I didn’t read the book, so to a large extent I don’t really care how this film deviated from it or if all the nerd references made it into the film.
I heard from a lot of people who read the book that the film didn’t go as heavy with the 80s pop culture references as the book does. Personally I think that’s a good thing. It allows you to throw in 90s and 00s references as well (like Halo MJOLNIR armor and the Serenity from Firefly).
This reviewer would agree with you:
It’s sort of like saying “I’m going to shut down the internet every other day”.
Plus they never really establish any negatives about the virtual world of the OASIS to explain WHY real life is “better”. There is some insinuation that the OASIS enables people to escape the world’s problems, rather than address them. In fact, the OASIS seems like a perfect solution to the one world problem we are presented with - overcrowding.
Sure, Halliday bemoans how he spent his life geeking out on tech and 80s pop culture, rather than human relationships. But Wade seems perfectly normal and has actual friendships and love interests he met in the OASIS that transfer to the real world. And even if they didn’t, what is the negative about using virtual reality to have a VR pall in Tokyo or San Paolo you would otherwise never have met?
The problems modern society has now with the internet and social media - fake news, people misrepresenting themselves, invasion of privacy, identity theft, depression and alienation - are largely ignored or at best casually referenced and glossed over.
I sort of agree. Like I said earlier, I liked that Artemis has more going on in the movie than if it held closer to the book’s plot. The whole “Rebellion” thing was sort of throw-away and could have been left out completely except that I suppose it explains why Artemis has a guy to bring Wade in. I wonder if more Rebellion stuff or explanation wound up on the cutting room floor.
After seeing it, I felt that a lot of real world stuff that wasn’t in the book served mainly so you weren’t just watching a CGI cartoon the whole time. But, reading that article, I agree it also raised the personal stakes more than everyone reciting movie lines in Og’s VR-pod tricked out rec room.
I enjoyed the movie as a spectacle, it was fun seeing on the big screen, especially the set pieces. But also I feel like it could have been a lot better if Spielberg had done more with the story. Mark Rylance was incredible, I also really liked Olivia Cooke,
Ben Mendelsohn, and Lena Waithe. I’ve liked Tye Sheridan in other movies but I didn’t think he was very good here, but that also might be because his character was pretty bland.
I read the book but I don’t remember all the details. There was some stuff I was confused by in the movie, I don’t know if it was explained and I missed it or they just glossed past it:
[ul]
[li]What is the economy like in the real world? They show Wade living in the stacks and having to sleep on top of a washing machine, but he can hang out in the Oasis all day without otherwise worrying about a real world job or where to get food? The stacks didn’t look great, but they also didn’t look super terrible. The peeks inside the various ones reminded me of the characters on the show Raising Hope, poor but not exactly in a dystopia. There were a lot of people in the “loyalty program” debtors prisons things, and Wade did say that people had somewhat given up on the world, but I wish we had seen more of what it was like. It would have made the stakes a bit more believable, because otherwise Wade just kinda seemed like many 20 year old guys now who prefer to play games a lot because they are just more fun than the real world. [/li][li]What is the rest of the outside world like? I believe there were quick shots of other people fighting and zeroing out, and some of them seemed to be in public places like some kind of food court at a mall. Then at the end when they are driving there are kids and people watching their VR sets on sidewalks of streets that don’t look radically different than city streets today. There were even normal looking businessmen with briefcases that didn’t have VR sets. Do people go out and be social and put on their VR sets together? Or was it supposed to be like a commentary about people going out now and all being on their phones even when they are with friends?[/li][li]Why do people have full treadmills that they are running on all day? I’m not really a gamer, but that seems like it would get really tiring really fast, and I don’t know how popular of a sale that would be. And I don’t know why anyone would have a haptic suit that would allow them to feel getting kicked in the balls. If I had a full VR haptic suit, I would want it so I feel whatever hits or punches were dialed down like 95%, so I would be aware of the hits but it not be painful. [/li][li]Not keeping the pop culture limited to the 80s allows more fun references and cameos, but also brings up more questions about the world. The pop culture references only go up to 2018 by necessity, is that because having later references to 2037 pop culture would be too weird and confusing, or because the world’s culture was stunted by the terrible things that have happened like the “corn syrup wars” or whatever he said. [/li][/ul]
I was also bothered that Artemis said something about how Wade would be disappointed in meeting her in real life, but then she ends up being a beautiful woman with a not even that dark birthmark on her face. It doesn’t even look that bad, but it also looked like something I could cover up with makeup and I’m not even that great at using makeup. I know it’s a Hollywood movie, but that just seemed ridiculous to me.
