Ready Player One (Spielberg)

[megladon8]

I could see the constant pop culture references getting tiresome really quick.

[transmogrifier]

Not feeling it.

[megladon8]

Looks like it was written by the Family Guy writing staff.

References = quality writing

[number8]

[Morris Schæffer]

Wrong thread. That looks like a movie which exists.

[Irish]

I don't see a substantive difference between what "Ready Player One" might attempt and what the "The Lego Movie" (another Warners property!) and something like "Stranger Things" already did -- and people loved that shit.

Anyway, I'm mildly curious how they're gonna squeeze in the poor ol' Iron Giant (another Warners property!) from 1999 into a story that fetishizes that 1980s.

[Dead & Messed Up]

In fairness, I think there's a lot going on under the hood in The Lego Movie, to the point that its references are more little side-goofs, whereas this looks like the totality of the premise. And as for Stranger Things... boy, that fucking show. That's a whole different can of worms (or maybe not). But you're right, in that people did love both, nostalgia was a factor, and that seems to be the reason so many are excited for the film. I'm just worried because people have started posting excerpts from Cline's book on Facebook and Twitter, and it's so... so... bad. Even as someone who enjoys much of the 'Berg's recent output (TinTin, Lincoln, Bridge of Spies), this looks awkward and forced.

[Morris Schæffer]

Found out that John Williams isn't scoring this. And perhaps it's fitting since we saw the Delorean, but it's Alan Silvestri himself.

[number8]

I'm sure the movie will swap the references around in accordance to copyrights and Spielberg's own taste, but the book did not stop its fetishization at the '80s.

When it came to my research, I never took any shortcuts. Over the past five years, I'd worked my way down the entire recommended gunter reading list. Douglas Adams. Kurt Vonnegut. Neal Stephenson. Richard K. Morgan. Stephen King. Orson Scott Card. Terry Pratchett. Terry Brooks. Bester, Bradbury, Haldeman, Heinlein, Tolkien, Vance, Gibson, Gaiman, Sterling, Moorcock, Scalzi, Zelazny. I read every novel by every single one of Halliday's favorite authors.

And I didn't stop there.

I also watched every single film he referenced in the Almanac. If it was one of Halliday's favorites, like WarGames, Ghostbusters, Real Genius, Better Off Dead, or Revenge of the Nerds, I rewatched it until I knew every scene by heart.

I devoured each of what Halliday referred to as "The Holy Trilogies": Star Wars (original and prequel trilogies, in that order), Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, Mad Max, Back to the Future, and Indiana Jones. (Halliday once said that he preferred to pretend the other Indiana Jones films, from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull onward, didn't exist. I tended to agree.)

I also absorbed the complete filmographies of each of his favorite directors. Cameron, Gilliam, Jackson, Fincher, Kubrick, Lucas, Spielberg, Del Toro, Tarantino. And, of course, Kevin Smith.

I spent three months studying every John Hughes teen movie and memorizing all the key lines of dialogue. Only the meek get pinched. The bold survive.

You could say I covered all the bases.

I studied Monty Python. And not just Holy Grail, either. Every single one of their films, albums, and books, and every episode of the original BBC series. (Including those two "lost" episodes they did for German television.)

I wasn't going to cut any corners.

I wasn't going to miss something obvious.

Somewhere along the way, I started to go overboard.

I may, in fact, have started to go a little insane.

I watched every episode of The Greatest American Hero, Airwolf, The A-Team, Knight Rider, Misfits of Science, and The Muppet Show.

What about The Simpsons, you ask?

I knew more about Springfield than I knew about my own city.

Star Trek? Oh, I did my homework. TOS, TNG, DS9. Even Voyager and Enterprise. I watched them all in chronological order. The movies, too. Phasers locked on target.

I gave myself a crash course in '80s Saturday-morning cartoons.

I learned the name of every last goddamn Gobot and Transformer.

Land of the Lost, Thundarr the Barbarian, He-Man, Schoolhouse Rock!, G.I. Joe - I knew them all. Because knowing is half the battle.

Who was my friend, when things got rough? H.R. Pufnstuf.

Japan? Did I cover Japan?

Yes. Yes indeed. Anime and live-action. Godzilla, Gamera, Star Blazers, The Space Giants, and G-Force. Go, Speed Racer, Go.

I wasn't some dilettante.

I wasn't screwing around.

I memorized every last Bill Hicks stand-up routine.

Music? Well, covering all the music wasn't easy.

It took some time.

The '80s was a long decade (ten whole years), and Halliday didn't seem to have had very discerning taste. He listened to everything. So I did too. Pop, rock, new wave, punk, heavy metal. From the Police to Journey to R.E.M. to the Clash. I tackled it all.

I burned through the entire They Might Be Giants discography in under two weeks. Devo took a little longer.

I watched a lot of YouTube videos of cute geeky girls playing '80s cover tunes on ukuleles. Technically, this wasn't part of my research, but I had a serious cute-geeky-girls-playing-ukuleles fetish that I can neither explain nor defend.

There's been a proposal ever since the book came out that Ernest Cline meant for it to be a shameful criticism of nerd culture, but I'm more on the side that the dude was 100% earnest with it.

[transmogrifier]

Is that from the book? That's brutal.

[number8]

Yes, that's 3 consecutive pages in the book. There are even worse parts, too. It's really, really, really terribly written.

[D_Davis]

The "Holy Grail of Pop Culture?"

GAG!

The book was a series of name drops and oh-look-what-trivia-I-know moments loosely stitched together with a plot found in many dozens of better SF novels.

[D_Davis]

RPO is basically a long introduction post on a geek-culture internet forum in which the OP tries to impress a bunch of people he or she doesn't know with a bunch of information that could easily be learned on any number of wikis, in novel form.

[D_Davis]

I don't see a substantive difference between what "Ready Player One" might attempt and what the "The Lego Movie" (another Warners property!) and something like "Stranger Things" already did -- and people loved that shit.

Anyway, I'm mildly curious how they're gonna squeeze in the poor ol' Iron Giant (another Warners property!) from 1999 into a story that fetishizes that 1980s.

Stranger Things uses pastiche and nostalgia to tell a good story and create a certain sense of atmosphere in a certain era. Its appropriating nostalgia to create something bigger than itself. RPO is a list of references and name drops wrapped up in a poorly told story, in which the lists and name drops do nothing to add to anything about it.

It's all about the execution, really.

Stranger Things is how to do it right,

[Dead & Messed Up]

Gang, he knows all about The Simpsons, so he's pretty legit.

[D_Davis]

Gang, he knows all about The Simpsons, so he's pretty legit.

Is he a viking at pop culture?

[Spinal]

Is he a viking at pop culture?

OK, now you're officially back.

[Spinal]

"And of course, Kevin Smith."

*shudder*

[D_Davis]

OK, now you're officially back.

hahaha.

[Sycophant]

Pretty cool that the only thing involving women in that tiresome checklist is a "fetish" for "girls."

[D_Davis]

I wonder why it took him longer to listen to Devo's discography than it did TMBG, when Devo has 1/2 as many albums?

[Sycophant]

And Bill Hicks is the only comedy representative? This is really a manual for insufferableness.

[Winston*]

Pretty cool that the only thing involving women in that tiresome checklist is a "fetish" for "girls."

And all his musical references are bands of white dudes.

[Spinal]

There was a whole section dedicated to Japan. What more do you want from him, Winston?!

[Winston*]

Bill Hicks sucks.