I saw this last night on a Netflix disc on recommendation from my daughter. We were discussing the Showtime series "Billions", and how there is so much pop culture injected into the show. It really makes it fun to watch when they keep bringing things up from the past that you really lived through and embraced many years ago. She then urged me to watch this movie.

 

"Ready Player One" is a gamer's movie, and is entirely geared to a younger audience... but Spielberg has loaded this film with tons of pop culture, mostly from the 70's and 80's. Much of this would go way over the heads of their target audience, because the material came way before they were born. It's a lot of fun to catch everything they do. The entire scene with "The Shining" is amazing. Had to post this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixWL1BWi44U

 

 

The entire scene with "The Shining" is amazing. Had to post this.

 

 

I completely agree, they did a fantastic job on that part. Ready Player One is a fun movie.

 

 

"The Shining" is amazing.

 

 

Absolutely amazing part!

I tried to watch this about a week and a half ago.... But thanks to my husband bringing his teenage cousin over, it was a disaster. Dood talked thru the entire movie. :|

I tried to watch this about a week and a half ago.... But thanks to my husband bringing his teenage cousin over, it was a disaster. Dood talked thru the entire movie. :|

sorry about that

A real OMG moment was they started using the Charm of Making from Excalibur.

The best movie ever about the legend of King Arthur, 1981

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4I_zbi3Sak

Worst thing I've ever seen, and I suffered through that steaming pile called "Titanic".

I thought the the JJ Abrams Star Trek movies were bad (I've only watched the first 15 minutes of that abomination), but this thing was worst.

Up until I saw this, I thought Sucker Punch, (a 13 year old boy's masturbatory fantasy gone wrong), was awful.  But Ready Player One takes the cake.

Awful, just plain awful.

No story, no plot, no charter development, no thanks.

Told you it was geared for a younger audience. That means it has to keep to that "Avatar" IQ level. It's a very sad omen for the future with everyone so addicted to VR.

Told you it was geared for a younger audience. That means it has to keep to that "Avatar" IQ level.

I saw it about a month ago.  I saw it with a couple of younger people and they loved it.  I lost interest about half way through.

Most movies are now geared towards young people.

A few years ago I watched a CBC documentary called "How the Kids Took Over."  If you ever get a chance to see it, I'd recommend you do so.  It is really interesting.

The tween and teen market is a highly describable market, according to documentary that in 2005, in North America tweens and teens had out spent the next three age groups combined.  The dollar figure was in the billions.  What they spend their money on was entertainment.  I don't blame business for going where the money is.

 

 

 It's a very sad omen for the future with everyone so addicted to VR.

I take it you haven't been to the mall lately?  LOL.

What do you mean future where everyone is addicted to VR?  Were living it now.  According to some studies I've read, over 20% of teens and twenty-somethings are addicted to their smart phones.

 

 

Malls are a big no for me. Haven't been to one in years. I spend most of my time here in my home office. The rest of my time is spent in Casinos, Bowling Ally, and restaurants. Never fails to see an entire family staring at their phones, and never saying a word to anyone. I absolutely refuse to even carry a cell phone.

Told you it was geared for a younger audience. That means it has to keep to that "Avatar" IQ level. It's a very sad omen for the future with everyone so addicted to VR.

 

 

Nah. I mean the target audience has about that level of emotional maturity, and the source material is maybe cracks into the kind of quality you'd expect from the YA genre, but the target audience for it was in their 30s. Specifically it's geared to the "I am self defined purely by the commercial media I consume" capital G Gamers subset.

 

The whole "and now we fellate saturday morning cartoons" and other such sections of the film aren't ironic or cheeky references, but dead serious. The movie is better about it than the book, but it's kinda a testament to spilberge that he managed to turn out something watchable. 

 

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. 

 

That's from the book. That goes on for 10 pages. It's not the only time something like that happens. 

 

 

but it's kinda a testament to spilberge that he managed to turn out something watchable.

Spielberg is really hit and miss for me. He's created some real crappy movies since the masterpiece called "Jaws". I absolutely hated "E.T." and "A.I.", but he pulls off 2 of the best movies ever made, in my opinion, with "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan".

I mean asking for perfection is a bit much. the dude is by far one of the single best directors and producers in the business ever, and he's done very few objectively bad movies (I don't like E.T. very much myself, but broken down into its parts, it's a great film).  A bad Spielberg movie  still gets 3 out of 5 stars most times.

 

 

Seriously if you ever decide you hate yourself, go read Ready Player One. It'll give you an appreciation for the absolute dreck Spielberg managed to spin into the 50 cent a foot tin thread that is this movie.