Ready Player One (w/ Andrew Fossier)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
It wasn't closely. What's the secret thing?
Just got to find something you love to do and then do it for
the rest of your life. I don't want to be a product of
my environment. I want my environment to be a
product of me. Hello and welcome to the

(00:40):
Establishing Shot, a podcast where we do deep dives and two
directors and their filmographies.
I am your host Eli Price, and weare here on episode 109 of the
podcast. Yeah, it's rolling along here.
Spielberg has been a long one. We're still rolling in the
Spielberg. Just a few left at this point.

(01:02):
You know, it's we're hitting thelast few here with Ready Player
One at the topic for discussion this week.
So yeah, I think. Am I right?
Yeah, this was the last Spielberg movie of the 20 tens.
So, yeah. So wrapping up the 20 tens of
Spielberg's career, it's been aninteresting decade of movies for

(01:26):
him, I think some good ones, some OK ones, I guess as well
thrown in. But yeah, we have a returning
guest this week. Andrew Focia is joining me to
talk about this world of virtualInternet fun.
I guess. Happy to be.

(01:49):
Here in our virtual conversationabout yeah, the metaverse.
Yeah, yeah. Joining me across from across
the state, I guess we're in the same state, but not the same
city via, you know, via God's Internet or you know, I don't

(02:13):
know. Al Gore's.
Internet, you know, that's what he would say anyway.
Yeah, we're we're here. We're doing it.
And Andrew has been on before. He has, he has talked about his
experience with Spielberg on theTwilight Zone episode.

(02:34):
We talked about Twilight Zone, the movie.
We talked about, I think all thesegments actually on that, even
though only one of the segments was Spielberg, we talked about
all of them. So that was fun.
Yeah, they yeah, that was a thatwas a disaster filled back story

(02:56):
as well. So that was a little, that was
pretty fun. Yeah.
But yeah, if you want to hear Andrew's like background with
Spielberg, that's the episode togo to listen to that.
We're not going to, we're not going to rehash that here.
So I just figured I'd ask, you know, what you've been watching
recently that you want to give ashout out to that That's been

(03:17):
good. We were just talking about
Superman. I really like that Highly
recommend and I know I'm late tothe party, but season maybe not
that late to the party. Season 2 of Andor OK was
amazing, finished it up I need. To get around to that, I've been
shy, you know, to to get into any more like Marvel or Star

(03:42):
Wars TV shows. Yeah, but yeah.
So my my issue, my issue for thefirst time with with season
starting season 1 was I just finished the Mandalorian and
started that in it. I love Andor it.
I think it's better personally now than Mandalorian.
But going straight from Mandalorian into Andor, I was
just like, what is this? Where where where's the

(04:04):
Mandalorian? So take a break and give it a
shot. It's it's really good.
Yeah, yeah, I'll have to check it out soon.
I think my wife would be interested in that one.
So we might try to watch that together sometime soon.
We're we're we are re watching Brooklyn 9/9.

(04:24):
Love that show. It's a.
Very funny show. It really is.
It's it's becoming one of my favorite, like, sitcoms, really.
Yeah. It, it might be like top five,
like maybe #5 but if I break into the top five for me, but
that's, that's kind of our thing.
We, we mostly like watch sitcomstogether.

(04:45):
Yeah. But yeah, we might throw in a
little Star Wars and, or if she's interested.
So we watch the Mandalorian together.
So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's good recommendations.
Superman and and or yeah, Super.I love Superman too.

(05:06):
It was great. I was pleasantly surprised.
I guess I didn't have like superhigh expectations, but yeah, I
was, I was, I was. It was well received.
I'll just say that I really enjoyed it.
Yeah, my joke was, my joke in myreview on Letterbox was that

(05:26):
it's fantastic and I haven't made my Fantastic Four review
yet, but it's going to be that it was super so spoiler there.
Haven't I haven't gotten to thatone yet.
I need, I still need to get to theaters.
I've I've been like sick. And so I I got I went to
Superman later than I was wanting to go to it and that's
kind of pushed back me being able to get to see Fantastic

(05:49):
Four two. So hope maybe this weekend I'll
be able to go see it. So we'll see.
But yeah, we're not talking about superheroes, at least not
those superheroes today. We're talking about the world of
Ready Player 1. And this is this.

(06:11):
This is like the, I guess the end of a a string of 2010's
motion capture movies that Spielberg delved into.
I guess he just like got really interested in that technology
this decade. And this is yeah, so, you know,
started off the decade with adventures of 10/10 and then hit

(06:35):
up the motion capture again withthe giants and BFG.
And yeah, now we're this is so 1010 is like all motion capture
because it and it's all in a animated world.
And then this one is like BFG islike the motion capture giants
and, you know, in in the real world.

(06:56):
So it's it's kind of like live action with motion capture
plugged into it sort of there. I guess there are some virtual
ish sets on that movie, but mostly real world sets.
And yeah, this one's kind of like I want to say it's like

(07:16):
6070% in in the Oasis, which is the virtual world of the Ready
Player One universe. And then maybe like 40 ish
percent, I guess in the real world.
I'm pretty sure that's that's what I've read or heard or
something when I was doing my research.

(07:39):
When I think so when I think about this movie, having seen it
in theaters originally, like when I was when I said, hey, I
want to do it, when I think about this movie, I'm like, Oh
yeah. It's like, like it's the the
alternate reality metaverse is the movie.
And I, yeah, I forgot how much like there's there will be
something happen in the game or the the Oasis and then it cuts

(08:03):
away to something in the real world like representing that.
Yeah, it's, it's it's interesting.
I forgot that part of it. Yeah, we'll definitely talk
about how if or how that works, you know, when we get kind of to
that part of the discussion. But yeah, it's it, it is
surprising like how much of it is in the real world.

(08:27):
It's like it's not quite 5050, Idon't think.
I think it's still like majorityin the virtual world, but it's
only like, I think it's like 6040.
I want to say I think there's like 80 minutes in the Oasis
world, in the virtual world, which comes out to about like
60% I think of the movie. Yeah.

(08:48):
That's not, that's not somethingabout, right?
Yeah. Yeah, which I think it's like 2
hours, 20 minutes. So about an hour and 20 is there
about and then an hour in the real world.
Yeah, I think that's I think that's about right.
But yeah, let's let's jump back though to 1972 when Ernest Klein

(09:09):
was born in Ohio. Ernest Klein is the author of
the book Ready Player 1. And he was kind of like a
typical kid that grew up in likethe 70s and 80s, like huge Star
Wars fan, got his first like, computer and video games as a

(09:29):
teenager and like, nerded out onthose.
And yeah, just like just completely like engulfed in late
seventies 80's pop culture. And yeah, in 2001, Ernest Klein
started working at CompuServe, which was this like it's, it's

(09:54):
kind of like they did, they werelike the first kind of e-mail
and chat. Like they kind of started a lot
of stuff that like we still knowthe Internet for today, even
though CompuServe is like dead and gone, like long gone.
They kind of like forums like they had for like big forums,

(10:14):
they kind of started the e-mail thing.
They had like chat room things and a few other things that like
when you think about the Internet, you think about like,
yeah, emails, forums, like chatting like, and they did all
those things. And he so he worked as like kind
of a support tech support for, for that.

(10:35):
And I think in 2001, CompuServe like was a lot of what the
Internet was. So, so he's basically like doing
tech support for the Internet. But yeah, I didn't really
remember CompuServe. Like I was using the Internet in
2001 but it was mostly like to do research for school I was in.

(10:57):
I was in middle school ish. Yeah, I was a little younger, so
I was. I wasn't on the Internet yet,
but yeah. Yeah, I definitely like have the
dial up to get on and, you know,do some, do some, I guess
searching for some, some, I don't know, a little essay or

(11:20):
whatever in middle school that you had to write.
Yeah, that you go back and read and you're like, I don't know
that I needed to do any researchto write this terrible paper,
you know. But working there is kind of
like where he traces back the the seed or inception of this
idea, I guess of this kind of virtual world.

(11:41):
And then obviously like as the technology progresses, like it
becomes more and more like, I guess like the the new
technology progressing feeds like that idea and makes it grow
into something like more realistic, you know.
But yeah, he he set the novel inOklahoma City, but it was

(12:04):
inspired by the winter greatnessof Columbus, which is where the
movie ends up being set. And there is there is like about
like 1/4 or 1/3 of the book in Columbus because that's where
like the Oasis, I can't rememberthe the name of the Oasis
company in the game. I mean, in the novel it's not, I

(12:27):
don't think it's really mentioned in the in the movie.
I don't remember. Yeah, but it's like it's
something games is the name of the company.
I just don't remember what it is.
But yeah. So there there is Columbus in
the book. But but yeah, Wade doesn't live
in Columbus until later in the book.

(12:47):
But yeah, it's probably just easier for the movie, just like,
oh, it's all in Columbus. Yeah, staying in one place
makes. Sense yeah.
So he, he based it on, you know,growing up in, in Ohio, I guess
Columbus is where he lived. He, he lived in a trailer park
himself. I don't know if it's like his
childhood or later in life or whatever, or how long it was,

(13:09):
but I did get and read that in my research.
So that probably influenced a little bit of like the whole
stacks thing. And and then another thing is
like, he loved Wonka. And like when he was thinking
about this idea, like he was thinking like, oh, maybe it can
be like sort of a Wonka style contest in this story sort of

(13:32):
thing. And so that gets integrated.
And yeah, all those sort of things along with his love of
like 80's pop culture, just likeamalgamates together into this
book. He wrote it.
He I think he started writing itin like 2009 or 2010.

(13:55):
And he even like he even wrote, wrote the novel after having
already sold the rights to it toWB, which is pretty crazy.
I'm sure he had like some of it written already, but he he
didn't finish the novel. He hadn't finished the novel and

(14:16):
had already sold the rights to amovie to WB.
So wow. Yeah, yeah.
And so. And a part of that is because
like the guy that was that he a guy he had met at South by
Southwest Festival, I think had was worked for WB and was also

(14:37):
like, I guess have become sort of his manager.
It's one of the guys that produced the movie too.
So that's probably part of it. This guy was connected to WB and
like knew he was writing this book.
And so I got told WB the pitch got him to pitch it to WB and

(14:57):
they went ahead and bought the rights to it.
But yeah, that's pretty crazy. And so because of that, he even
worked on the screenplay starting in 2010.
Ernest Klein did before the bookhad even been published.
The book didn't publish till 2011, but like in the meantime,
when he was waiting for it to publish, he started working on

(15:17):
the screenplay already. And yeah, I'm.
I have it right here in my notes.
Dan Farrah at WB helped him findthe publisher and kind of was
his manager of sorts during thatprocess.
But yeah, the book did really well.
It struck A chord with nerds of this 80s subculture and a lot of
other people too. I think the first The First

(15:39):
Ghost sold 1.7 million copies, ended up in 40 countries and 30
ish different languages. And yeah, it really he's I don't
know, I guess it just stuck struck A chord culturally and
people connecting to also like the vast number of pop culture

(16:04):
references from the 80s that arein this book.
It's it's, it is like quite the water hose of 80s culture, like
a lot of which I like didn't youknow a good bit that I that I
know a lot that I didn't know. And you kind of just have to

(16:24):
like roll with it, you know? But yeah, it's, it's, it's the
book is fun. I did listen to the audio book,
but yeah. Ernest Klein, I know you didn't
get a chance to read the book. I do recommend it.
So like if if you still like. Yeah, I've got to check out from
the library. I just got to commit to doing

(16:46):
it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I definitely recommend it. I did a lot of listening, doing
the dishes or, you know, drivingor whatever.
That's kind of when I do that sort of thing, podcast or
audiobooks. But yeah, yeah.
So Ernest Klein is working on the script and then this guy,

(17:08):
Zach Penn kind of gets into the project.
He, Zach Penn, was kind of knownas a superhero writer in the
2000s. So he did work on X2, the X-Men
Movie. He worked on Elektra, he worked
on The Incredible Hulk. So did a lot of work, you know,

(17:28):
doing superhero movies in the 2000s.
He also he actually got his start working on last action
hero, the 1993 movie with Schwarzenegger.
I think is in that, but he he was working on that and got
dropped from it. And the I guess the tie in here

(17:51):
is when he was dropped from the movie as a writer, he actually
like warned them like they had it's the release date set for
the week after Jurassic Park. And he's like, I think you guys
should think about moving, moving your release date out
from like behind, like the week after Jurassic Park.
So there's his like early Spielberg tie in is knowing that

(18:15):
Jurassic Park was probably goingto be a big hit.
But yeah, Zach Penn meets ErnestKlein actually working on a
documentary called Atari Game Over that released in 2014.
Klein had done some, I guess maybe talking heads or something
on that documentary. And yeah, Penn had been sent the

(18:40):
screenplay, like sent the, I guess the idea or the pitch to
work on the screenplay for this movie and had at first declined
it because he kind of looked at the book and was like, I don't
know if this is makeable as a movie.
And I definitely get that havingread the book now, but but yeah,

(19:02):
he he eventually I guess is won over by Ernest Klein and the
people at WB. And yeah, he so he and Klein
kind of work together. He I guess he's like the main
screenplay writer. And then Klein does I guess a
lot of the the work doctoring itand helping him.
So, but yeah, so so the book so for for you, I guess this is

(19:29):
good. You can be the audience
surrogate for people who are listening and haven't also have
not read the book. So the book there, there's quite
a few like differences between the book and the movies.
Like one big one is that Wade isin school.
He goes there's, he goes to school on the main planet, which

(19:53):
I can't think of the name. So like the, the world of the
Oasis is like each there's planets and you, you have to
find ways to travel between planets.
Wade goes to school on the main planet that everyone starts out
on. That's where like schools are.
And most, most people go to school in the Oasis.

(20:15):
So most kids log into their VR. They're like school issued VR
headsets and. That's how they log in, that's
how they do school. They are in a virtual classroom
as as their avatar and that sortof thing.
And so like he's actually like in he's like a senior in high

(20:38):
school in the book. And so you have a little bit of
that. You have, there's that, there's
the fact that the contest is a little bit different in the
book. There's like there's keys that
unlock gates. And so there's like you have to

(20:59):
figure out clues to find the key.
And then along with that comes another clue to like find the
gate that the key unlocks. And then in that gate is like a
big challenge that you have to pass.
And so they kind of consolidate that into just like the
challenge is finding the keys inthe yeah, the key on the movie.

(21:22):
And then, yeah. Yeah, right.
And so there's a there's a little bit more like interesting
like quest kind of plotting in the book than in the movie to
me. And then and I think another big
difference in the book from the movie is that like to me in the

(21:45):
book, so I think in both, Wade is a bit of like a bit of a an
annoying know it all in a way. Like he's like that in both.
He's definitely like he's definitely that way in different
ways from the book in the movie,but he's still kind of like an

(22:06):
annoying know it all. Like, he's not like the easiest
character to like, but I do feellike in the book, they do a
better job of, like, highlighting his vulnerabilities
and making him a more human character.
Whereas in the movie, I don't feel like they do a whole lot
of, like, good character development as far as that goes.

(22:29):
Yeah. And so.
So like, by the end of the book,you're like, really rooting for
this guy. Whereas I feel like by the end
of the movie you're like, why? I'm like, why do we want this
guy to win it all? I'm not really sure you know.
I feel no, I, I know what you mean.
I feel like the the the film, it's more based on we don't want

(22:52):
well, I was going to make an Andor reference to the guy.
He's he's an Andor. We don't want the villain to to
win more so than like, I want, you know, wave to win.
Yeah, and in the book too, like he's super like Wade is Wade and
Slash Parsival is he's super, super cynical.

(23:12):
So like when he first meets Artemis and they they they're
kind of like talking about in the book, like what are you
going to do if you win? Parsival is kind of like I'll
just like, I'm just going to like get a big use all the money
to like build a big space station and like go to like take

(23:33):
people, take a like whatever number of people and leave this
like rotten, like dying planet behind and go find like
somewhere else. Like that's kind of like his.
He's like super cynical, pessimistic, like, you know,
this world sucks that we live on.
We need to start over. And then Artemis is like no,
like like that sucks. Like if I if I like, you know,

(23:58):
when I'm going to like solve world hunger, you know, they're
they're both like, you know, teenagers.
So they they're kind of like, that's kind of how they think
like, oh, I'm going to sort like.
So it's it's interesting you andthen parsable.
Wait, slash Wade's character arcis kind of like him becoming
less cynical and more like trusting of people and more

(24:21):
like, yeah, just more of a like lovable guy, I guess through the
movie. And so there's just not really
that at all in in the in the movie where whereas it's like
that's a big part of the book. So I don't know that it's just I

(24:44):
don't know if I would have enjoyed the movie more if I had
just not read the book. But I definitely think that the
book does a lot of the stuff that the movie should be doing
better. Yeah, but it's.
But it's funny because I listened to a couple of podcasts
that had come out talking about the movie back when it released.

(25:07):
And at least one of them, there was a a critic that felt like
the movie did did a lot of stuffbetter than the book did.
And then the book, the the weight character sucks and in
the movie, like he's more relatable and stuff.
And I don't know, I just like everything she was saying.
I was like, I kind of feel the opposite.

(25:29):
This is really weird. Just.
Just based on what you told me about like everyone going to
school in the metaverse, Yeah, I'm, I'm not 100% sure about
this at the start of the movie, but my my one of the things I'm
kind of just like torn on is it presents in my opinion, it

(25:51):
presents the metaverse more as agame yeah, than a metaverse.
And it's. And it's not.
It's supposed to be metaverse, right?
Yeah, so it's it is like there'sa lot of gaming aspects to it,
right. But like most people in in the
book, the way he way describes it, as most people stay on the
main planet where there's no there's like certain zones,

(26:14):
certain planets, depending on how they're like created slash
coded that like are non P2P. So they're not or POP, whatever
the term is there. You can't fight people.
Oh. PvP Yeah, yeah.
PvP Yeah, did I say that or did I say something P2 Pi was like
peer-to-peer to peer? Yeah, yeah, they're not PvP.

(26:39):
There's like non PvP zones. So the main planet we're like
all the schools are and like thereally like most people are, are
logging on to the Oasis to like do business.
Yeah. Or do like there's like Wade
does tech support. He like does a job doing tech
support. And so like he's in high school,

(27:02):
but he also has a job to make a little bit of money and also is
like trying to get out. Like you have to have like money
within the Oasis to like get offplanet to teleport somewhere or
like hitch a ride somewhere. And so, yeah, most people are
logging on to the Oasis to like go to work or to shop or

(27:26):
whatever. And yeah, and in the movie it
makes it seem like, oh, everyone's just logging on and
like going to racing planet to race or going to like, you know,
war zone planet to like do a battle or where like all that
stuff goes on for sure in the inthe book, but also like, that's

(27:49):
not what most people are in the Oasis doing.
Yeah, I wish the movie had. Maybe it maybe it mentioned it
in passing or something I'm not remembering.
I don't think it did. I yeah, no, I feel like even the
scene of the when he's explaining how like if you 0
out, you lose everything and start over.
Yeah. And then which is true.

(28:09):
Yeah. But then it cuts to a guy, it
cuts to a guy in like an office look, kind of looking space that
just died. And then he like runs through
the window and it's like he was maybe this would have been
interesting is if if it would have been the kind of thing
where they were setting up, likepeople were having to play

(28:30):
certain games that give more money or something.
I don't know, like a like a bot kind of like like they were kind
of a I'm thinking of like Runescape bots and stuff like
that. If they were doing that falsely
to get money for their company or something, that would be but
but it it seemed like it was just focused on it being a game
as opposed to right the metaverse.
Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah.

(28:52):
And it's definitely like more which I don't know if the term
meta was the term metaverse being used in 2018.
I I think it was definitely coined before.
It might have been coined, yeah,but it wasn't really like in
regular use. Well, well, yeah, it was.
I know it was coined in I'm a little familiar with it.

