Ready Player One (w/ Andrew Fossier)

Eli (00:01.378)
Hello and welcome to the establishing shot a podcast about directors. Well, I'm going to restart. I'm going to start over.

Eli (00:12.898)
Hello and welcome to the establishing shot a podcast where we do deep dives and two directors and their filmographies I am your host Eli Price and we are here on episode 109 of the podcast Yeah, it's rolling along here Spielberg has been a long one. We're still rolling on the Spielberg just a few left at this point You know, it's we're hitting the last few here with

Andrew Fossier (00:26.298)
109

Eli (00:41.44)
Ready Player One, the topic for discussion this week. So yeah, I think, am I right? Yeah, this was the last Spielberg movie of the 2010s. So yeah, so wrapping up the 2010s of Spielberg's career, it's been an interesting decade of movies for him, I think. Some good ones, some okay ones, I guess, as well thrown in. But yeah, we have

A returning guest this week, Andrew Fosier, is joining me to talk about this world of virtual internet fun, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, joining me from across the state, I guess. We're in the same state, but not the same city.

Andrew Fossier (01:23.524)
Happy to be here in our virtual conversation about the Metaverse.

Andrew Fossier (01:37.37)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli (01:40.11)
via, you know, via God's internet or, you know, I don't know, whoever made the internet, Al Gore's internet. You know, that's what he would say anyways. Yeah, we're here. We're doing it. And Andrew has been on before. has talked about his experience with Spielberg.

Andrew Fossier (01:49.476)
Al Gore's internet.

Andrew Fossier (01:55.418)
Hehehe.

Eli (02:08.109)
on the Twilight Zone episode. talked about Twilight Zone, the movies. We talked about, I think, all the segments actually on that, even though only one of the segments was Spielberg. We talked about all of them. So that was fun. Yeah, that was a disaster-filled backstory as well. So that was a little, that was pretty fun.

Andrew Fossier (02:15.641)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:30.371)
You.

Yeah.

Eli (02:35.489)
But yeah, if you wanna hear Andrew's background with Spielberg, that's the episode to go to to listen to that. We're not gonna rehash that here. So I just figured I'd ask what you've been watching recently that you wanna give a shout out to. That's been good.

Andrew Fossier (02:53.206)
We were just talking about Superman. I really like that. Highly recommend. And I know I'm late to the party, but season, maybe not that late to the party, season two of Andor was amazing. Finished it up.

Eli (02:55.553)
Yeah, that's true.

Eli (03:05.365)
Okay, I need to get around to that. I've been shy, you know, to get into any more like Marvel or Star Wars TV shows. But yeah, so.

Andrew Fossier (03:10.136)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (03:19.235)
Yeah.

Yeah, my, my issue, my issue for the first time, but the season starting season one 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 Mandalorian? So take a break and give it a shot. It's, really good.

Eli (03:29.089)
yeah.

Eli (03:40.727)
Yeah.

Eli (03:45.25)
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 what we are re watching Brooklyn 99 right now It's just it's a very funny show It's it's becoming one of my favorite like sitcoms Yeah, it might be like Top five like maybe number five, but it might break into the top five

Andrew Fossier (03:58.122)
Mmm. Love that show. It really is.

Andrew Fossier (04:06.38)
Really?

Andrew Fossier (04:12.941)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (04:15.533)
But that's that's kind of our thing. We we mostly like watch sitcoms together But yeah, we might throw in a little Star Wars and or if she's interested so we watched the Mandalorian together so yeah

Andrew Fossier (04:20.365)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (04:29.197)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Eli (04:34.157)
Yeah, that's good recommendations, Superman and Andor. Yeah, I love Superman too, it was great. I was pleasantly surprised, I guess. I didn't have like super high expectations, but yeah, was, I was, was, it was well received, I'll just say that. I really enjoyed it.

Andrew Fossier (04:49.229)
Hmm.

Andrew Fossier (04:58.125)
Yeah, my, my joke was my joke in my review on letterbox was that it's fantastic. And I haven't made my fantastic for review yet, but it's going to be that it was super. So spoiler there.

Eli (05:06.157)
I haven't gotten to that one yet. I that 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 Four 2 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

Andrew Fossier (05:20.429)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Fossier (05:34.553)
Yeah.

Eli (05:35.232)
at least not those superheroes today, we're talking about the world of Ready Player One. this is, this is like, I guess the end of 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 1010, and then hit up the motion capture again with the giants and BFG. And yeah, now we're, this is, so 1010 is like all motion capture, and it's all in an animated world. And then this one is like, BFG is like the motion capture giants in the real world. it's kind of like,

live action with motion capture plugged into it sort of. 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 60, 70 % in the Oasis, which is the virtual world of the Ready Player One universe. And then maybe like,

Andrew Fossier (06:38.263)
Yeah.

Eli (07:04.269)
40ish percent I guess in the real world I'm pretty sure that's that's what I read or heard or something when I was doing my research

Andrew Fossier (07:08.601)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (07:12.781)
Yeah, when I think about this movie, having seen it in theaters originally, like when I said, hey, I wanna do it, when I think about this movie, I'm like, yeah, it's alternate reality metaverse is the movie. yeah, I forgot how much, like there will be something happen in the game or the Oasis, and then it cuts away to something in the real world, like representing that.

Eli (07:18.221)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (07:32.727)
There is, there's a good bit.

Andrew Fossier (07:41.705)
Yeah, it's interesting. I forgot that part of it.

