SADDO: THE MOVIE (aka READY PLAYER ONE)

I read the synopsis of the book on Wikipedia and thought that it was probably a terrible book that would likely be a terrible movie.

iron giants and f-zero racing look exactly the same as 99% of the ultra mainstream movie stuff out there

Yeah, in what universe is this not "ultra mainstream," and can I move there instead?

somebody signed off on using "cinematic game changer" and "holy grail of pop culture" in the trailer titles. huh.

the racing shit just looks like a reznor grimdark take on the Wachowski's Speed Racer but with even more adolescent angst than that already implies

wow, the entire constellation around this novel is just pathetic con pander bullshit. Hey guys, did you know Wil Wheaton narrated the audiobook?

Cline used the personalities of Howard Hughes and Richard Garriott, and placed Halliday's birth year around the same as his own so that his pop culture interests would coincide with Cline's "and the other middle-aged uber geeks I know"

oh my god this fucking clown

There's a reason I said what I did!

Fanboy the Movie. This is going to be another one of those movies saturated with pop culture references, but only the pop culture references they can license. Like the second Lego movie, where the much-touted evilest villains of all time just all happen to be Warner Brothers properties.

Rush, though, I want to say makes a few appearances in the book. I haven't read the book, and none of you make me want to read the book.

tbf Lego Batman is a pretty fun film that knows what it is

ugh i read this book based on rave reviews elsewhere and hated it so much. it's world of warcraft: the novelization.

m'lady: th'movie

quite apart from all the 80s-kid jerkin every time i read about this book it seems to be like, what if the matrix was good, and instead of destroying its creators and freeing yrself you just competed for money in an obstacle course installed by its designer? okay

i can do that anyway, is the thing

Willy Wonka and the Content Farm

Oh cool, the ultimate apex of our pathetic arrested development manchild nostalgia barf culture.

Like if you're a grown adult who is thrilled by the idea of Freddy Krueger getting blown away by a Halo gun...

I don't get why this gets shit on but guardians etc get fellated but whatevs yr call homies

Yeah idk I didn't like that either. Also do you have a minute to talk about Stranger Things?

I don't get why this gets shit on but guardians etc get fellated but whatevs yr call homies

― sleepingbag, Sunday, July 23, 2017 12:24 AM (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Whatever one thinks of Guardians of the Galaxy it isn't really comparable to this.

I would say read the book to get a taste of just how bad it is but that would be inhumane. Trust me, it's worse than any other nerd baity thing out there

I am not sure where to start explaining the salient differences between Guardians of the Galaxy and this desaturated pablum

one has the name of the best American filmmaker of the last 40 years on it?

Haha yes good job

tbh i do have to withhold judgment on this movie seeing as this is a guy whose most profoundly felt masterpiece is a michael crichton adaptation

but this particular book rly does feel like the concrete wall at the end of the world

So I guess most of you will go see this anyway?

What would make you think that

I hope it flops like Ishtar

I hope it gets beaten at the box office by the Lego Ninjago movie

I hope it crashes and burns like Pan Am Flight 103

I hope it dies peacefully in bed, surrounded by loved ones and family. At the funeral they play a Rush song. After hovering in a bardo state for a few seconds the soul enters a young baby.

JK I hope it tanks

a guy whose most profoundly felt masterpiece is a michael crichton adaptation

yeah right

if you were 12 perrrrhaps

:)

I think all of us were 12 at some point

comes after 11 iirc

Representative excerpt from the book

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.
I memorized lyrics. Silly lyrics, by bands with names like Van Halen, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, and Pink Floyd.
I kept at it.
I burned the midnight oil.
Did you know that Midnight Oil was an Australian band, with a 1987 hit titled "Beds Are Burning"?
I was obsessed. I wouldn't quit. My grades suffered. I didn't care.
I read every issue of every comic book title Halliday had ever collected.
I wasn't going to have anyone questioning my commitment.
Especially when it came to the videogames.
Videogames were my area of expertise.
My double-weapon specialization.
My dream Jeopardy! category.
I downloaded every game mentioned or referenced in the Almanac, from Akalabeth to Zaxxon. I played each title until I had mastered it, then moved on to the next one.
You'd be amazed how much research you can get done when you have no life whatsoever. Twelve hours a day, seven days a week, is a lot of study time.

look, tl;dr, but jfc

obv it's a life choice, peace be with you and all that, but maybe y'all could get your own island or something

He listened to everything ... Pop, rock, new wave, punk, heavy metal.

that excerpt makes him seem like an evil neil cicierega haha

And, of course, Kevin Smith.

It's pretty impressive how nothing in that entire list is actually obscure or weird

"I memorized every last Bill Hicks stand-up routine."

That one I didn't see coming, true.

I couldn't get to the end of that passage but I'm sure the punchline was hilarious

is it possible this book is a satire of the cultural death of the west?

no one interested in the Spielberg film who hasn't heard of the book (eg, me) gives a damn about it.

Is it too late for them to pull a Disney, fire Spielberg and get Verhoeven on the job?

is it possible this book is a satire of the cultural death of the west?

i mean yeah, but it'd have to be an entirely accidental satire, which i guess would make it even more successful

tombot massively otm, verhoeven would have been perfect for giving this the evisceration it deserves

The most surprising response, from apparently intelligent people, was that this film was in fact very good. I find it hard to accept that anyone intelligent can think this. Indeed, if an intelligent person does think it, it suggests to me that civilisation is further down the slimy slope of post-literacy than even I had suspected.