(29:13):
The the origin it was, it was the the novel Snow Crash, which
is actually from what I know. I, I, I haven't read it either,
but I know main main themes. It's it's kind of similar
outward dystopia forces people into, you know, this virtual
world. The main character is like a
pizza delivery driver in the metaverse, if I remembering

(29:37):
right. Yeah, but it's it's kind of the
same thing. Everyone works there, everyone
makes money there. It's not a game.
There are games in it, but the main function of it is kind of
like the Internet. It's everything.
Yeah, yeah. And yeah, it's so, yeah.

(29:57):
And all of these. So OK, I'm going to name some
more like problems with making this into a a movie.
I'm going to go through a list of it's it's kind of like the
irony is that the main problem, the irony is the main problem
with the book is what made it popular, which is the vast

(30:20):
accumulation of like cultural references, which are there in
the movie too, which also I think that that that can apply
to the movie. Let that ironically, what
probably makes it popular are the cultural references, not the
substance, but but we'll get into that.

(30:40):
All these problems we'll kind oflike talk about culminating
later into like what, you know, spoiler or alert, the movie
doesn't totally work for me, butwe'll talk about like how all
those accumulate into that a little later when we dig deeper
into themes. But yeah, I mean, so, yeah, so

(31:01):
for, I mean, for the screenplay,getting all these cultural
references, one one thing that like worked in their favor was
WB only had the rights to so many things.
So when Zach Penn was writing the screenplay, he was just, I'm
sure he had like a list of references he can make that WB

(31:23):
already had the rights to and hefocused on those.
So that probably helped a lot with not the movie not being too
bogged down with that. And then of course, like when
Spielberg comes on, you kind of you're able to like, OK, now we
can reference some Amblin Amblinproduction stuff with like the

(31:44):
DeLorean and Back to the Future and stuff like that.
Yeah. But like, but there's a lot of
stuff they they couldn't get rights to that are in the book.
Like Ultraman plays a big part acouple of times in the in the
book and they can get the rightsto Ultraman.
Yeah. I don't really know much about
Ultraman to be honest, but but he does play a big part in the

(32:07):
book. They do so there's in the in the
book too. There's like a lot of more video
gamey parts of like where he's playing, playing a game against
like it. It could be like him and H
playing a game against each other and arguing over it.

(32:27):
It could be like part of a challenge playing a game.
There's even the I think it's the first gate he he has to like
re enact the whole movie war games starring Matthew
Broderick. Oh.
Wow. And so like, that's the other
thing that's different, a littledifferent from the book to the

(32:48):
movie, is that like these guys that are at the level of like
Parsival and H and Artemis that are like really trying to find
the keys. They know everything.
And so like when H is like, oh, I've never seen the shining.
If you've read the book, you're like, well, that doesn't make
sense because you would you would literally have watched

(33:10):
every movie that holidays ever mentioned like a million times.
And so, but but if you didn't, if you hadn't read the book that
that wouldn't really click with you or bother you.
You're like, Oh, yeah, I guess it didn't like horror movies or
whatever, but in the book, like he's like, oh, I've watched,

(33:30):
I've watched war games probably like 50 times.
And so like, he knew all the lines to say and where to go to
reenact the movie as a dislike challenge or whatever.
And so there's stuff like that that's just like, not cinematic,
like. Yeah, that's a lot more than a.
Race with King. Kong in it, yeah.
Watching watching someone re enact a movie or watching

(33:51):
someone play a video game is notvery cinematic.
So there's a lot of stuff that like that that they replaced
with the more like action scenes, like the race and stuff,
which I think is like smart likeyou like.
I wouldn't want to watch the movie of of some of the
challenges he had to, you know, it just wouldn't be fun to watch

(34:11):
as a movie, whereas erase is funto watch.
So yeah, it he does a little bitdifferent things, like with side
characters. The one of the cool, I think one
of the cool things of translating book stuff to movie

(34:33):
stuff from like, you know, the medium of a novel to the medium
of a film is that in the book, the Halladay journals are text.
So you, you read them, you read the Halladay journals and that's
how you know all the things about Halladay.
And there's like a big appendix that they use to like, you know,

(34:56):
find all the references that arelooking for in the Halladay
journals in the movie. It's like these these visual
recreations of his memories and stuff.
I think that's a really cool wayto like translate that to make
it more cinematic. So I think that was a smart
idea. A few other things, like with

(35:18):
rights and stuff. They wanted to recreate a scene
from Blade Runner, but WB was they vetoed it because Blade
Runner 2049 was coming out in 2017 and they didn't want, like
it, the references to like, takeaway from the success of that, I
guess. So, yeah, that got vetoed.

(35:40):
But they did eventually get the rights to The Shining and
Spielberg was like, excited about that.
And yeah, that became a big partof the movie, really the whole
The Shining thing. Yes.
Bill. Speaking of Spielberg, he
finally enters the project in 2015, so it's been in
development for a few years at this point.

(36:04):
You know, with I guess like 5 years, because they probably
would have bought the rights back in like 2010 if he's
already working on the screenplay back then.
So five years in development, Spielberg.
Spielberg hadn't actually like heard of the book until WB gave
it to him. So they gave him the book in the
screenplay. He read the screenplay first was

(36:26):
like, oh, this is really interesting.
And then he read the book and Klein actually talks about like
waiting. He he like found out like, oh,
Spielberg has the screenplay andwe're waiting to hear back from
him. And he talks about like just
nervous. He's like anxious for two weeks
waiting back from Spielberg. But yes, Spielberg, Spielberg

(36:48):
comes on. He does a lot of re like giving
input to rework the screenplay with with Zach Penn, a few of
the things he does. He requests more of the
switching between VR and the real world that we kind of
already touched on a little bit.So that was like something

(37:10):
Spielberg wanted this. I can't remember who.
I wrote this quote down from oneof the special features.
I don't remember who said it, but they were talking about
Spielberg. They said he really wanted to
establish this physical link between what people are doing in
the real world and what's happening in the Oasis, so that
that was kind of his thinking there.

(37:30):
Spielberg's at least. Does it work or not?
We'll, we'll talk about it. Also also, Spielberg wants to
make Sorrento less cold and mechanical than he is in the
book. He's he, he wants to keep him
menacing, but a little bit more like pathetic.

(37:53):
It's a little bit of a lighter tone in the movie than in the
book. In the book, he's like ruthless,
which I kind of like more. Yeah, it's it's kind of it's one
of those things with a movie like this, like, like we talked
about Superman earlier. You mentioned Superman.
What One of the things I loved about Superman, this new
Superman movie was Superman is like really good.

(38:17):
Lex Luthor is just like, really.Bad, Yeah.
Yeah. And it's like in like a normal
movie, you want your characters to have a little bit more
nuance, you know, And there is some nuance in in the Superman
characters. But like, at the end of the day,
what it boils down to is this guy is really good.
And this guy really, really is bad and evil.

(38:37):
And that's kind of like what youwant in in like a superhero
blockbuster movie. And I feel similar here.
I'm like, I don't know, I think I would have rather had Sorrento
just be like a little bit less pathetic and more just like
ruthless and menacing and in control.
Like in the book he's like very in control.
And in here he's a little bit more bumbling.

(39:00):
And I guess it in some ways it feels a little bit 80s, but also
like, I don't know, I feel like,I feel like that was a bad
change. I feel like you want a little
bit more, a little bit less likenuance and those sorts of
characters. And let's just make the guy
evil. So like, he's really easy to

(39:20):
root against, you know? Yeah, but.
Yeah, I don't. Did you, did you think about
that at all with Sorrento? Like, were you, did you, did you
ever think like, oh, this guy's like, I'm scared of what this
guy might do? Or did you feel like, oh, he's a
little bit more like pathetic orbumbling or not in control or?

(39:41):
Yeah. I mean, he, he never really, I
mean he doesn't know how to do the spell for the you know, he
doesn't know he's got people telling him references to stuff
to appear. It seems like his cardinal sin
more so than any of the horrendous stuff that he does.

(40:02):
I, I, I, I feel like conflicted because it's like obviously he's
like buying people's debt and putting them in a box, right?
That's objectively evil, but. But the film's main problem
seems to be that he's a fake. He's a poser.
He doesn't know the references. If he did know the references,

(40:22):
he'd be a better person. It's like, would he like, yeah,
yeah, it it seems. It seems conflicting.
Like when you have a character whose company, again, is buying
people. I don't throw the word around,
but enslaving, I mean it. Yeah, he's buying them to for
people, is forcing them to work.In the book, they're called

(40:44):
Indentured servants. Well, there you go.
He's he's enslaving people by leveraging their debt.
And but also he's fake. Like I don't know if would he be
any better if he wasn't fake? Would he be any better if he
could reference the right films?Yeah, and the and the.
So in the book it's like he's he's a little bit similar, like

(41:07):
everyone, like everyone hates him because they know he's not a
true like Gunter the the term like he doesn't really know
Halladay and he doesn't really know the references and stuff.
And he he he like unashamedly, unabashedly, though says like,

(41:27):
yeah, we have whenever they've like rigged their, their like
haptic rigs. So that like if there's a
challenge, like he can be loggedin as his avatar.
But if there's like a challenge he wouldn't be able to do
himself, he can like rig someoneelse that is good at that sort
of challenge into his avatar. OK, that's actually interesting.

(41:50):
Like like he tells Pars of all that.
Basically he's like bragging, yeah, about the technology and
how they've, how they've like hacked and rigged the system.
Yeah. And so it's like, yes, he like
he doesn't have the knowledge orlike, you know, all that stuff.
But also, but also he's just like, he's unashamedly,

(42:13):
unabashedly like trying to take it over and, you know, use it.
Yeah. Basically like to make money,
like to make the Oasis not free,basically.
And all that. But yeah.
I I love the I. Thought that was a bad change
for Sorrento personal. Yeah, no, I really like the his

(42:35):
little, his little PowerPoint where he's discussing how much
of the how much of the visual field they can they can take up
before they induce seizures. That is comical, Yeah, I'll give
him that. And it feels relatable at times.
Yeah, it's maybe a little hyperbolic, but still a lot of

(42:58):
truth in that. How much of someone's timeline
can we fill with ads where they'll stay on our app?
See, but that to me, I can, I can invent or, you know, someone
can invent, right? Specifically like, right
software to block it. I the ads that get me.
And every time I see it, I get mad.

(43:20):
It's just like the gas, like thegas station, like the, the TV,
the gas TV ads where it's like those will pop up when you're
pumping gas. And I'm just like, this is kind
of annoying, man. I hope this is it.
And then you see something aboutlike Ford or something's going,
huh? Well, we could put ads in our
infotainment system. It's like, guys, calm down.
We're yeah, we're already not anyway.

(43:43):
Oh, man. Yeah, yeah.
So another character, a little bit of a character change.
It's not like complete characterchange, but they do, they do
make Halliday in the movie a little bit more of this kind of
like tragic figure. He's a little bit of more of
like the melancholic genius. Yeah.
Who like missed out on happiness.

(44:04):
It's kind of like a Citizen Kanetype thing going on with the
holiday character in the movie. I guess like the the kind of
skeleton of that is there in thebook, but and you know, you do
still in the book have the wholelike he really like he loved the

(44:25):
lady that ended up marrying Ogden Morrow, but he never like
took his chance and like that's in the book.
But I think they do they do it alittle bit more of like honing
in on like the tragic Ness of the character, I think in the in
the movie. So I thought that was a a decent
like change or like it's not really, they don't really change

(44:49):
anything. They just kind of like hone in
on it more, I guess, and put a little bit more focus on that.
So I thought that was fine. But yeah, I mean, All in all,
they really like to the book is so like chock full of like
references and quests and stuff.And so you really do have to
like, OK, what can we keep that will be good to that people will

(45:12):
enjoy watching and will fit in a2 hour film, you know, And so
that's I would imagine there's alot of work that goes into like
honing that down. And you know, because it none of
the challenges are, I don't think any of the last challenge

(45:33):
with the with the adventure gameI think is very similar to the
last challenge of yeah, I'm pretty sure it's like the kind
of a similar Samish last challenge in the book, but all
the other ones are like they they just came up with something

(45:54):
different. Yeah, and the movie felt really
weak. Yeah, that one is not.
There's like nothing about it that's in the book.
That one's like, I mean, the race too.
There's nothing, there's no racelike that in the book.
So the first score. Yeah.
Well, the race, I don't know if you want to discuss the trial
specifically now, the race felt kind of weak to me too, but for

(46:16):
a different reason. But this was just kind of like.
I. Know what movie to watch and
then see the photo and then go to the ballroom, then jump to
her. I don't know.
Yeah, it didn't really feel. Yeah, it's like, it's like we
have the rights to The Shining, let's use it.
But then like The Shining doesn't really play into
anything. And no at all.

(46:37):
That's just like they're there, they're in like the Overlook
Hotel. It was cool.
It was cool when they walked. Yeah, it's.
Cool. Yeah, but it but it like
recreates shots from The Shiningand everyone's like, oh, cool,
but like I could just go watch The Shining.
You know, yeah. So it kind of felt like a, it
kind of felt like a like an Apple product demo a little bit

(46:59):
too like, oh, you're in the movie.
Like I it was cool in the sense that it just brought it in in an
unexpected way. Yeah.
And at the time I hadn't seen it.
So it was just like that was thesetup for me knowing and seeing
movie, but. Anyway, yeah, yeah, they, they
tried to make, they tried to make the challenges a little bit

(47:19):
more like personal to holiday. Whereas in the in the book, the
challenges are are mostly like you, there are like some of the
later challenges, like the cluesyou kind of have to like hone
into Halladay's personal life a little bit.
So like the whole like he he wasin love with Ogden Morrow's wife

(47:42):
thing plays into it towards the end.
But in the, but like the first couple of challenges, they're
literally just like things that Halladay liked.
And so he made that the challenge like the, I mean, the
first to get the first key, you,you have to play this like
arcade game Joust against this like really good AI avatar

(48:08):
character and beat them like to get the like, that's literally
the 1st to get the first key. That's what you have to do.
And it's it's because Halladay liked that game.
You know, it's not like something like big personal
insight into its life. It's just so there's, you know,
so there, there's there's a degree to which like, OK, you're

(48:31):
making, you're honing this like this book chock full of stuff
down into two hours. So there there is a little bit
of like I understand, like you have to make it more personal.
These challenges to kind of likeput this like through line
through the movie to kind of like speed up the plotting and
like make it try to make it morelike human and and like

(48:54):
relatable with some and some addsome stakes, like some more like
film cinematic E stakes, character stakes to it, but it's
kind of sloppy. You know, like you said, like,
oh, let me jump across these zombies and dance with this
lady. It's like, I guess there's a

(49:15):
little cliche Ness to it, I guess, and it's a little bit
more like sloppily put together.But yeah, yeah, yeah.
And what, what? I don't know.
I don't want to delve too deep into like all of my quibbles
quite a bit because I do have quite a bit.
Let's. But before we do delve into

(49:36):
that, let's let's go through like the crew and the cast and
and a little bit of production stuff.
And then we can jump more into that stuff.
The the crew for this one you dohave.
It's not exactly like Spielberg's go to guys.
So he's working with WB. So at this point DreamWorks is

(50:00):
kind of dead and gone. For all intents and purposes.
It's, I think I want to say Bridges Spies was really the
last true DreamWorks movie. DreamWorks still like it.
The name is there on movies evento this day.
But like, it's not really. It's more like just to have the

(50:21):
name, you know, like they're notfinancing it, They're not
produced. Like they're not like
distributing it. It's just like to have the
DreamWorks name because it's like a known thing that
Spielberg was attached to, I think is the reason they still
put it on stuff. But yeah, so he's not, this
isn't DreamWorks at all. This is WB.

(50:44):
And so you do have a couple of like WB producers like Donald
Deline and Dan Farrah. But then Spielberg brings on
Christy Mccosco Krieger, who's aAmblin, one of his Amblin girls
that as a producer. So kind of a little bit of AWB
Amblin mix there for producing, of course, based on the novel by

(51:08):
Ernest Klein released in 2011. I did see this in in one of my
sources. It had a different like list for
adaptation and screenplay. I don't really know why the
adaptation said Ernest Klein andEric Eason.
I don't know who Eric Eason is or what he did for the

(51:30):
adaptation, but the screenplay was Zach Penn and Ernest Klein.
I don't really know what the difference is there or what
what. I didn't really pay attention to
the credits in the movie to see if there's like, a credit for
adaptation. So yeah, I don't know what that
was him either. Yeah, That's the only time I
ever saw this Eric Eason guy's name.

(51:51):
So, yeah. So there are a couple of, like,
big Spill bird guys. Janusz Kamitsky is the director
of photography, cinematographer,whatever you want to call him.
Michael Kahn is editor. You also have another editor
though, Sarah Brochure. They probably did need 2 editors

(52:14):
for this because you kind of have two things going on with
the real and virtual worlds. So she, I wonder if she was like
a ILM person. The, you know, ILM does all the
digital stuff with this. So yeah, music John Williams was

(52:36):
not available. So Spielberg brings on Alan
Silvestri and yeah, we'll talk about him later.
The sound crew is Chris Monroe and Gary Rydstrom.
Rydstrom is like is a definitelya go to Spielberg sound guy
production design. Adam Stockhausen, who I know for

(53:00):
sure worked with Spielberg on Bridge of Spies.
I don't, I haven't done the the episode for the Post yet, so I
haven't really, I don't know if like he worked with Stockhausen
again between Bridge of Spies inthis.
But yeah, Adam Stockhausen is like Wes Anderson's production
design guy. So I always think it's it's so

(53:22):
interesting. He brought him on for Bridge of
Spies. And then for this, I just found
that interesting because when you think of when I think of
Adam Stockhausen, I think of WesAnderson kind of design, like
highly stylized. So I guess that applies a little
bit here because you have to have such high detail kind of in

(53:43):
both of these, both in, like thereal world and in the virtual
world. Yeah.
So I guess that attention to detail is what he brought him on
for, which, you know, I think was a good idea.
Yeah. Art direction by Mark Scruton
and then Claire Fleming for the motion capture art direction.

(54:04):
Anna Pinnick was the set decorator.
You have some visual effects guys with Roger Gayat, Grady
Koeffer and Matthew E Butler. Some mocap supervisors with
Heidi Hathaway, Gabriella Rios and Clint Spillers costumes.
I know he's worked with this lady before.
Casio will lick him. Maimon.

(54:26):
I can't remember what movie he worked with her on though, but
it's just not in my brain right now.
But I know he has worked with her before.
And then yes, Gary Powell. Powell does some second unit
directing, some assistant directors.
Adam Somner is like he's assistant director on all of

(54:46):
Spielberg's movies at this point.
And then a few more, Emma Horton, Raphael Sands, and then
this guy Frazier Fennel Ball is the assistant director for the
crowd scenes. So anytime there's like big
crowds of people in the, in the,I'm assuming it's talking about
for like the, the crowd engine that ILM builds for the, the

(55:10):
digital stuff. Yeah.
And then casting by Lucy Bevin and Ellen Lewis.
So that's that's the main part of the crew kind of a mixed bag
of like typical Spielberg guys and then some you guys.
When you do a movie like this, you kind of like have to miss
mix and match, you know, from your typical guys because it's

(55:33):
such a different sort of thing you're doing with this movie.
But hi. Quick reminder that you yes, you
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You'll find out how to join the Establishing Shot family through

(55:55):
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(56:18):
Might even let you choose a movie for me to review for the
show. Check out that link in the show
notes to learn more. Back to the show.
Yeah, let's talk about the cast.This, this will be, this will be
fun. There's not.
There's not a whole lot of people to talk about with this,
but the few we do have will be fun.
Yeah. Spielberg and the special

(56:40):
features said this. I thought that I was like, oh,
this is really good. He said casting is intuitive for
him. He's like, I only really know
that someone is right for a role, like when I see them doing
it. And so like, yeah, he puts a lot
of stock in like, you know, the the auditions and stuff and

(57:04):
actually, you know, trusting hisintuition with, OK, this guy has
what I'm looking for based off of, you know, bouncing off of
this, this other character I already have cast.
So I thought that was cool to hear talk about how he sees
casting as this intuitive process, which Spielberg's

(57:27):
directing is very intuitive too.He's he's just kind of like one
of those, I don't know, he he's,he's one of those guys that is
just ingrained in him. This whole, the whole filmmaking
thing is just, it just comes to him naturally, I think.
And that's why he's a household name.

