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The Last Movie(s) You Watched... (quick one or two sentence reviews)

bionicbob

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mnkykungfu said:
DigModiFicaTion said:
Ready Player One (2018)
I wasn't expecting much from this one as I new it was going to be 90% cgi, and it didn't disappoint my expectations. Still, it wasn't terrible, just not anything I'd revisit. I'd place it with the other teen focused movies such as the Hunger Games, Maze Runner and Valerian. For the story line I think Tron or the Matrix is better. This looked like Avatar in terms of its cgi, which I've never been a fan of. It was fun to see the Easter eggs and pop culture references, but beyond that it was predictable and without any real suspense. 6/10

Yeah, if you just can't get over CG, a purposely video game world is not going to be a movie you'll love.  Personally I really liked the plays on video game culture though.  Just like a game, there's no mystery about what will happen in the end (the player will win) but I thought there were quite a few surprises and nice touches along the way, personally.

While the CGI was gorgeous, I agree, I found the movie boring and soulless.

But my biggest issue is the messaging.  I have never read the book, so I don't know what the messaging in it was about, but the movie seems to be about Drug Addiction.  This is a society seemingly addicted to playing in a virtual world rather than trying to make the real world better.  Even after all the hero goes through -- discovered real world love, and receives the power to change things -- he still decides drugs in moderation is the solution.    :p :blush:
 

Masirimso17

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bionicbob said:
While the CGI was gorgeous, I agree, I found the movie boring and soulless.

But my biggest issue is the messaging.  I have never read the book, so I don't know what the messaging in it was about, but the movie seems to be about Drug Addiction.  This is a society seemingly addicted to playing in a virtual world rather than trying to make the real world better.  Even after all the hero goes through -- discovered real world love, and receives the power to change things -- he still decides drugs in moderation is the solution.    :p :blush:

That’s why I don’t think it’s specifically about drug addiction. I think the message is the obvious one: there is a beautiful world out there, don’t waste it on fake things all the time. My short film Luna had the same message.
 

mnkykungfu

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RE: Ready Player One
Wow, and here I thought it was pretty specifically about video games, lol. I really just took so much of it to be a love letter to video games, from the question of "how much is too much?" to the war between single-player depth vs multi-player bonding. The idea of commercialization taking over the gaming world, even to the extent of gameplay not being complete unless you pay for upgrades. The inequality of FTP vs PTP gamers. The list goes on.

The book is much more of a nostalgia trip, a love letter to all things late 70s/early 80s, including D&D. I love it as well, but I think it's probably a good call to keep the film a lot more focused. I don't know how much of the viewing audience would appreciate all the callbacks to 70s Japanese manga and tokusatsu shows. Not sure how much appreciation they'd have for adaptations of D&D adventure modules. For my money, probably better to keep those for the book while letting the movie focus on film and video game worlds. I loved the Kubrick tribute!
 

Jrzag42

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That's the problem. Adaptations shouldn't let the greater audience interfere. Adaptations of books, and to a greater extent games, should have their first priority be to appeal to the fans of the source material. Sure the casual movie goer might not like seeing a Dungeons and Dragons monster challenge the main character to an old arcade game iinn a cave, but I would! And actually, nostalgia for 80s,specifically that that D&D and video games, has proven to be somewhat marketable, with shows like Stranger Things and Regular Show. Of course, something like standing in an arcade and playing Pacman until its kill screen wouldn't necessarily be visually appealing, even to fans of the book, but it could've been reworked. The War Games portion would also have to be reworked to be more akin to the Shining segment in the film.
I'm a defender of the film, I enjoyed it, but a book accurate adaptation would've been better. It's also worth noting that there the characters are supposed to look just like themselves while in the game, so they really didn't have to have all the characters be cgi.

But anyways,
 

mnkykungfu

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jrWHAG42 said:
The book of Ready Player One is much better. I really enjoyed the movie, but it's not nearly as good as the book. The movie doesn't have The Lich challenging Parzival to Joust, which is all I really wanted to see in a film version.

jrWHAG42 said:
That's the problem. Adaptations shouldn't let the greater audience interfere. Adaptations of books, and to a greater extent games, should have their first priority be to appeal to the fans of the source material. Sure the casual movie goer might not like seeing a Dungeons and Dragons monster challenge the main character to an old arcade game iinn a cave, but I would! And actually, nostalgia for 80s,specifically that that D&D and video games, has proven to be somewhat marketable, with shows like Stranger Things and Regular Show. Of course, something like standing in an arcade and playing Pacman until its kill screen wouldn't necessarily be visually appealing, even to fans of the book, but it could've been reworked. The War Games portion would also have to be reworked to be more akin to the Shining segment in the film.
I'm a defender of the film, I enjoyed it, but a book accurate adaptation would've been better. It's also worth noting that there the characters are supposed to look just like themselves while in the game, so they really didn't have to have all the characters be cgi.

