I bet you figured we’d all hate this. Wrong!
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2018/04/09/qt3-movie-podcast-ready-player-one/
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2018/04/09/qt3-movie-podcast-ready-player-one/
Dingus, I will agree with you about the voice acting.
I really wanted to write in about this movie, because it felt like I had a lot of things to say about it. But every time I tried to arrange my thoughts coherently I just kept thinking about how this movie ends by saying “hey nerds, you should go outside once in a while”. I can’t get beyond how misguided that seems to me.
Especially since “outside” is where the evil corporation’s drones will find you and destroy you!
It was so awesome at the end of Raiders when Indy faced the camera and told me to cut down on fried foods.
I just want to play the Tab Cola music intro to this week’s episode on a loop for the next six hours. I’ll listen to the podcast tomorrow.
(I’m only kinda kidding. That’s one of the best commercial jingles ever, with the way it goes to a 7th major chord the second time through the “verse-y” part.)
At my son’s soccer game on Sunday, the opposing coach on the other side of the pitch (translation: field) was yelling at his players to make better passes. “I want those passes crisp! And clean!”
And I yelled back, “And no caffeine!”
Only people my age laughed. I guess everybody else must love Sprite.
-xtien
“I know it’s kind of a groaner…but I found love.”
I thought it was a fun movie. Not bad or great.
The things that made Tom mad made me laugh. (This isn’t how video games work! And my beloved scared cultural icons are being made into pop fodder!)
I did go on quite the tear. But I only took umbrage because the movie pretended it had insight into videogames and pop culture. If it was just being dumb like, say, one of the Shreks or a South Park movie, I wouldn’t have cared one whit.
But, yeah, RAWR ANGRY!!!1!
-Tom
P.S. Have you watched November Criminals yet? What was your favorite scene?
-xtien
It’s true that the movie doesn’t understand how video games work. But, ironically, that’s one of the few things that was faithfully from the book – the book also doesn’t understand how video games work, which is sort of ironic, I guess. Yes, the most popular video game in the world is completely pay to win and has permadeath. Uh hunh.
I dunno, it’s like the immortal guys in Highlander. Maybe they wouldn’t want to live a life in fear of Clanky Brown always trying to chop their heads off. Maybe they don’t want to murder other people. But it’s the nebulous Prize that drives them to kill or be killed, because, as is often stated, “There can be only one winner of the Prize.”
Here, if they win, they get global bragging rights, wealth nearly beyond measure, and a position to run the world’s preeminent corporation right into the ground. (Assuming they didn’t beat the campaign in Spreadsheet World before assuming the CEO role.) That’s a tasty slice of meat in front of a pack of starving dogs.
Mrmfh. You’re conflating the game with the easter egg hunt. At least in the book, they were very distinct things – everyone played the game (even if they really only used it for shopping or chatting or whatnot), but only a distinct subculture of nerds hunted the egg.
@ChristienMurawski Your comment about the author of the book “showing off” is exactly what I told people annoyed me most about it. It was just too damn smug. I read the entire thing, that part never improves. I won’t be comparing the two until watching the movie is free, though.
This movie was way more fun than I thought it’d be. Thumbs up!
So, I’m here because of Serenity (2019) podcast/discussion, but my comment is mostly Ready Player One related, that’s why I’m here. Although I didn’t like the movie, because it was way too dumb in the way it portrays video games culture, I don’t think Spielberg was the main problem of that.
Basically I didn’t like how easily Tom dismissed Spielberg as a gamer with an insight into how video games work (54:02). Beside that casual game Tom mentioned the guy worked on other video games like The Dig or the very first Medal of Honor, and he was constantly seen at E3. But the most important point he was involved in development of one of the most ambitious canceled titles - LMNO.
LMNO was supposed to be a short narrative driven, but highly interactive, highly systemic video game with high replayability involving an autonomous NPC. It was developed by Looking Glass alumni: Doug Church, Austin Grossman, Terri Brosius and Randy Smith.
These are people who helped to invent and form the so-called ‘immersive sim’ genre, who worked on one of the most systemic non gamey games ever made like Ultima Underworld, System Shock 1, Thief 1,2,3, Deus Ex 1, etc., which were highly influential on game developers. It was long before the days when the term ‘immersive’ was ruined by AAA publishers’ PR guys, so now it basically means cutting edge photo realistic graphics and highly detailed environments.
Thanks to Looking Glass and their games Arkane Studios exists: Arx Fatalis is a love letter to Ultima Undeworld, Dishonored is a turbo Thief game, Prey is spiritual successor of System Shock. By the way, Far Cry 2 works the way it works, because System Shock, Trespasser and Deus Ex inspired FC2 dev team.
Back to my point, in one of the LGS related interviews Randy Smith talked about Steven Spielberg (at 1:06:25):
To me that doesn’t sound like Spielberg is completely clueless. on the contrary, he knows what video games are about.
My guess is this time he couldn’t surround himself by the right people like in case of LMNO, who could update his knowledge regarding VR and video games culture, provide a reality check, helped him steer the project on the right track. So I blame Ready Player One script writer and the book.