(57:49):
But yeah, some people that I'm sure there's more of a science
to it, but Spielberg, he's like,Nope, I just know it when I see
it. I know which shot is right when
I see it. I know which actor is right when
I see their audition. He just, it's all intuitive for
Spielberg. So I think he might be a real

(58:09):
life, what's his name, Anorak Wizard?
Yeah. Yeah, so the character, the
actors. Ty Sheridan, of course, plays
Wade Watts slash Parsival or Z for short.
It's kind of his like pet name. But yeah, so he, Ty Sheridan was

(58:38):
he was actually, he was one of the brothers in the Tree of
Life, the Terrence Malick movie.He's not like the one that's
focused on more. I think he's the brother that
dies in that movie. Spoiler I guess you can't really
spoil The Tree of Life. There's not really much of A

(58:59):
plot per SE. But yeah, so he was in that.
He is kind of breakout was in the movie Mud in 2012 with
Matthew McConaughey. He was a young guy in that.
And yeah, he he was in a few more movies.
He was also in the movie Joe with Nicholas Cage, which I have

(59:23):
not seen. Yeah, he so he's he's kind of
one of those guys that like got some good roles young, really
young and like was one of those kids that's like, oh, watch out
for this guy kind of things. And so that's kind of where he
is at this point in his career. He's like had some really good

(59:45):
roles, like as a younger, like kid, but also like just a
younger adult, I guess, you know, teenager, young adult.
And so, yeah, he, he actually sent an audition and they passed
on him. And then I don't, I don't

(01:00:07):
remember why, but at some point Spielberg or somebody is like,
well, let's look at this guy again.
And they actually bring him in to do a test with Olivia Cook.
She was already cast. And Spielberg was like, I think,
I think they have like chemistry.
I think this is our guy. So that's how that's how all Ty

(01:00:28):
Sheridan gets cast. I don't I don't know how I feel
about Ty Sheridan. He's fine.
I guess he's just he's a strangelooking guy.
He's like not, it's, it's like one of those kind of guys that's
like one of those actors that you look at him and you're like,
he's not a bad looking guy. He kind of like he's kind of a

(01:00:54):
good looking guy, but he's just got a strange face a little bit,
I don't know, not like being like mean or rude or anything.
It's just when you're an actor, your face is a big part of it.
And some people have, some people have like distinct faces
and that's what makes them, you know, a distinct actor, you

(01:01:16):
know, And he does have like a distinct strangeness that I
can't really pinpoint to the wayhe looks.
It doesn't really, I guess, add or detract anything for this
role that for this particular role.
But yeah, he, I don't know. He's I guess to me in this role,

(01:01:38):
he's just kind of there. Yeah, yeah, he doesn't.
He, I was going to say he kind of captures the well for some
reason, for some reason, I'm sorry for the podcasters.
I was making a like big eyed amazed face.
He for some reason just Shia LaBeouf reminds me of Shia
LaBeouf. I don't know why, just every

(01:02:01):
time I see him I just think of Shia LaBeouf.
He's kind of got that like puppydog excitedness to him.
Yeah, like that, that. Like, oh, yeah.
Like, like a young Shia LaBeouf did.
Yeah, I can see that. Yeah.
Especially like when you watch like the like the behind the
scenes. He's got that kind of energy.

(01:02:23):
Yeah. On set, yeah.
I don't know. He he's fine in the movie.
He's not really like, adding a whole lot to and like, to be
fair, I don't think he has a whole lot to work with with this
character the way it's written for the movie.
But like, he doesn't like, elevate it either.

(01:02:43):
Like, he doesn't elevate what's on paper.
To me. He just kind of like, is there
and is fine. He's he's not like, bad, but
he's not really, like, he's not like popping off the screen or
anything, you know? Yeah, I don't know.
I wasn't. I wasn't terribly impressed with
Ty Sheridan in this movie. I don't know.

(01:03:06):
Do you feel differently? Do you feel similarly?
Yeah, I mean, I my, my, I guess my the things that I disliked
were not like, it wasn't like any of the casting choices being
like offensively, sure, you know, off or something, right.

(01:03:26):
But it was just kind of the the tone or the decisions and
certain instances like to start off with the dialogue dump, you
know, of like, yeah, that's position.
I have AI don't know. I have a peeve when the

(01:03:46):
narration is happening to the audience.
Why are you making a documentary?
Like that's, that's what I that's what, how I just process
it. Like just get me into the story,
Show me this character doing something interesting or having
a conflict or having something that they're going to need to
grow, you know, set it up for me.

(01:04:07):
Don't tell me I'm in a movie. You know what I mean?
Does that make sense? Or don't, don't, don't tell me
I'm watching a movie. I guess that was my main thing.
I, I don't feel like he did. I feel like he did.
He did an OK job. I, I think the I think they
should have done another take ofhis big speech.

(01:04:27):
I don't know why, like it was just it was, but I don't again,
I don't think any. You know, again, I think that's
like less on the delivery and more on the like.
Yeah. Wait, why do we care about what
this guy says? Yeah, yeah.
It's, it's mainly because we know Boss Man is going to get a
Mechagodzilla. That's why we know.

(01:04:49):
That's why we're fighting. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, we yeah, I think this character that is just like
really botched in this movie, unfortunately, which sucks
because it's like it's one of the things.
So Olivia Cook, we're going to talk about her as.

(01:05:13):
We're going to talk talk about Olivia cook as Samantha slash
Artemis art. I guess Art 3 Miss next reminds
me of myth Regan, the Megan movies.
Yeah, but yeah, we'll talk abouther next.
But like almost feel like her her character felt more

(01:05:37):
interesting and more dynamic andit's like I almost wish she was
like the one that was like winning it and getting to like.
I don't know if she I don't knowif it's like the acting or the
the way the characters were written or what, but I don't
know if she just had seemed to have like a little bit more

(01:05:57):
depth to her. Well.
Yeah, when he first when she's first introduced just because
parsables like oh God, it's her yeah, the the Twitch streamer
yeah, yeah, yeah, I didn't like that, but but yeah, no, I yeah.
In the in the book, in the book,she is like an obsession of his

(01:06:19):
like a like an online crush. She has like A blog and like
every once in a while she'll like as part of her like blog
thing, she'll like post a picture of her avatar or
something. And he has like a a big crush on
her and like has read all of herthings she's done and she and

(01:06:39):
she is like a very like, I guesslike one of the reasons probably
he is crushing on her is becauseshe's like very knowledgeable of
all the stuff like he is. And so like by the time they
meet, which is they they meet atthe first key, at the first key
challenge, he like, it's kind oflike he's crushing on her, but

(01:07:05):
trying like not to show that he's crushing on her sort of
thing. And he's kind of like
starstruck, but doesn't want to like put those vibes off sort of
thing. And here it's like, I don't
know, I thought it was funny toobecause he sees her and he's
like, it's her. And it's like, you do this race

(01:07:25):
every day and I'm sure she does too.
And you've never seen her beforethat.
Like, yeah, I don't know. I just found that hard to
believe. Whereas in the book, it's like
no one has found where the firstkey is.
It's there's no like in the movie.
It's like everyone knows that this is the first challenge and
everyone it runs every day at this time or something like

(01:07:46):
that. But somebody, I can't remember
the exact, the exact thing he says, but it it was hidden
behind some type of a clue, I think someone, it's not clear
someone, someone figured out where it was immediately.
There's like a portal that you have to walk through to get to
the race, right? But then no one.
But then no one's beaten beaten the race.

(01:08:08):
Yeah, but everyone knows that's the first challenge, whereas in
the book it's like him, like Parsival and Artemis are the 1st
2:00 to actually like find wherethe the first challenge to get
the first key is. And it's kind of one of those
things where it's like a, it's like a, you know, snowball

(01:08:30):
effect of like a couple of people find it and then it like
snowballs. And then like more and more
people figure out, oh, they, youknow, these people found it.
They kind of like use context clues.
And then like IOI, we'll figure it out.
And they'll like go set up a barricade and try to like have
all their, have all their Sixers, you know, beat the

(01:08:52):
challenge. And yeah, it's, it's, yeah, it's
it's kind of a whole different thing in the book.
But yeah. Back back to Olivia Cook as
Samantha slash Art Artemis, justso for Olivia Cook, her early

(01:09:12):
career, this is kind of early inher career.
So she's she's had like some success already in her career.
She was a part of that Bates Motel series from 2013 to 17.
She was in that movie Ouija in 2014, which wasn't like well
rated, but like any horror movielike that a lot of people see.

(01:09:36):
And so she was in that movie Me and Earl and the Dying Girl in
2015. And then I think her like one of
her first, like you could say Breakouts was in that movie
Thoroughbreds in 2017, which I haven't seen, but I do remember
hearing like, oh, this movie is really good back in 2017.

(01:09:57):
And so I kind of, I'm pretty sure though they would have
been, they were, they had already filmed this movie before
that movie came out sort of thing.
What? Yeah, they did, they filmed this
in 2016 because it, you know, it's a lot of digital stuff,
long post production. Yeah.

(01:10:17):
So she probably like filmed thoroughbreds and it released
after she already filmed for Ready Player 1.
Probably. Yeah.
The selection process, they didn't really talk about that,
how she was selected for the role at all and any of the
research I did. So I don't really, I didn't

(01:10:38):
really come across how she got cast.
But she's a really good actress.It's I think she's, I think she
does pretty good with both, likeher live action and, you know,
motion capture stuff. Yeah, I didn't really have any,

(01:10:58):
any big problems with her. I do think her and I think, I
don't think Olivia Cook and Ty Sheridan have very good like
chemistry at all, both real lifeand in like the Oasis Avatar
characters. It's, I don't know, there's

(01:11:21):
just, there just wasn't any likefire there for me.
I wasn't feeling like, Oh yeah, can totally see them falling
there, that they're falling for each other or something.
I don't know. Yeah, I just don't think she
would have. I don't think she would have
been interested in him because II like her.
I like her character, how she's presented specifically as like

(01:11:45):
the you have to do good. You can't just succeed.
Like the whole point of it for her is to save the Oasis from,
you know, again, we yeah, the the main driving force is the,
the, the antagonist, but she's like, that's why we're doing

(01:12:07):
this. It's not so we can get rich and
yeah, be comfortable. It's to save the things we love.
And I like, I like her, like, anger towards him at like, just
kind of being like, Oh, yeah, I'm in it because it'd be cool
to be wealthy, right? Yeah.
And she's like, yeah. And then and that's the other
thing, like so that's similar for her in the book.

(01:12:29):
So her, her character is very similar in the book.
She she has like very good character motivations and and
like she has like a good head onher shoulders and emotionally
and stuff like kind of like selfaware about her issues and her
just like what the point of it all is in the book.

(01:12:51):
Like I said, Parsival never saysanything to that effect.
Like he never is like, Oh yeah, I'm in it for the money.
Like far from it. Like he's in it for he's also
hates IOI and doesn't like that's kind of like the point of
all the Gunters and the, like, Gunter clans in the book is like

(01:13:13):
none of them, like any of them would do anything for IOI not to
get control of the Oasis. Yeah.
It's like, it's like their theirthing because it's something
that holiday created and they'relike super fans and, you know,
and so but and then like I said,he's like more cynical.

(01:13:34):
He's like, yeah, I guess I wouldlike try to get off of this
trash planet and like take as many good people with me as I
can. So he has like, it's, it's a
more cynical version of like, Artemis's motivations, but it is
like still. Yeah.
Like his version of, like doing good is like leaving the crap

(01:13:56):
behind instead of trying to, like, fix the crap.
And so it, yeah, I hated like, like that whole interaction
because I was like, and it's probably it, I probably hated it
more because I had read the book, but I was like, this is
not, this is stupid. Like, this is not this character

(01:14:17):
at all in the book, like in it. And it kind of sucks as like
this character's motivations as he's like, yeah, I want to get
rich or, I don't know. I thought that was dumb.
But yeah, just going back to what had started that money
trail. Yeah, you are correct in that
like, or I think you're correct in that like Artemis has good

(01:14:41):
motivations and it's hard to seeher like going for this guy in
the book. It's it's very similar.
It's like because like I said, he is kind of like a jerk, know
it all, like annoying guy in thebook, just like he is a little
bit in the movie. And like she really like it's

(01:15:04):
kind of one of those things where they're teenagers.
So there's a bit of like, I kindof like hanging out with this
guy because he like likes all the same things I like, but also
like he's annoying and a know itall and kind of a jerk.
And so it's in the book. It's like this like slow burn of
him, like being smitten with herand her like enjoying his

(01:15:26):
company because they like all the same things, but also like
keeping them at arm's length because she's like he's
annoying. Also, like my main goal is to
win this thing and I don't want to get caught up in a
relationship. So there's like a long portion
of the book where where there's there's that kind of dynamic.
Whereas in the movie, they really rush through like that

(01:15:48):
relationship and like, Oh yeah. Within a few scenes, he's like
saying like, I love you and it'slike.
Totally unbelievable. It's I've seen this meme several
times. You know the the the guy looking
at a butterfly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it's like the the one I've seen most recently that's not
related here, but it's just likewoman being professional.

(01:16:09):
Some guys is this a wife like like, like completely misreading
a situation. And yeah, he is over.
He is head over heels for her immediately and then.
And he is in the book, he says. But there's like a, there's like
a, there's a relationship development, like a slow burn.
Like I'm Smit with her, but I can't like put that all on the

(01:16:33):
table. Like, I'm trying to play it cool
like a typical like teenager would be, you know?
Yeah, yeah, I'm forgetting. I'm forgetting the teenagerness
of it. I I guess that makes that that
makes it. They're like they're 18.
Yeah, OK, no, that's that tracksmore.
I I'm, yeah, I'm, I'm thinking of it in terms of my life right

(01:16:54):
now too. And I'm just like, yeah, dude,
come on, this is too much. It's OK, He's 18.
It it makes sense. I remember being 18.
Yeah, I mean, you say and do dumb stuff when you're 18, but
at the same time it's like you you didn't build up to that in
the movie with the character. What like with the relation,
with the relationship of the characters.

(01:17:16):
And so I don't know, I just I thought their chemistry was bad.
I thought the development of their relationship was really
bad. I don't know.
Next on the list I had the three, the other three of the
quote on quote UN quote high 5, which is which is also the
nickname they have in the book because they're the 1st 5 to get

(01:17:39):
on the scoreboard in the book. There's like a scoreboard that
it's just like up all the time. And so, yeah, you have Lena
Waithe as Helen Slash H I thought she was great.
Yeah, she's. When she popped up on screen, I
was like, oh, yeah, her. I recognized her from that Aziz

(01:18:00):
Ansari show. What was it called?
Master of None? Is that what that's called?
I don't remember her in it, but yeah, that's the Aziz Ansari
show. Yeah, yeah.
She's she's like his best friendin it, I think.
And yeah, in that show I've only.
Seen it in passing by the way aswell.
Gotcha, that explains it. But yeah, she's in that.

(01:18:24):
And so I recognized her from that.
But yeah, she's she's very like,she's one of the, I wish, I wish
she was in more stuff. Like I don't, I don't feel like
she's in very much at all. I think I looked at her
filmography and it's like there's not a whole lot she's
like acted in as far as like movies goes.

(01:18:45):
But she she has like a very like, lovable screen presence.
And I'm like, oh, I would love to see her like in more stuff.
And she like she kind of has like a natural, like comic kind
of personality that I find like funny and endearing.
Sort of. I don't know.

(01:19:07):
Yeah. I thought she was really good
both as Helen and as H Like I felt like her personality came
through really well When she's like she's kind of so in the in
the mood in the movie, she's like kind of this humanoid
Cyborg kind of thing. Whereas in the book she's like,

(01:19:29):
she's just a white dude. It kind of like plays out as
like, I don't know how much I should spoil for the book.
I'll leave the I'll leave some of the like there are
revelations in the book alone incase someone because I mean,
we're we're definitely like spoiling the movie, but there's

(01:19:51):
some differences in the book that I think people would enjoy
being, you know, this isn't a book review, so I don't want to
spoil everything in the book in case you want to go read it.
But so I'll leave that alone. But it's different.
I'll just say that. But there, but there.
It's a similar like Revelation, but it's different I guess.

(01:20:13):
You you get kind of like you thecharacters talk about like why
decisions were made and what went into it and back story and
stuff that you don't get here. There's just not time for it.
And then you have Win Morisaki as Daito and Phillip Zhao as

(01:20:33):
show the the guy that plays Daito is actually like he's in a
bunch of stuff in Japanese movies.
It's nothing I I've seen, but I did recognize a couple of like
the directors he's worked with. So he's kind of a big bigger
deal over there. The kid is just a kid actor, you

(01:20:54):
know, I don't think he's really been in anything else, but he
was fun. I thought they were both good.
They didn't really have much to do at all, but they're good.
Yeah, let's there's a few so we could talk about the villain
characters. Ben Mendelsohn, Place Sorrento.

(01:21:16):
Spielberg had seen him in Bloodlines and determined from
that point that he wanted to work with them.
But, yeah, he auditioned and it took them three months to hire
to, like, bring him on. I'm not sure why, but, yeah.
But yeah, I think he's fine. Ben Mendelsohn is doing what he
can with the script, you know. Yeah, no, I I like him.

(01:21:38):
He he was, he's he's one of the he's he's a, he's a big
character. And yeah, rogue, rogue one,
obviously, Yeah. And or and I like, I like his
character there too. But yeah.
He plays, he plays kind of like ambiguous characters pretty
well, I think. And, and he's good in this, you

(01:21:58):
know, it's, he's not like, it's not like you watch it and you're
like, Ben Mendelsohn is so good in this, but he's like, he's
good. You know, he's solid.
He's doing his job well. Yeah.
And then TJ Miller plays I Rock,which is a, as far as I can

(01:22:19):
remember, a completely made-up character from.
It's not in the book. And if it is in the book, I it's
so little, I don't even remember.
I rock in the book. So, yeah, one of the things that
I thought was funny with TJ Miller is that like he showed up

(01:22:39):
and Spielberg was like, yeah, Sowhat are you thinking for this,
this IROC character? And TJ Miller is like, I was
kind of thinking like, like the way like Boba Fett interacts
with Darth Vader, but like just a funnier version of that, you
know? Yeah.
And like when he's when he was like given an example in the

(01:23:02):
special features, I was like, Oh, I can kind of see that.
But then like I was thinking about the movie and I was like,
that doesn't come through at allin the movie.
He's just kind of like a goofy, like mercenary, I guess kind of
guy in the in the movie. But I thought he was, I thought
he was a fun. He's not in the real world at

(01:23:23):
all. He only is in the in the Oasis.
Yeah, he's never never revealed.I I did.
I did think it in that way it was.
He has a lot more in common withall the mean, all the
protagonists, because. I thought so too.

