Ready Player One Spoilers Thread

Spielberg is not the director he used to be. He lost his magic touch years ago IMO.




Someone gave me the book when it came out. I never read it, and I have no interest in seeing the movie. But I'll say this much - since the movie came out, the value of Adventure carts on Ebay has absolutely skyrocketed. I've seen loose carts selling for $20..$30... $50! there's even a seller trying to scam somebody for a boxed copy, for $1,500!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Atari-2600-Adventure-VGA-90-HOLY-GRAIL-Ready-Player-One/202277580230?hash=item2f18aeedc6:g:kTIAAOSwAfpawWie

What's funny/sad about that is, it's not an original release from 1980. It's a re-release from 1981 at the earliest. The game was originally released in early-mid 1980 and no boxes from 1980 had a hanging tab on the back of them. Also, every box with that tab had glued flaps, and both features didn't start appearing on Atari's boxes until early 1981.
Atari Adventure was the original third challenge in the book too actually though I think it was last in a gauntlet of challenges in that gate. My only gripe with it is same as in the book -- a team of trained corporate 80s drones couldn't look up the original easter egg and figure it out when it's one of the worst kept secrets in videogame history? It's especially egregious in the movie though since they JUST have to do the Atari part and the film establishes that we're in a world with the normal modern internet and Twitch and such. Nobody Googled "atari easter egg?" Really??
 
Atari Adventure was the original third challenge in the book too actually though I think it was last in a gauntlet of challenges in that gate. My only gripe with it is same as in the book -- a team of trained corporate 80s drones couldn't look up the original easter egg and figure it out when it's one of the worst kept secrets in videogame history? It's especially egregious in the movie though since they JUST have to do the Atari part and the film establishes that we're in a world with the normal modern internet and Twitch and such. Nobody Googled "atari easter egg?" Really??

Just like nobody thought to try driving backwards for an entire 5 years of racing for the first key.

You know... driving backwards in a racing game... the thing nearly everyone attempts at some point just to see what happens. Thousands of players... probably racing the course daily... not a single one reversed at the starting line... in five years. Come on.
 
Atari Adventure was the original third challenge in the book too actually though I think it was last in a gauntlet of challenges in that gate. My only gripe with it is same as in the book -- a team of trained corporate 80s drones couldn't look up the original easter egg and figure it out when it's one of the worst kept secrets in videogame history? It's especially egregious in the movie though since they JUST have to do the Atari part and the film establishes that we're in a world with the normal modern internet and Twitch and such. Nobody Googled "atari easter egg?" Really??

In the book Adventure was not the final challenge really... The book opened with Wade and/or Halliday explaining that the Easter egg in Adventure was the inspiration for his Easter egg... In the final challenge in the book, once wade passed the Monty Python And the Holy a Grail movie, he had to guess the password to turn on the the ability to play Adventure to come full circle on the egg hunt... The password was Kira - the D&D name for Ogden Morrow's wife and Hallidays crush... That was the challenge - to guess the password like in the movie War Games - not the ability to find the egg in Adventure
 
In the book Adventure was not the final challenge really... The book opened with Wade and/or Halliday explaining that the Easter egg in Adventure was the inspiration for his Easter egg... In the final challenge in the book, once wade passed the Monty Python And the Holy a Grail movie, he had to guess the password to turn on the the ability to play Adventure to come full circle on the egg hunt... The password was Kira - the D&D name for Ogden Morrow's wife and Hallidays crush... That was the challenge - to guess the password like in the movie War Games - not the ability to find the egg in Adventure
You're right, sorry. Been a while since I've read it... I remembered it was the last thing but not how it was only symbolically after that. I rememberd it made more sense in the book but not why.

I think that's the movie's biggest weakness-- tbey didn't seem to consider the difficulty or obviousness of each challenge's solution, just how it'd look on screen. Would've expected more from Spielberg. Gives it an almost children's book level of "uh huh, nobody tried THAT, yeah right." I get making the references more accessible, but making the challenges themselves something most audience members would've found out in five minutes was mehhhh.
 
I just saw the movie last night, have not read the book, and really enjoyed it. A number of the concerns expressed her are items I also picked-up on, but I let them go to enjoy the movie.

In every scene with video games, I tried to name the games (I could make out a lot, but not all). If we really want to be picky, what was up with the misshapen Pac-man CT? I also noted arcade game posters I own (shown on my website), as well as countless other 80s references. In one scene, I swore I saw Mappy, but missed Pac-Man (the character) in another (my buddy told me about it).

Scott C.
 
Just saw the movie this afternoon. I've read the book twice. The movie is not the book. It could never be... not in 2 hours 20 minutes. If they really wanted to stay true to the book it would have to have been a trilogy... and even then some stuff would be cut.