Eli (07:46.222)
Yeah, we'll definitely talk about how, if or how that works, you know, um, 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. It's like, it's not quite 50 50. I don't think, I think it's still like majority in the virtual world, but it's only like, I think it's like 60 40. I want to say, um, I think there's like 80 minutes.

Andrew Fossier (07:55.715)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Fossier (08:09.079)
Yeah,

Eli (08:15.501)
In the oasis world in the virtual world which comes out to about like 60 % I think of the movie Yeah, which I think it's like two 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 Cline

Andrew Fossier (08:23.383)
Yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah.

Eli (08:44.725)
was born in Ohio. Ernest Cline is the author of the book Ready Player One. And he was kind of like a typical kid that grew up in like the 70s and 80s, like huge Star Wars fan, got his first like computer and video games as a teenager and like nerded out on those. yeah, just like, just completely like engulfed in

late 70s 80s pop culture and Yeah in 2001 Ernest Cline started working at CompuServe which was this like It's it's kind of like they did They were like the first kind of email and chat like they kind of started a lot of stuff that like we still know the internet for today even though CompuServe is like

Dead and Gone, like Long Gone, they kind of like forums, like they had four like big forums, they kind of started the email 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 that.

Andrew Fossier (09:43.225)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (10:10.281)
And I think in 2001 CompuServe was a lot of what the internet was. So he's basically doing tech support for the internet. But yeah, I didn't really remember CompuServe. I was using the internet in 2001, but it was mostly to do research for school. I was in middle school-ish age.

Andrew Fossier (10:20.035)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Fossier (10:34.924)
Yeah, I was a little younger so I wasn't on the internet yet, but yeah.

Eli (10:41.845)
Yeah, I definitely like had 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 whatever in middle school that you had to write that you go back and read. And you're like, I don't know that I needed to do any research to write this terrible paper, you know. But working there as kind of like where he traces back the seed.

Andrew Fossier (10:57.432)
Yeah.

Eli (11:11.635)
or inception of this idea, I guess, of this kind of virtual world. And then obviously, as the technology progresses, it becomes more more like, I guess, the new technology progressing feeds that idea and makes it grow into something more realistic. But yeah, he set the novel in Oklahoma City.

but it was inspired by the winter greatness of Columbus, which is where the movie ends up being set. And there is like about like a quarter or a third of the book in Columbus, because that's where like the Oasis, I can't remember the name of the Oasis company in the game. I mean in the novel. I don't think it's really mentioned in the movie. Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (11:45.081)
Mmm.

Andrew Fossier (12:04.963)
Yeah, I don't remember.

Eli (12:08.343)
but it's it's something games is the name of the company. I just don't remember what it is. But yeah, so there is Columbus in the book, but yeah, Wade doesn't live in Columbus until later in the book. But yeah, it's probably just easier for the movie, just like, it's all in Columbus. Yeah, so he based it on, you know, growing up in Ohio, I guess Columbus is where he lived.

Andrew Fossier (12:27.617)
Yeah, singing one place makes sense.

Eli (12:37.601)
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, but I did get and read that in my research. So that probably influenced a little bit of like the whole stacks thing. then another thing is like he loved Wonka. And like when he was thinking about this idea, like he was thinking like, maybe it can be like sort of a Wonka style contest in this.

Story sort of thing and so that gets integrated And yeah all those sort of things along with his love of like 80s pop culture just like Amalgamates together into this book he wrote it He I think he started writing it in like 2009 or 2010 and he even like He even wrote

wrote the novel after having already sold the rights to it to WB, which is pretty crazy. I'm sure he had like some of it written already, but he didn't finish the novel. He hadn't finished the novel and had already sold the rights to a movie to WB. yeah. Yeah. so, and a part of that is because like the guy that was

Andrew Fossier (13:54.403)
Wow. Yeah.

Eli (14:03.095)
that a guy he had met at South by Southwest Festival, think, worked for WB and was also like, I guess had 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 knew he was writing this book. And so got told WB the pitch.

got him to pitch it to WB and 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 Cline did, before the book had 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 the screenplay already. And yeah, I have it right here in my notes, Dan Farah at WB.

Andrew Fossier (14:42.723)
Mm-mm. Yeah.

Eli (14:58.529)
helped him find the publisher and kind of was his manager of sorts during that process. But yeah, the book did really well. It struck a chord with nerds of this ace subculture and a lot of other people too. I think the first, first 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 struck a chord culturally and people connecting to also the vast number of pop culture references from the 80s that are in this book. It is quite the water hose of 80s culture, a lot of which I didn't.

Andrew Fossier (15:40.579)
Yeah.

Eli (15:53.772)
you know, a good bit that I know a lot that I didn't know. And you kind of just have to like roll with it, you know? But yeah, it's, the book is fun. I did listen to the audio book. But yeah, Ernest Cline. I know you didn't get a chance to read the book. I do recommend it. So like, if you still like...

Andrew Fossier (16:15.289)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I've got it checked out from the library. I just got to commit to doing it.

Eli (16:21.653)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I definitely recommend it. I did a lot of listening, doing the dishes, or driving or whatever. That's kind of when I do that sort of thing, podcasts or audio books. yeah, yeah, so Ernest Cline is working on the script. And then this guy, Zach Penn, kind of.

gets into the project. He, Zach Penn was kind of known as a superhero writer in the 2000s. So he did work on X2, the X-Men movie. He worked on Electra. He worked on the Incredible Hulk. So, did a lot of work, you know, 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 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 or at like the week after Jurassic Park

Andrew Fossier (17:45.39)
Haha.