(01:23:43):
I thought they could have done something with that.
Yeah, like especially when boss,you know, Sorrento is like gonna
nuke everybody. Yeah.
He even says that that's a that's a camper move.
Don't they? Like, yeah, like why did he not?
But he just like runs off. He doesn't like stay and try to

(01:24:04):
like fight with Yeah, you would have liked to see like him stay
and try to like keep Sorrento from doing it with Parsival.
But he just like runs off and islike.
Oh, but I guess so much stuff. He's also not honorable.
Sounds too strong of a word to use for that with the context of

(01:24:25):
what it is. But yeah, he he, he chooses self
preservation over trying to do what's right.
But yeah, it does feel like he it does feel like that would
have shown up earlier, especially when, I don't know, I
guess he thinks he, his experience won't be affected
because he's helping Sorrento. But it's like your, your
experience and and this is goingto get way worse if he wins.

(01:24:49):
So yeah, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, it's it's hard.
It's a it's not a very well fleshed out character, but like
for what it is, it's like, it's not bad.
It's he's fine. Yeah.
He was the character. Yeah.
TJ Miller does good as like Comic Relief.
He kind of has that like he kindof has like the perfect voice

(01:25:11):
for that's what they were going for, you know, that goofy
sounding voice. He kind of like, I don't know, I
don't know if this is rude to say to DJ Miller, but he kind of
has like, a Stoner voice. You're like, oh, that guy
definitely. Like, it's like, you know,
puffing weed in between, you know, and between shots, you

(01:25:32):
know, he just kind of has that, like, kind of Stoner like, yeah,
man, kind of voice. Yeah, I, I, I guess the first
like imprint I had of him was onSilicon Valley.
OK, yeah, I've never watched that, but yeah.
Well, he's always, he's always smoking weed on that show.

(01:25:53):
There you go. So that just gets the character.
Yeah, it's pretty fun. There you go.
Yeah, yeah, We'll, we'll skip down a little bit.
Hannah. John Kamen plays finale Xandor.
What even is that character? I don't know.
The more. Like.

(01:26:13):
She's. Had a cool version of Sorrento I
guess. Yeah.
Head of security. And then all of a sudden she's
like doing like, like stunt car stuff and then this in the car
chase at the end. And I'm just like, I don't know
what this character even is. Like why do I why am I scared of
her? Why do I care about what she
what she thinks? I don't know.

(01:26:35):
It was yeah, this, it's not thisactresses fault.
It's. She don't know.
Yeah, yeah. It just was a weird.
It was a weird. It felt like she, it felt like
if anything, her character undercut the ruthlessness of it
was almost like Sorrento didn't want to get his hands dirty or
like didn't have the skill. But then it's also like he
didn't have the skill to do all the evil stuff.

(01:26:57):
He doesn't have the skill to do all the nerd stuff.
What is he doing? How is he has the commentaries?
Maybe that's the commentary. That's probably something to be
said there. Yeah, probably, yeah.
But yeah, yeah. She's a, she's a nothing
character, you know, you know, no disrespect to the actress,

(01:27:17):
she's just fine. And even like in the special
features there was like they were talking about like, oh,
they were impressed because she she was able to do like some of
the stunts herself. She's like athletic and whatnot
and was able to like do some of like hanging out of the car
stuff herself. And I was like, oh, you know,
props to props to her. The character sucks, but at

(01:27:38):
least she's like doing some cool, like, acting and stunt
work, you know? Yeah.
So props to her, you know, and I'm.
I'm also sorry to her that they gave her like a stupid
character. Yeah.
A few more side people to note before we talk about the final
Big 2. Ralph Innocent is in this movie

(01:28:00):
playing Rick, the the boyfriend of Aunt Alice, who's played by
Susan Lynch, who Wade Watch doesnot try to save in the book.
So I won't say any more about that.
But yeah, Claire Higgins plays Miss Gilmore, who is similarly,

(01:28:24):
like, barely in the book as she is in the movie, but kind of
like a, oh, she's like a, she's a nice lady that, you know,
gives me hope that the world canbe, you know, good or better.
And then this guy Lawrence Spellman plays, I love this in
the credits. He's lame tattoo guy, the guy

(01:28:47):
that, like, kidnaps him and brings him to Samantha's hideout
sort of thing. Yeah.
I just thought I'd note him because I liked his name in the
credits. Lame tattoo guy.
Yeah, OK. Simon Pegg.
Simon Pegg plays Ogden Morrow and also the Curator.

(01:29:07):
Spoiler alert, if you can tell that that was Simon Pegg's voice
as the curator. But.
But yeah, Simon Pegg was actually about to take a break.
He had, like, a string of big productions that he had worked
on and then gets a call to do this movie.
And it's like, OK, yeah, I guessI'll put a pause on my break and
come work on the Spielberg moviebecause it's a Spielberg movie.

(01:29:30):
Why wouldn't I? Yeah, he's he just.
He pops in a few times as the curator.
I think his, I really, I think his banter is really good as a
little Butler curator guy. It's kind of one of the few
little pop up characters that islike well written and funny.

(01:29:52):
And then, you know, he shows up at the end as Ogda Moro.
He's he's good again. It's not like anything too
special. He just is there for a minute.
But yeah, but yeah, say the bestfor last Mark Rylance as
Halladay, James Halladay slash Interact the Wizard.

(01:30:15):
This Mark Rylance is just so freaking good.
Yeah. He's just such a great actor.
Yeah, he definitely, he definitely gave the the a good
performance as him. I I found it convincing.
Mm hmm. Yeah.

(01:30:36):
Yeah, before I talk more, they, I had heard somewhere that they
did, they actually wanted Gene Wilder in this role.
But he had actually, he already had been diagnosed with
Alzheimer's at this point. And I think they had reached out
to him to kind of like just get a just gauge, like, hey, we
think we can work with you Despite that, you know?

(01:30:59):
But he just, he wasn't taking any more roles at that point.
So that's, I don't, I don't remember where, where I read
that or heard that, but but I did.
So if it's not true, then, you know, whatever, just throw it
out. But I did hear or read that
somewhere. Yeah.
Mark Rylance, he had become a friend of Spielberg's at this

(01:31:21):
point. He worked with them first on
Bridges Spies and then like on that that first day of Bridges
Spies, he had actually like asked gave him their script for
BFG and already was like castinghim as the BFG while still
working on bridge of Spies. And then yeah, this he brings

(01:31:43):
them back for this. Everyone on set like in the
special features is like, yeah, Mark Rylance was awesome to work
with. Everybody loves them.
And one of the things Mark Rylance, he's not a in the
special features a whole lot, but one of the things he said
that I thought was good was thathe really only has a few chances

(01:32:07):
to make an impression in the movie.
And so and there's a bit of mystery to the character that is
at least in the way he saw it. And so he really like tried to
use that mystery to his advantage to like make the
character at least have the the like visage of having a lot of

(01:32:32):
depth, you know, to the character, even though he only
has like a few scenes to do thatwith.
And when he said that, I was like, that's true.
He really does like add a ton ofdepth to this character with
like 3 scenes. Basically.
You can't really count the Anorak stuff because Anorak just

(01:32:53):
kind of like, pops up and like and like, gives keys out and
says good job. Yeah.
But when he's like, when he's Halladay man, he adds like, I
don't know the in. In a slightly lesser actor's

(01:33:13):
hands, this, this would not havebeen as compelling of a
character, I don't think. I don't know.
What did you what did you think of Rylance as James Halladay?
Yeah, I I liked him. I liked.
I mean, I don't know if the I I don't think that this was an
intentional like movie goal, butone of the things, one of the

(01:33:40):
themes that I picked up on was kind of like questioning the
like deification of tech CEO's and like, yeah, how like it's,
it's what they build is cool. What they build is or, or, or
what what they are at the helm of creating is amazing in some

(01:34:01):
cases. But, but kind of the caution and
I and I, and I think ultimately he seemed like he really was
doing it because he enjoyed it. And, and I don't know, the, the
accidental trillionaire thing kind of feels a little like,

(01:34:21):
yeah, I don't love it, but I liked his, I liked his like
energy. And it seemed like he was, it
seemed like he was genuinely interested and, and loved what
he was doing. And I, I like that aspect of
like he created this thing that's being abused by people,

(01:34:43):
but that wasn't it. He didn't want like he, I don't
know. And, and I, I find the
conversation that he, they're had, they had that, that, that
they're having about people are doing too much with it.
Like it's becoming like basically when the metaverse
became everything. I guess I find that conversation

(01:35:05):
really interesting because his perspective is just like, well,
what can I do, you know? And I don't know, I like, I like
that conversation a lot. That's interesting.
Yeah. And I think, yeah, I agree with
a lot of what you're saying likethe the whole it is interesting

(01:35:26):
to think about like this kind ofwe I feel like we have a bit of
a different like lens to look atthis through in 2025 than we did
even just seven years ago in 2018.
Of kind of like the rise of the tech CEO celebrity.

(01:35:47):
Obviously we have a few of them,yeah, that have gotten a lot of
attention in the past, like since this movie.
And yeah, it is interesting liketo think of this movie through
that lens, which maybe not a lotof people were doing in 2018,
even though definitely it definitely wasn't.

(01:36:08):
It was it was there to it was there to see if you were aware
of it. But I just don't think of as
many people it was on their minds back then.
But yeah, it's definitely an interesting lens to look at it
through because I mean, you think of first of all, like,
like you said, accident, accidental, trillionaire,
billionaire. I don't know about that.

(01:36:31):
Like these guys that are billionaires, there's no
accidents about it, you know? Maybe accident was the wrong
word. It more so was like.
It more so was like. I think that I think it's AI
think it's a fair term, Yeah. Because you do get that
impression that like, he never intended to become rich and just

(01:36:53):
like, oops, I made a billion dollars.
I mean, oh, sorry, a trillion. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
In the movie, you get that. I mean, in that that impression,
the trillion thing, like whatever, it's just a number.
It's it's a, you know, billionaire, trillionaire.
Like in I don't know that mean trillion is obviously a lot more

(01:37:13):
than a billion, but inconsequential as far as like
the the commentary, like what it's trying to say.
Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it's like there's a
degree to which what do we do with these guys?
Like how much like they these guys kind of become gatekeepers

(01:37:38):
in a way of certain parts of culture.
And in the case of this story, Halladay kind of becomes a
gatekeeper of like pop culture. Like everyone is obsessed with
80's pop culture because that's what Halladay was interested in.
And so like he like it kind of like the what's important as far

(01:38:02):
as culture goes kind of tricklesdown from him.
And there's a degree to which you can see that now even to
like, I mean, like there's a degree to which like the values
of Elon Musk unfortunately like kind of trickle down to a
portion of society where what's important to him trickles down

(01:38:27):
to that portion of society and it becomes important to them
too. Maybe less so now after the the
break. Yeah, the the, the big breakup.
But but yeah, you know, you can see degrees of that.

(01:38:48):
It's probably more though, so it's an interesting mix up
because or mash up, I guess is abetter way word I'm looking for
because really typically the thetech guys aren't really like
gatekeepers of pop culture. That's more like your Hollywood
celebrities or your you know, ordirectors or, you know, the

(01:39:12):
people that are making the the art and the and whatnot.
Typically, like pop culture isn't like gatekeeped by tech
guys. So it's an interesting to see
that that's the case in this one.
I don't know if that says anything, but yeah, I don't

(01:39:32):
know. I don't, I don't know exactly
what this movie would be saying about the tech billionaire and
what it means for society because in this case, like from
what we can tell, he's actually like a pretty good guy.
Yeah, in this in this representation, he kind of just,
he kind of just made a thing that can be used that that is

(01:39:58):
it's it's used to hurt people, but it's not explicitly bad.
Like the Internet's a good sin. And like, yeah, there are awful
things on the Internet, but there's also amazing connection
that can happen because of it. So it's it's more of a neutral
as opposed to strictly evil thing.
And we've seen kind of, I don't know, just just.

(01:40:21):
Abuse. Yeah, abuse of that kind of
power, when people get it, it it's kind of I I talked about
this little friend recently about like the the adage of, you
know, like absolute power corrupts absolutely.
And it's like, well, is it a chicken or the egg?
Like what, which which one causes?
And my, my synopsis of that is like, well, the people that are

(01:40:42):
seeking absolute power are pretty corruptible.
Like, like there's, there's a skewed we, we think about, we
think about that phrase in like the terms of a random guy on the
street being given this power. Are you going to become corrupt
with this absolute power? Kind of like the Easter egg, you

(01:41:03):
know, situation here with Halliday giving it to someone
random like that absolute power.Is that going to corrupt this
random person in the story? But in the way that actually
happens, it's someone staking claim and and getting more
influence and bribing people to do and it's like so by the time

(01:41:26):
they. Get to some.
Point yeah, but it's when they get to the point where they have
absolute power, they're corrupt and evil as opposed to the
absolute power. You know, I don't think anyone
should have absolute power over other people like that.
But the But the point is we think about it in terms of,
well, if I was given absolute power, I don't think I would
become corrupt necessarily. And that's that's probably true

(01:41:48):
for a lot of people. But the people who end up with
absolute power in our world in reality are bad.
Like that's that typically leadsto bad things.
And so, yeah, I think that ties in here with with you're right.
It's like Sorrento is the guy who has accumulated power and is
trying to get the final piece. And for whatever, you know, our

(01:42:14):
gripes are with Wade. Wade's goal is he.
He wants to do it because he he,he, he worships how to.
Keep it like it is. He wants to keep it free and
open and accessible and all that, which we'll get into a
little bit of like the inconsistencies with with with

(01:42:35):
how things end and everything, but which is I guess a similar
problem in the book and the movie of like a bit inconsistent
with its messaging. But yeah, there I think to along
those same lines of what we've been talking about, there's a
degree to which like the tech billionaire guy usually has some

(01:42:57):
like pretty big issues. Like, there's some yeah.
And and I think like, even though we look at holiday and
we're like, oh, he's a pretty good guy.
Like, he also had some like, pretty, like, pretty deep social
and emotional issues that like, caused him to probably like, to

(01:43:20):
a degree caused him to like, escape into this work and this
creation instead of like, being in the real world.
And like, it's one of those things where like, I wasted away
because of my emotional and social issues, not dealing with
those. I've now created something that
is like beyond my control and isbecoming something that I never

(01:43:43):
intended it to be. And you know, you can question
like, well, if you would have like dealt with your emotional
and social issues, like, would you have done this thing?
Like, would you have been in a better mindset to, like, maybe
create something that wouldn't have gotten away from you and
become something you didn't intended to be?

(01:44:06):
Yeah. But yeah, I don't know.
Yeah, his, his obsession with creation kind of created an
obsessive, addictive world for other people to get into.
And then that, yeah, had an effect on society.
Yeah, that that's a, that's interesting too.
I, I think it's, I think you're right that, that it was a
different, at least in my perspective, it was a different

(01:44:31):
lens in the, you know, the times, the time from the movie
came out during. But especially since the movie's
been out, there has been kind ofthe rise of just, you know,
every time you turn around, there's a new tech CEO doing
something crazy and like, or, you know, immoral.
And it's, yeah, it's almost always at the expense of others.

(01:44:55):
And his, his presentation in in the film is incredibly
idealistic. Like, in other words, it's kind
of the the basis of a good intentioned person imposed onto
someone with all this power who's just kind of like, I don't

(01:45:17):
know what to do with it. I'm just, I'm just your average
trillionaire guy. I like my tech.
And it's like he's he's for thatreason admirable.
Yeah. But I'm just super skeptical
thinking, sitting here thinking,OK, what?
What, what atrocities has he committed with, you know, this
level of control? Yeah.

(01:45:37):
And I think there's a degree to which like it, you know, I can
kind of get on board with with the the whole thing.
Like he also like had started this company and you, when you
start a company and you're like the creator guy, like you kind
of get caught up in the people taking advantage of your
creation and make, you know, making it more than you ever

(01:46:00):
wanted it to be. But you're but they're also
like, it's like the whole like alot of times this will play out
with like science in real life or in movies, like any sort of
like scientific or technologicaladvancement.
It's like you kind of have to get in bed with bad people to
get the resources you need to tolike make the advancements, but
then you're like making stuff for bad people that are going to

(01:46:23):
do bad things with it. Yeah.
It's like the whole Oppenheimer thing.
It's the, you know, it's the Jurassic Park thing.
It's like, it's all of those things.
Like if you want to have a a real life, you know, example in
Amanheimer and a fake one in Jurassic Park, you know, But
yeah, it so. Yeah.

(01:46:47):
At the end of the day though, like Mark Rylance plays this
character and gives it way more depth than anybody had business
giving this character I think. Yeah, for sure.
Like you, you totally buy in. Like we're, we're kind of like
putting it this character under a microscope, but like in the
real time watching the movie, like you like really love this

(01:47:11):
guy and you, you know, you feel bad for him, but and you also
like admire him and, and Mark Rylance does that with like, you
know, 10 minutes or less of screen time really.
Yeah, he capture, he captures the kind of like I said, I, I

(01:47:32):
think I already said this, the the, the idealism and the
lovability of what we envisionedall this technology could
become, right? Maybe even before before I was
before I was, you know, aware ofthis kind of stuff.
Like probably like early 2000s, you know, that that kind of that
kind of optimism about what it could be versus kind of what it

(01:47:56):
is now, you know, with like deadInternet, dead Internet theory
and stuff like that where it's just like bots talking to bots
talking to bots. And it's like that that kind of
thing. I think he captures that
optimism and that lovability of that era really well.
Sure. Yeah, Well, I guess we can move

(01:48:19):
into talking a bit about like the production.
They they filmed this from June to September of 2016.
A bit unusual for filming because you're splitting between
live action shots and 80 minutesof the virtual universe of the
Oasis. Spielberg talked about like this

(01:48:40):
being one of his most difficult projects because of the layers
of elements you're trying to integrate.
I think it, I think I remember him saying something like it.
It felt like I was directing 4 different films at the same
time. Yeah.
It's. And that it was like chaotic
because of all the layers that you're having to like pull

(01:49:01):
together, you know. But yeah, they, they started off
with the Oasis stuff with all the, all of that.
So they, they do their first take there in the summer in the
UK. So they, they set up at Warner

(01:49:26):
Studios in Leveston, which is north of London.
They have like the interiors forthe IOI offices there.
They build the stacks in the back lot there.
That's also, I think I'm pretty sure where they set up like all
the motion capture stuff that they do there.
And then, yeah. So then they from there, they

(01:49:48):
kind of like go outward, they goup to Birmingham, and Birmingham
is like the real world representative of Columbus.
They're not actually shooting inthe US.
So Columbus also is, has a few locations in London, like the

(01:50:09):
street where the the friends meet up at the US postal truck
or whatever. And then the I/O IHQ, it's like
a school in London. Yeah, there's yeah.
So they, it's all just random these few places in the UK that
they that they shoot real world stuff and then like the interior

(01:50:30):
sets and the motion capture stuff.
And then, yeah, the rest is doneby digital domain in a virtual
world. So yeah, I, I did, I was right.
They did do the performance capture studio in Leaveston is
where that was set up at Warner Studios there.
So yeah, on on set, you know, people just all all the actors

(01:50:57):
talked about loving working withSpielberg, him bringing tons of
positivity. I just always love hearing that.
You know, he's it's fun to watchhim on the special features, but
it's also like, great to hear you never really hear bad things
about Spielberg on set. He's just like positive and
excited. I love this quote, Ty Ty shared

(01:51:21):
and shared that Lena Waithe, something that Lena Waithe said
about Spielberg. She said, quote, Steven is a
giant. That doesn't make you feel
small. UN quote, I was like, oh, that's
really sweet. I love that because he is a
giant, but like, you just alwaysget the feeling that people just
love working with him. Yeah.

