Ready Player One

Started by wilder, July 22, 2017, 04:41:00 PM

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Alethia

I fucking loved this. Saw it in 70mm Thursday night at the Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn. Can't wait to check it out in IMAX 3D. Much to my relief, at no point did I find this to be the soulless nostalgia-fest many people seem to be describing, the same people who spew nothing but effusive praise for something like "Stranger Things" (speaking of soulless nostalgia) which is decidedly not my cup of tea. It's chock-full of references, sure, but that's the world of the film, and it rarely pauses to leer or wink or even take a breath (not that I needed it to)...everything feels organically and emotionally integrated, unlike so much other ostensibly like-minded fare drowning the box-office and drawing puzzling amounts of critical praise....  and a few of the cornier plot moments (mostly the Corporate Baddies material) had a tongue-in-cheek quality that I found, well, winning in that grand old Spielbergian "suburban underdogs against the system" (as aptly described by Alexandro before me) stuff. And Mark Rylance is predictably brilliant.

So yeah, loved it.

samsong

i'm not going to shit on anyone's enjoyment of this movie, but i don't really understand the praise for rylance.  he's playing a slightly more functional version of garth algar.

Alethia

Quote from: samsong on April 02, 2018, 06:47:16 PM
he's playing a slightly more functional version of garth algar.

Okay, while I don't think that's giving it enough credit, that made me laugh out loud.

Drenk

Wow. That was painfully bad to watch. I'm with you, Samsong. Let's do a clan or whatever and we'll make out on Tuesdays.
Ascension.

Alethia

Saw this again, this time in IMAX 3D and enjoyed it even more. Not getting the hate for this. It's such a blast.

Drenk

There is this great article about the book: https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17250892/ready-player-one-book-facebook-internet-dystopia.

And Spielberg couldn't save that material. It's too bad. It's the delusional fantasy of a fanboy. It's about nothing real, not even about the delusion. It's only a product of that delusion.

Some quotes...

QuoteIts story imagines the future by superimposing it on the past — specifically, on its author's childhood — and is mired in the utopian misconceptions that defined the childhood of the internet as well. As the online world has moved into something more like middle age, the notion that the anonymous, unaccountable freedom of the web is a panacea for prejudice seems hopelessly outdated. That didn't stop Cline, or many of the online-world architects that were his contemporaries, from insisting that the liberties of the internet would be both inevitable and universal.

QuoteThere is no sign of these dangers in the text of Ready Player One; while the world outside of the OASIS is falling apart, the virtual world remains — yup — an oasis, a utopian expanse where anything is possible and everyone is emancipated by their online presence. The digital landscape Ready Player One envisions is centrally rooted in VR, which was lauded in the '80s as the quintessential technology of the future, but which has panned out to be something much more marginal. But no matter: the book's obsession with the past is so fundamental and inescapable that the wish-dream of the '80s is the only future it can imagine, in form and ideology. "This is the OASIS," Wade Watts says of his online world in a text chat with his love object. "We exist as nothing but raw personality here."

This is, to put it lightly, not how the internet worked out. Rather than liberating people from abuse and marginalization, online platforms have become tools for amplifying existing social inequality and harassment in unprecedented ways. We need look only at abuse campaigns like Gamergate, and the painful realities of harassment on social media like Twitter and Facebook, to find ample evidence of how incredibly untrue these visions of the future were, and are.

QuoteThis is the narcissistic drive behind the very worst elements of both the internet and the gaming world: not only to seek out things they like and enjoy, but to ensure that only things they like and enjoy can exist. This contest is portrayed, somehow, as a cool, fun thing, and not a rich dude smothering the development of newer and more vital culture because he really liked Space Invaders and The Last Starfighter.

QuoteThis apparent anti-corporate stance resonates oddly with Wade's total devotion to media that is made, by and large, by corporations, and his consistent deification of Halliday and his company, GSS. Ready Player One ends (spoiler!) with Wade winning the contest, the fortune, and control of the OASIS, passing the scepter of its corporate monarchy from Halliday to his most obsessed fan, which solves everything in a way that can only be described as Phase 2 of the Underpants Gnomes business plan.

QuoteAbout halfway through Ready Player One, Wade reveals his OASIS password: "No one in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful," a reference to a 1987 song by They Might Be Giants. It is a strange, contrary sentiment to endorse in the context of a fantasy about getting exactly what you want: the girl, the money, the world.

Ascension.

tpfkabi

I have opened myself up to going to a lot more popcorn movies in the last couple years - basically post The Force Awakens when I found a theater pretty close that has $6 3D matinees. The trailers didn't entice me much, but it's Spielberg. I had fun with it. I think I generally bump up my score a point or so any time I see it in 3D, so who knows if it will change when I see it later in 2D. The 3D was particular cool during one sequence. There was nothing in the advertising that told they were going there. If they would have teased it, I think the box office would have been a little bigger. :

SPOILERS

The entire sequence in The Shining - inside Kubrick's movie - was incredible. If you see this in 3D you actually get "splashed" by the elevator blood from The Shining! Insane. They do the thing where it appears water/blood splashes on the lens, so in 3D it's the closest you can get to being in/with the elevator blood.
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

pete

"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

Robyn


Alethia

^^ THANK YOU!

Been defending this movie to the proverbial death as of late.