Hello patrons and welcome to a special bonus subscriber episode of 80s all over. As you are probably well aware by now, there is a very big Spielberg film making around in theaters. We'll be discussing Ready Player One. It seems like a perfect fit for us because so much of the conversation around the film hinges on the value and or the problems with nostalgia. And the movie itself is of course built on the hook that these kids are playing this video game where they're trying to find the puzzle that will solve everything and win them the entire internet. And it's all hinged on 80s movie trivia, basically.

That sounds like it's gonna be just barrage of pop culture and nothing else. And certainly that was the fear going in. I think there's more to talk about than that. And so Scott, we not only are gonna talk about the movie, we've got a very special guest this week, we've got the screenwriter, the film Zach Pinn. So I think this is gonna be our big ready player bonus.

And I hope you guys enjoy.

Let's just lay a little bit of foundation on what Spielberg means to us. No filmmaker is infallible. No filmmaker is perfect. We are all human beings. Artists are human. And by default, we are going to screw up sometimes. Let's take off the rose colored glasses while I do believe that Spielberg is one of the most accomplished and impressive and entertaining filmmakers ever. If you're not necessarily as enamored with him as we are, then that's fine too. Well, you don't have to like his movies to acknowledge the fact that he may have one of the single greatest film voices of anybody who's ever shot mainstream film. And that is because he from a very very young age, Ait and briefed it. He's part of that first generation of film nerds turn filmmakers. And I really think it's a phenomenon that didn't exist until the 70s. These are guys who grew up steeped in like television reruns of stuff and double features and whatever films they could track down. And they loved movies very very deeply the way we did. They just had a very different relationship with them. And so by the time they started making movies, they were making movies about movies. And their language was driven largely by other films they'd seen. I don't think there's anybody who more crystallized all of those skills than Steven Spielberg. And that's why I think out of the guys who were that class of the 1980s, he's the one that has remained a gigantic commercial force every decade since. We could sit here and discuss, as you mentioned, commercialism or marketing and cash money. But the bottom line is, if you're a film lover, this is the man who directed jaws and closing counters and raiders of lost arc and ET and a Jurassic Park and minority report and Shenlers list. This is a great filmmaker. But I think children of the 80s, she was one of the first names that we knew and not just names. It was even when he was executive producing stuff. It was like Harry and the Henderson's and Gremlins and amazing stories on television and stuff that we liked really enjoyed and looked forward back to the future. It's like how many great films do you have to see his name on before as a 16, 17, 18 year old? You're like, damn, that's him. I like this guy. You know, like what a body of work. If we can jump into Ready Player One, I think it does capture bits and pieces of the G Wiz childlike wonder that happens in some of his best films. It just to me lacks the emotional oomph that a close encounters does or even a minority report does that it's 90% spectacle and 10% heart. Like discussing it now, it almost feels like a femoral. Like it's almost, I got to see it again to remember stuff. I've been thinking about it and I think here's the problem. This is back to the future if they had not recast Eric Stoltz. And I mean that because the kid is the kids one of the biggest problems. Not only is he, I think, somewhat of a blank. And there's a lot of kids right now who look exactly like this kid. And I just don't get much off of him in the movie. Now you can argue that that is part of the fact that he's playing the main character. And this is a video game movie, and to some degree, video game avatars are supposed to be blank,

but there's not much that I get off of him. And I think beyond that, narratively, there's two more interesting characters who could have been the lead. I think both Artemis and H are more interesting and compelling characters, and I think if either of them had been the lead of the film simply by nature of what they did in the movie.

Artemis is leading a revolution. H is on- characters, and I think if either of them had been the lead of the film, simply by nature

of what they did in the movie. Artemis is leading a revolution. H is on the road in this van that she's put together. Their 50 steps ahead of Wade at every point in this film, the whole movie is wait for the dumb white kid to catch up. And when he finally does, I guess he does some stuff to help, but ultimately I don't think he drives this movie, and that's a problem. i think aric stoltz that

every conversation i ever had with bob gale about the reason stuff to help, but ultimately I don't think he drives this movie and that's a problem.

I think Eric Stoltz, that every conversation I ever had with Bob Gale about the reason

they recast was, it wasn't light.

No matter how good Stoltz was in it, there was a lightness that had to exist in back

to the future in order to get over certain story points.

That's ultimately a movie in which a guy almost boinks his mom and to make that palatable there is a playfulness that's required and when they recast with Michael J. Fox they got everything they needed. I think this movie lacks that kid at the center of it which is a Spielberg Hallmark. The lead character is kind of a blank slate. Now part of that is that seems to be the template for giant budget, you know, global blockbuster movies is that your hero will be a likable bland white guy so that every, they think, the general studio thinking is, you can insert anything into that character, but it doesn't make the film more interesting, that's for sure. And so what if that's the thinking that thinking's broken and it's done and it's over?

That's not the case. That doesn't make us identify with people anymore and it doesn't in any way serve as the blank template anymore. We have to stop trading that as the default. Well, I agree. And this movie's a good example of why? Because that character by making him the default hamper's the film. It's just not interesting with him as the lead. There's 50 things the movie's doing.

It is not a clearly defined,

straight line film like Jurassic Park,

where... Heal fault, hamper's the film. It's just not interesting with him as the lead. There's 50 things the movie's doing.

It is not a clearly defined, straight line film like Jurassic Park where it's dinosaurs and they're real and you're on an island with them. That's pretty fucking simple. This movie, there's 50 different things. You've got the game that you're playing. You've got Sorrento and his old thing that he's doing. You've got Wade. You got the world itself that they're living in. And even if you just wanted to make a movie

about a world where everything is so far run down that we have voluntarily given up living in the real worlds that we can just live in a virtual one, that's plenty of meat. And there could have been a whole movie where there was no game involved. And it was just about the Oasis and about the life that people are starting to build in there.

That's obviously it's not a big studio blockbuster

in a movie like this cost a bazillion dollars a second to make, just to pull it all together. So they have to have the big driving action story. I think that the nostalgia is the trick of the... It's the least important thing in the movie. And if you strip it off and make it something totally different, it still works as a story. The nostalgia is unimportant. And my kids, when they watch this movie, they're not hung up on what the nostalgia means to them or how bonded they are to each and every single thing on screen. They recognize a lot of stuff and they were having fun. But they were watching the adventure of the kids playing the game in the oasis and that was the heart of the film to them. I look at it a bit differently and I don't want our listeners to get the wrong idea because I like this movie. I just don't love it and I'm really trying to figure out what the disconnect is there. To me, this movie is three classic movies in one. It's Willy Wonka plus the last starfighter plus Hoofram Roger Rabbit. What's interesting here, like Roger Rabbit, I caught a lot of these references and they're tailor made for somebody of my age, okay? And I recognized most of those references and I just thought, neat, that's kind of cool. Oh, someone in the video game world is playing as Iron Giant, someone is playing as Chuckie. That's cute. I wasn't clapping my hands and going ape shit for it and I don't think most people would. I just think it's cute little garnish. To some degree, there's things that they never address. For example, how fucking sad is it that all of these kids have been forced essentially to become addicted to 80s pop culture in order to win this game when that's not naturally what they'd be into? You're talking about pop culture in the movie that is 75 years old at that point.

It's not their pop culture. None of the kids in this movie grew up on the 80s because the 80s were already distant history by the time they were born. It's forced on them. I think the most important thing in the middle set piece, and I'm gonna talk carefully here, even though we'll set up some spoilers when we talk to the ScreenWriters Act pin later, but the middle set piece, there's a movie that is based around.

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