(01:51:43):
But yeah. So Ty Sheridan also talked about
on the first day he showed up and Spielberg was like, hey, do
you have, you know, because they're doing motion capture
stuff. Hey, do you have the parsable
walk down? And Ty's like, I, I don't know,
like I'm not really haven't really thought about like how
parsable would walk. And Spielberg was like, you

(01:52:04):
know, yeah, he, he's going to have like a swagger that Wade
doesn't have in real life. He said it and he was like, it's
like, it's like the Saturday Night Fever walk.
And so he like, gets he gets them all set up in the motion
capture stuff. And then Spielberg's like he
presses play and it's staying alive play in and he's like, OK

(01:52:26):
action. And so he's like having him like
do a Saturday Night Fever walk to like staying alive while
they're filming. Get recording it.
I thought that was a fun little anecdote, yeah, of Ty's first
day on set. But yeah, it it's, it's
interesting. I guess we can talk a little bit

(01:52:49):
about how it was filmed. So well, OK, we'll come back to
this. We'll come back to like the
cinematography and whatnot. There's let's talk about like
production design and effects. There's a ton of concept art

(01:53:09):
obviously that's done in pre production that eventually is
used by stock housing and the ILM people to kind of like build
out this world. But yeah, it's they, they do
kind of have to create two different worlds and they want
to make them them distinct. So one of the ways obviously is
like color of the Oasis is very colorful, whereas the real world

(01:53:33):
is kind of drab. Yeah, Spielberg talks about,
like wanting to make design the world of the Oasis to like look
real, which I think it does fairly a fairly good job of when
it's like a situation that wouldlook real, you know?

(01:53:54):
Yeah. But make it like just different
enough from looking like the real world so that, you know,
like right now I'm in the Oasis,which I don't think many people
would have trouble making that distinction.
But it is good to know that he was thinking about that at
least. Yeah.
I mean, this is, this is one of those movies where just like

(01:54:15):
everything on screen is just like highly, highly designed
because you have like for one, like in the, even in the real
world, it's like a futuristic real world and it's kind of
sci-fi ish. And so like it's like this mix
of, you know, old low tech stuffand high tech stuff.

(01:54:38):
And just, and then of course, like in the Oasis, everything is
highly designed because it's being made from scratch.
So you, you know, it has to be. And yeah, I, I just like just
imagining like the stress of theall these design people both

(01:54:59):
like real world and virtual. It's like man, I have to create
all this stuff. Yeah, it's a lot, Yeah.
Creating an and maybe that's, I don't know, I, I think the
metaverse oversight aspect of itis probably, just probably

(01:55:21):
coming from the writing or directing standpoint of just not
wanting that to be the focus. But also from a design
standpoint, making it more game like, it's probably easier
because then you're showing lessvariety of things.
Yeah, maybe so, yeah, I mean, solike in the real world they the

(01:55:44):
way they design. So obviously like when you're
out in the streets and stuff, that's just what it is.
But then like I guess the insideof the I/O IHQ is like really
where a lot of the design stuff comes into play.
So I mean, you have like the indentured servant pods, like

(01:56:07):
that whole thing that you have to design.
And then I think that there's a there's a large portion spent in
either the like war room with all like the haptic suit, like
rigs and Sorrento's office. And so since they're spending so

(01:56:28):
much time there, they kind of built Sorrento's office like up
on stilts in the middle of the war room so that like, they're
not, they're not having it like,OK, now we need to go get takes
like them walking down a hallwayinstead, he can just like walk
down this out of his office, down the steps into the war room
and back or whatever. I thought that was smart.

(01:56:51):
And then, yeah, it's it's one ofthose things where like, so, you
know, they do that. They build the stack.
The stacks are built in a back lot.
They they start with illustrations.
It has to look like, you know, unplanned and has haphazard.
So there's a lot of engineering that goes into that because they

(01:57:12):
actually like built. So there was like, I think,
yeah, 6 structures that they built four stories high.
And then like, so anytime there's like real sets,
basically they they build the real sets on a small scale and
then in post they like digitallylike expand it.

(01:57:34):
So like, so like the war room islike much smaller on the real
set. There's like a real set that
they build and that they have real people on real rigs doing
the stuff. But then like they digitally
like add way more depth and width to that and like kind of

(01:57:56):
use motion capture to add digital, more digital, like
Sixers on the rigs on the, you know, back there.
Or same thing with like the indigered servant pods.
Like they they have like a smallversion, real set of that that
they expand digitally. Same thing with the stacks.
Like they have those six, you know, structures that they've

(01:58:18):
built, but then they like that one, like they expand huge.
Yeah, digitally. And so that's, you know, it's
just so much even in the real world they're having, they're
doing a lot of like CGI expansion of those spaces.

(01:58:40):
Yeah. I mean, I thought it's like it's
for the most part looks good. Like you, you're not watching it
and you're thinking like, oh, this is so much like CGI in the
real world. Partly because a lot of that
stuff is like background and you're not focused on it, but
like there are there are a few times where it does like come

(01:59:03):
out in your face like the when the stacks explode.
I'm like, that's a very digital stack, you know, trailer stack
falling. I think I even wrote like stack
explosion looks fake in my noteswhen I was watching the movie.
That one just kind of stood out to me as well.

(01:59:24):
I was like, I would have liked to see them really, like explode
and make the stack, you know, the big stack fall over.
Yeah, or. Even a miniature or something,
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
And in most Spielberg movies, hewould.
So I guess because he had high limb at his, you know, doing all

(01:59:45):
this work and is like, might as well get them to make a digital
stack falling, I guess. I don't know.
It looked fake. It takes away from the stakes to
me when something looks fake. I don't feel as like, I don't
know, worried about Ty or whatever when that when that

(02:00:06):
happens. But yeah, I mean, so you know,
there's just tons of detail thathas the costumes.
There's so many different costumes they have to design for
both, like real world people butalso digital characters.
The the characters are like veryhighly designed.

(02:00:29):
Spielberg does a lot of work, like looking at the actors and
the characters side by side whenhe's kind of like helping guide
that that design process. And you mean they're having to
build like, details upon details.
The I mean, yeah, you have like a whole team working
specifically on facial expressions of the characters to

(02:00:53):
the degree that like they're like studying the emotions that
are being expressed. And they're like Parsable's
emotions aren't quite coming across right.
And so for him, they like they take Ty Sheridan's eyes and
model his eye. They were like, I think what
they maybe what they did, this wasn't explicitly said.
This is just me kind of like taking the facts that I got from

(02:01:18):
the special features and kind oflike putting my own.
This may be the why behind it isthey took his eyes and modeled
Parsival's eyes more on ties. And I think maybe what they did
was they were like, where is Ty doing the most, like expression
of his emotion? And maybe they saw, OK, it's in

(02:01:39):
his eyes. So let's really like focus in on
Parsival's eyes. Yeah.
And then with Olivia Cook, they were doing, they were like
working on similar things with her emotions.
And for her, they took her mouthand really like worked on
Artemis's mouth, mimicking Olivia Cook's mouth.

(02:02:02):
So maybe with her, they were they were saying, OK, her a lot
of her expression of emotion comes through her mouth.
And so let's focus on, hone in on that for Artemis.
Also with Artemis, she has like those big eyes.
So it wouldn't really work for those.
Yeah. And they did talk about like it

(02:02:22):
being hard to like at certain angles make her eyes not look
like super weird and alien. Yeah, Yeah, I thought that was
interesting. Like the way they are really
like honing in on OK, how can weget emotion to come across
correctly from the real world world actors to these avatars?

(02:02:46):
Yeah, yeah, that's cool. I I just kind of assumed that
they would have done, although Iactually don't know if this
technology was was used as much then or it was as fleshed out
then. There's a game called Hell Blade
where the main character is a Celtic like a Celtic warrior and

(02:03:11):
she the the person. It's a cool story that the the
one of the artists that was working on getting, they just
did like some test shots with her and they had one of those
like cameras that kind of like I've seen.
Oh my gosh, his name is giving me Gollum.
Yeah, that's motion capture. Yeah, right, right.

(02:03:33):
But but specifically the level of the expression of the face in
this game was Wade way more fine-tuned.
And they wanted the, you know, they wanted this artist to
showcase that in this in this inthis thing.
And then they kind of put her onthe stage like, hey, go do it
for this thing. And she kind of became the

(02:03:53):
character for the game. But yeah, I I don't know.
I kind of just assumed that theywould have done more as opposed
to explicitly being animated in my in my.
So, yeah, so yeah, you are correct.
So that is an element. So with the motion capture,
which we can, we can talk about it.
Yeah, it's it's next in my notesanyway.

(02:04:16):
But yeah, in the motion capture they, you know, they have the
suit on. There's like a whole suit they
put on that picks up their movements and then they they
have this kind of like headgear with the head Cam on it.
That's like right in front of their face.
That's like pointed out their face and they have like all the
dots on their face that it uses that it uses like pick up on

(02:04:40):
facial expressions. So that is they're they're doing
that to get the character, but then they they have to build the
way the face. They're not just like face
mapping and making like a digital version of Thai Sheridan
space in a digital version of, of Olivia Cook's face.

(02:05:00):
They, they're making, they're having to like animate the, the
avatar the way that they've designed the avatar to look,
which looks different than the real people.
And so like you have like the you have like all the facial
expressions, but like the yeah, what I was talking about was

(02:05:21):
like, OK, we're making these have these avatars and they have
like different facial features and stuff than these people.
But what what they were doing was OK, there's something
mission and missing emotionally in these avatars faces.
They're doing the same. They're doing the same like
facial expressions, but there's something missing.
OK, with Ty, let's use the eyes.Let's let's bring his like

(02:05:45):
actual eyes somehow and integrate them into this, this
avatar. Same thing with Olivia Cook with
her mouth. Let's make this Artemis avatar.
Let's animate her mouth to be more like Olivia Cook's mouth,
because that's where we're seeing her expression of emotion
come through. And so it's it's, it's, you're

(02:06:07):
not wrong, it you, you're actually right.
But they do have to like, actually build the design of the
avatar. Because it's not a one to one.
Yeah, that that's what I was. I think that's what I was
messing up. And I, I quickly looked it up
just to make sure I wasn't missing something.
The the the thing that was revolutionary about what I was

(02:06:27):
talking about with, with the Hell Blade team, it was low
cost, real time as opposed to needing a lot of time post
production. So they could plug it directly
into the game engine, have an actor do a live mocap, and it
was instantaneously rendered in so.
So yeah, but but the difference there too, the actress's face

(02:06:52):
was what was used in the game. They weren't yeah, they like put
war paint or something on her, but but it wasn't like an avatar
of her. It was literally just her face
so. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And and there's like there is like some real time stuff like
when when they're doing motion capture, they usually have like

(02:07:13):
a big screen out. So that like act the actors can
like get a feel for like, OK, they're they go ahead and like
put more like what's the word? I'm looking for like less
quality versions of their avatarin the, in the like the virtual

(02:07:35):
set so that like they can go ahead and do some, some moving
around in motion and be able to look at the screen and get a
feel for where they are in the virtual set, what they look,
what they're, you know, what their motion is looking like in
that environment. So they they are able to like
see that it's just a more crude is the word I was looking for.

(02:07:56):
It's a more crude version. And so in post, what they're
doing is they're going in and like fleshing out where this
look, this looks like the end product we get, whereas like the
real time stuff is just more crude, yeah, you know, less
detailed versions of. It well, I, I bet that that,

(02:08:18):
that the, the rig that they use for like the Mandalorian stuff,
I don't know what to call it, but you know, I'm talking about
where it's like like it's like 360° screens that like create a
virtual environment around. I don't know, I don't know what
it's called. There's a special name they call
it, but it creates they use a game engine to accurately set

(02:08:41):
the lighting. That's one of the things that's
so cool with the Mandalorian is like he's got that's one of the
hard things about CG is he's wearing reflective armor.
So if there's green screen around him, it just creates
weird green glows. But they have a big screen that
they can dictate what's on all around the recording studio.

(02:09:03):
But you don't know cool to work with with this for the for the
because the cool thing is about that is it puts the actor in the
environment and it reacts to their, you know, predetermined
movements as opposed to just hey, go act against that green
sheet over there, you know? Yeah.
So you typically in, in, in motion capture.

(02:09:25):
So I talked a lot about it in the 1010 episode.
I can't remember what the space.So there's like a term for like
the space in which like the motion capture is being
captured. But like there's, they basically
like in that space, they have like all these cameras set up

(02:09:45):
all around it. And they're like, they're these
cameras that are like picking upon the sensors in the suit and
stuff to the, to the degree evento which like if you're not in a
suit, like Spielberg could be inthe middle of set directing and
he's not being picked up and like imported into like the

(02:10:05):
motion capture stuff being recorded by the motion capture.
You have to be like in the suit that these special like cameras
are like picking up the motion of.
And so, yeah, there's, so there's this space that I wish I
could remember the term, but, you know, you can go back and
listen to Tintin and learn the term there.

(02:10:26):
It, it didn't come up in my research for this.
Yeah, yeah. There's this space.
And then they have all these props.
So there's they're basically like these crude PVC pipe, you
know, versions of whatever prop or vehicle or whatever they're
in in the movie. So they have like they have like

(02:10:49):
a space and stuff to interact with.
But yeah, it's, it's for the, for the most part, like they are
kind of like, it's kind of like green screen acting.
There's not really, there's not blue or green screens for motion
capture really, because they're literally just picking up their

(02:11:10):
their, their movement. Oh, right, so the green.
OK, that's true. So they're not like filming them
in motion capture. Yeah, no, they're picked.
They're like the green screen islike if they're just putting the
character into the environment. Motion capture is.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, motion capture is
literally just recording their movements and facial

(02:11:31):
expressions. And so that's the that's the
cool thing about motion capture and why, like, people like Andy
Serkis have been like big advocates for it was because,
like you, you still get to be anactor in a space, like acting
against other actors. Uh huh.

(02:11:52):
And there's a degree to which like you, you get to actually
act. It's, it's obviously like
there's elements that are missing.
And sometimes they do build likelike in Tintin, they would build
like these wire and PVC pipe versions of the sets.
So they're actually like in thislike fake version of the set to

(02:12:14):
like move around in the space and act in with like props that
are like PVC pipe versions of the the props that will be
digitally added later that they need.
So like for instance, there's they're recording the race and
you know, he's in the De Lorean.Well, they have like a PVC pipe

(02:12:35):
De Lorean that he's like sittingin and like steering in and
stuff in the motion capture stage.
Yeah. And yeah, that's cool.
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's it's really
interesting how it works and andI think it's cool.
One cool thing about the DeLorean is so Ty shared and had

(02:12:56):
met Ernest Klein when he got cast on the movie and Klein owns
a DeLorean and had let Ty drive it.
And so which it was funny in thespecial features because Ty
didn't know Klein and his brother were the only ones that
had ever he'd ever let drive it.And so I was like, I'm only the

(02:13:19):
third person to ever drive this.And he like got real nervous.
It was funny. But it was cool because he was
like, oh, I was on the set and Iwas remembering driving the the
DeLorean. And at one point I'm like, I'm
driving backwards and I'm like, looking back, you know,
backwards out of the back. And I remembered from driving

(02:13:41):
the real DeLorean that you can'treally see very well looking out
of the back because there's, there's the flux capacitor back
there and other stuff in the way.
And so that's, that's why where he gets the idea, no, I'm going
to need to like open the door and like look at the door.
And so, yeah, I thought that wasa cool thing that like, you

(02:14:02):
know, he remembered like, Ty Sheridan actually, like, gave
some good input into, like, whathe needed to do to drive
backwards. But it's also a good, good
example of like what it's like to work on a motion capture
stage, you know? Yeah.
And I think that's an important distinction because even the
thing I was describing about like what they use on The
Mandalorian, that is really for putting a costumed actor in an

(02:14:27):
environment as as opposed to putting the costumed actor in
front of a green screen and thenputting a virtual environment
around them. They have a digitally created
environment that's been projected.
So you have color accurate lightcoming off the screens
reflecting with his armor, and it looks really cool.
But that's not mocap. That's like more green screen as

(02:14:49):
opposed to motion capture is capturing the performance of the
actor and then putting that in in a digital environment after
the fact. Yeah, that, that's an important
distinction. Yeah, yeah.
And it's, yeah, I was talking, Iwas talking to Robin, my wife
earlier about like motion capture and stuff.

(02:15:10):
And she was just like, I don't even know, like, like I think
Gollum was the only one she could think of.
And, you know, I started naming stuff off and she was like, oh,
OK. And she was like, I would just
have a hard time, like if I just, since I just don't know,
like thinking, oh, this is motion capture versus, oh, this
is just like CGI or animated or whatever.

(02:15:33):
Yeah. And I was like, yeah, it is, it
is. It is one of those things you
just have to know it is or it isn't.
You know, it's not like you can watch something necessarily and
tell a huge enough difference toknow like, oh, oh, this was
created digitally or oh, this was like a motion capture

(02:15:53):
digital performance like. Yeah.
And another thing, another thing, there's just not like a
ton. There's not like tons and tons
of motion capture performances out there really.
It's not a technology that's like caught on and is used like,
you know, a ton and a ton and a ton really.

(02:16:15):
As opposed to green screen, which is everything, yeah, yeah.
And I think that's what's I think part of what what Mocap
does too is it's specifically isspeeding up the process for the
artist because it could be done manually, it would take way
longer. And so that that saves that
saves time and money, but it also gives the actors the

(02:16:39):
ability to put more acting into it, right.
And that's something I do remember.
That's interesting. If there's mocap going on and
then the anatomies don't line up, it's kind of exactly what
you're talking about with the faces of the avatars.
But like if the mocap that's being done is for like, you

(02:16:59):
know, an animal, well, it doesn't necessarily go, I think
I'm thinking of planet of the ape stuff like the, you know,
Physiology isn't the same. So they have to kind of extend
it and you know, but it still gives them a.
Basic life adjustments and whatnot.
And, you know, you, you kind of have to like, you kind of have
to map out like, you know, for, for Caesar, for example, you

(02:17:22):
kind of have to map out like, OK, Andy's eyebrows, what, what
points on his eyebrows match up to the points of the brow of,
you know, Caesar the ape. And you're going to have to like
map out that stuff in the codingto what movements like make what
parts of like the digital character move, you know, Yeah,

(02:17:45):
there's, there's a lot that goesinto it.
It's, it's really fascinating. And I think it's a really, I
think it's a really cool way of doing things, like a really cool
method, yeah, of capturing the performance.
Even though it's going to be digital in the end, digitally
ridden, rendered, you're still giving the actor a chance to
like, they're not just voice acting, you know, they're

(02:18:11):
actually like doing the physicalperformance too.
And you know, you see a lot of that in the behind the scenes,
like Lena, Lena Waith, like theyhave her like rolling around on
a Rollie chair, which which, like I said, so the people that
are rolling her and the chair itself aren't picked up by the
motion capture cameras only she is.

(02:18:31):
But like, it's, it's for like the, the wave of blood and the
shining sequence. She's just like on this rolly
chair, just like flailing aroundand stuff.
And so she gets to do this like really fun physical performance
that, you know, gets rendered digitally, but she's actually
getting to do it. She's not just like standing in
a studio going like, whoa, she'sshe's like, she's actually like

(02:18:56):
flying across the the the motioncapture stage for like probably
like a little bit freaked out from being on this rolly chair
flailing around, you know, and actually, you know, that comes
through in the performance. I think a little bit a little
bit more realistic than than sometimes it can be with with,

(02:19:18):
you know, just working with a green screen or, you know, that
sort of thing. So, and I think there's
sometimes where like you're an actor working on a green screen
acting against some digitally rendered character that you
don't see. And with this, like you're

(02:19:39):
working against other actors, y'all are both going to be
digitally rendered, but at leastyou're working against some
someone real, you know? Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, but yeah. And it's not only like the lead
actors that are doing motion capture, they do a lot of like
motion capture work with other elements too.
So like think you think of like the dancing scenes, like the

(02:20:02):
zombie dancers or like the zero gravity club thing, like
sequence. They they actually like have
like wired people wired up in the mocap suits.
Like like, I think they brought in like some trapeze artist.
For that to have like some floating around dancers

(02:20:23):
capturing and they, you know, they'll get, they'll get a
couple of people in the motion capture suits, you know, record
them doing several different dances.
And then they like, you know, digitally recreate that kind of
over and over, you know, to to get all of the zombies or all of
the people in the zero gravity thing.