But anyways,

Fair point on not appealing so much to the mass market.  Though I do still think that in adapting books, you're always going to have to trim things and choose what to focus on.  So as I said before, I think limiting it to videogames and movies is better.  I actually thought the new scenes thrown into the film like the car race were a far more cinematic way to portray the same point, which is a love and understanding for games and gaming culture.  And the book faced a mountain of criticism for being very limited in it's development and agency for the female and minority characters.  As much as the movie was also criticized for that, I thought it did a better job.  Great way to seize the opportunity to adapt material and find ways to actually improve on the original.  But anyways :)
 

suspiciouscoffee

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Isn’t there an entire chapter in the book of the protagonist just listing 80s things he likes? I never read or watched it because I’m actively disinterested.
 

The Scribbling Man

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suspiciouscoffee said:
Isn’t there an entire chapter in the book of the protagonist just listing 80s things he likes?

Yes. Tbh, I feel like most of the book reads like a kid listing his favourite things rather than a novel, and there are so many rookie writing and grammar errors it's as if it wasn't even proofread. 

I didn't like the film at all, but I have more appreciation for it after reading the book, which I  thought was really, really bad. Honestly, I can't fathom why it's received so much attention. Yes, it plays on people's nostalgia, but it couldn't have done a worse job IMO. It's like the novelisation of a Wikipedia article. 

The film is shallow, but at least it's competent. The concept is also something that I think lends itself better to film rather than literature.

This guy sums up a lot of how I feel (skip to 4:04 to avoid the product placement at the start): 
 

Jrzag42

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Was the book criticized for that? Whoops. Well the movie is even worse, with the woman character being kidnapped and having to save her.
I haven't read the book since like, 6th grade, so I need to read it again. I don't remember everything from it.

I do agree that things need to be trimmed and altered to be more cinematic, but I also feel that things were altered too much.
I also understand limiting it to movies and games, but some things like Ultraman and Leopardon at the very least were important to the book, and would've been cool to see in the film. I don't know. Maybe the book just shouldn't be a movie.
 

DigModiFicaTion

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Bumblebee (2018)
Snagged a super cheap 4K code for $2.40 on this one. Pleasantly surprised. The opening scene was probably better than anything Transformers I've seen since the original Transformers movie. The Transformers looked great and the humor was mostly in check. Makes me hope this is a reboot, not a prequel. The plot moved along a bit too fast to establish any real character or story development, but this was on par with a Saturday morning cartoon as experienced through the mind and eyes of a child, albeit with blood and swearing ;) Highlights were the Robot designs and transformations. Lacking was the character development and the pointless S7 crew. This captured the feel of Transformers while successfully bringing it into a young adult forum. 7/10
 

addiesin

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Re: Ready Player One
I didn't like the movie that much, it wasn't bad but it was emotionally empty to me other than the actual Halloway character. I didn't like the main character being rendered as a CGI thing, it made him hard to care about.

What really got on my nerves though was that they never really explain the logistics or limits of the Oasis. How do you move? Do you have to also move in the real world to move in there? Then what's up with that bad guy chair? In what way is it actually better than present day VR? Real money must come in somewhere, because the one character was going to sell the Iron Giant thing. But can't you just create your own character and make it look however you want with no coding knowledge or purchase required? Then why would anyone buy something like that? Can you only be a character roughly the same size as a human? 

And for that matter, why aren't there a hundred Jokers and Darth Vaders, like any given comic con? Every recognizable character was actually a person using that character as an avatar, so why was there so little variation and imagination? You can see the movie once and catch just about everything that might be called an Easter Egg, which is a disservice to the overall concept.

Compare to Jurassic Park, same director doing another book adaptation with striking visual possibilities. They discuss how the park runs, how it cost a lot to build and will cost a lot to visit, they show how the ride on rails accidentally prevents visitors from seeing some of the animals, stuff that makes it seem like a plausible theme park. I just don't see the same level of thought-out detail in the setting of the Oasis, and it never quite reached believable. Compare to The Matrix, a similar setting in presentation. They can do almost anything but require someone on the outside coding while your brain is literally jacked into a computer network. Though it's nothing like anything that exists, we understand how it works and why the one guy wants to go back into the Matrix permanently. You can't eat or drink in the Oasis, you need an expensive suit to "feel" and even then it's not your entire body, just whatever the suit covers. 

The bad company is bad because they want to charge money for the service? That sounds normal, not bad. They are evil because they buy your debt and make you work it off by playing video games? That doesn't sound evil, that sounds amazing, I'd love to pay off my student loans by winning in Mario Kart.

