in the movie didn't necessarily follow the background of each. I think this is taking it way seriously. I'm just saying, for me, it served it's purpose good enough.
I was a massive fan of the book and ended up watching the movie in theater, only later to be gifted a shirt and DVD of the movie. So, while it has dissapeared from the public's mind, it is constantly at the back of mine.
I agree with almost all of what you're saying but I still love this film !
Dude the Iron Giant being a weapon to fight Meca-Godzilla is a perfect example of both chars.. Mans diabolical war machine created to kill the living version going against a war machine turned peaceful giant nails it.
Your opening comments killed my soul. Gosh. I loved the movie lol
I liked it. Preferred it to Alita. It was low impact though. I can't remember much about it. Maybe the book leaves more of an impression on those that read it.
i remember this film it was pretty awesome and giving some nostalgia from other pop culture 90s and 80s genre and Video games too Steven Spielberg film is a masterpiece and it doesn't need a sequel actually because if they're gonna ruined what's movie is it but I would always rewatch this film anytime I would like.
I see where you're coming from and it highlighted something for me - I loved the film, but it's a popcorn flick. Now I have thought more about it the film stripped out a lot of the non-nostalgia plot elements - Wade's physical journey, his apartment and most of the IOI infiltration plot. The oasis was given a lot more structure in the book too, including the financially limited ability to explore it. There was far more on how it impacted society and how society adapted to use VR with the school sequences etc.
I understand the switch of the challenges, but the puzzles felt easily achieved in the film and a definite struggle in the books - both in working out what the challenges are and in the solving.
Several characters felt watered down too... but overall it probably needed multi-film or series length room to flesh out the plot and character stories.
honestly i still love this movie. to me the little cultural nods are just there for fun and it would have cost too much time to deconstruct even a few of the characters who weren't directly relevant to the plot.
also i do truly love that exchange at the end where wade asks the halliday ai/avatar if halliday is really dead. i think the implication is that the soul of halliday lives on in the thing he's created. just imagine how much that thought must have resonated with an artist like speilberg.
Yeah, and it has a parallel to the Adventure game where the creator embedded his name in it so he would be inside the game forever, in a way.
wait... the movie is only 4 years old?
holy crap...
usually I'm shocked to hear how much older something is than I thought, but this time around I'm shocked that this movie isn't already 10 years old... it feels way older to me...
Love this movie, still watch it quite often
I personally loved watching "Ready Player One"! I agree with you on the fact that it's not the best representation of some of the properties, but it works as a one off. Peace and love y'all 🤟
I think you're reading wayyy too much into this.. I really liked, and often rewatch, Ready player one. In its world it makes perfect sense..
This movie was incredible, gave me so much happiness when I watched it.
I get what you’re saying but everyone watched Godzilla and iron giant thinking we were gonna see them f*^% shit up and we wondered what they’d look like if they had. I thought it was a great movie as long as you just take it for what it is. A nostalgia inducing action movie with amazing graphics and a decent storyline. 🤷♂️
I actually liked this movie. Bought it from RedBox even.
However I would argue it has been forgotten largely because it paints a very dark picture to the future of humanity that basically VR will lower our real life standards and that we will behave in cyber in a way that is worse than real life. Not exactly a happy ending although people working together beat the corporations in the movie but yeah some of it was very random.
You make an excellent point. Futuristic dystopian sci-fi has a very bad track record at the box office. Blade Runner bombed on release. Spielberg didn't have a huge hit with Minority Report either. Strange Days flopped badly with another virtual reality plot. Matrix was a rare hit in the genre, but its sequels faded away fast.
@@jedijones There were no Matrix sequels other than the Animatrix. I refuse to go looking to see if they did a follow up to any of that.
Those other films though over time have become classics, whereas a lot of people forgot this movie was even made and I don't see any reason for that to change any time soon.
Such a fun movie. Loved it.
Great video, but I don’t agree. This movie brought us nostalgia in a way that made us smile and took us back to the memories we had of those properties. Idk how old you are but it was balanced and enjoyable. Sometimes I think when people critique things they sometimes go too deep. Enjoyable movie all around.
This movie was created as a love letter to the gamers who have been here from the start and any open minded person along the way. Needing any sort of explanation to any Cameo characters sorta eliminates the point of the virtual world they all enter into everyday.
Basically, adapting a book into a movie is going to disappoint people. This has happened since motion pictures began.
You couldn't be more Wrong with this review. This entire Movie is Exciting & Demo worthy!