Eli (17:45.742)
So there's his like early Spielberg tie-in is knowing that Jurassic Park was probably gonna be a big hit But yeah, Zach Penn meets Ernest Cline 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

sent the 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 having read the book now. But yeah, he eventually, I guess, is won over by Ernest Cline and the people at WB and.

Yeah, so he and Klein kind of work together. I guess he's like the main screenplay writer, and then Klein does, I guess, lot of the work, doctoring it and helping him. But yeah, so the book, so for you, I guess this is good. You can be the audience surrogate for people who are listening and also have not read the book. So the book,

Andrew Fossier (19:09.049)
Yeah.

Eli (19:12.173)
There's quite a few like differences between the book and the movies like one big one is that Wade is in school. He goes there's he goes to school on The main planet which 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 schools are. And most people go to school in the Oasis. So most kids log in to their school-issued VR headsets. And that's how they log in. That's how they do school. They are in a virtual classroom as their avatar.

Andrew Fossier (19:46.585)
Andrew Fossier (20:03.822)
Yeah.

Eli (20:07.905)
that sort of thing. And so like, he's actually like in, he's like a senior in high school in the book. And so you have a little bit of that. 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 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 challenges finding the keys in the movie. Yeah, right. And so there's a little bit more like interesting like

Andrew Fossier (20:55.883)
Yeah, the key unlocks the clue and then, yeah.

Eli (21:06.677)
quest kind of plotting in the book than in the movie to me. And then I think another big difference in the book from the movie is that like to me in the book, so I think in both Wade is a bit of like a bit of 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 and the movie, but he's still kind of like an annoying know-it-all. Like he's not like the easiest character to like, but I do feel like 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.

Andrew Fossier (22:03.257)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli (22:05.909)
And so by the end of the book, you're really rooting for this guy. Whereas I feel like by the end of the movie, you're like, why do we want this guy to win it all? I'm not really sure.

Andrew Fossier (22:21.465)
I feel like, no, I know what mean. I feel like the film, it's more based on, we don't want, well, I was gonna make an Andor reference to the guy. He's an Andor. We don't want the villain to win more so than like, I want Wade to win.

Eli (22:36.685)
Yeah. And in the book too, he's super like Wade is Wade and slash Parzival is he's super, super cynical. So like when he first meets Artemis and they, they, they are kind of like talking about in the book, like, what are you going to do if you win? Parzival 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 a, like, whatever number of people and leave this, like, like, dying planet behind and go find, like, somewhere else. Like, that's kind of like his, he's, 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, when I'm gonna, like, solve world hunger, you know.

Andrew Fossier (23:16.995)
Whoa.

Andrew Fossier (23:36.322)
Yeah.

Eli (23:36.482)
They're both like, know, teenagers. they're kind of like, that's kind of how they think like, I'm going to start like, so it's interesting. And then Parzival slash Wade's character arc is kind of like him becoming less cynical and more like trusting of people and more 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 movie where whereas it's like that's a big part of the book so I don't know that it's just I 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 But it's but it's funny because I listened to

Andrew Fossier (24:32.493)
Yeah.

Eli (24:36.053)
a couple of podcasts that had come out talking about the movie back when it released. and at least one of them, there was a critic that felt like the movie did, did a lot of stuff better than the book did. And then the book, the, the way 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,

Andrew Fossier (24:52.846)
Hmm.

Eli (25:02.893)
kind of feel the opposite. This is really weird.

Andrew Fossier (25:06.595)
Hmm. Just based on what you told me about everyone going to school and the metaverse, I'm not 100 % sure about this at the start of the movie, but one of the things I'm kind of just like torn on is it presents, in my opinion, presents the metaverse more as a game than a metaverse. And it's supposed to be a metaverse, right?

Eli (25:18.614)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (25:29.163)
Yeah. And it's, and it's not, it's not supposed. Yeah. So it's, it is like, there's a lot of gaming aspects to it, but like most people in, the book, the way he way describes it is most people stay on the main planet where there's no, there's like certain zones, certain planets, depending on how they're like created slash coded that like are, non P2P. they're not.

Andrew Fossier (25:38.36)
Right.

Eli (25:59.118)
Or POP whatever the term is there you can't fight people on PvP. Yeah, did I say that or did I say something? I think I said I think I said P2P peer-to-peer. Yeah Yeah, they're not PvP. There's like non PvP zone so the main planet where like all the schools are and like that really like most people are are logging on to the oasis to like do business or do like there's like

Andrew Fossier (26:04.111)
PVP, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Fossier (26:08.153)
I think it's at P2P. I was like peer to peer, whatever. Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (26:16.045)
Mmm.

Andrew Fossier (26:26.274)
Yeah.

Eli (26:29.159)
Wade does tech support. He like does a job doing tech support. And so like he's in high school, 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 money, like money within the Oasis to like get off planet to teleport somewhere or to like hitch a ride somewhere. And so yeah, most people are logging onto the Oasis to like go to work.

Andrew Fossier (26:50.478)
Yeah.

Eli (26:59.071)
or to shop or whatever. And yeah, in the movie it makes it seem like, 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 book, but also like, that's not what most people are in the ways it's doing.

Andrew Fossier (27:09.282)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (27:27.287)
Yeah, I wish the movie had, maybe it mentioned it in passing or something, I'm not remembering. I, yeah, no, I feel like even the scene of the, when he's explaining how like if you zero out, you lose everything and start over, and then it cuts, yeah, but then it cuts to a guy, it cuts to a guy in like an office, kind of looking space that just died, and then he like runs for the window, and it's like, was, maybe.

Eli (27:33.185)
I don't think it

Eli (27:40.689)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, which is true in the book.