(02:20:44):
But but yeah, I thought it was cool there.
They're they're not just digitally creating those,
they're actually like getting real people dancing performances
in the motion capture. So I thought that was cool too.
Yeah, definitely. But yeah, then then we moved to
ILM. Well, I mean, they, they do

(02:21:07):
after they do the motion capturestuff, they go record the real
world stuff. And they, they I'm pretty sure,
yeah, they shot that on film, the real world stuff that they
wanted kind of that that the effect of shooting on film for

(02:21:28):
the real world to make it even more distinct from the digital
world, which I thought was a cool idea.
And then the other thing we haven't really talked about,
about the way that the motion capture in the digital world
was, was like captured is Spielberg.

(02:21:48):
Where does Spielberg come into all this?
And if if you remember from the 1010 episode, we talked about
like how it works with like the camp, the it's like virtual
camera sort of thing. So Spielberg actually has like
this big controller and you know, he can stand in front of a

(02:22:09):
screen and you know, he can see the environment that they've
created that the the digital actlike the the motion capture
performances are being like captured and placed into.
And he basically he has like a virtual camera with this
controller and he can move it around like he like he would a

(02:22:33):
normal camera. He can change like the lighting
like you would on a normal set. And so he's basically like doing
virtual directing with this controller just like you would
on a real set. And so that's a another cool
aspect of this way of of doing things.
Was a pretty amazing level of control to have to.

(02:22:53):
It is, and I think, you know, I talked about on 10/10, the you
can really feel a lot on 10/10, or at least I could watching it.
Like Spielberg is playing with the camera.
He's really having fun doing things that you can't do with a
normal camera. But because there's like not
really bounds on the movement and the placement, you know,

(02:23:17):
and, and the virtual with the virtual camera, you can like put
it under, you know, this bookshelf and be looking out
from the crack of the bookshelf without having to like build
some special rig to fit the camera under there to get the
shot you want. So there's a lot of like
playfulness like that. And with the way the camera
moves and like, there's like this long one take sequence and

(02:23:41):
10:10 that would be like really impossible or difficult to do
with a real camera in the real world.
So you can feel that a lot in 1010 and it becomes, to me, it
was distracting. You don't feel that as much
here. I think he's grown a lot.
I think he grew thinking maybe got it out of his system in

(02:24:01):
Tintin. And here he's like, you can
still feel the playfulness sometimes with the camera, but
he's he's really trying to film it most of this stuff like you
would in the real world. And I think it works a lot
better here in the Oasis than itdid in the Tintin world with the

(02:24:25):
way Spielberg uses the virtual camera.
But another element in this one that he hadn't had in the past
is because they, you know, they use the VR goggles in the, you
know, in the context of the story in the film or the book or
whatever. Spielberg 8, I think they were

(02:24:46):
like the HTC Vive VR headset. Spielberg was able to like put
that on and go into the virtual environment and he's basically
like doing virtual location scouting and virtual lighting
and test shooting. His, his little like virtual

(02:25:07):
self in the VR had a camera, like a virtual like little
camera. And so he was able to like,
practice test shots and like do some location scouting.
And then like he did, he had theactors do that too, like walk
around in the environment with the VR headset on.

(02:25:27):
And yeah, it's, you know, and you, you better believe that HTC
was like posting pictures of Spielberg using their VR
headset. But yeah, I thought that was
cool too. And you could tell Spielberg was
having a lot of fun with it. They they also, while we're on

(02:25:50):
the subject of like camera work and stuff, one of the cool
things was that they shot the holiday memories on with like
they, they basically like set upmultiple cameras at multiple
angles to all like record at thesame time.
These takes so that like when you're in the the archives with

(02:26:13):
the curator, like, and he's kindof like spinning the set around,
you know, and the it's because they filmed it like from all
those angles so that you could like rotate it like you would,
you know, a product that you're buying on Amazon that you want
to like flip around in three. D Yeah, that's cool.

(02:26:34):
Yeah, so I thought that was really cool too.
A cool, smart idea. The lighting.
This is the, the lighting too, you know, I think Kaminsky,
Kaminsky probably, I mean, he's,he's definitely lighting the
real world sets. But as far as everything else

(02:26:54):
go, he's probably more of like a, like a consultant on what
they should do with the lighting.
I read somewhere that he wasn't always like comfortable with his
role because there's a lot of stuff that's like predetermined
upstream for him. So he didn't really have as much
freedom with his lighting as he normally does.

(02:27:15):
But Spielberg worked with ILM onthe lighting for like 2 years.
And I think I'll, I'll say this about like we, we'll talk a
little bit more about the virtual environments and stuff
that we see before we move on toother stuff.
But I wanted to say the lightingin the Oasis universe, it's

(02:27:42):
really good. They they tried to light it like
you would light a real set. They worked really hard on that.
And I think to me, the, the camera, like the virtual camera
work and the virtual lighting iswhat makes this CGI world feel

(02:28:04):
cinematic and not like a video game.
Yeah, because when you're watching them in the Oasis, like
I think most, most directors, itwould have like, ended up
feeling like you're watching a video game.
Yeah, cutscene as opposed to actors.
Exactly. Acting, yeah.

(02:28:27):
And in this, like you really, you're watching it and you're
like, this would never be a cutscene on a video game like
this. Is this looks like it was
digitally like virtually shot ona virtual camera with virtual
lighting by a virtual Spielberg for the big screen.
You know, I really, really appreciate, that's one of the

(02:28:50):
things that probably I appreciated most is like the the
detail and work that Spielberg put in with ILM to really like,
make these digital environments and digital sequences look
cinematic and not like a video game.

(02:29:12):
Yeah, I I really, really appreciated that, that aspect of
it. Did you, did you think about
that at all when you were watching?
Not not consciously, but, but I,I can think of several different
situations where that feels, that feels right, Like it feels
like it's not just. Yeah, yeah, that's a, that's a
really good point. I I can appreciate it.

(02:29:37):
Thinking back to a few scenes though, yeah, really stuck out.
Yeah. And like a like, so like a small
example would be there, you know, they're really lighting,
trying to light it. Like a real set would be lit.
So like when a, when a character's face like goes
somewhere that it would get dark, their face actually like
gets dark and isn't still lit. Yeah.

(02:29:58):
And so like little details like that that, you know, they
really, you know, you're workingin this virtual environment and
you're really having to like payattention to those details of
what's lit and what's not. And yeah, I really appreciated
that aspect. Yeah, IOM, assisted by Territory

(02:30:20):
Studio, they developed around 60virtual environments.
You know, they're they're creating all these spaces that
either feels like true to the character, like like HS garage
or whatever feels like it feels like HS garage.
It's really well designed, I thought, yeah.

(02:30:40):
And then like, or it feels like true to the set piece or the
plot development, like the race in New York City.
Like, that's just a cool place to do a race, you know, or like
the the club is supposed to be like a sphere, but they couldn't
actually, like, make it a spherebecause then it looks the same

(02:31:03):
from every direction. And so like, their workaround
was like to make the middle of it zero gravity spherical.
And so, yeah, there's just a tonof attention to detail.
And then, yeah, I mean, one of the cool things is, so do you

(02:31:25):
remember the moment where Wade, like, puts on the goggles and it
kind of like the camera, like zooms in on his face and then
like goes into the goggles and you like go into the Oasis for
the first time? So for that little that, you
know, 10 seconds of transition from the real world to the
Oasis, they did a ton of extra work.

(02:31:48):
They it is one of the times where Ty was in front of a blue
screen and they got like a special close up camera so that
they could like zoom like move the camera way in close on his
face. But there gets there gets to a
point where like that doesn't work anymore.
So they scanned his face and recreated his face digitally

(02:32:10):
with, like, down to the details of like, where his pores are and
everything. And so like that, you can get
actually, like, so right there at the end of that, like, it's a
digital tie shared in space before it, like, pans over into
the goggles. And I thought that was really
cool. Yeah.
But that was a cool shot. Yeah, yeah.

(02:32:34):
We talked about the wide shots being added digitally.
We, we talked a little bit aboutthe overlooked, the overlooked
hotel from The Shining. They like, they basically like
scanned those, they scanned it into a computer to like,
recreate those sets. And yeah, they, they tried to

(02:32:59):
like, imitate the grain of the film and the lighting of those
sets and like the texture of thefake snow when they're outside.
And. And yeah, I thought it looks
good. You know, it looks like The
Shining. And yeah, yeah, it was fun.

(02:33:19):
We talked a little bit about, you know, The Shining doesn't
actually like play a whole lot into the point of that, that
challenge. But nevertheless, it was fun and
it looked cool. I thought the like the like
blood splattering on the camera for like the the blood river was

(02:33:39):
a bit much, but you know, it wasfun.
They do have like a few real actor actors like stand in for
the original character. So like the Grady twins.
Those are like 2 little girls, like not the original ones.
Obviously. They they have stand in on a
real set and then like the the old woman and that comes out of

(02:34:02):
the tub. It's like a a stand in real
actor for the original. And then there's like digitized
versions of those two obviously for some parts.
But yeah. Yeah.
Ernest Klein said that was his favorite edition was the whole
like shining thing. But you know, it wasn't my

(02:34:26):
favorite, but I thought it was cool.
And yeah, I guess like last thing, as far as like the
design, ILM developed this like crowd management engine that
they called Arcade and they, they kind of had to because in
that last battle sequence, they're having to animate half a
million characters basically. And so so yeah, they, they

(02:34:52):
basically like built this engine, this like crowd
management engine. So they have like, you know, all
sorts of different characters that they kind of like plug in
that have all kinds of differentlike, fighting styles that are
like randomized or whatever. They're like randomized but

(02:35:14):
controlled, you know? Yeah, Yeah.
And so. Yeah.
And then they like, they just started like letting the engine
run and then Spielberg would watch it and he would be like,
OK, but yeah. Like I think over here, like it
would be cool to have like some Wizards casting a spell.
And so they would like input that and so they would rerun it
again and you would have the like the group of Wizards over

(02:35:37):
here casting their spell. And so yeah, it's it's pretty
cool. I think in the in the film it's
it's kind of anti climactic, that whole thing.
First of all, because like we talked about the speech and how
like it doesn't really like connect with the viewer
emotionally and and then like they don't really do anything.

(02:36:00):
They just everyone shows up. But then it just like goes back
into like the Parsival versus Sorrento thing and so like.
Yeah, there was no the them showing up had.
No effect, Yeah. No, I mean they wanted it to be
kind of more of the community. I I think that was the goal as

(02:36:21):
making it, it's the community isassisting.
But like, if she hadn't got the shield down, they would have
gotten, they wouldn't have been in any way.
So yeah, it was, it was kind of muddy in that sense, but it was
cool to see the community supporting him.
I don't know. Yeah, it was conflicting.
Yeah, for sure, yeah. Sound.

(02:36:44):
There's a lot of sound work in this.
Obviously Rydstrom started working very early on for the
sound. Lena's voice was something they
had to nail down for H. They did some like tests with
her voice to see like, oh, can she like do a fake deep voice?
But they ended up letting her just do her normal voice because

(02:37:07):
it it kept like the personality of her voice the most true.
And then they just pitched her voice down.
I think he said 25%, which is a lot.
That's a lot to pitch a voice down.
But yeah, right, I think it sounds good as H You can tell
it's kind of fake, but also likeit's an avatar.

(02:37:28):
Like it, it's one of those things where like, yeah, it
sounds like a voice pitched down, but like it's a, it's like
a avatar in a virtual world. Like someone I guess wanted it
to sound like that. Like it's, it's believable.
That's what I'm saying, yeah. So Rydstrom does a ton of

(02:37:50):
research on like, how original sounds were made.
So there's tons of references. And so like one example of a
sound they recreate, Spielberg remembered because he was a
producer for Back to the Future.And so he remembered, Oh yeah,
when we were doing the steam coming out of the back of the De

(02:38:11):
Lorean, we went and got like, I don't, I can't remember.
It was like maybe some fire Hydefire hydrants or I mean, not
hydrants, extinguishers or something like that.
Sprayed those for the sound of the steam.
And so like, so yeah, they did that.
They recreated that. One of the thing Rydstrom talked
about was he recreated the the creaking of the Titanic for when

(02:38:35):
the stacks are starting to tip over and fall.
Yeah. So, yeah, so just like all the
time, anytime there's like some reference to some, you know, 80s
thing that has a particular sound, they Rydstrom actually
like researches how they originally made that sound and

(02:38:55):
tries to recreate it, which I think is cool.
The race sequence has no music. I thought that was interesting.
I didn't realize that, but then like, think about, I was like,
Oh yeah, there is none. It's just all sound effects.
And Rydstrom did talk about something with sound that I I
guess kind of like intuitively know, but like he put it in a

(02:39:18):
way that I will explicitly that I haven't thought about it, at
least not recently. And and that is that one job of
sound in a movie is to focus your attention.
And so like in busy sequences like the race where there's so
much happening, the sound reallydoes a lot of work to help focus
your attention. So like when you know, wades

(02:39:40):
driving through and there's likethere's so much stuff happening
around him, but you're hearing the sound of like the coins
clicking into his thing. Like it focuses yours are on
your it focuses your attention in on not on the T Rex in the
background or the other races around him, but like that he's
collecting these coins to put inhis fuel tank.
And so I had never really thought about that before, but I

(02:40:01):
was like, yeah, that makes sense.
There's there's actually like a lot of thought that goes into.
There's so much going on. We need to use sound to like
focus the viewers attention and on this one thing.
I feel like, I feel like needle drops are addictive, Like you
want to get a good one, Yeah. There's actually not a lot of
them in this movie. You would expect more honestly.

(02:40:23):
Yeah, actually that is an area that it, it felt kind of like
not reference. See, I don't know.
Yeah. And it's also, I'm not 100% sure
I you know, I'm not that I'm thinking about it.
I guess I didn't pay a ton of attention to sound as much as
the visuals, but I wonder the the split between.

(02:40:48):
I would assume most of the musicis diegetic but then like it's
not in the intro Like I don't know I guess.
I guess I I guess I didn't really pay.
Attention to that. It starts off with Jump by Van
Halen. Yeah, but isn't it like him
putting isn't that when he? No, no, no, that's him leaving.
Leaving the stacks so. It's not diegetic.

(02:41:10):
It's not, Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I guess he is kind
of jumping down the stacks. Jump into the Oasis, that's what
it is. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, you know, there's there's a kind of a

(02:41:32):
philosophical difference betweensounds in the virtual and real
world. So they have to think about too.
But yeah, there's, there's a lotof it is a very like sound heavy
movie when you really think about it.
And then we we haven't talked a bunch about the score.
Spielberg had worked with Silvestri never on his own
films, but he had worked with them on all the Robbers of Mecca

(02:41:56):
stuff that he had produced with Amblin and everything can so.
But yeah, but so a lot of times with John Williams, Spielberg
will start working on scores like way early in the process.
But with this movie, they reallyhad to wait till post production
to do the score. And so Silvestri comes on for

(02:42:19):
that. Spielberg really already knows,
like, here's all of your music cues.
This is when music is coming in.This is when it's stopping.
There's no music here. You know, he already had it all
mapped out, which is a little different than typical for for
Spielberg. The way Spielberg works with
John Williams. This is just a very, like,
different sort of process. Yeah.

(02:42:41):
But yeah, you know, they it's a lot of this, a lot of the score
is kind of like, it's not reallyin your face.
Like, I don't think about the score a whole lot when I'm
watching this movie, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
Like it's there and it kind of has, you know, the epic sort of

(02:43:02):
sounding things when, you know, quests and epic things are
happening. And it's just yeah, it, it does.
It's a fine score. I think.
It's not bad. It's not, it's not distracting
and it's not like it doesn't feel like it's trying to do all
the work for you, I guess, if that makes sense.

(02:43:23):
Yeah. Sure.
Yeah, there's a, there are a fewlike fun facts about the score.
So like one of the things Silvestri was saying was like
Spielberg would give him notes on like, OK, in this sequence
with the De Lorean, he was like,I, I don't want the score to
sound like back to the future. I want it to actually be back to

(02:43:46):
the future. And so like you'll hear stuff
like that in the score, like theyou'll hear like the back to the
future theme kind of come through in the score.
I thought that was funny. And then at one point like
they're trying to get like this very like religious sounding
part of the score with a choir and everything.

(02:44:08):
And they, they use they he Silvestri looks up what Easter
egg is in Latin and it's Ovis patrum tui.
And so he like the the chorus ofthe choir.
Part of part of the score is that is Easter egg in Latin.

(02:44:29):
And then the verses of the Latinchoir is the the words of the
second clue in in Latin. So that was a fun little, little
thing. Yeah.
Tons of post production work. Basically, like most of the
stuff we just talked about is post production.

(02:44:52):
Yeah, it's it's so much Post production work that Spielberg
filmed and released the Post during post production of this
movie. Yeah, I guess when you're
creating a digital world, you'regoing to have a lot more post
production. Yep.
Yeah, I mean, he Spielberg came on in 2015 and this movie
released didn't release till 2018.

(02:45:14):
So yeah, the the book released, of course, with a movie tie in
cover with Ty shared in on the front.
And it, it actually was the first time.
It was the number one New York Times bestseller.
It had been Time 5 before but the movie tie in release was #1
That's a fun fact. Hello again.

(02:45:36):
Do you know how you can really support the show for free in
just a few minutes or less? That's right.
Just leave a rating and review on Spotify and Apple or wherever
you listen. That might allow for ratings and
reviews. These really help the visibility
of the podcast. In fact, just hit that pause

(02:45:59):
button right now and drop the review right now and then you
can get back to the show. I'd greatly appreciate it.
OK, I trust that you win. Left that rating and review, now
back to the show. Spielberg does a little pat on
the back for the high tech community by doing the premiere

(02:46:21):
of the movie at South by Southwest, Which is, is it's
kind of like a festival dedicated to interactive
technology and media. So there's there's the Film
Festival part of South by Southwest, but then there's a
there's a other aspects of that festival to dealing with like
tech and media and stuff. But that was on March 11th,

(02:46:45):
2018. There were two interruptions to
sound when they were starting itoff, but the crowd was still
enthusiastic about the movie. And yeah, successful release at
South's premiere. Then they released it later that
month on March 29th, 2018. Movie made $583,000,000

(02:47:11):
worldwide box office after opening #1 making 52,000,000
first weekend. So yeah, I mean, this movie
really kind of erased his 3 consecutive box office failures
for a Spielberg movie, you know?And so, yeah, and even like in

(02:47:33):
China, it was a record at the time it had, it even made more
money in China than it did in the US.
Which? Is kind of crazy.
Unfortunately, it was overtaken by a little movie called
Avengers Infinity War the next month, but.
But yeah, you mean it took its rightful place behind Infinity

(02:47:55):
War? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm not the biggest fan of Infinity War, but yeah, it's,
it's a better movie than this. Yeah.
I mean, did the movie did did pretty well.
It did really well. Turns out that, you know, US
80's pop culture is kind of internationally loved, I guess.

