READY PLAYER ONE

[Circo]

The book that made me buy a rift. Loved it

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[Draco1962]

READY PLAYER ONE movie release pushed back to March 30, 2018. All because of Star Wars Episode VIII release. Damnit.

[hansolo77]

Least it's getting made still.

[Draco1962]

FINALLY! The first teaser for the movie!

 

[hansolo77]

All I see is a screenshot.  I don't want to click the play button.  Still haven't read it yet and I don't want to spoil it. 

[RIP-Felix]

26 minutes ago, hansolo77 said:

All I see is a screenshot.  I don't want to click the play button.  Still haven't read it yet and I don't want to spoil it. 

I feel the same, but wonder if seeing the movie first would be better than reading the book first?

The Martian was a better read after seeing the Movie first. I liked the movie and the book was good too. I preferred the scientific depth in the book, but not the profanity. If I'd seen it after reading, I think I'd have enjoyed the movie less. Conversely, The Force Awakens book was an interesting read after seeing the movie. It added more thought and feelings. It explained more than I got from the movie. It enriched the story without detracting from the film. If I'd read the book first, I still would have liked the movie, but perhaps more so. I'm not sure. 

I think in this case, the book may be the better story to consume first. From the trailer, I don't think I'll be blown away by the movie. However, the idea is interesting. I think I'd rather imagine the characters and scenes for the first time, rather than have the Hollywood concept fed to me.

[Draco1962]

I read the book and if I hadn't the trailer would not have made as much sense. There is much that 2-3 hours in a movie will not cover. Similar to how Ender's Game felt forced in some parts. 

[stigzler]

That's a fact. Haven't read the book and that trailer made no sense at all. Does it have a story, or is it just kids running around in virtual reality?

[Draco1962]

Definitely a story and much more than a bunch of kids running around.

[RIP-Felix]

Just spent a credit on Audible, will listen sometime this fall. I still need to finish the third book in Asimov's Robot series and move on the Empire series. So I have at least 4 books ahead of me before I can get to it. And that's if I don't re-read the Foundation series just to cap off the whole epic, which I may very well do. So I have potentially 9 books to pound through before I get to it. I'm in no hurry. It's nice to have a backlog of good SIFY to look forward to over the next few months.

EDIT:

I had some yard work to do this morning, so I put on a pair of headphones, started Ready Player One on audible, and went on about it. SO GOOD, so far! Asimov can wait, I'm devouring this first. (Man, that trailer looks so much better now! I really hope it doesn't suck now that I'm being spoiled with this). BTW: the plot is way better than that trailer let on about, which is basically nothing except the key at the very end . Yeah, I'm enjoying it.

[hansolo77]

That's why I want to read the book first!  I'm backlogged on "new canon" Star Wars books.  Hit a dull point when I got to the "Aftermath" series.  I'm about 1/3rd of the way through the first book and it's just dragging on.  Might be the author, but I just can't get into it.  Might take a break and do Ready Player One to catch up.  @Draco.. did he do a sequel?  I thought I read some where that there was one, or at least one in the works.

[Draco1962]

Rumors of READY PLAYER TWO since 2015 but nothing definitive. He wrote an unrelated novel titled Armada since then. So I will believe it when I see it.

[tthurman]

I need to find where I put this after getting it off of audio-books.  This looks like my kind of movie!

[RIP-Felix]

I couldn't stop listening to this yesterday. I needed to go to bed and continued to listen a couple of hours after turning out the light. I only needed to work 4 hours today, but I wanted to continue the experience. So I put on Rush and listened to that while working. I rushed home to finish it. I'm playing Joust on mute while I listen! I think I'll have it done in the next few hours. Crazy!

BTW: has Black Tiger made it into the GameEx competition yet? I've never heard of it before it was mentioned in the book. Now I have to check it out.

23 hours ago, hansolo77 said:

That's why I want to read the book first!  I'm backlogged on "new canon" Star Wars books.  Hit a dull point when I got to the "Aftermath" series.  I'm about 1/3rd of the way through the first book and it's just dragging on.  Might be the author, but I just can't get into it...

I'm interested in starting a Star wars book cannon binge, but I've never read the books. I've only seen the movies and thoes made for tv ewok movies. So which books should I definitely get?

***************

EDIT:

I just finished the book and it was a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to the movie now! Bad news however, I still suck at Joust:

[RIP-Felix]

Ok I have a few things to point out (Don't read the spoiler if you haven't read the book):

1. At 1:28 in the video above see if you can catch the Joust nod.
2. I have a feeling copyrights will challage this movie. The nature of the book makes me wonder if Hollywood can stick to the characters, games, music, movies, and so on mentioned in the book. They may not be able to work out the deals to use key copyright protected works mentioned in the book. The meaning? I wonder if they'll have to substitute in other (perhaps better known) works. Case in point...
3. Spoiler

   I'm wondering what the iron giant is doing in the clip at 1:15? Parzival doesn't choose it as his prize when completing the Jade gate challenge and neither do any of his Gunter friends. It was mentioned as one of the available robotic statues however. That means that none of the IOI Suckers took it either, since Parzival was late to complete this challenge. Neither was it specifically mentioned in the final showdown. So what's it doing in the clip? My guess is that they are substituting for one of the chosen robotic statues (either for recognition or copyright reasons). It's not that big of a deal, but it certainly undermines the character's choices. These choices let you the reader know the taste in 80s pop culture that character has. It's kinda a personal thing to change.

