STACK Aug #154

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Steven Spielberg’s VR adventure is both a celebration of 1980s pop culture and a cautionary tale about crossing the line between the real world and the virtual one. E rnest Cline’s novel Ready Player One is considered the Holy Grail of Young Adult fiction. Set in a dystopian future that approximates touch and sexuality. By the third act of the movie, that interaction between real life and virtual life is almost non-existent, and that is what made me jump into this movie.” The creation of the film’s virtual world

tell a story that will fit a reasonable length was, in itself, a challenge,” said Penn. “The whole time I was writing the book I assumed there wouldn’t be a movie,” adds Cline. “I wanted to mash up everything in pop culture and pay tribute to the pop culture that I love. Really, the only two guys that could make this movie work were Steven and Zak.” A self-described geek, Cline's book is a veritable love letter to 1980s pop culture and loaded with references to the films and characters of the era – one that Spielberg of course was heavily involved in. Consequently, the director held back on including too many of his films in Ready Player One . “I didn’t want to be vilified for some kind of grand act of vanity, so I had to leave a lot of myself out or defer to another director,” he said. Expect to see pop culture greats likes of Back to the Future , Akira , Freddy Krueger , Tron , The Iron Giant , and many more within the film’s OASIS. Cline’s novel is given to employees of companies like Oculus VR and HTC Vibe to inspire them and show them the potential of virtual reality, and the writer believes that the film will expose more people to the concept of the technology. “Last Christmas was the first Christmas where you could actually buy virtual reality headsets that were commercially available. I think [the film is] going to change the speed with which virtual reality will be adopted by civilization. That’s the power of movies.”

of 2044, teenager Wade Watts escapes the real world for a virtual utopia called OASIS, where its pop culture-obsessed creator has hidden an Easter Egg that will reward whoever finds it with wealth and power. “I put down the book and I said, ‘you’re going to need a younger director’,” said Spielberg at the Warner Bros. Comic-Con panel. “I had no idea at first how I was going to do it as a filmmaker, but [Ernest] was the handbook for doing that. “The thing that made me want to tell the story, more than anything else, was

I put down the book and I said, ‘you’re going to need a younger director'

the kind of world that 2044 gives to people, which is so dystopian,” he continued. “People are leaving the country and all of a sudden virtual reality gives you a choice, another world you can exist in and you can do anything in that world that you can possibly imagine. “There are optic suits that aren’t on the market yet that give you a kind of feedback

required two years of preparation, and co-screenwriter Zak Penn was also challenged in adapting the book to the screen, in collaboration with the author. “It’s definitely the most complex movie I’ve ever worked on, and I think Steven might agree with me. There’s so much material in that book that you can use.

Just to find a way to winnow it down and

Ready Player One is in cinemas on 29 March 2018.

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