(02:48:21):
Yeah, to a certain degree, I guess.
But yeah, people and. And that really came through in
the reception of the film. People were more excited about
the references than all the VRCGI stuff.
In fact, so much so that both the New York Times and Wired
compiled lists of all the references that they found in

(02:48:43):
the movie. And.
Yeah, that people were impressedwith the CGII was impressed with
the CGI. And this is 7 year old CGI, so
yeah, I mean it. Definitely.
It definitely was well done. There were no, like, there were
no, like, glaring, you know, problems that I remember.

(02:49:04):
The honestly, like the, the onlyCGI problems I had were when it
was in the real world, not with the not in the digital world.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's kind of some kind of
saw this as a renewal of Spielberg's sense of
entertainment. The French, the French magazine

(02:49:24):
Le Mans called it, quote, an atomic inventiveness, UN quote.
So people are seeing kind of, I guess seeing this as the the
blockbuster Spielberg coming back.
But other people kind of felt like all the CGI and pop culture
mass kind of the emptiness of the project project.

(02:49:47):
It's kind of like outdated dynamic of hero and and
sidekicks and you know, all thatkind of stuff.
But yeah, the actually the videogame community was the hardest
on it. Yeah.
Apparently they felt like the game culture of the book, which

(02:50:07):
is definitely there, was supplanted by like, cinephile
quotes and references. And then they felt like the
message, which was far from being positive, kind of echoes
cliches about disconnection fromreality and loss of social ties.
And I think the gaming communitykind of scoffs at that, that
kind of opinion of, yeah, what gaming is.

(02:50:31):
Yeah, because I mean, it is, it is, it is a different type of
community. Yeah.
And that that plays into what we've been talking about too.
Is it? It's because the movie like
focuses in on the game aspect ofthis world when that's not
really the real reason it's bad.It's because of the
metaverseness where everyone's doing everything in this.

(02:50:54):
Fake world yeah, and it's and itsupplants the real world, right.
Like I we, you know, I don't know, we haven't talked, we
haven't gotten like specificallytalking about hardware or
anything or, you know, representations in our world.
But like the, the Apple Vision Pro prom, like like ad where
it's like, oh, you can wear it and film video.

(02:51:16):
And it's like the dad's kid is like opening a present.
And what's dad doing? Dad's wearing Vision pro
watching it so he can rewatch. It's like, OK, OK, I am very
tech forward. I am chronically online, but
take the headset off, man. Like, you know, it's like so in,

(02:51:36):
in that's in that sense, I kind of understand the, the, the idea
of like, well, connection matters more than than you're
recording it for later. But you know, on the other end
of that, if you're connecting virtually, that is, that is a

(02:51:58):
community. Like there are communities that
that connect that way. And so, yeah, yeah.
But I but I also would push back.
I also would push back on the the gaming like critique of it's
oh, it's cinephile focus. It's like, yeah, but like the
last the the thing that's interesting to me that I do like
about the way the final challenge, his voiceover is kind

(02:52:22):
of awkward talking about it. You know what you have, but it's
like. It's basically the opening of
the book. Is that the monologue he gives
there when he's doing that game is like the opening of the book?
That's interesting, but it's something that is special to me
because it's something that I that I recognize about what's

(02:52:44):
what's interesting about video games is that it makes you
you're interacting with in a very different way, like film.
You can rewatch and rewatch and and you can be very invested in
and love. Obviously we're on the podcast
right about it, but the thing that's unique about video games
is that it's, it's a much more visceral interaction with the

(02:53:09):
creator of that environment. And especially, you know, those,
those older games where it was one or two people making a game.
It it's, it's a different experience than watching it
happen in a film because you're doing it.
And so I, I do like that final part where he's, you know,

(02:53:33):
talking about the uniqueness of right.
No, he he's not talking about that, but but but he's talking
about the, the, I guess quarter of the game, yes, which the film
got wrong, but whatever. I was so, I was so upset at the
very beginning when they're doing like the whole anorak, you

(02:53:54):
know, expositing about the, you know, the key challenge or
whatever. And he says, like an Easter egg
gives you powers that help you complete the game or something.
I was like, no, that's exactly what an Easter egg is not.
Yeah, an Easter egg doesn't haveanything to do with completing

(02:54:14):
the game. That's the whole point.
Right. Yeah, an Easter egg and.
I was so upset. I was like why did they have him
explain define an Easter egg theopposite of what an Easter egg
is? Right, it's it's.
It's not an objective. Right.
The objective is the Easter egg.Does that make sense?

(02:54:35):
Like that might sound, that might sound semantic, but.
No, I mean it's. Quest objective is as explicitly
outlined. Go talk to so and so to get your
powers and Easter egg is you're just in the level and oh, this
panel moves and you go in a secret room that's like the
office or something, you know, like that kind of stuff.

(02:54:58):
It's. Yeah, it's like when you talk to
the creator of the the Pokémon game inside Inside, like the,
you know, the office set in thatone building and Pokémon and in
the, you know, the Pokémon game.Yeah, that's what an Easter egg
is. It doesn't have any bearing on
the game. It's just like, oh, cool, that

(02:55:18):
thing's. Yeah.
Like that's what the Easter egg and adventure is.
The whole in the very beginning of the book, it's talking about
how like this guy created this game, but and then like the
company that he created it, that, you know, published it and
everything this game, like they,they didn't put his name on

(02:55:39):
anything. They weren't like, like his name
wasn't on anything to do with the game.
And so he, when he was making it, he made this little, you
know, secret little room that you could find if you were just,
like, messing around that had his, you know, created by his
name. Yeah.

(02:55:59):
He doesn't really explain that in the movie.
Well, he doesn't explain all that context, but he explains,
he explains the. Yeah, right.
I guess the reason for wanting the Easter egg.
Right. It's it's about finding the.
It's about the Easter egg. Is the destination not an
object? Yeah, an objective I guess.

(02:56:22):
I don't know. Right.
And it's still semantic, but it's similar with like the
Easter egg, the the holiday Easter egg is, is not some like
quest to complete. It's like it's all about like
the journey and exploring his mind and all that.
And yeah, one more quote I wanted to say that I had written

(02:56:46):
down from reception Matt Zoller sites who writes for I think New
York, The New Yorker magazine a lot.
And if you, if you remember, if anyone has been listening since
the Wes Anderson series, he doeslike the big all the Wes
Anderson books, the, you know, the big fancy coffee table

(02:57:09):
looking books where there's a ton of interviews with Wes
Anderson. That's Matt seller sites.
But on this movie, I, I really liked this.
He said, quote, Spielberg is notgiven enough credit for making
sad movies without the audience noticing.
And I think that's true of this movie.
Like it's a movie that doesn't feel like a sad movie and

(02:57:31):
doesn't really have like a sad movie ending.
It tries to end like positive. But like when you really, like,
take a step back and think about, it's like this is kind of
a sad movie. It's about it's a sad movie
about a sad guy with an ending that like, is is spun
positively, but it's still kind of sad, you know?

(02:57:52):
Yeah, they won and, you know, they're friends now.
But like, the Oasis is still theOasis.
And it's like, you know, taking away, yeah, you close it two
days a week, but yeah, it's still.
That's not addressing the systemic problems that make it
like, why did did you shut that?Did they wait?
No, no, no, He did say somethingabout IOI.

(02:58:15):
Yeah, they kicked IOI out. But but they shut down the
sinners, right? Is that that's that's the
positive that so they did address probably the most
abusive. Yeah, the most abusive group we
saw, but. Yeah, no, that's true.
But like the root issue is stillkind of there of this virtual

(02:58:38):
world that is not reality that everyone spends all their time
in. But anyway.
Well, well, and then and what I would say about that too is the
the optimism of the end of the movie is.
Oh well, we. Have kissy days now is I hated
that the the ending, the implications.

(02:58:59):
Great term kissy days. Oh, we're going to have kissy
days instead of Oasis days. It it's just like the the brute
problem. I would say more so than even
the Oasis. The implication is that reality
is dystopian and horrible. And, and I mean, the stacks are
just like the manifestation of that.

(02:59:21):
Like they are living horrible lives and the escapism of the
Oasis is why it's so addicting and alluring.
But you're a trillionaire. I mean, I don't know if they
don't go into it, but like, but like, there's so much more that
could be done than like, you know, babysitting.

(02:59:43):
The amount of time people spend in this virtual world, there's
like systemic problems that led to its prevalence.
And yeah, I don't know, maybe that's I, I Hunter was my wife
Hunter was reading the the premise of Ready Player 2

(03:00:03):
earlier today and it's like evenbigger.
No, it is an even bigger holidaytreasure.
I'm like, what's bigger than thebutton to turn it off?
And it's a trillion dollars thatfelt a little.
I know nothing about it but I. Just I don't either.
I haven't looked up anything about Ready Player 2 and don't
really plan to. Yeah, it's not a book I read.

(03:00:25):
And I was like, oh, I really would love a sequel to this.
You know, same with the movie. But yeah, I before we keep
going, I will mention before we like kind of wrap up our
thematic and characters thoughtsand all that.
It was nominated for for AcademyAward for Visual Effects but did

(03:00:47):
not win. I think it lost to Damien
Chazelle's First Man. I don't know.
This probably had cooler VFX than first Man, but.
Yeah, I didn't. I didn't see first man, I don't
think. It's pretty good.
Yeah. It didn't get it didn't get like
great critical reception, but I thought it was pretty good.

(03:01:11):
But now I feel like I did because I feel like I remember
people being mad about not having the flag planting scene
in the movie. Is that is that that film or was
that later? I don't remember, honestly.
OK, yeah, maybe maybe I did see it.
I if I do, I don't recall. Yeah.

(03:01:32):
OK, so we're we're we've kind ofbeen in the weeds of like what
this movie is or isn't about. Here's my thing with this movie.
This is the biggest problem withthe movie.
I think there's so many things it could be about, but it
chooses not to really be about any of them.

(03:01:52):
And I think that's the biggest problem.
If you could have just chosen one of the things that is like
that's touched in this movie andand just chosen to like hone in
on it. But I, I don't know, it just
feels like Spielberg's playing it safe with this movie.
It's like it's about all these things and none of them at the

(03:02:13):
same time. Because at the end of the day,
it's, I don't know, there's there's a bit of like meta
textual criticism that I'm thinking going on here of like
this movie really isn't about a whole lot of anything at the end
of the day. And there's so many things it

(03:02:36):
could have been about. And it's kind of similar in the
world of the movie. Like there's so many things, I
don't know, they they wrap up and they're like, yeah, we got
rid of the IOI centers, but like, you know, oh, and we
closed it down for our Tuesday Kissy days.
You know, everybody's happy now.And it's like, no, the world

(03:02:57):
seems like, what did you do to like fix the problems of the
world? Yeah, like, well, but yeah.
Does the book focus more on on Not probably in the world.
It's kind of a problem in the book too.
I think it's kind of like a yadda, yadda, everything was, we
were all happy now kind of thing.

(03:03:20):
At least from my memory. I'm actually like struggling to
remember exactly what the details of what happens at the
end of the book. But but yeah, I don't know.
So I wrote down some like thematic things.
So like our relationship to nostalgia, is nostalgia good?
Is it bad? What are the nuances of that?

(03:03:41):
You know, we I talked a little bit about like the gatekeepers
of culture, who decides what's important and not what's worth
being nostalgic about? Is it like the average person or
is it only the powerful people? Like, that's an interesting
topic. How about how technology
connects us and pushes us apart at the same time?

(03:04:02):
There's this kind of paradox with technology.
We've touched on that a little bit.
The film doesn't really push into this.
It doesn't, it doesn't lean intolike how people are different
necessarily online from in person.
It's like very superficially does with like the way they
look, but it doesn't really talkabout like how people can be so

(03:04:24):
vastly different online than they are in person.
It doesn't really like push intothat at all.
And then like you have this whole like, reality is the only
thing that's real. It's like saying everything and
nothing at the same time. Yeah, get off your phone.
Be in the moment. And I feel like it's

(03:04:46):
inconsistent. This is a problem with like the
book and the movie, just this concept in general.
It's inconsistent in that idea because I think that's what the
movie thinks it's about and the book thinks it's about like I
think that's, that's like the big quote, you know, that
Halladay says. So I think that's what the the

(03:05:07):
you know, Zach Penn and Klein and Spielberg, that's like the
big quote the holiday says. That's what this movie is about.
It's about how reality is the only thing that's real.
You need to spill, spend time inthe real world and, you know,
spend time with your friends instead of, you know, online or
whatever. But it it's about like, you

(03:05:28):
know, it's it's it's trying to be about regretting spending too
much time on the Oasis and not with your friends.
But then you make a contest thatlike, forces people to spend all
their time on the Oasis and not with their friends in real life.
And not even like just on on theOasis, like specifically
holidays interpretation of reality, right.

(03:05:50):
That was the thing that was justwas like.
It doesn't make any sense. Yeah, like it's so it's so
inconsistent. It it, it didn't bother me when
I read the book so much. And it it didn't like, I didn't,
like, consciously think that when I was watching the movie.
But the more like that I've sat with it and thought about that,

(03:06:10):
I'm like, this is stupid. It's like, it's like, let's
let's try to get people to spendmore time in reality and not
regret, like, missing time with their loved ones and their
friends. Yeah.
Like, but also let's make a contest that makes everyone
obsessed about the things that Ilove and spend all their time
trying to find like this this crap.

(03:06:33):
Like it, it doesn't make any sense.
Yeah. Like that.
That's not really so much of A, like, push in the book per SE.
There's not like this magical reality is the only thing that's
real common, like quote from Holiday that I remember.
But definitely in the this movie, it's like, yeah, it just,

(03:06:56):
it doesn't make any sense to me thematically.
Like there's a huge thematic inconsistency with that.
That is, it is, it is strange and, and, and again, it's like,
I think that it can be, I think that obviously anything can be
taken to an unhealthy level, right?
Obsession. Obsession is is dangerous, but

(03:07:19):
obsessively consuming and being interested in pop culture is
like you're following your interest.
You're seeing this film because you know you found out it was a
it was it was an inspiration forthis film and you're you're
following your own path. That is, you're jumping into a

(03:07:41):
world of possibilities and you're forging your own interest
path. This is well, hey, he made this
cool thing and his 11th favoritehorror film was The Shining.
So that's where we're going. It's like, but OK, hold The
Shining up on its own merits. Is it the best horror film?
Is it your favorite horror film?Well, it's holidays 11th

(03:08:02):
favorite horror film. So that's why it's important in
this context. And that just.
I don't like that about it. It's a bit of like, you know,
like I was saying like gatekeepers of culture kind of
thing, but also like, I guess touching a little bit on fanboy
culture, like where your whole like interest revolves around

(03:08:25):
what this particular person thatyou idolize thinks, which is
which can be a big problem sometimes with pockets of pop
culture. Yeah.
Like with especially like in ourIP driven world and, you know,
people may, you know, online fans thinking they like own the

(03:08:46):
the rights to like dictate what what they're like favorite pop
culture thing should be and should not be.
Yeah, that's that. I don't think there was as much
of that back when this movie released, but it's definitely
been a lot of it since. Yeah, yeah, I and, and this is
kind of, this is kind of part ofwe've had, there's been a lot of

(03:09:09):
societal conversations and to behonest, I don't know the studies
that have been done. I, I, I, I need to look more
into it. But but the thing that's the
thing that's one of the one of the big ones is like, Oh, well,
like video games cause violence or video games cause addiction
or I feel like video games get put in a weird like hypodermic

(03:09:34):
needle kind of territory when it's like the current
generations film or DND equivalent, like, you know, DND
is the devil. Like it that that kind of stuff.
It there's there's there's a healthy moderation and I think
the dutiful adherence to realityis kind of a weird.

(03:10:03):
I don't know it it definitely comes across as anti tech, but I
can see if it's more I can see if the I can see if the point is
more just like value connectionswith people in your personal
life is is more important than playing video game.
But again, in the in the book, it's more of a metaverse.

(03:10:29):
So it gets, it gets murky because you don't know, it's
like, well, yeah, but if you're unable to make money because all
the corporations in the world only function in the metaverse,
right, then what do you do? You can't just shut, oh, you
shut it down. You shut it down for your kissy
Tuesdays. I need to work, man.

(03:10:51):
Like so. Yeah, I can't remember.
It seems like it's something like that in the book too.
Like they shut it down on the weekend.
I don't remember exactly, but it's been like it's, I think
it's been a week and 1/2 or two since.
It's probably been a couple weeks since I finished the book
so it's hard to remember, but. It's like once, once, once or

(03:11:12):
twice a week, I don't remember. I said Kissy Tuesdays is.
Yeah, it's. I think in the film it's
Tuesdays and Thursdays, which islike, sounds random to me, but
whatever. Yeah, yeah.
I don't know. It's all very inconsistent to
me. And I just don't think Spielberg
interrogates this world enough for much at all.

(03:11:32):
And I think that's unfortunate because there's a lot there,
like I said. But yeah, OK, let's do this.
I have like a list of quibbles and I'm just going to run
through them. So there's we've talked about

(03:11:54):
this, there's spurts of a lot ofexposition that's kind of boring
to listen to. You know, the movie opens with
it. And then I don't know, there's
just there's just parts where the movie where Spielberg
usually isn't like this. So I don't know what it is about
this one in particular. But like, it's like he doesn't

(03:12:15):
trust the audience. So like, you know, you one of
the things that actually like did fool me for a second.
I didn't remember this from the first time and it fooled me
because I thought at first it was one of their like yadda
yadda, yadda. And then they end up in
Sorrento's office and you don't like how they get in there.
It's like that doesn't make any sense.

(03:12:36):
And then you realize like, oh, they've hacked into his rig that
that whole thing, you know. So it actually did fool me
because there is a lot of yadda yadda ING in the plot of like,
how did they escape here? How did they get there?
They don't show me or tell me orit and then I'm like caught up

(03:12:57):
on that. It's like, wait, how did you get
out of there? There's so many people and you
would think they would have security.
So there's a lot of that. So that's why I was thinking
that when they when they show upwith guns and, you know, and
Sorrento's office, so it, it fooled me.
But then like they show you visually, like, oh, you, you

(03:13:20):
kind of catch on like, oh, they've like hacked into it.
But then like the characters like explain what they did and
you're like, I didn't need you to explain like you, You've
already shown me that you're notactually there, that you've
hacked into it somehow. And then they go on like this
one to two-minute exposition of what they did.
And I don't know, it's just so annoying.

(03:13:45):
I hated it. It's it's a, it's a hard task to
make people running around or moving in VR goggles exciting.
But like, I feel like that's a big part.
That's one of the big problems Ithink of the switching so much
back and forth from the real world to the fake world is

(03:14:07):
honestly like watching people move around in VR goggles and
haptic suits kind of looks stupid to me.
It's like it's not, it's not exciting to watch.
It doesn't add anything to like what's happening in the, in the
virtual world to me. It's not like I don't know, it's

(03:14:27):
not exciting. It kind of looks stupid.
Like I hated, I hated the whole sequence where like he's like
swinging around in the back of the van because they're getting
rammed by other vehicles in the haptic suit and the cables and
stuff. And he's like flopping around
and the in the in the Oasis because of that.

(03:14:48):
And I'm like. This is just stupid.
Yeah, I guess. The way this is playing out,
like I get it, but I don't know,it's just that's one of my
quibbles as I think showing people in VR goggles looks
stupid and it's not fun to watchon the, you know, in a movie.
No, yeah, that, that's true. And, and I feel like one of the

(03:15:09):
major areas that it struggled with was consistency with the
tech because honestly, the startup of him, like getting on
the omnidirectional treadmill, that was pretty cool.
But then we cut to the kids running in the street and it's
like, OK, I can suspend disbelief that, you know, the

(03:15:31):
motion tracking doesn't need a full suit, right?
It's better, it's good enough. But is this VRAR or is this VR?
Because if this is VR, they're going to run over the curb and
trip. If it's VRAR, maybe there's a
what benefit it just it. It just felt like it felt like

(03:15:55):
the technology understanding waskind of limited.
Yeah, they they're kind of all over the place with it.
Yeah, I wish that. I don't know, It just felt like
it felt like the reason it was that is because that's more
visually interesting to see happen than a bunch of, you
know, teenagers on omnidirectional treadmills on

(03:16:15):
the side of the street. The same same thing.
When you know the war room. Yeah, and then War Room.
And then a totally different oneis Sorrento's rig is like a big
seat. It's like, how is he running
around? Yeah.
Well, it's, well, in that case, it's all very inconsistent,
right? And in that case, that's the
other thing I can buy that it looks so good.

