
Watch the First Trailer for Steven Spielberg’s Adaptation of ‘Ready Player One’ - janober
https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/22/watch-the-first-trailer-for-steven-spielbergs-adaptation-of-ready-player-one
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WheelsAtLarge
Question: What do people find appealing about Ready Player One? I'm a child of
the eighties yet I had trouble getting through the first few chapters so I
stopped. Something I rarely do since I find it hard to stop reading a book
once I start. What am I missing?

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cvsh
It was terrible. Just an endless avalanche of 80s pop culture references
loosely strung together with a horribly cliche plot and characters.

The references weren't even interesting either. It'll just be something like,
"Then, I traveled to planet Bueller, where I played through the plot of Ferris
Bueller's Day Off--", and then a page and a half literally describing various
scenes from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. That's it. It adds nothing. Unless the
idea of scenes from 80s movies and TV shows and video games that you are
familiar with being described back to you is inherently amusing, you will
probably find that this gets old very fast.

Then again - this might translate much better to the screen, in a way it
didn't to the page, because A) film is a much better medium, I think, to
delight the audience with familiarity than writing, and B) from the trailer it
looks like the film will expand beyond just _80s_ pop culture, and intermix
the references a little better than "I went to planet Star Wars and here are
some scenes from Star Wars I played through". With Spielberg at the helm, I
have pretty high hopes. Just don't expect, if you like the movie, to read the
book and like it even more. If the film succeeds, this will be one of those
very rare instances in which it's better than the material it's adapted from.

If you want to read a good novel about VR, pick up Snow Crash instead.

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ezekg
I was actually planning to start Snow Crash tonight, so that's funny. I liked
Ready Player One quite a bit, so hopefully I enjoy Snow Crash even more. Any
other good VR books? I also picked up Armada by the author of RPO, being a
sucker for alien invasion sci-fi.

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eps
Neuromancer, but of course.

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clamprecht
Direct youtube link to the trailer:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtwpjnuaVTE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtwpjnuaVTE)

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santaclaus
I kind of feel like the trailer is lacking some 80s feels... Atomic Blonde's
trailer drips with the 80s, on the other hand.

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ezekg
HN coming down hard on this one, unsurprisingly. I thoroughly enjoyed the
book, having read it a couple months back, and am pretty stoked about the
movie. I do however wish the trailer focused more on (or even mentioned) the
hunt i.e. the entire plot of the book; the trailer looked visually good but
was kind of boring. There were a few scenes I immediately recognized though
and that was cool to see!

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thatswrong0
I've never read the book.. the trailer did absolutely nothing to tell you what
the movie's about. It just looked like a bunch of pop references strung
together with something to do with VR in a dystopian future. I don't think
I've ever seen such a bad trailer for a high budget film..

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johngarrison
I wanted to enjoy the book, but it was pretty sub-par. I admit it made me
smirk when I "got" an 80's reference, but it also annoyed me how obvious it
was that the book was deemed "great" just because of such a cheap,
transpartent tactic.

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katpas
Having not read the book before, shall I read it before I see the film? Or
could the film adaptation be better than book?

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robterrell
Read the book. It's a light and fun assembly of 80's references (for a plot-
based reason!) packaged inside a VR capture-the-flag adventure. My son read it
a few weeks ago and enjoyed it while getting none of the references... we had
a fun weekend chasing down arcades with video games from the book (Joust
features at a key early plot point).

Could the film be better than the book? Hmmm... Can you think of any VR movie
that's better than the book it's based on? I can't either.

I'm not optimistic about the movie, but what I like about the trailer is how
they seemed to have licensed a fair bit of 80's nostalgia (I loved seeing the
Iron Giant in there, the Delorean from BTTF, Freddy Kruger getting blasted)
which is really the important trick for adapting this book. (i.e. I really
hope they licensed Ultraman.)

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yk
The fun thing about it, is that Spielberg directs the movie. (Also, the book
should lend itself to a movie adaption.)

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bassman9000
Overdose of memberberries Guaranteed box office

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aerovistae
Why is this on HN? Just an ordinary scifi movie, no? Based on a kind of
mediocre bestseller?

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43224gg252
Marketing.