Agree 💯
It's based off of actual people playing the characters in a video game and not based off of the characters themselves, that's why it works! Think of it as GTA but modded, people do that all the time with characters and use them in ways the actual character would never be portrayed, same thing when it comes to basics.
Exactly- it’s movie about a VR world where you can do anything thus references in the Oasis are purposely over the top because that’s the kind of stuff players in a game do to up the fun factor. Like when you try to fly the Dodo plane in GTA, it’s a goof on purpose. The guy ripping the movie doesn’t get the joke. I thought it was brilliant to have all these crazy throwback things mixed up and totally out of context.
@@johnmoore3504 Yeah, judging by the comments here, the OP is just about the only one who didn't understand the point of the movie. He's probably just trying to rile up the interwebs for clickbait.
Look, I understand that the challenges needed to be changed, because none of them really adapted well to a movie and wouldn't be fun to watch at all, so I was really behind that (also keeps the experience fresh for someone who read the book) but where I disagree is the changes to the story that happened. While I understand the need to cut some things down because of sheer length and I guess some things don't really work out the same on screen I guess, some things have been cut that I do miss. And I am not really that happy with how they changed that first challenge because here everyone knew where it took place and had an idea that something needed to be done there, they just didn't get what the right course of action would be, while in the original nearly no one even had an idea what to do or where to begin looking.
I still enjoyed it a lot btw, just missed some things.
Every single movie can be improved upon. The problem when you've read the book first is that you have another copy of the story sitting right there in plain view to compare it to. It's a giant handicap to a movie. I'm sure some guy could do a rewrite of the plot of Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark that you would like better too. The only difference is you haven't read that potential rewrite yet when you watch those movies. It's only fair to NOT hold the existence of a book against a movie, and to watch the movie as if you never knew the book existed, and to not make any attempts to compare the two. The movie needs to be judged on its own merits.
I love this movie. All the nostalgic references made my heart happy, as I was instantly transported to my childhood. I watch it every time it plays on T.V.
You really overthought this movie dude. Its a nostalgic loveletter. Just enjoy it.
About the Iron Giant part, in the book it was originally supposed to be the Japanese superhero Ultraman that got used. But Tsuburaya Productions, the company who own Ultraman series, got a legal battle with UM Corporation around that time so it was hard to include the character. Tsuburaya eventually wins but it was too late to include Ultraman in the movie.
Although by watching your video, I think they're gonna missing the point of Ultraman character too if he got included.
In regards to the iron giant. It doesn’t need to be a homage to the character because it isn’t the iron giant. Its someone playing as the iron giant.
Ready Player one was pure cotton candy. It was a hit of sugar that vanished into nothingness almost as soon as the taste hit.
That's not how it works. The Marvel movies are big in the culture and they absolutely freaking suck compared to Ready Player One. The culture is not an accurate measure of quality AT ALL.
@@jedijones
The Marvel movies are not great movies. But compared to Ready Player One they could pass for great.
@@somerotter You're not as funny as you think you are.
@@jedijones
I didn’t say anything funny. Marvel movies are mostly mediocre. Ready Player One is actively bad.
@@somerotter RP1 is one of the most entertaining movies I've seen in the last 20 years.
The whole movie could be summed up in the words "hey, remember this?" That is NOT enough to keep a movie in peoples' memory banks
For real, this movie is exactly the same genre as Wreck It Ralph, Space Jam 2, and the Emoji movie - a character journeys through various intellectual properties and you’re supposed to like it because “hey, didn’t you like those IPs too?”. The only difference is that Wreck It Ralph actually paid attention to its plot and characters.
I think you overlook one big factor here - this is absolutely how real life players would use characters in a game. Taking your Iron Giant example, normal people/fans would either 1) not understand the deeper meaning of what he stood for, 2) not care what he stood for and just want to play as him b/c they like him, or 3) intentionally use him in a completely flipped around manner b/c that, in itself, is a statement.
Plus I don't agree that it's slipped from public consciousness. I personally think about this movie anytime I see someone wearing a VR headset.
Ready Player One is basically a modern 80s movie. It takes all the tropes from a classic 80s film and modernizes them with its references and visuals. It was dumb, but I loved it so much.
Admittedly Spielberg didn’t have much to work with considering the source material 😅
The problem when you try to shove what could have possibly been three movies into one.
If even one movie is lacking substance, how could you make three?
@@mmorkinism The substance lack is not from lack of material, but lack of usage of it.