I also had problems with some of the script. “A fanboy knows a hater” was a big line that stuck out to me and I might have groaned in the theater. Also how everyone had to exclaim about how crazy it was that Sho was 11-years-old, though you would think most people would realize that avatars and actual people can be different ages, races, sex, or anything and not be terribly surprised when an online badass is someone unlike that in the real world. And then I liked how they tricked the villain into thinking he was in the real world when he was still in the Oasis, but then I really didn’t like how they had to completely explain to the audience what was going on like we wouldn’t figure it out ourselves.
I could nitpick a lot more, but overall it was fun and I enjoyed myself. It’s very much a popcorn movie, something with no nutritional value.
In the book, there’s basically few jobs to be had as the entire world is in a depression brought about by lack of fuels. Wade makes some pocket money scavenging and repairing electronics to resell but doesn’t start making real money until he gets the first key and is showered with endorsement deals. He also doesn’t have a treadmill until later in the book when he gets his own apartment (skipped in the film). I don’t know if the treadmills were “common” since in the montage of Stacks people no one else seemed to have one that I remember.
In the book, you can get suits with haptic feedback but they didn’t include crippling pain. In the film, there were billboards for the X1 suit (“Feel the Real!”) and I guess they were for hard core gamers who wanted every experience of being in the game. Sorento would use whatever was top of the line just because why wouldn’t he? Plus that was probably the first time he experienced any sort of combat in the game so it was never a liability until then.
You’re seriously asking if there’s a market for something to make your private bits tingle and feel sensation in a virtual reality world of every type of body, being and gender imaginable? :dubious:
Hell, when the time comes it won’t be a cup in the suit but a sock/sleeve for full 360° stimulation and the ability to feel every slap and tickle.
In short: I was really hoping to like it, but I thought it was terrible and the characters/plot to be cartoonish and ridiculous.
That said, I loved The Shining sequence and hearing Alan Silvestri “quote” his own score from Back to the Future. Is this the first film Spielberg hasn’t used John Williams on since the 70s?
One thing that really bugged me: Am I supposed to believe, that for 5 years, on an Atari 2600 world, that no one who played Adventure unlocked the Easter egg?
Keep in mind someone had to play “Adventure” in the 3rd gate to unlock the egg.
Yeah if I had never read the book I probably would have enjoyed it more, but I just couldn’t stop comparing the movie to the book. And honestly the only way the book could have truly been represented was with a movie trilogy, and as much as I would love to see it in this format there’s no way it would have ever been made.
I’m also going to pipe in on people that are always cutting down the book and the way it was written. I loved reading this book, I probably have read it at least once a year since it came out. Is it “War and Peace”? No. It’s the literary equivalent of a summer popcorn flick! I equate it to the “Da Vinci Code”, every hater on the interwebs came out to slag on the story, deus ex machina and the writing style. If it was truly a crappy book it wouldn’t have sold millions of copies!
Ok, I didn’t quite pick up that the 3 eggs were necessarily serialized that way. I figured you could find each egg in any order, independent of the previous eggs.
Yeah the book lays it out pretty well, once you find the first key you got a clue to the second key. Then a clue to the third once you found the second. So the whole TV on the frozen lake wasn’t “revealed” until after the second gate was opened.
Even if the TV on the lake was readily available, Artemis points out in the club that although lots of people had jumped off, no one had after attaining the first key. Granted that wasn’t the solution to the second key after all but I think it implies that Quest #2 isn’t active for you unless Quest #1 was done even if you blunder through the appropriate motions.
To use the book as an example instead, I’m sure someone in the five years or so after Halliday died did the Zork house but it wouldn’t have gotten you closer without first doing the Copper key’s dungeon and stuff.
I imagine there are specialty codpieces (for both sexes) available to simulate intercourse, but it’s a PG-13 film so Wade settles for a suit with glowing haptic sensors in the crotch.
Not relevant to the movie at all, but… I thought one of the weakest parts of the book was how instantly the first clue ought to have been cracked. With that level of stakes, someone is going to set up an automatic image processor that looks at every square foot of every planet in the oasis and compares it to every image from every bit of pop culture that Halliday ever mentioned. If one of the maps from a particular D&D module is recreated in one of the planets somewhere, it will be noticed within a week at the outside.