Andrew Fossier (27:56.056)
This would have been interesting is if it would have been the kind of thing where they were setting up, like people were having to play certain games that give more money or something. I don't know, like a bot kind of 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 have been, but it seemed like it was just focused on it being a game as opposed to the metaverse. Yeah.

Eli (28:22.785)
Right.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's definitely like more, which I don't know if the term meta was the term metaverse being used in 2018.

Andrew Fossier (28:35.385)
I think it was definitely coined before then. Yeah.

Eli (28:38.381)
It might have been coined, yeah, but it wasn't really like in regular use.

Andrew Fossier (28:43.031)
Well, yeah, I know it was coined in, I'm a little familiar with the origin, was the novel Snow Crash, which is actually, from what I know, I haven't read it either, but I know main themes. It's kind of similar, outward dystopia forces people into this virtual world. The main character is like a pizza delivery driver.

In the metaverse, if I'm remembering right. Yeah, but 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.

Eli (29:23.467)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm Yeah Yeah, and so yeah it so yeah and all of these so okay. I'm gonna name some more like problems with making this into a movie I'm gonna 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 accumulation of?

like cultural references, which are there in the movie too, which also I think that that can apply to the movie. That ironically what probably makes it popular are the cultural references, not the substance. But we'll get into that. All these problems we'll kind of like talk about culminating later into like what, you know, spoiler alert, the movie doesn't totally work for me.

but we'll talk about how all those accumulate into that a little later when we dig deeper into themes. yeah, mean, so, yeah, so for the screenplay, getting all these cultural references, one thing that 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 could make that WB already had the rights to. And he focused 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, okay, now we can reference some Amblin production stuff with like the DeLorean and Back to the Future and stuff like that.

Andrew Fossier (30:59.947)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (31:21.805)
Yeah.

Eli (31:22.893)
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 a couple of times in the in the book and they can give the rights to Ultraman I don't really know much about Ultraman to be honest, but But he does play a big part in the book They do so there's in the in the book too, there's like a lot of more video gamey parts of

Andrew Fossier (31:33.913)
Hmm. Yeah.

Eli (31:51.926)
like where he's playing a game against, like it could be like him and H playing a game against each other and arguing over it. It could be like part of a challenge playing a game. There's even, I think it's the first gate. He has to like reenact the whole movie War Games starring Matthew Broderick. And so like,

Andrew Fossier (32:17.083)
wow.

Eli (32:20.119)
That's the other thing that's different, a little different from the book to the movie is that like these guys that are at the level of like Parzival and H and Artemis that are like really trying to find the keys, they know everything. And so like when H is like, I've never seen The Shining, if you've read the book, you're like, well, that doesn't make sense because you would literally have watched every movie that Halliday's ever mentioned like a million times.

Andrew Fossier (32:42.553)
Andrew Fossier (32:48.323)
Uh-huh.

Eli (32:49.973)
And so, but if you hadn't read the book, that wouldn't really click with you or bother you. You're like, yeah, I guess it didn't like horror movies or whatever. But in the book, he's like, I've watched War Games probably like 50 times. And so he knew all the lines to say and where to go to reenact the movie in this challenge or whatever. And so there's stuff like that that's just not cinematic.

Andrew Fossier (33:13.155)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (33:19.351)
Yeah, that's a lot different than a race with King Kong in it. Yeah.

Eli (33:19.467)
Watching someone, yeah, yeah. Watching someone reenact a movie or watching someone play a video game is not very cinematic. So there's a lot of stuff like that that they replaced with the more action scenes, like the race and stuff, which I think is smart. I wouldn't want to watch the movie of some of the challenges he had to do. It just wouldn't be fun to watch as a movie.

Andrew Fossier (33:44.31)
Yeah.

Eli (33:47.778)
whereas a race is fun to watch. yeah, he does a little bit different things like with side characters. I think one of the cool things of translating book stuff to movie stuff from like the medium of a novel to the medium of a film is that in the book,

Andrew Fossier (33:47.798)
Yeah.

Eli (34:17.793)
The holiday journals are text. So you read them, you read the holiday journals, and that's how you know all the things about holiday. And there's like a big appendix that they use to like, you know, find all the references that they're looking for in the holiday journals. In the movie, it's like these visual recreations of his memories and stuff. And I think that's a really cool way to like translate that to make it more cinematic.

Andrew Fossier (34:41.593)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (34:46.433)
So I think that was a smart idea. A few other things like with 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, their references to like take away from the success of that, I guess. So yeah, that got vetoed, but.

They did eventually get the rights to The Shining and Spielberg was like excited about that and yeah, that became a big part of the movie really, the whole The Shining thing. But yeah, Spiel, speaking of Spielberg, he finally enters the project in 2015. So it's been in development for a few years at this point, you know, with, I guess like five years, cause 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 hadn't actually like heard of the book until WB gave it to him. So they gave him the book and the screenplay. He read the screenplay first and was like, this is really interesting. And then he read the book and Klein actually talks about like waiting. He like found out like, Spielberg has the screenplay and...

Andrew Fossier (35:56.889)
Mm.

Eli (36:12.781)
We're waiting to hear back from him and he talks about like just nervous. He's like anxious for two weeks waiting to hear back from Spielberg. But yeah, Spielberg comes on. He does a lot of like giving input to rework the screenplay 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 Spielberg wanted. I can't remember who, I wrote this quote down from one of 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 was kind of his thinking there, Spielberg's at least. Does it work or not?

Andrew Fossier (36:43.159)
Yeah.

