Ready Player One: Special Edition

It is clear the audience found this film enjoyable and are placing it in cultural context. Apparently from a book steeped in gaming culture. I picked up the cultural references generally, but oddly found the heart of the film rather depressing/ cynical. The gaming world being much like a graveyard/ wasteland of culture, where kids dress up in the corpses of all our precious memories of childhood and the arts. I did not find that cute at all. (Did you see that virgin advert with a mountain of mashed up characters from TV and film? well in felt like that. A little nauseating) The worst offender of which was the very bizarre sequence in which the child like cartoon gamers of the present are placed in sharp CGI contrast with the ADULT content of 'The Shining' (which is of course watered down for adolescent consumption.) I found my self rather mournful for the degradation of this vivid film. CGI cartoon Neophytes VS 1970's adults is weird to do! The Shining was an educational film for many people's development as adult viewers and as filmmakers, and it was poorly used here. There are a lot of films about teenagers and children saving the world out now.. so many??? And this is another such fantasy product. At its heart if felt rightly cynical to outline the ruthlessness of corporate reality underlying the present youth's everyday reality. It is present in most products they buy and interact with and there is no allusion in this film that these companies are ethical in any way, so they become the cardboard bad guys in this story. The gamers the heroes of freedom of some kind? Or the inheritors of some corrupted and violated landscape of freedom. The myth is of of the gaming world as' invaded' by the corrupting business community, not built and run by them. Though these issues exist in the real world the resolution of this plot is again relegated to the world of excessive fantasy though, as with all this bandwagon of films, this victory is of no real social relevance being impossible and improbable. I find myself wondering what film the 1970's would have sculpted from such a plot? Would there be a resolution that was grounded in the real social world somehow, and had some real teeth to it? Instead of giving young people fantasy solutions to real issues, that flatter their egos and really achieve nothing real. They remain as good little consumers. The plot here is Mr WW handing over the chocolate factory to Charlie once again. That is lovely, but is not the answer, because it will never happen kids! I liked how the creator of this gaming world was a very melancholic fella. It was as if he had himself given up all hope of his fantasy world solving anything important. I really hated the 'awful' cheesy ref to Terminator 2 film, but that was cheesy 'before' so I will let it go!!

I thought this was a great film - actually one of the best I've seen in a while. Yes, it's your typical American big budget film but there's lots of stuff I really enjoyed in it - action packed with Virtual Reality, computer games, cheesy bad guys, some incredible CGI and actually quite an in depth story - there's even some romance in there to keep the misses happy!I haven't read the book but many people have said this film doesn't do the book justice. If that's the case then the book must be amazing and I'll have to read it at some point. Unfortunately, this is often the case when books are made into films, with time being a massive constraint and parts are either vaguely covered or omitted entirely. Look how long the Lord of the Rings films are!I think in the not to distant future Virtual Reality experiences will be similar to what's portrayed in this film, which is a really exciting concept. There are already companies working on Haptic suits and gloves etc.For anyone that has an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive you can experience parts of the world from this film in Ready Player One: OASIS beta which is available for free on VivePort (Oculus users can now access this too!)

It's a good film, has lots of pop culture references, however I don't know whether it was just me, but I never really got invested in the main characters. It seemed like it was trying to be epic, had a hint of Tron, but never quite got there. Unfortunately another reminder that Speilbergs best work is probably behind him. It's good not great

I didn't expect much of this film and so was very pleasantly surprised. The storyline is obviously game-related, but I found it readily accessible, even as a non-player of games - since original DOOM, that is. Maybe it's aimed at younger people, but most of the references seemed pretty grown-up to me. I especially liked the 'Room 237' scenes - it was actually pretty mind-blowing. I am giving it four stars within its genre, because it did everything it said on the tin and a bit more besides, but it is a bit childish. Acting was fine - considering it's not Shakespeare - and the sound, photography and special effects were top notch.There is a slightly 'dark' side to the film and that is the apparent willingness of many kids - even grown-up ones - to lose themselves in fantasy games rather than interacting in the 'real' world. It smacks a bit of The Matrix, but this time it's their choice - the red pill or the blue pill - and most people willingly take the blue in order to escape the hassles of life. However, we all do this to a certain extent, whether it's reading, watching movies, listening to music or playing games. We all harbour a wish to escape it all - somehow - so it's difficult to judge, and it isn't just a 'kid' thing.

Very clever plot, keeps you hooked right from the beginning. Even has a recreation of "the shining", what more could you want! It has a powerful existential storyline which I think paradoxically we could all learn from...step away from the smart phones, tablets, tv's everyone......