(03:16:41):
It's hard to tell what reality is.
But like he's sitting in his chair and he can't.
I, I don't know. I don't know.
How does the movement work in that chair?
Yeah, it's all done with like the little roller mouse thing I
guess. So if you stopped rolling, yeah

(03:17:03):
at that point, just make it likea neural like thing.
Yeah, like you're connected. Or they could put something on
the side of their eyes and theireyes turn blue and they're in
the the the metaverse. Just forgo the VR goggles and
the. Yeah.
Crotch shots in the the armor and stuff just make it all I
guess. It's like more fun to design

(03:17:23):
those things, like the, yeah, the visual things.
It looks cooler It, it looks cooler like just a person
standing there in it. But like when you get P, when
you're like, painting across people in the stacks, like
flailing around in their living rooms, it just looks stupid,
like, and it's not like I think some of it is played a little

(03:17:46):
bit for, for like, for comedy, but like, but yeah, but like at
the end when it's like the battle sequence and you're
painting across like people flailing around in the streets
when it's supposed to be a serious battle.
Like, that's not. I don't think they intended out
to be Comic Relief, but it does look stupid and comedic like it

(03:18:08):
it looks ridiculous. Yeah, well, and and the the war
room stuff, I think part of thattoo.
That I can get it, I can buy into.
Yeah. But but what I was going to say
was the visual interest of seeing something happen and then
it happened like the the laser shot knocking them all out of
the line. There's no way they would be,

(03:18:29):
especially if they're in those rigs.
Those rigs have the omnidirectional treadmills.
They're not the tread where the treadmill is in the room doesn't
represent where they are in the virtual world, I guess, is what
I'm saying. So it wouldn't be a line, but
it's more visually interesting to see that happen.
And then the T Rex falling down was kind of funny.

(03:18:52):
I could buy that, knock them allout.
But yeah, it was the the technology was inconsistent.
And that's part of what was the most interesting part to me
about this world is the technology and, and how people
integrate it to their lives. So.
Yeah, yeah. And I don't know there's, I

(03:19:15):
mentioned this already, but there's a lot of like yadda
yadda ING. And what I mean by that is like,
it kind of skips over stuff. So in the in, you know, in the
sequence of events, So like one of the one of the ones that like
stood out that I remember is like Samantha is in, you know,
the IOI war room. And then like it, it cuts to

(03:19:40):
like something else. And then when it cuts back to
her, she's just like outside nowshe's out of the IOI
headquarters. It's like she is like a wanted
person and like, this is a, likethis is a, you know, billionaire
trillionaire, trillionaires, like tech, heck evil

(03:20:00):
headquarters. Like there's not like security
that's going to stop her from going out the door because it's
not like she's not like sneakingout.
She's just like walking down thesidewalk out of this
headquarters. And it's just like.
I don't know, there's a lot of stuff like that that's like,
this is stupid. Like this guy would have, you

(03:20:20):
know, security everywhere and they would have pictures of her
in their V, like in some screen where they could constantly,
like, be screening people and they wouldn't just be letting
people out of the building without, like, seeing if it was
her. Yeah.
I don't know. There was a lot of stuff like
that that they kind of yadda, yadda, passed like, plot holes,

(03:20:44):
you know, that bothered me. Yeah.
Yeah. I wrote down characters, get out
of sticky situations through film editing instead of, like,
actually getting out of the situation.
Yeah. I don't know.

(03:21:05):
Z Parsival's inspirational speech is kind of lame.
The Oh yeah, this is one that we, we talked about before we
got on the whole like driving backwards thing.
Like somebody would have driven backwards, but after all this

(03:21:25):
time has passed, people would have got bored trying the same
thing. Someone it should have been.
Going to go. Backwards this time and would
have accidentally discovered it.Yeah, that, like driving
backwards in racing games is like thing you do when you get
annoyed like that. I've done when I get annoyed at
the game, I'm like, well, I'm just going to drive backwards.
I whatever. I don't play racing games a lot.
But going against the objective right is something you do when

(03:21:49):
you get frustrated. And if they've been doing this
for how many years? Yeah, I, I, I laughed when I saw
that in your notes because I, I,I that's one of the things I
said to Hunter as soon as it happened.
I was like, this is the gaming community.
They know. They know the pixel to stand on
for the Dark Souls boss to make the bug happen.
Yeah, it would have. It would have been found.

(03:22:10):
It should have been a little more complicated, but that's a
nitpick, I guess. But yeah, it just, it was too
convenient. Yeah, yeah, my, my last quibble
is this. Sorrento is on a rage.
He opens the door to the postal van.
He has the gun pointed at Wade and, you know, sees that Wade is

(03:22:35):
getting the Easter egg and has this like drops the gun to his
side and has this like, goofy, like lovable smile that comes
up. And I'm like, this makes
absolutely no sense. What how did this character get
to this point? We've seen no, we've seen no
signs of like him actually beingcaring or he doesn't actually

(03:23:00):
care about like the integrity ofthe game, like that's not part
of the character and that's kindof what it seems like it's
doing. Like, I don't know, it made no
sense to me. I was like, I kind of like threw
my hands up and I was like, what?
Like this is this makes no. Sense I mean, he naked the
virtual world, right? I guess.

(03:23:21):
I guess the movie's argument is he he nuked the virtual world
and then he got to the real world and he couldn't do it
because he knew it was wrong. Like he couldn't kill him, but
it's like, but he killed the Ant.
That would be it if it was. Killed the whole stack.
Well, yeah, I could see that if it was.
And that is a big thing. Like in the books, like he's he

(03:23:42):
is not afraid. Like they in the book, they like
stage one of the high fives suicides and make it seem like a
suit. Yeah, it's he's like it's
ruthless. And it's less so in this.
So I could kind of see what you're saying if it wasn't for
the fact that like it's the moment that he sees him in and

(03:24:04):
he has this like goofy, like this kind of like, oh, I see
what it was all about smile on his face.
You know, it would be one thing if he, like, try to do it and
just kind of like, defeated, butthat's not like the expression
he did. And that's not like the moment,
you know, that way it it's, yeah, it just a really bad

(03:24:29):
choice. Like, I don't know if that's
Mendelssohn's fault or like, oh,I mean, even if Mendelssohn
didn't make that choice, like ultimately it falls on Spielberg
because he's the one directing. He can say like, no, that's not
what we're going for in the scene.
I need you to do more of this sort of reaction.
That that was, that was a strange tone with the whole like

(03:24:51):
I didn't believe, I believed based on the character he would
have shot him. Yeah, I was confused because it
kind of seemed like a it kind ofseemed like a New York standing
up for Spider Man thing when allthe when the crowd of people
were like, no, you can't get through.
Oh, he's got a gun. Go on through, Sir, There's 400
of us. But go to the.

(03:25:13):
Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it didn't, it didn't wrap
up well in that in that sense, it felt.
Why were the people there? I don't get the point of all the
people showing up if they were just going to let him pass.
Yeah, I feel like we're being really hard on it, but.
And my other. Was a hard.
It was a hard ending. Yeah, and my other quibble with

(03:25:34):
like the the whole like finding the egg thing is like the not
signing the paper thing. He's like he's like, oh, he's
like, oh, this is like when whenyou made Ogden sign away his his
rights. OK, I'm not going to sign this
is I'm not going to make the same mistake you did.
I was like, how is that the sameas what you're doing?

(03:25:57):
You're signing to say I won the game, which you did.
That has nothing to do with signing away rights.
Like it's not a similar mistake or anything at all.
No. Like.
That's that's the thing. That didn't make any sense to
me. Yeah, Hunter made a made a
really good point about this when we were talking about it.
She she said like if he had saidsomething, if if that's what the

(03:26:20):
movie wanted to go for, if he had said, hey, sign this and
you'll have control of the you'll have control.
You can do it. You you'll be the guy in charge.
And he said, I want to share this with I want my friends or
something, something like that. Like this whole thing is I don't
clan up. I'm imparsible.
I'm the I'm the one kind of. And and if he'd gotten to the
end and he had made the realization that he wanted his

(03:26:46):
friends to be there, Yeah. That that would have been
growth. But the growth was recognizing.
Wait, this is just like that time you signed the contract.
That's not good. I you you regretted that I
shouldn't do it. Yeah.
It's like it's. And then he still gets, he still
gets it. Like he still gets the thing he

(03:27:08):
didn't sign for. How does how does the book
handle that part? It that there is.
That's not really in the book. It's not.
Does he get control? He So what is the what is the
Easter? He went, yeah, it's the the
winnings is the same, but there's not the whole like, oh,
I'm not going to sign this because of your like that's not
in the book. But yeah, he the the like the

(03:27:29):
prize is the same. Like he wins control of the
Oasis and the money and all that.
Yeah. So the the test is.
But he does split it with the high 5 just like he does.
That's good. I like that.
I I just wish that I like, it's like what Hunter said.
This Hunter, Hunter is the origination of the idea.
It's like if if he had made the decision to be different than

(03:27:55):
Halliday because he wanted his friends there as opposed to
well, I got to follow Halliday. It's like, OK, you got to the
end. Now you're at the end of your
holiday knowledge. What are you going to do?
Are you making a decision or is Halladay making a decision?
Yeah, anyway. Yeah.
Yeah. I don't know, we could go on and

(03:28:16):
on. I had a lot of quibbles and
problems with this movie that sometimes I have a quibble and
I'm like, whatever, you know? But this one there was there was
just so many that kept popping up and they really bothered me
because there's a lot of potential.
There's so much potential with this movie and they just like, I
don't know, I feel like they really did not do with this

(03:28:37):
movie what it could have done. But it's getting late and we
still have to record a movie draft episode.
So I'm going to share my final thought very quickly.
And my question for my final thought is, do we create new
culture anymore? The idea of like pop culture

(03:28:58):
resurfacing and you know, why a generation can love old popcorn
culture that wasn't theirs as interesting.
But I just, I wonder, like, doesnew culture get created anymore?
Or are we in this cycle of just recycling pop culture where it's
the the problem of IP, you know,are we making new things?

(03:29:19):
Are people interested in seeing like new original things
anymore? Or do they just want to see more
of what they've liked in the past?
And I think, I think there's a alot of nuance in that.
You know, you can see like you can see times when like like
Oppenheimer, for example, there's Oppenheimer had no

(03:29:40):
business making as much money asit was, but it was an original
idea made in an original way andpeople were interested in it and
wanted to see it. You know, and it's not just that
it's music, it's whatever pop culture you want to talk about.
But I don't know, I was just kind of thinking about how like

(03:30:02):
really like new culture can onlybe made through engaging with
the real world in some way. And I think the movie wants to
be about that and doesn't reallyactually like delve into it.
But I do think that's something that I was thinking about after
this is like, you know, these people are obsessed with old

(03:30:22):
culture. They're not actually like
creating anything new. And do we have that the same
problem, like our is our like online obsession and our, you
know, obsession with seeing, youknow, I don't know, Happy Guilt
War 2 instead of some new original comedy.

(03:30:48):
Is that like holding back our culture from like actually
creating new culture, whether it's music or film or fashion
or, you know, other, whatever other forms of art?
We're, we're not, we're so engaged online that we're not
like engaging with the real world and real people around us

(03:31:09):
enough to actually like create something new, some new pop
culture. And, you know, I, I don't think
that's like all in out true. Like there's like meme culture
is a new kind of pop culture that's like totally new, totally
unique to the age we're in. Like, I, I, I'm aware of that,

(03:31:33):
but I do, I do think it is a, animportant question to ask and to
contemplate. Are we engaging with the real
world enough to get actual inspiration to create new
things? And because even memes are kind
of recycled. They're recycled, they're
recycled pictures and quotes andyou know, memes get recycled

(03:31:53):
over and over again. So like, I don't know, I think
it's good to appreciate existingcreation.
Like I don't think it's wrong togo to watch Happy Guilmore 2 if
if you know you're interested inthat, it's good.
It's good to appreciate existingstuff.
But I think it's better to create new things.

(03:32:18):
And I think I think that's one thing that we get stuck in as
humanity is we settle for good when we could have better.
Yeah. And I think I think that's an
important question to ask even for something like pop culture
and what kind of culture are we creating?
What kind of art are we creating?

(03:32:40):
Are we settling for good when wecould have better and best?
And yeah, I don't know. That was just kind of the
question. Final thought I came out of this
with. I don't really have an answer to
it. It it's just kind of like
something to think about. Well, no, it's, it's definitely
a good question. And I, I feel like, I feel like
a good example of that idea is like, I, I think we've talked

(03:33:05):
about it before. I, I'm not a fan of the remake,
the remake, the remake of thingsthat were animated live action.
I, I don't like that. I I I find it.
I find it. Offensive.
Offensive. It's awful.
No, it's just it just makes me sad because it just makes me
want to watch the original for the first time again.
Does that make sense? Yeah.

(03:33:26):
Like, like. And.
And so to contrast that something that I think is
incredible that I went to by theway, with no expectations
because this is controversial. I haven't really, I haven't seen
all of the direct films through all the way through.
I, I, I've seen bits and pieces here and there.
But my point is my, my interest in this fandom was basically

(03:33:50):
zero. I hadn't even seen the first
Puss and Boots, but Puss and Boots.
The Last Wish is incredible. It is a sequel to a spinoff from
the Shrek universe. And the art team was like, hey,
we are going to try so hard. We are going to, we are going to
pour our souls into this animation.
The animation's amazing. The story is OK.
I don't know why, but my point is like, it's so obvious to

(03:34:15):
people working on this thing. Loved it because of the care
they gave it. And I think it was more, I'm not
going to say it's, it was a risky thing, right?
But it was, it was a risk. It was riskier than they could
have been. I guess they, they went way

(03:34:37):
harder for that goal. And so anyway, I, I think, I
think the question is good because creating new stuff, I
think takes a lot it, it, it doesn't just take the courage as
as part of it too. It takes courage, but it also

(03:34:58):
takes, you know, studios willingto take risk and they are very
risk averse because it's very transactional.
I was talking about this with Hunter about this film.
It's like it's so transactional.And then at some point, it comes
down to do we have the money andthat's that, that.

(03:35:22):
I hate that. I hate that.
It's like, well, we could have had a new movie, but the
executive decided to make a remake of an old movie because
that tested better or something.You know it.
I'm not cynical. I know, I know there are artists
working hard. To make new stuff, yeah, we're
going to trash the Acme versus Wiley Coyote film as a tax write

(03:35:45):
off. Yeah, Yeah, I'm not cynical.
I know there are people, you know, pouring their soul into
into making art. It just increasingly discourages
me the frequency with which artistic decisions get made by

(03:36:06):
committee or by dollar as opposed to people just making
making something risky because because, yeah, there are going
to be flops. When you make something risky,
it's not going to resonate with people.
And then you get in Everything Everywhere All at Once and it's
amazing and it wins best picture.
And it was made by a team of howmany people with for how much

(03:36:26):
money? Like it was nothing, you know,
it was it was an incredibly small team.
It was incredibly low budget best picture and everything it
took. I mean, I don't, I don't
remember what it yeah, I don't remember what it didn't win
because it was, but it was a risk.
It wasn't Everything Everywhere all at once five, you know,

(03:36:46):
right? Or the remake in 20 years.
So yeah, anyway, that's my soapbox.
Good question. It was all the sequels of it
wrapped into one movie. It was Everything Everywhere at
once. Yeah.
Every sequel all at once, you know?
No, Yeah, I, I think that is definitely like the other aspect

(03:37:07):
of my question is like, you know, the money driving things
sort of aspect of it. Yeah, yeah, I'm glad you said
that. Yeah.
I guess before we wrap up, wheredoes this fall for you as far as
like Spielberg movies? For me, it's like it's like just

(03:37:30):
above like the bottom tier of like 3 movies that I just think
are not good. This is like, I don't think this
movie is good. There's redeeming aspects of it
and so it's like it's like a tier like I haven't in a tier
with like Amistad, the Lost World hook and this kind of like

(03:37:54):
not the bottom list of bottom tiers of Spielberg, but pretty
much bottom tier. Yeah, I would.
I would say I agree. I don't have all of his films
ranks. Sure, Yeah, but but.
Just ball parking. Yeah, yeah.
And, and it's, that's also wild cuz I also don't know off the,

(03:38:16):
my head like success rankings, but this is up there, right?
I mean, this did amazing in the box office.
Yeah. I mean, it made made over 500
million worldwide. Like it, it did really well.
Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I, it's hard to see where

(03:38:38):
it ranks in his greatest hits box office wise because yeah, I
don't know, It's, it's funny because.
I mean it, it's like it's doesn't have terrible like
critic review, like it has like a a 64 meta score, which is

(03:38:58):
green. It has a 3.3 on letterboxed,
which isn't terrible. Like it's kind of in that range
where it's like, oh, I might like this, I might not.
I haven't been keeping up with the letterbox.
What? What did you what star?
What star rating did you give? 2 1/2 Two.
And a half that's I, I would say, I would say either 2 or 2

(03:39:19):
1/2 from yeah, I'm stuck on thatlast half star.
But that that's about where I'd put it to.
I've seen way worse movies. It was. 71% tomato meter.
So it's it's you know, it's ripe.
Yeah, I don't know. It's Yeah, I know.
We dug into. It.
I know we dug into it a lot, butI think that's just because it
was so close to being something interesting and they just didn't

(03:39:43):
commit. There's there's a degree to
which like, I'm going to be harsher on a Spielberg movie
that I might be on someone else's movie.
Yeah. And yeah, because it's a
Spielberg movie, I, I expect more, you know, so, but yeah,
it's, it's like those four movies I named with this
included. Are all I have all ranked 2 1/2

(03:40:07):
stars and the ones the three Spielberg movies I have below it
are ranked lesson rated less than that.
But yeah, so yeah, it's, it's kind of in that, but most, most
Spielberg movies are like 8 stars and half, maybe 7.

(03:40:29):
But yeah, it's, it's down there.I I just really, it was just
kind of like one of those movieswhere there's one, there's an
eye roll for something in every scene or sequence and it just
gets old after a while, but. Yeah, yeah.
Yep. Yeah, I don't know.

(03:40:52):
I guess I'll, I'll, I'll say next week me and you are doing a
motion capture performances draft.
So that's going to be fun. It's probably going to be a
short episode because it is pretty late for for us As for
recording. So we might fire through those
real quick, but it's still goingto be fun.

(03:41:15):
And then, yeah, we're picking back up with Spielberg again the
week after that with West Side Story.
I'm excited to rewatch that one.So yeah.
But Andrew, I know you're not onthe socials a whole lot, but I
do always like to share your letterbox with people, so.
Yeah, and I just said I'm not upon it, but I reviewed, I

(03:41:35):
reviewed Superman and I saw reviews.
I will review Fantastic Four, nospoilers.
I already told you my Yeah, yeah.
So follow, be sure that Andrew on letterbox, if you want to
know where to follow him, just click in the episode description
and click the link because I'll put it there.
Yeah, that's all we have for this week.

(03:41:56):
I've been Eli Price for Andrew Fosier.
You've been listening to the establishing shot.
We will see you next time. We were happy here for a little
while. But look, I figured this way
better to be king for a night than smoke for a lifetime.

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