{"id":254,"date":"2018-03-28T22:47:25","date_gmt":"2018-03-28T22:47:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.binarydevotion.com\/?p=254"},"modified":"2023-03-20T20:42:08","modified_gmt":"2023-03-20T20:42:08","slug":"ready-player-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.binarydevotion.com\/?p=254","title":{"rendered":"Ready Player One?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The film of one of the most unashamedly geeky books has finally come out, and I saw it on its first UK showing.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.binarydevotion.com\/?attachment_id=255\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-255\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-255 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.binarydevotion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/rp1-300x127.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"416\" height=\"176\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.binarydevotion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/rp1-300x127.png 300w, http:\/\/www.binarydevotion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/rp1-768x325.png 768w, http:\/\/www.binarydevotion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/rp1-1024x433.png 1024w, http:\/\/www.binarydevotion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/rp1.png 1215w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 416px) 100vw, 416px\" \/><\/a>The book, for those that don&#8217;t know, is set in a dystopian 2040-something where life is pretty crappy, and the majority escape reality into a virtual world called the OASIS.\u00c2&nbsp; Created by James Halliday, born 1972 and a lover of most things 80s, this full immersion VR exprience is where people work, play, go to school: everything.\u00c2&nbsp; Halliday dies, having not found love and with no close friends, and his will leaves everything &#8211; his fortune and control of the OASIS &#8211; to the person who completes the quest to find 3 easter eggs, each consisting of a key and a gate that need to be found and opened respectively by solving a clue.<\/p>\n<p>The hunt is a full on 80s nostalgia geek out. The story itself works, but for me it was wonderful because it felt so close to the 80s I experienced, growing up as a geek whose first console was an Atari 2600, played Infocom adventure games and programmed a 64.<\/p>\n<div class=\"video-container\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"READY PLAYER ONE - Official Trailer 1 [HD]\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cSp1dM2Vj48?feature=oembed&#038;wmode=opaque\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>The trailer for the movie left me absolutely desperate to see the movie.\u00c2&nbsp; For starters, the track used in it was a thumping remix of World in My Eyes by Depeche Mode from the album Violator, which may possibly still be my favourite album. (It&#8217;s the Cicada remix if you want to find it).\u00c2&nbsp; It was fast paced.\u00c2&nbsp; It made me think this was going to be wonderful.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve re-read the book in the last couple of weeks and whilst it&#8217;s not going to win any literary prizes it still is enjoyable for the story and references even if there are some aspects that are worrying &#8211; the stalking of Art3mis, in particular.<\/p>\n<p>The film finished half an hour ago, and I saw it in 3D at an IMAX theatre with decent sound and VIP seating: arguably the best experience at the moment.<\/p>\n<p>But I feel let down.<\/p>\n<p>Why?\u00c2&nbsp; Possibly because I had massive expectations of the film, what with the book being so resonant with me and the trailer turning that to 11.\u00c2&nbsp; The hype.\u00c2&nbsp; The hope.<\/p>\n<p>But it wasn&#8217;t as epic as I&#8217;d hoped.\u00c2&nbsp; It was enjoyable, but not a patch on Paddington 2&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t quite put my finger on it yet, but it&#8217;s a lot of little things that disappointed in little ways.\u00c2&nbsp; The first easter egg referenced D&amp;D in the book, but here it&#8217;s a car chase.\u00c2&nbsp; The second referenced text adventures, and the film is not the same&#8230;\u00c2&nbsp; It feels like it has been geeked down, which is somewhat understandable but is surprising given Cline&#8217;s heavy involvement with the movie.<\/p>\n<p>The soundtrack was frankly disappointing.\u00c2&nbsp; Zero Depeche Mode, but 1 New Order track (and a Joy Division t-shirt.\u00c2&nbsp; Oh, and a New Order technique Tee too) but it should have been more memorable.<\/p>\n<p>The plot has changed massively, and I can see why this was necessary to move things on faster, but&#8230;\u00c2&nbsp; It&#8217;s 2040 and the leader of evilcorp is writing down passwords to a full immersion body suit on a post it note?\u00c2&nbsp; There&#8217;s too many things that suspended suspension disbelief that I didn&#8217;t notice in the book.<\/p>\n<p>I enjoyed it, but I feel it could have been so much more: the mysogeny in the book deserved to go, but not the real nerdy stuff.\u00c2&nbsp; I say the mysogeny is gone but Art3mis feels like a prize that Parzival wins still.\u00c2&nbsp; It now feels a bit of a let down, but maybe I was expecting too much.<\/p>\n<p>I will see it again with the kids, and undoubtedly buy the blu ray when it&#8217;s available.\u00c2&nbsp; And I still want a delorian&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>But&#8230;\u00c2&nbsp; Oh.\u00c2&nbsp; That&#8217;s it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The film of one of the most unashamedly geeky books has finally come out, and I saw it on its first UK showing. The book, for those that don&#8217;t know, is set in a&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-binary-life","category-reviews","post_format-post-format-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.binarydevotion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.binarydevotion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.binarydevotion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.binarydevotion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.binarydevotion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.binarydevotion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.binarydevotion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.binarydevotion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.binarydevotion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.binarydevotion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}