Eli (37:10.677)
We'll talk about it. Also, also Spielberg wants to make Sorrento less cold and mechanical than he is in the book. He wants to keep him menacing but a little bit more like pathetic. 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. It's kind of.

Andrew Fossier (37:11.865)
I have some opinions.

Andrew Fossier (37:21.657)
Hmm.

Andrew Fossier (37:37.113)
Yeah.

Eli (37:39.798)
It's one of those things with a movie like this, like we talked about Superman earlier, you mentioned Superman. One of the things I loved about Superman, this new Superman movie was Superman is like really good and Lex Luthor is just like really bad. 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 the Superman characters.

Andrew Fossier (37:52.066)
huh.

Yeah, yeah.

Eli (38:05.143)
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. and that's kind of like what you want 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.

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 like Nuance and those sorts of characters and let's just make the guy evil. So like he's really easy to root against, you know But

Andrew Fossier (38:58.381)
Yeah.

Eli (39:01.237)
Yeah, I don't know, did you think about that at all with Sorrento? were you, did you ever think like, this guy's like, I'm scared of what this guy might do, or did you feel like, he's a little bit more like pathetic or bumbling or not in control or?

Andrew Fossier (39:06.029)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (39:16.491)
Yeah, I mean, 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.

Eli (39:29.281)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Fossier (39:34.68)
more so than any of the horrendous stuff that he does. 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 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, he'd be a better person. It's like, would he?

Eli (39:44.531)
Right, yeah. Right.

Eli (39:54.539)
Yeah.

Eli (40:01.665)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (40:03.737)
It seems conflicting when you have a character whose company, again, is buying people. I don't throw the word around, but enslaving, mean, yeah, he's buying them, making them for his forcing them to work.

Eli (40:12.311)
Yeah.

In the book, they're called indentured servants. Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (40:20.289)
Well, there you go. He's enslaving people by leveraging their debt. But also he's fake. Like, I don't know, would he be any better if he wasn't fake? Would he be any better if he could reference the right films?

Eli (40:33.346)
Right.

Yeah, so in the book, he's a little bit similar. Everyone hates him because they know he's not a true Gunter, the term. He doesn't really know Halliday, he doesn't really know the references and stuff. he unashamedly, unabashedly though, says, yeah, we have...

Andrew Fossier (40:48.121)
Yeah.

Eli (41:03.681)
whenever they've like rigged their, they're like haptic rigs so that like, if there's a challenge, like he can be logged in as his avatar, but if there's like a challenge he wouldn't be able to do himself, he can like rig someone else that is good at that sort of challenge into his avatar. and so, but like, but like he tells Parzival that basically he's like bragging about the technology and how they've

Andrew Fossier (41:22.009)
okay. That's actually interesting.

Andrew Fossier (41:30.435)
Yeah.

Eli (41:33.038)
how they've hacked and rigged the system. And so it's like, yes, he doesn't have the knowledge or all that stuff, but also he's just unashamedly, unabashedly trying to take it over and use it. Yeah, basically to make money, to make the Oasis not free, basically.

Andrew Fossier (41:36.013)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (41:53.624)
Yeah.

Eli (42:02.413)
All that but yeah, I thought that was a bad change for Sorrento personally

Andrew Fossier (42:04.907)
I love the, yeah, no, I really liked the, little PowerPoint where he's discussing how much of the visual feel they can take up before they induce seizures. It's like, yeah.

Eli (42:15.383)
Yeah. Yeah.

That is comical. I'll give them that. And it feels relatable at times. It's maybe a little hyperbolic, but still a lot of truth in that. How much of someone's timeline can we fill with ads where they'll stay on our app?

Andrew Fossier (42:27.513)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (42:41.977)
See, but that to me, can, I can invent or, 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. It's just like the gas, like the gas station, like the got 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 about like Ford or something's going, well we could put ads in our infotainment system. It's like.

Eli (43:11.309)
Yeah, Yeah Yeah, and so another character a little bit of a character change It's not like complete character change 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

Andrew Fossier (43:11.789)
Guys, calm down. We're already not. Anyway.

Andrew Fossier (43:37.282)
Yeah.

Eli (43:38.146)
who missed out on happiness. It's kind of like a Citizen Kane type thing going on with the holiday character in the movie. I guess the kind of skeleton of that is there in the book. And you do still in the book have the whole, he really loved the lady that ended up marrying Ogden Morrow, but he never took his chance. That's in the book.

But I think they do a little bit more of honing in on the tragicness of the character, I think, in the movie. So I thought that was a decent change. They don't really change anything. They just kind of hone in on it more, I guess, and put a little bit more focus on that. So I thought that was fine. But yeah, mean, all in all, they really like to...

Andrew Fossier (44:16.056)
Uh-huh.

Eli (44:36.715)
the book is so like chock full of like references and quests and stuff. And so you really do have to like, okay, what can we keep that will be good to that people will enjoy watching and will fit in a two hour film, you know? And so that's, I would imagine there's a lot of work that goes into like honing that down and, know, cause none of the challenges are, I don't.

Andrew Fossier (44:48.352)
Yeah.

Yeah

Eli (45:04.919)
think any of the last challenge with the adventure game I think is very similar to the last challenge of yeah I'm pretty sure it's like the kind of a similar same-ish last challenge in the book but all the other ones are like they they just came up with something different more cinematic so

Andrew Fossier (45:31.245)
Yeah, the second one in the movie felt really weak.

Eli (45:34.955)
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 race like that in the book. So the first two were.

