A movie about video games called Ready Player One was showcased at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con over the weekend. The trailer sported two full minutes worth of content as the 2018 sci-fi film preps for release next year.
The movie is set in Columbus, Ohio during the year of 2045. The trailer starts off by giving viewers a really brief rundown of what to expect from the movie and a somewhat incoherent and messy synopsis of the film. You can check out the trailer below, courtesy of MovieClips Trailers.
The first half of the trailer is about a kid who spends his free time in the virtual world of Oasis, where we get a few quick clips of him meeting characters like the Iron Giant and fighting off classic villains like Freddy Krueger, and formerly iconic heroes like Duke Nukem (the latter of which has been reduced to nothing more than nostalgia masturbation at the whim of Gearbox whenever they’re in need of a quick financial fix).
The second half of the trailer is a little bit different. There appears to be some sort of tournament-style VR setup where a bunch of players hop into cars and start racing in what’s essentially Trackmania meets Fatal Racing (two of my favorite racing games). We see someone using Kaneda’s bike from Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira, which is a nice little nod to the anime, along with the DeLorean from Back to the Future. Apparently whatever game is featured in the movie allows for mods the way GTA V used to before Take-Two sodomized the right of creativity in online play.
Based on that trailer alone there’s nothing there that makes me the least bit excited to see it. It looks like a visual amalgamation of Michael Bay-tier film-making based on a concept of what people who don’t play video games think video games will be like some 30 or so years from now.
This seems like the sort of movie that will likely end up being a PG (or PG-13) rendition of something like Gamer. A video game love-letter from casuals for casuals.
I can also already imagine the piss-poor, tech-demo quality VR and AR tie-ins that Warner Bros., will inevitably release alongside the movie that will likely appeal to the casual plebeians who have no idea what quality VR gaming is supposed to be like.
Anyway, maybe we’ll see something actually worthwhile of the film when the second and third trailers surface ahead of its official theatrical release.