Maybe I just don't get it, but I suspect that I do get it and it's just not very good.
 

mnkykungfu

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jrWHAG42 said:
The book of Ready Player One is much better. I really enjoyed the movie, but it's not nearly as good as the book. The movie doesn't have The Lich challenging Parzival to Joust, which is all I really wanted to see in a film version.

jrWHAG42 said:
Was the book criticized for that? Whoops. Well the movie is even worse, with the woman character being kidnapped and having to save her.
I haven't read the book since like, 6th grade, so I need to read it again. I don't remember everything from it.

I do agree that things need to be trimmed and altered to be more cinematic, but I also feel that things were altered too much.
I also understand limiting it to movies and games, but some things like Ultraman and Leopardon at the very least were important to the book, and would've been cool to see in the film. I don't know. Maybe the book just shouldn't be a movie.

She's just barely present in the book, and mostly as a trophy.  In the film, she's a leader, she's captured because she sacrifices herself to save Wade.  And then she's very active as a spy when she's a prisoner.  There's a lot more agency and development, with lots more examples.  

I lived in Japan and watched a lot of Japanese pop media, but even I didn't know half of what the book was talking about in that area.  (And let's face it, the translation of these names doesn't lend itself well to English..."Leopardon"?  Ugh.)   Each to their own though.  The film and book can be appreciated separately.  I tend to watch films first if possible, since the book is nearly always a richer story with more details.
 

mnkykungfu

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addiesin said:
Re: Ready Player One
I didn't like the movie that much, it wasn't bad but it was emotionally empty to me other than the actual Halloway character. I didn't like the main character being rendered as a CGI thing, it made him hard to care about.

What really got on my nerves though was that they never really explain the logistics or limits of the Oasis. How do you move? Do you have to also move in the real world to move in there? Then what's up with that bad guy chair? In what way is it actually better than present day VR? Real money must come in somewhere, because the one character was going to sell the Iron Giant thing. But can't you just create your own character and make it look however you want with no coding knowledge or purchase required? Then why would anyone buy something like that? Can you only be a character roughly the same size as a human? 

And for that matter, why aren't there a hundred Jokers and Darth Vaders, like any given comic con? Every recognizable character was actually a person using that character as an avatar, so why was there so little variation and imagination? You can see the movie once and catch just about everything that might be called an Easter Egg, which is a disservice to the overall concept.

Compare to Jurassic Park, same director doing another book adaptation with striking visual possibilities. They discuss how the park runs, how it cost a lot to build and will cost a lot to visit, they show how the ride on rails accidentally prevents visitors from seeing some of the animals, stuff that makes it seem like a plausible theme park. I just don't see the same level of thought-out detail in the setting of the Oasis, and it never quite reached believable. Compare to The Matrix, a similar setting in presentation. They can do almost anything but require someone on the outside coding while your brain is literally jacked into a computer network. Though it's nothing like anything that exists, we understand how it works and why the one guy wants to go back into the Matrix permanently. You can't eat or drink in the Oasis, you need an expensive suit to "feel" and even then it's not your entire body, just whatever the suit covers. 

The bad company is bad because they want to charge money for the service? That sounds normal, not bad. They are evil because they buy your debt and make you work it off by playing video games? That doesn't sound evil, that sounds amazing, I'd love to pay off my student loans by winning in Mario Kart.

Maybe I just don't get it, but I suspect that I do get it and it's just not very good.

Well, it's definitely Wade's story, but I thought the journey of the two creators struggling to find meaning in their work had emotional content, also.  I'm not sure who Halloway is...did you mean James Haliday?  I also thought the questioning of identity and what that means to people IRL vs online had emotional power.  In any case, I suspect maybe you'd catch more on a rewatch.  They were pretty explicit about most of the mechanics of the world.  A few tidbits that you mentioned:

Yes, you move in the real world, hence why Wade has a treadmill in both vans.  And why his uncle loses the game when reacting to real world stimuli.  And several other examples.

All the iconic stuff is proprietary.  They say that as the Oasis expanded, it absorbed other licensed worlds, until everything was part of it.  But they exist as unique items, which is why the bounty hunter makes such a big deal about his armor and weapons, and why Wade shows off the vehicles in the garage (and if you caught even half of the 20 easter eggs in that scene alone, I'd be gobsmacked) and why the big bomb at the end is one of a kind and a big plot point.

The company is bad because their charges and interest make their loans almost impossible to pay off.  That's why going to their centers is shown like prison.  It's why Artemis leads a revolt against them because her parents never escaped them.

The company is also about runaway capitalism and the compartmentalization of gaming.  They drain creativity and just work the math to exploit gaming.  Like stacking a leaderboard with clan members rather than individual players finding their own ways to succeed.  Like selling off maximum screenspace to ads.  Like equipping all their players with the best suits and systems and jacking up the prices so nobody else can afford them.  It's a commentary on competitive gaming as in industry and the effects of that compared to what gaming was like in the 80s.