That said, I enjoyed the movie. Enough that I want to watch it again. That's a rarity in this day and age.
 
Since we are in a "safe space" - haha:

I really hated this movie - I was actually upset the morning after I saw it :) Am actually still pretty bugged by it and am going to remedy this frustration by rereading the book.

I REALLY loved the book and thought they should have stayed true to it.

But, as others have said, that is next to impossible in two hours and twenty minutes.

I think the book would have made an amazing 12 episode Netflix series - would have been incredible!

There is a lot of talk in the book about Parzival not selling out to IOI - I really feel like Ernest Cline absolutely sold out to Spielberg - much easier to write about sticking to your vision/dream than turning down those huge $$$ in the real world. Not saying that I could say no to all that cash either but man...

Where was the TOMB OF HORRORS? C'MON!!!!
 
Overall, I liked it. My kids did as well.
I thought the same thing about the first race - hell my first move in any game is to go backwards - Black Tiger taught me that.
The last challenge made the whole movie moot.
IOI would have walked in, signed the digital contract and gotten spit right out. It was a morality lesson they couldn't have passed - at least on the first go and especially if Halliday was acting as non-impartial judge, avatar or something more, as was implied.
The change of Sorrento to general corporate bad guy from a technological proficient opportunist was a draw back.

I was hoping for more game related call backs but when they didn't happen, I wasn't disappointed. I'm happy from a collector prospective there weren't more, there aren't going to be a 100,000 more folks looking for Jousts and Tempests this way and it was fun seeing it have different challenges from the book. The movie was chock full enough of easter eggs and call backs that a significant amount of folks in the theater were calling out about them.

The movie passed the pee test. Both my kids and I needed to pee about half way through but clenched through because we didn't want to miss anything.

Some things I noticed:
I guess WotC didn't give permission for the full D&D ampersand on his shirt, they should have gone with the free advertising as Pathfinder is a serious contender in RPG d20.
Everytime they tossed the quarter back and forth there was an "extra life" tune, I couldn't place from where exactly but it should have been obvious to the main characters. An "extra life" tune is as ubiquitous as the Final Fantasy VII victory fanfare.
Seeing it in 3D added nothing to it.
For a poor gamer the DeLorean was a pretty spiffy ride to start with.
The glaive! the glaive! Krull is seriously one of my most favorite 80's movies - not a guilty pleasure one either. Either you get Krull or you don't.
Of course they're browncoats.
i-R0k was not explained well. Someone as powerful as him would have been a known entity not a sleeve card. A line from Aech about his effectiveness or propensity for being a low level player sniper douche would have made him a more potent threat.
I would have loved to see an Elliott avatar riding into battle with a laser beam shooting ET in a milk crate basket or a team of Smurfs. I know somewhere in the Oasis there's freaking Smurf planet and yes - that would be real icky real quick if you subscribe to Henchman 24's theory like me.
 
Did anyone get the free poster through Fandango?
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Since we are in a "safe space" - haha:

I really hated this movie - I was actually upset the morning after I saw it :) Am actually still pretty bugged by it and am going to remedy this frustration by rereading the book.

I REALLY loved the book and thought they should have stayed true to it.

But, as others have said, that is next to impossible in two hours and twenty minutes.

I think the book would have made an amazing 12 episode Netflix series - would have been incredible!

There is a lot of talk in the book about Parzival not selling out to IOI - I really feel like Ernest Cline absolutely sold out to Spielberg - much easier to write about sticking to your vision/dream than turning down those huge $$$ in the real world. Not saying that I could say no to all that cash either but man...

Where was the TOMB OF HORRORS? C'MON!!!!

I don't say this very often but I pretty much agree with everything you just said...
 
Good point zOner - I thought the ticket was pricey but I didn't care - had been waiting for so long to see it... but now that I have I don't think it's worth it for the full size poster - still a good movie but wit stick with 80s movie posters...
 
I didn't care for how they made it much more family friendly by eliminating Daito's death which was a major plot point in the book and made you feel more for Shoto. I lacked the emotion for the characters within the movie, which was not the case reading the book. Also, I thought Wade indoctrinating himself into the bowels of IOI was a much stronger plotline than the movie version of this mechanism. Also Ogden getting them all together seemed like a much more believable storyline than him being revealed as the curator.

I must say I was kinda meh, it was entertaining enough but still disappointing IMO as I thought it lacked the transfer of emotion from the great book to the film. I did appreciate the Tomb of Horrors living on as a giant image on the back of the mail truck though.
 
I didn't expect it to be as family friendly as they shifted it, but I understand why in retrospect.
 
I actually thought his infiltration into IOI was one of the weakest plot points of the book and felt the movie did a better job of getting an insider into the facility.
 
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