Andrew Fossier (45:43.083)
Yeah. I mean, we discussed, yeah, well, the race, I don't know you want to discuss the trial specifically now, the race felt kind of weak to me too, but for a different reason, but this was just kind of like,

know what movie to watch and then see the photo and then go to the ballroom and then jump to her? don't know. Yeah, it didn't really feel...

Eli (46:01.781)
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 like at all, it's just like they're there. They're in like the Overlook Hotel. Yeah, it's it's cool. Yeah, it like recreates shots from the shining and everyone's like, cool. But like I could just go watch the shining, you know. So if you're.

Andrew Fossier (46:10.967)
No.

Yeah, it was cool. It was cool when they walked in, but,

Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (46:26.425)
Yeah, it kind of felt like a, it kind of felt like a, like an Apple product demo a little bit too. Like, you're in the movie. Like I, it was cool in the sense that it just brought it in, in an unexpected way. And at the time I hadn't seen it. So it was just like, that was the setup for me knowing and seeing movie. But anyway, yeah.

Eli (46:34.092)
Yeah.

Eli (46:49.261)
Yeah, they tried to make the challenges a little bit more personal to Halliday. Whereas in the book, the challenges are mostly, there are some of the later challenges, like the clues, you kind of have to hone into Halliday's personal life a little bit. So the whole, he was in love with,

Ogden Morrow's wife thing plays into it towards the end. in the, but like the first couple of challenges, they're literally just like things that Halliday liked. And so he made that the challenge. the, mean the first, to get the first key, you have to play this like arcade game joust against this like really good AI avatar character and beat him.

Andrew Fossier (47:21.017)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (47:44.299)
huh.

Eli (47:46.444)
Like to get the first, like that's literally the first, to get the first key, that's what you have to do. And it's, it's because Halliday 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's, there's, there's a degree to which like, okay, you're 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.

Andrew Fossier (47:54.157)
Ha

Andrew Fossier (47:58.275)
Yeah.

Eli (48:15.969)
Like you have to make it more personal, these challenges to kind of like put this like through line through the movie to kind of like speed up the plotting and like make it try to make it more like human and and like relatable with some and some add some stakes, like some more like film cinematic stakes, character stakes to it. But it's kind of sloppy, you know, like you said, like, let me jump across these zombies and.

Andrew Fossier (48:38.072)
Yeah.

Eli (48:44.909)
dance with this lady. It's like, I guess there's a little cliche-ness to it, I guess. And it's a little bit more like sloppily put together. But yeah, yeah. Yeah, and what, I don't know. I don't want to delve too deep into like all of my quibbles quite yet, because I do have quite a bit. Let's, before we do delve into that, let's go through like,

Andrew Fossier (49:06.69)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli (49:15.467)
the crew and the cast and a little bit of production stuff and then we can jump more into that stuff. The crew for this one, you do have, it's not exactly like Spielberg's go-to guys. So he's working with WB. So at this point, DreamWorks is kind of dead and gone for all intents and purposes. I wanna say Bridges Spies was really the last true DreamWorks movie.

DreamWorks still like, the name is there on movies even to this day, but like it's not really, it's more like just to have the name, you know? Like they're not financing it, they're not produce, 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.

Andrew Fossier (50:06.03)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (50:11.811)
Hmm.

Eli (50:13.911)
But yeah, he's not, isn't DreamWorks at all, this is WB. And so you do have a couple of WB producers, like Donald DeLine and Dan Farah. But then Spielberg brings on Kristi McCosco-Kreiger, who's an Amblin, one of his Amblin girls that is a producer. kind of a little bit of a WB Amblin mix there for producing.

Of course based on the novel by Ernest Cline released in 2011 I did see this 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 Cline and Eric Eason I don't know who Eric Eason is or what he did for the adaptation But the screenplay was Zach Penn and Ernest Cline

I don't really know what the difference is there or 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 is. Yeah, that's the only time I ever saw this Eric Eason guy's name. yeah. So there are a couple of like big spillware guys. Janusz Kaminski is the director for Tabak.

Andrew Fossier (51:20.545)
Yeah, I'm not familiar with him either.

Eli (51:36.822)
director of photography, cinematographer, whatever you want to call him. Michael Kahn is editor. You also have another editor though, Sarah Brochar. They probably did need two editors for this because you kind of have two things going on with the real and virtual worlds. she, I wonder if she was like a ILM person. you know, ILM does all the digital stuff.

Andrew Fossier (51:53.336)
Yeah.

Eli (52:06.049)
with this, so. Yeah, music, John Williams was not available. So, Spielberg brings on Alan Silvestri. And yeah, we'll talk about him later. The sound crew is Chris Munro and Gary Rydstrom. Rydstrom is definitely a go-to Spielberg sound guy. Production design, Adam Stockhausen.

Who I know for sure worked with Spielberg on bridge of spies I don't I haven't done 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 and this But yeah, Adam stockhausen is like Wes Anderson's production design guy. So I always think it's it's so interesting. He brought him on for bridge of spies and then for this

I just found that interesting because when I think of Adam Stockhausen, I think of Wes Anderson 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 both of these, both in like the real world and in the virtual world. So I guess that attention to detail is what he brought him on for, which I think was a good idea.

Andrew Fossier (53:22.307)
Yeah.

Eli (53:31.308)
Yeah, Art Direction by Mark Scruton and then Claire Fleming for the motion capture art direction. Anna Pinnock was the set decorator. You have some visual effects guys with Roger Geyatt, Grady Koufer 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 Willicamaymon.

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 does some second unit directing, some assistant directors, Adam Somner is like, he's assistant director on all of Spielberg's movies at this point. And then a few more, Emma Horton, Raphael Sands, and then...