Hitchens take on RP1, nah not really he is actually talking about Dunkirk here!

lol that excerpt above explains why one of my besties loves this so much. he's obsessed w/ pop culture references

crying copyright seems kinda rich given the nature of the document in question

To put it mildly!

(prints out complete transcripts of all Toys/Movies We Grew Up With episodes, shuffles pages, signs name at bottom)

the villain is going to be Captain Power, somehow

Ready Player 3: 30 Years Ago a Child Would Kick a Ball on the Street

so i hear that this book mentions Sword Art Online a bunch of times because its plot is ripped off of that series.

every time this gets bumped I have to watch this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMBylNJQEbg

As stated upthread I watched this with the kids and didn't hate it. I also saw the new Space Jam with the kids and yeah, it wasn't great but they really liked it, so no regrets.

not planning on watching Free Guy, with or without kids.

without question one of the worst things ive ever seen a theater crowd cheer for in my life pic.twitter.com/NYPsaHpKO1

— josh lewis (@thejoshl) September 25, 2021

lol I saw that but I guess I’d already walked out by that scene, Jesus Christ

it has 80% on rotten tomatoes

love content and properties

The thing I remember most about that film is that Taika Waititi is fucking terrible in it

Ryan Reynolds is such an unlikable and shite actor and he reminds me of Michael Owen

after about a million cue drops w/ "whoa do you remember star wars? EPIC" things in the past decade i think even the theme music is rotten for me, the second the notes hit i was like "oh BROTHER, do you gotta"

xp Yeah he’s always awful

should note that I did not deliberately see this, I bought a ticket to a “surprise film” and it turned out to be this non-movie, definitely got that losing scratchcard feeling when it sunk in

i honestly think there's a case that the worst movies of the modern era are the stupidest most banal empty insults of any period of anything

the laziest most ineptly shot custard pie fight is funnier than this void

For sure sign me up for a plague-era theater-of-literally-throwing-shit over this

I descended into the replies and saw this.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FAJ5K69WEAUN_Jp.jpg

"genuine assets"

loud neurotypical extroverts that cheer and whoop in cinemas is bad enough in any context and that people do it at Tarantino/Marvel Shitverse/Joker/Stuff Like This screenings is even bloody more criminal!

some comments saying that this is a kids film, but they clearly say "shit" twice, just in this clip.

"it has 80% on rotten tomatoes"

at least it was a 5% better movie than The Many Saints of Newark on RT shall be its epitaph

Free Guy was MUCH more entertaining than RP1

oh man, I'd forgotten about this little portion of lockdown entertainment (re the sequel book)

that "he was on a nearby production so they just winged it" thing is just hollywood kayfabe bullshit right? they say that about literally every surprise cameo in every shitty movie

that "he was on a nearby production so they just winged it" thing is just hollywood kayfabe bullshit right?

Of course. That two seconds of footage likely took six months of lawyers going back and forth.

so the guy from parks and recreation is captain America now?

sorry, must sound like either an idiot or a prick saying that, I honestly didn't know though

yeah, paul schneider is captain america

he's starlord fwiw

huh never heard of starlord before

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EVJwYzHU4As-HXX?format=jpg&name=medium

I remember reading Doomlord when I was recovering from measles but this starlord sounds like a bit of a wanker

This board is full of annoying ppl

yeah but at least there are plenty of consistently hilarious people as well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMBylNJQEbg

when the movie trailer was released, the guy who created "the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny" did this

Here's the official trailer for READY PLAYER ONE: pic.twitter.com/0rQnUE5LdK

— Neil Cicierega (@neilcic) July 22, 2017

I feel torn here, because I hate this kind of nerd-pandering stuff but I was also delighted by 'Big Daddy meets Dan Dare' on that Eagle cover above and I don't know if I could say hand on heart that it's all that different

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55d9a2ebe4b090d1642480e9/1464364474580-GMSRHQNMRFXGFCOJNDJ6/image-asset.jpeg?format=2500w

The weird thing about this movie is that I watched this with my son some time last year and while I had the same kind of reaction as most people in this thread, my son enjoyed it quite a bit despite hardly getting any of the references, which has made me wonder if this movie is actually better if you don't know the references. Was my constant eye rolling distracting me from a decent action movie that was hidden underneath the pop references? Could this have been good if it referred to completely made up pop references? Maybe that would make it weird and interesting?

Oh dear at the Free Guy clip. I actually encouraged my 16yo to go and see this because, like any out of touch parent, I thought it might be her kind of thing. She gave it 1.5 stars on Letterboxd :) "It was random stuff crammed in for no reason". B-but I thought that's what you liked?

I mean if we're going to be comparing the two, Free Guy was much, much worse than Ready Player One and I regret suggesting that my son and I watch this while his younger sisters and mother watch the Paw Patrol movie, which was also probably better than Free Guy.

Ugh, my son really really wants to see Free Guy and my wife loves Ryan Reynolds so I better brace myself for having to sit through it.

Could this have been good if it referred to completely made up pop references? Maybe that would make it weird and interesting?

― silverfish, Wednesday, September 29, 2021 10:29 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Imagine the level of creativity this would require!

I guess alternatively, you could make it all pop culture references from another culture, like make it all Eastern European pop references or something

Is Ryan Reynolds meant to look like a fucking waxwork?

quite possibly?

He acts as well as one, after all.