I read a lot of reviews that said they actually didn't need all the explanation of the gaming world that was present.  They just wanted to get on with the story and accept that such a world existed.  I suspect that the issue lies with a lot of non-gamers watching the film and not caring one whit about the subject.  They either missed obvious things or didn't want to watch CG or wanted a different story.  It's probably best enjoyed as a love letter to gaming, and skipped by anyone who has no interest in that.  As you mentioned, there are plenty of other action movies out there to appeal to different genres, like the 5th Jurassic movie or the new Dwayne Johnson film.
 

mnkykungfu

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Hey since there seem to be several people unhappy with the theatrical version of Ready Player One, though...anyone want to try a fan-edit of it?
 

addiesin

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mnkykungfu said:
They were pretty explicit about most of the mechanics of the world.  A few tidbits that you mentioned:

Yes, you move in the real world, hence why Wade has a treadmill in both vans.  And why his uncle loses the game when reacting to real world stimuli.  And several other examples.

But the bad guy could just sit in his chair and his character moved anyway. And since the sensation of touch is optional (and expensive), we can assume most don't have it in the Oasis. With a barebones setup of goggles and gloves, how would your gear know what your feet are doing? What if you need to climb or go up stairs or if you're floating like in the club scene or the zombie dance scene? In my opinion there just wasn't enough information given to understand how immersed one would be in the Oasis, so the only thing I could compare it to is present day VR, which has external controls like buttons and joysticks.

All the iconic stuff is proprietary.  They say that as the Oasis expanded, it absorbed other licensed worlds, until everything was part of it.  But they exist as unique items, which is why the bounty hunter makes such a big deal about his armor and weapons, and why Wade shows off the vehicles in the garage (and if you caught even half of the 20 easter eggs in that scene alone, I'd be gobsmacked) and why the big bomb at the end is one of a kind and a big plot point.

But Wade's friend was making the Iron Giant, alone and for profit, so wouldn't that be illegal if it was proprietary? Wade is poor but has a DeLorean. The ONLY one, at that. There's a maximum of one instance of any given fictional character likeness, for example there is one Chucky doll, one Joker, etc. In a place where anything is supposed to be possible, I don't think it makes sense to have the same limits as the real world in regards to copyright and intellectual property.

The company is bad because their charges and interest make their loans almost impossible to pay off.  That's why going to their centers is shown like prison.  It's why Artemis leads a revolt against them because her parents never escaped them.

I understand this but I don't think it's very believable. This is slavery, and without justification in the film, I don't see a plausible way US law would have changed so much as to allow that on a grand scale in the seemingly short amount of time between now and when the film takes place.

The company is also about runaway capitalism and the compartmentalization of gaming.  They drain creativity and just work the math to exploit gaming.  Like stacking a leaderboard with clan members rather than individual players finding their own ways to succeed.  Like selling off maximum screenspace to ads.  Like equipping all their players with the best suits and systems and jacking up the prices so nobody else can afford them.  It's a commentary on competitive gaming as in industry and the effects of that compared to what gaming was like in the 80s.

I don't think you're responding to my points anymore but like I said, that's not bad, that's normal. It's business. It might actually discourage people from spending so much time in the Oasis, which would have a net positive effect on the world as a whole. Assuming that the only big difference between the film's world and ours is the existence of the Oasis and the passage of time, it seems to have allowed the real world to fall into disrepair in almost every way.

I suspect that the issue lies with a lot of non-gamers watching the film and not caring one whit about the subject.  They either missed obvious things or didn't want to watch CG or wanted a different story.  It's probably best enjoyed as a love letter to gaming, and skipped by anyone who has no interest in that.  As you mentioned, there are plenty of other action movies out there to appeal to different genres, like the 5th Jurassic movie or the new Dwayne Johnson film.

People can understand a film and dislike it. Just like I paid attention to it but forgot the exact name of the Oasis inventor. The film is, to me, not terrible but forgettable. Gamer or not.

I didn't mention anything about a fifth Jurassic film or a Dwayne Johnson film, not sure where you got that.
 

Jrzag42

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In other news, I just watched Return of the Living Dead for the first time since I was a child. I loved it so much.
 

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For what it's worth, I started writing that reply a few hours ago, just didn't finish till after TM2YC posted. Why?

I watched I Am Mother, a Netflix movie, with my wife tonight. It was fantastic. Much better than I expected from a "Netflix movie". The tension was thick throughout, plenty of ethical questions raised, twists at every corner. Highly recommended.

My wife loved it too!
 

TV's Frink

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Just a reminder that this is a one or two sentence review thread, as already stated there's other places to discuss in depth.

Overlord (2018)

Hell of a lot of cheesy fun. 8/10
 
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