Disguise Fraser Fennel Ball is the assistant director for the crowd scenes. So anytime there's like big crowds of people in the, I'm assuming it's talking about for like the crowd engine that ILM builds for the digital stuff. Yeah, and then casting by Lucy Bevin and Ellen Lewis. So that's the main part of the crew. Kind of a mixed bag of like.

Andrew Fossier (54:37.495)
huh.

Eli (54:57.783)
typical Spielberg guys and then some new guys. When you do a movie like this, you kind of like have to mix and match, you know, from your typical guys, because it's such a different sort of thing you're doing with this movie. But yeah, let's talk about the cast. This will be fun. There's not a whole lot of people to talk about with this, but the few we do have will be fun. Yeah, Spielberg.

Andrew Fossier (55:11.886)
Yeah.

Eli (55:24.457)
And the special features said this, thought that I was like, 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,

Auditions and stuff and actually, you know trusting his intuition with okay this guy has what I'm looking for based off of you know bouncing off of This this other character already have cast so I thought that was cool to hear him talk about How he sees casting as this intuitive process and which Spielberg's Directing is very intuitive to he's just kind of like one of those

Andrew Fossier (56:09.315)
Yeah.

Eli (56:18.209)
I don't know, he's one of those guys that it's just ingrained in him, this whole filmmaking thing, it just comes to him naturally, I think. And that's why he's a household name. But yeah, some people, 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.

Andrew Fossier (56:34.584)
Yeah.

Eli (56:43.509)
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 life, what's his name? Anorak wizard. So yeah, so the character, the actors Ty Sheridan of course plays Wade Watts slash Parzival or Z for short.

Andrew Fossier (57:00.505)
Yeah.

Eli (57:13.345)
It's kind of his like pet name. yeah, he, Ty Sheridan was, 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 alert, I guess. You can't really spoil The Tree of Life. There's not really,

Andrew Fossier (57:37.187)
Yeah.

Eli (57:43.692)
much of a plot per se. But yeah, so he was in that. His kind of breakout was in the movie Mud in 2012 with Matthew McConaughey. He was a young guy in that. And yeah, he was in a few more movies. He was also in the movie Joe with Nicolas Cage, which I have not seen. Yeah, so 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, 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 roles like as a younger like kid, but also like just a younger adult, guess, teenager, young adult.

And so, yeah, he actually sent an audition and they passed on him. And then I don't 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 they have like chemistry. I think this is our guy. So that's how.

That's how old Ty Sheridan gets cast. I don't know how I feel about Ty Sheridan. He's fine, I guess. He's a strange looking guy. He's like not, it's like one of those kind of guys that's like, one of those actors that you look at and you're like, he's not a bad looking guy. He kind of like, he's kind of a good looking guy, but he's.

just got a strange face a little bit. I don't know. Not like being 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 distinct faces and that's what makes them a distinct actor. And he does have a distinct strangeness that I can't really pinpoint to.

Andrew Fossier (59:42.996)
Haha.

Eli (01:00:08.439)
the way he looks. It doesn't really, I guess, add or detract anything for this role, for this particular role. But yeah, he, I don't know, he's, I guess to me, in this role, he's just kind of there.

Andrew Fossier (01:00:25.709)
Yeah, yeah, he doesn't, I was gonna say he kind of captures the, well, for some reason, for some reason, sorry for the podcasters, I was making a like big eyed, amazed face. He, for some reason, just Shia LaBeouf, it reminds me of Shia LaBeouf. I don't know why, every time I see him, I just think of Shia LaBeouf.

Eli (01:00:37.801)
Yeah.

Eli (01:00:44.417)
Yeah.

Eli (01:00:48.855)
He's kind of got that like puppy dog excitedness to him. Like that, like, yeah. Like a young Shia LaBeouf did. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah. Especially like when you watch like the behind the scenes, he's got that kind of energy on set. Yeah, I don't know. He's fine in the movie. He's not really like adding a whole lot to like.

Andrew Fossier (01:00:53.417)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, like that, that energy.

Andrew Fossier (01:01:07.875)
Yeah.

Eli (01:01:17.261)
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 he doesn't elevate it either. He doesn't elevate what's on paper to me. He just kind of is there and is fine. He's not bad, but he's not really like, he's not popping off the screen or anything. I don't know. I wasn't.

Andrew Fossier (01:01:21.625)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (01:01:41.602)
Yeah.

Eli (01:01:45.185)
I wasn't terribly impressed with Ty Sheridan in this movie. I don't know, do you feel differently? Do you feel similarly?

Andrew Fossier (01:01:54.104)
Yeah. mean, I, my, my, I guess my, things that I disliked were not like, wasn't like any of the casting choices being like offensively, you know, off or something, right. But it was just kind of the, the tone or the decisions in certain instances, like to start off with the dialogue dump, you know, of like,

Eli (01:02:11.382)
Hmm

Eli (01:02:22.423)
Yeah. Yeah. Exposition.

Andrew Fossier (01:02:23.659)
Yeah, this is why I have a, I don't know. I have a peeve when.

the narration is happening to the audience. Why? Are you making a documentary? Like that's 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 gonna need to grow. Set it up for me.

Eli (01:02:34.529)
Yeah.

Eli (01:02:40.461)
sure.

Andrew Fossier (01:02:52.183)
Don't tell me I'm in a movie. You know what mean? Does that make sense? Don't tell me I'm watching a movie, I guess. That was my main thing. I don't feel like he did, I feel like he did an okay job. I think they should have done another take of his big speech. I don't know. Fine. Like it was was, but again, I don't think anything.

