Ready Player One

[The Borgified Corpse]

I'll admit he hasn't really done any SFF at the level of Jurassic Park or ET in quite awhile, but I have seen almost all of his movies and the only one I didn't at least enjoy was 1941. I have not seen Duel, Something Evil, Twilight Zone, Always, Amistad, War Horse, Lincoln, The BFG, and The Post.

For me, his last great movie was Saving Private Ryan. I was referring to his post-1998 output. Of that:
I haven't seen A.I. but I've had people explain the plot to me and even that is so depressing that it makes me want to kill myself. (The only cure is an instant injection of pure cinematic fun, like Lara Croft: Tomb Raider! )
Minority Report was OK but I was way too grossed out by all the removed eyeball stuff.
Catch Me If You Can & The Terminal were both decent in a light, fluffy, inconsequential sort of way.
War of the Worlds was tremendously stupid and gave me a long, abiding hatred for Dakota Fanning.
Munich was boring and takes itself way too seriously.
Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, 'nuff said.
The Adventures of Tintin did that photo-realistic CGI thing that I don't really like but I thought the script was funny. I give more credit for that film to Edgar Wright & Steven Moffat.
Bridge of Spies was incredibly boring. It's not quite Tom Hanks' worst movie but it's close. (Thank you, Da Vinci Code.) On the plus side, Mark Rylance was the only redeeming feature of the movie, so I'm glad he won an Oscar for it.
I haven't seen War Horse, Lincoln, or The BFG yet.

As for 1941, I see what he was trying to do but he just doesn't achieve it at all. I think a big problem there is that Spielberg is an optimist but he's directing a script by Bob Gale & Robert Zemeckis, who are hardcore cynics. If Zemeckis had directed the film, I think it would have at least become a cult classic, if not a mainstream hit. But Spielberg's optimism waters down the satire too much.

 

[kirk55555]

I've heard nothing but bad things about the book, but the movie seems to have evolved to add in stuff relevant to my nerd interests (meaning stuff made after I was born in 1990, instead of mostly being 80s nostalgia like I've heard the book is) so I'll probably see it eventually.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

New trailer:

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Looks like they've drastically changed the real-world narrative, for better or for worse.

 

[JD]

Still looks good to me. The guy who wrote the book, Ernest Cline, is credited as one of the writers, so some of those changes might have actually come directly from him.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

That's part of why I said "for better or for worse" because the changes could have been done to improve on the book (which are needed in some parts of the narrative).

 

[Kai "the spy"]

Not just the real-world parts have been altered. That car race, for example, isn't in the book. But that's understandable, as the challenges in the book (acting out Monty Python, for example) wouldn't quite work in a movie.

 

[DrCorby]

I tried reading the book shortly after it came out, got a couple of chapters in, but it just didn't grab me like I expected. Maybe I'll have to give it another try.

 

[JD]

I haven't read it, but it definitely seem to be a love/hate kind of book.

 

[DarthPipes]

I really enjoyed the book. It's certainly not without its flaws but it's a book that I've enjoyed reading. How is will translate to the big screen though, I'm not sure.

As for Spielberg's post-1998 films, I won't apologizing for liking Crystal Skull. I thought Lincoln was great and although fluffy, Catch Me if You Can was a great deal of fun with a stellar cast. Minority Report had moments of greatness but ultimately comes up short, especially with the ending.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

As for Spielberg's post-1998 films, I won't apologizing for liking Crystal Skull. I thought Lincoln was great and although fluffy, Catch Me if You Can was a great deal of fun with a stellar cast. Minority Report had moments of greatness but ultimately comes up short, especially with the ending.

I also like Crystal Skull. I wish it weren't as close a remake of The Last Crusade as it was (the plot beats are almost identical, and they fall in the same order), but it's a lot of fun.

My only complaint with Minority Report is that it should have ended when Tom Cruise is arrested. End on a down, ambiguous note. I'm still not sure that anything that follows that point actually happens except in Cruise's incarcerated dreams.

 

[Timby]

I also like Crystal Skull. I wish it weren't as close a remake of The Last Crusade as it was (the plot beats are almost identical, and they fall in the same order), but it's a lot of fun.

Which is funny, as Last Crusade is essentially a straight remake of Raiders with bonus Sean Connery.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Which is funny, as Last Crusade is essentially a straight remake of Raiders with bonus Sean Connery.

Yeah, there's a definite Indiana Jones formula. The only one that's narratively different is Temple of Doom.

 

[Reverend]

I haven't read it, but it definitely seem to be a love/hate kind of book.

