I want to believe they’ll do justice to the book, but I I have serious doubts.
2 Likes
I think it will make a better movie than a book, actually. I enjoyed the book but chunks of it read like a screenplay already. A lot of Michael Crichton’s work is the same.
Over at io9 there’s a whoooole lot of people who really hated the book just dripping contempt on anyone who enjoyed it. It’s honestly kind of funny how mad people get about it. It’s not War and Peace but come on, you’re gonna have a lot more fun reading RP1.
8 Likes
SF culture has its snobs like any other pocket of society.
Truth be told, there are rather few really excellent SF novels that I think would translate well to the screen, and so many that tried were just awful.
I agree RP1 has a screenplay vibe to it. But it has a fun mystery at the center of it, and I’m hoping that’s not drowned in kinetic CGI of racing DeLoreans. So many movies today seem to think they’ve done their job if you can’t blink without missing a jump cut (I’m looking at you Marvel). Or I may just be getting old…
2 Likes
6 Likes
I loved the shit out of Ready Player One. Sure, it’s not the most intellectually stimulating book, but it’s not trying to be. It’s just fun to read. Not everything has to be Dick and Asimov.
4 Likes
I wonder who they’ll cast as the thinly veiled Jobs and Wozniak characters.
1 Like
Mark Rylance and Simon Pegg, respectively.
Hmm the trailer has me intrigued because of the sheer what-the-fuckery going on, i mean you have to bear in mind it’s like one big videogame in the oasis and videogame logic is janky. Add me to the list of someone who really enjoyed the book as well and if you liked that i can recommend mogworld.
1 Like
Hmm. Pegg has the nerd cred but I’m having a hard time picturing him with enough beard and belly to pull off that part. I’ll remain cautiously optimistic.
1 Like
They will cast very well, as I love watching movies! Thanks for this movie.
1 Like
I think it might be generational. Being a kid of the 80s, all the cultural references made me squee.
1 Like
I loved the book and possibly more important my 12-year-old son has read it four times in the past few months! This movie will surely be a big success 
I have plenty of issues with Spielberg but when he’s good, he’s damn good…
3 Likes
I haven’t read the novel yet, but many friends of mine have, and there’s a clear split: some of them really enjoyed it as a nostalgic, fun read, with clever uses of cultural references, and the rest loathe it, declaring that it’s a pandering, offensive mess that disrespects women and uses nostalgia as a cynical cash-grab. They’ve been posting pages of it on social media, saying that it’s one of the most offensively bad things ever printed, etc. Hey, I dunno, the trailer looked fun.
I’d be fascinated to know what your 12 yr old son thinks of all of the 80s references. It’d be like me watching Woodstock as a little kid. “Dad, who was Wavy Gravy?”
3 Likes
Haha, very good question!
He actually groks a lot of them no problem… the 80s are particularly rich territory for family-friendly 2000s fare, so he’s been exposed to many of these properties either through parental influence or in other media (Youtube, “The Goldbergs”, etc.).
We’ve watched the BTTF movies for example, plus I’m a retro gaming enthusiast, so he knows his Robotron 2084 from his Joust, what a NES is, etc. We’ve even played a bit of D&D at home.
On top of that the book is gently didactic about explaining the stuff that readers don’t know - there’s enough detail, but it’s not rammed down your throat.
Finally, as a reader you can always ignore the references that don’t resonate with you… for example, the music of Rush means very little to me personally, and I don’t know from anime/manga giant robots, etc. But that didn’t spoil my enjoyment of the rest.
I dunno about the hate the book gets, I found it a harmless, fairly light geek fantasy, with some positive messages and a nice twist or two. Maybe it’s envy? Which is understandable… Hell, I’m as jealous as anybody at E. Cline’s success with what is essentially borderline fanfic/homage, but I don’t begrudge him 
2 Likes
Generation Gap?
- I hated the book and remember the 80s.
- I loved/liked the book and remember the 80s.
- I hated the book and don’t remember the 80s.
- I loved/liked the book and don’t remember the 80s.
0 voters
I read it and highly enjoyed it but i did have two giant issues with the book. The main character is nothing special to look at, chubby nerdy guy, and spends the entire last act becoming someone who he isn’t. Some Jason Borne, fit badass, and i found it to be unbelievable (in the worst sense of the word). Also the female love interest and story arc was also written poorly, it starts out fine but gets worse as the book moves along. It plainly reads as a story arc about woman written by a man, and while it’s not truly awful i was keenly aware of it while making my way through the book and was distracting.
I still think fondly of the book and would recommend it, but it has very clear characterization problems in the last act that almost derail the story. But for some it definitely would turn them off to the story altogether.
Also the constant pop and nerd culture references are fun, but it does have many moments where it feels gratuitous. It’s a double edged sword because that’s the point of the story, but it also reads as the author coming up with a premise that would allow them to jam as many references as possible into it in the first place.
2 Likes
Though unlike the forms seen at the yacht club or whole foods parking lot, SF snobbery is particularly ironic.
and needs a shave.
1 Like
There’s a particular page of the book that I remember when reading the first chunk of it (I got distracted by a half-dozen other books and ended up never getting back to it) which is currently making the rounds on Twitter and being derided as the Worst Thing Ever by some people, in which the protagonist lists out all of the 80s pop culture touchstones he’s making his way through to educate himself on the decade in preparation for egg-hunting. In context, this didn’t bother me in the slightest, but is being widely mocked as an example of shameless pandering.
Product placement in television and movies bothers me a great deal, since it takes me out of the narrative. My wife doesn’t even notice them and is instead annoyed by the histrionics of me complaining about all of the product placement. As long as we both have something to complain about, that’s all that matters.
1 Like
It didn’t bother me either, but i was keenly aware of what the author was trying to do. For some the ability to find all these references is pretty fun and i get it, its not what i would want from a book but thankfully the story was interesting enough for me to read it all. I do agree with others here that it reads as a screenplay, and the density of references would probably work better on the screen.
1 Like