    

[hansolo77]

6 hours ago, RIP-Felix said:

I'm interested in starting a Star wars book cannon binge, but I've never read the books. I've only seen the movies and thoes made for tv ewok movies. So which books should I definitely get?

I absolutely recommend getting the Thrawn trilogy first.  It was the first real push for the Star Wars books.  But it's non-canon now, which sucks.  When they released The Force Awakens, anything published that wasn't a novelization of the movies or Clone Wars tv show was converted to "Legends" and simply became a fun thing to read.  The nice thing now though is that everything going forward is guaranteed to be canon and things that happen in one book can have a direct impact on something from another.  We were all led to believe that every book in the past was getting approved by George Lucas, but things just got too out of hand and that stopped happening.  The nice thing too is that there's only maybe 2 years of books to catch up with (maybe 10 novels altogether).  The way I'm doing it is by publication order.  Since everything can be hinted at from previous books, I didn't want to risk reading something that was happening in a previous book.  So I'm reading them in the order they came out, so I wouldn't know anything before anybody else would have.  I'm also going back and picking up the old "legends" books as I seem them on the cheap.  If you decide to do this too, a good place to start is:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_canon_books

And then you can sort that by release date.  Looking over what I've read from that list.. "Heir to the Jedi" is good, as is "Dark Lords of the Sith".  "Lost Stars" is a bit much on the romance (a love story taking place during the events of Episode 4-6 with characters you didn't know existed).  I also read "Rogue One Catalyst" (a VERY good book if you liked the Rogue One movie, as it tells a lot more backstory).  "Tarkin" is also a good book if you're interested in learning about how he grew up to be the man he as in Episode 4.

[Draco1962]

One of the things I enjoyed about this book was how Cline wove the history of gaming - from humble arcade classics to full-on VR with haptic gloves and body suits for 100% immersion in a gaming (and non-gaming) world. 

It will be a movie that I will watch with my sons and wife.

[tthurman]

On 7/25/2017 at 4:04 PM, RIP-Felix said:

EDIT:

I just finished the book and it was a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to the movie now! Bad news however, I still suck at Joust:

15 hours of narration!

Binge listening!

[RIP-Felix]

8 hours ago, tthurman said:

15 hours of narration!

Binge listening!

Yup, it was epic and put me into a serious 80s binge. I watched Eddie the Eagle on HBO yesterday and found the song below. It's not 80s, but it lit a fire. I just put together a quintessential 80s music playlist to have GameEx play. Man I got it bad!

 

[tthurman]

If you haven't experienced the book, then this is unlikely to hold much meaning to you, but it's full of references.....  That said, skip this if you don't want to take any chances ruining the experience come release.

As already mentioned by Draco, do yourself a favor and experience the novel.  I don't see how any movie can equal the experience, but I'm hoping!

[Draco1962]

As he noted in he beginning of the video... BUY THE BOOK! READ THE BOOK!  DO IT NOW!!!

 

[RIP-Felix]

Okay, so that video did clear up some questions I had about continuity. There will obviously be some MAJOR concessions made to allow a version of the story to be told. There were so many references, that to stay true to the book, you would spend all the revenue the movie generated to pay licensing fees. Looks like they will be making sweeping substitutes to at least one "key" scene for sure, but for the same reason they'll have to do the same in other scenes as well. I'm glad they released the trailer with so many eggs to find, because they're really helping me to manage expectations and get excited for the film (that battle clip where Kruger explode into coins and drops his legendary weapons is awesome! I think they did a great job portraying that). Knowing sweeping changes are coming will be beneficial, so I'm not anticipating a scene that may not happen. I can just enjoy the movies for what it is, not disappointed when a scene doesn't happen, but elated to see a great premise portrayed on film. It certainly looks like it will be packed full of references, overt and hidden, action, fantasy, with the right mix of plausibility and adventure that makes the book so great. I can''t wait to throw my money at a ticket.

[tthurman]

Yeah, it's going to be impossible to get this spot on with the book, it would have to be a mini-series (which I would love).

I'd say the iconic character that I recall so fondly as a child with will almost certainly not make the movie.  Just to many licenses, that no one entity could possible have in their entirety.

Still I have high hopes for the condensed theatrical movie.  The potential for an incredible film is there for the taking. 

 

Geez....I can't wait.  I may have to go back through the book again to let my imagination run wild before the movie removes that possibility.

 

 

[tthurman]

[tthurman]

OR video, which contains possible spoilers for those of you that haven't checked out the book.

 

Spoiler