Speaking as someone who only read it a few months ago out of curiosity and thus have very little skin in the game: the two main criticisms I see most often are the cringy internal monologues by the protagonist and an overabundance of pop culture references. Both are accurate and both seem to entirely miss the point.
The protagonist is a painfully nerdy, anti-social teenager with an unhealthy fixation on the pop culture obsessions of the man who created the Oasis, and the series of puzzles required to gain control over it. So yeah, he's not a smooth talker. Who'd a thunk it?!
As for the pop culture stuff; that's kind of the book's whole gimmick: turning pop culture into a world building tool in and of itself.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Not just the real-world parts have been altered. That car race, for example, isn't in the book. But that's understandable, as the challenges in the book (acting out Monty Python, for example) wouldn't quite work in a movie.

I listened to the audio book 4 years ago. I am not sure if that was before or after the movie was announced. But I remember thinking most of the book is unfilmable. Not just acting out Monty Python but also War Games. Playing tabletop role playing games.

Much was made of Spielberg cutting references to his own films. Yet only once is he directly mentioned for the Indiana Jones films. So much of the book is lists of old movies and games. Or detailed descriptions of Arcades recreated in the Osasis. Some of that can be worked into the production in the background.

I was born in 1978. Some of the older games are before my time but this should be geared toward me. But I just hope it works as a movie. I knew most of the stuff but a movie is not made of name drops. I thought the book was depressing. The fact that my Dad just died and I was listening to it mostly during lunch breaks in the middle of the night in the horrible 3rd shift job I had at the time may have been a factor...

But that my generation's childhood pop culture will be escapism in the future from a horrible world. That we never we inspired by the fictional heroes to improve our real world ourselves but retreated into fanstasy instead. Maybe that was the lesson Cline was trying to show. But he seemed be getting off the references more.

 

[DarthPipes]

I also like Crystal Skull. I wish it weren't as close a remake of The Last Crusade as it was (the plot beats are almost identical, and they fall in the same order), but it's a lot of fun.

My only complaint with Minority Report is that it should have ended when Tom Cruise is arrested. End on a down, ambiguous note. I'm still not sure that anything that follows that point actually happens except in Cruise's incarcerated dreams.

I agree with you. It would have been a crappy fate for Cruise's character but would have made it a much better movie. What hurt it further was the Scooby Doo ending.

 

[mos6507]

But that my generation's childhood pop culture will be escapism in the future from a horrible world. That we never we inspired by the fictional heroes to improve our real world ourselves but retreated into fanstasy instead. Maybe that was the lesson Cline was trying to show. But he seemed be getting off the references more.

I haven't read the book but that's my expectation of where the story would need to go for it to be anything more than popcorn fluff.

So far the trailers seem to want to downplay the dystopian aspect and make it seem as though living in a Matrix meets Kingdom Hearts world would be more of a fun romp.

 

[Awesome Possum]

The movie looks fun. I just finished the book and found it to be pretty awful. The basic premise is interesting, but the main character is one of the more unlikeable characters presented as the hero that I've ever read. He's creepy as hell, yet somehow wins over the woman he's stalked, lusted over and later convinced himself that they were dating without any confirmation from her. Like he's entitled to him strictly by being the first age appropriate and non-related woman that really interacted with him. I didn't really care for the bits where they just list references and explain the references like it's supposed to be impressive because there's so much of it or the performative atheism and masturbation screeds. Some of the action scenes work because the author can't increase the word count by listing trivia about the giant robot fighting at that time.

The movie looks different. Seems like Art3mis actually does things other than be a trophy and they added action scenes to replace scenes of characters playing 40 year old games (by our time) and re-enacting whole movies.

 

[EnderAKH]

I'm reading/listening to the book now, and while I was trapped in the car listening to the beginning I was getting increasingly frustrated. The first six chapters are almost exclusively exposition and world building. The actual main character barely does ANYTHING.

Spoiler

He goes to school, sits down, closes his eyes, and has an encounter in a chat room. That is about ALL that happens in the first 6 chapters of the book.

Once Chapter 7 hit, things started happening, and it became a lot better. But spending the first 6 chapters just telling me about the world instead of showing me the world almost caused me to delete the Audible entry. I have confidence Spielberg will handle this better in the film.

 

[DarthPipes]

I saw the movie last night. It wasn't a bad film but I was disappointed by it. I'll get into more details later...

 

[Evil Twin]

Had the day off from work, so I figured I'd go see this. Yeah... This was too dorky even for my tastes (says the videogamer posting on a Star Trek forum ) And most of the pop culture references were stuff I don't give a shit about, so ultimately the movie didn't really do anything for me.