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[li]What is the economy like in the real world? They show Wade living in the stacks and having to sleep on top of a washing machine, but he can hang out in the Oasis all day without otherwise worrying about a real world job or where to get food? The stacks didn’t look great, but they also didn’t look super terrible. The peeks inside the various ones reminded me of the characters on the show Raising Hope, poor but not exactly in a dystopia. There were a lot of people in the “loyalty program” debtors prisons things, and Wade did say that people had somewhat given up on the world, but I wish we had seen more of what it was like. It would have made the stakes a bit more believable, because otherwise Wade just kinda seemed like many 20 year old guys now who prefer to play games a lot because they are just more fun than the real world. [/li][/quote]
The impression I got from the film (in spite of how “dystopian” we are told it is) was that the world was experiencing a bit of a renaissance from an even darker period. It was during that period in which Wade’s parents died. Columbus, OH has become the “fastest growing city in the world” thanks to the OASIS and companies like IOI. Which makes it seem more like a futuristic Bangalore or Sao Paola with the Stacks serving as a sort of a trailer-park favela. But as you said, while certainly not luxurious, they seems more or less safe and comfortable with a strong sense of community.
Not to mention that there economy is such that even the poorest kid living in one step up from an intermodal container yard can access this massive virtual infrastructure, presumably for free.
It’s not specifically stated why his generation are called the “Missing Millions” and why there is “no place to go”. It might be that their technology is such that most jobs have now been automated or virtualized. We see drones delivering pizzas after all. If that is the case, many people probably do live in “stacks” or similar low-cost modular homes. Maybe they earn a basic income that keeps them from starving and lets them buy a few odds and end. Intellectual and other elites may have lucrative corporate jobs at companies like IOI, but presumably the vast majority people don’t have the opportunity or means to “go anywhere” or “do anything” outside of the virtual world of the OASIS.
Because there are other things in virtual reality that one might want to have touch their balls. But to your point, I would not want to be playing Call of Duty with the suit turned up all the way so I can experience what a 7.62mm AK round to the face feels like. Then again, some hard-core types might. Same with the treadmill. Some people might actually want to get a physical workout from all that virtual running, jumping and ducking.
I wouldn’t recognize any pop culture references from 2037.
Story-wise, Speilberg is wise to not use references any more recent than the Halo Master Chief or the Serenity from Firefly. It should feel somewhat nostalgic to the audience.
Yeah, it’s like they wanted to say something profound about virtual vs real identity. But then they just landed on “oh…hot chick with birthmark”.
The “fanboy” line would have sucked if it were anyone but TJ Miller saying it.
Yeah, I also didn’t like how they had to explain "that’s Mechagodzilla, that’s the Akira motorcycle, that’s so and so. Either you know what those things are already or you don’t care.
Of course, that would mean you’re scanning millions of worlds and getting thousands or tens of thousands of returns from recreations of everything from Macross to Gremlins to Some Kind of Wonderful to Grayhawk to The Real Ghostbusters. You could waste a lot of time exploring numerous cartoon New Yorks populated by Babylonian god-spirits.
But… the first clue is so painfully obvious (“Gee, I wonder if the guy who dressed like the dungeon master on the 1st edition DMG means the Tomb of Horrors when he says a tomb filled with horrors?”) you would really only need to scan for the skull rock or other hints. I think the issue there was that the OASIS is 27 sectors, each a cube 10 light hours (6.706e+9 miles) across and then each filled with numerous zones with unique rules and full of individual worlds with their own unique geography, weather, cloaks or shields, etc. Scanning them all would have been arguably impossible even for IOI, much less anyone else.
In the book, you have to play Adventure on a console in Halliday’s office in Castle Anorak, so the only way to do that is to have already earned the Crystal Key. And you would have to work out which game to play by knowing that Adventure was the only game missing from the replica of Halliday’s childhood home.
Also, in the book it’s made clear that having a key changes the outcome of some acts. Anyone could have played Zork on a planet full of walk-throughs or take the replicant test in a Tyrell building - having the Copper or Jade Keys changed the outcome.
I have never read the book, I never even knew a book existed until recently, and I thought the movie was a lot of fun! Yes I had several problems with parts of it (Art3mis’s birthmark was laughable benign. Oh wow, the hot chick in the game is a hot chick with a slight birthmark in real life! And at the end when everyone was fighting in the game and it showed their real selves all standing on the street fighting- How does that physically work? If you are actually acting out in real life the motions you make in the game, running, punching, etc. you’d think the real world would be full of people getting into serious accidents/getting themselves killed. That’s what I thought the treadmill was for- So he could run all he wanted and not actually move.)
But I was entertained the whole way through, the car race at the beginning was incredible!
That was poorly handled throughout, I felt. You actually control your avatar with hand gestures and macros, so most people just need a visor and gloves and don’t need to move around wherever you are. The full-body haptic suit with omni-directional treadmill that lets you move more realistically was a rich person’s rig. Everyone fighting IOI would look pretty much like a bunch of people playing with their phones on the street while wearing Google glasses.