Eli (01:02:54.177)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli (01:03:15.725)
You know, again, I think that's like less on the delivery and more on the like, wait, why do we care about what this guy says?

Andrew Fossier (01:03:23.33)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it's mainly because we know Bossman is going to get a Mechagodzilla. That's why we know, that's why we're fighting. Yeah.

Eli (01:03:35.233)
Yeah. Yeah, 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 same. So Olivia Cooke, we're gonna talk about her as,

We're gonna talk about Olivia cook as Samantha slash Artemis art. I guess art three miss next Reminds me of Mathregan the Megan movies that have been coming out but yeah, we'll talk about her next but like almost feel like her her character felt more interesting and more dynamic and it's like I almost wish she was like

Andrew Fossier (01:04:13.497)
Yeah.

Eli (01:04:27.115)
the one that was like winning it and getting to like, I don't know if it's like the acting or the way the characters were written or what, but I don't know. She just seemed to have like a little bit more depth to her. There's...

Andrew Fossier (01:04:44.503)
Well, yeah, when he first, when she's first introduced, it's because Parzival is like, God, it's her, the Twitch streamer. I didn't like that, but, yeah, no, I, I enjoyed her character.

Eli (01:04:51.701)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, in the, in the book, in the book, she is like, um, an obsession of his, a, uh, like an online crush. Cause she has like a blog. Um, 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 big crush on her and like has read all of her things she's done. And she, and she is like a very, like, I guess like one of the reasons probably he

Andrew Fossier (01:05:06.659)
Uh-huh.

Eli (01:05:28.895)
Is crushing honors because she's like very knowledgeable of all the stuff like he is And so like by the time they meet which they they meet at the first key at the first key challenge He like It's kind of like he's crushing honor but trying like not to show that he's crushing honor sort of thing And he's kind of like starstruck but doesn't want to like

Andrew Fossier (01:05:33.749)
huh.

Eli (01:05:57.742)
put those vibes off sort of thing. And here it's like, I don't know, I thought it was funny too because he sees her and he's like, it's her and it's like, you do this race every day and I'm sure she does too and you've never seen her before. I don't know, I just found that hard to believe. Whereas in the book, it's like no one has found where the first key is. There's no like.

Andrew Fossier (01:06:14.946)
Yeah.

Eli (01:06:23.998)
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 that.

Andrew Fossier (01:06:31.587)
Well, but somebody, can't remember the exact thing he says, but it was hidden behind some type of a clue, I think. Someone cracked, someone figured out where it was immediately.

Eli (01:06:36.951)
Yeah.

Eli (01:06:41.758)
Something it's not clear. Yeah

Yeah, there's like a portal that you have to walk through to get to the race and then.

Andrew Fossier (01:06:49.785)
Right, but then no one's beaten the race. Right.

Eli (01:06:53.237)
Yeah, but everyone knows that's the first challenge. Whereas in the book, it's like him, like Parzival and Artemis are the first two to actually like find where 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 effect of like a couple of people find it and then it like snowballs and then like more and more people figure out.

Andrew Fossier (01:07:06.689)
Yeah.

Eli (01:07:22.393)
they, you know, these people found it. They kind of like use context clues. and then like IOI will 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 challenge and, yeah, it's, it's. Yeah, it's, it's kind of a whole different thing in the book, but, yeah, back to, Olivia cook as Samantha slash art.

Andrew Fossier (01:07:34.094)
Haha.

Yeah.

Eli (01:07:52.142)
Artemis. So for Olivia Cooke, her early career, this is kind of early in her career, so she's had 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 well rated, but any horror movie like that, a lot of people see.

And so she was in that movie, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl in 2015. Um, 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. Um, and so I kind of, I'm pretty sure though they would have been, they w they had already filmed this movie.

before that movie came out sort of thing. Yeah, they did. They filmed this in 2016. it's a lot of digital stuff, long post-production. So she probably filmed Thoroughbreds and it released after she already filmed for Ready Player One, probably. But yeah, the selection process, they didn't really talk about that, how she was selected for the role.

Andrew Fossier (01:09:01.049)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli (01:09:19.955)
at all in any of the research I did. I don't really, I didn't 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 like her live action and, you know, motion capture stuff. Yeah, I didn't really have any, any big problems with her. I do think her and

I think I don't think Olivia Cook and Tysha didn't have very good like chemistry at all both real life and in like the Oasis avatar characters. it's, I don't know. There's just, there just wasn't any like fire there for me. I wasn't feeling like, yeah, can totally see them falling there that they're falling for each other or something. I don't know. Did you

Andrew Fossier (01:10:01.643)
huh.

Andrew Fossier (01:10:18.295)
Yeah, I just don't think she would have. I don't think she would have been interested in him because I like her. I like her character, how she's presented specifically as like 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 main driving force is the antagonist, but.

Eli (01:10:35.938)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:10:47.693)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Fossier (01:10:48.905)
She's like, that's why we're doing this. It's not so we can get rich and be comfortable. It's to save the things we love. And I like her anger towards him at just kind of being like, yeah, I'm in it because it'd be cool to be wealthy, right? And she's like, no.

Eli (01:11:08.971)
Yeah, yeah and then and that's the other thing like so that's similar for her in the book 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 on her shoulders and emotionally and stuff like kind of like self-aware about her issues and her Just like what the point of it all is In the book, like I said parts of old

never says anything to that effect. Like he never is like, 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 none of them, like any of them would do anything for IOI not to get control of the Oasis. Cause it's like, it's like their, their thing.

Andrew Fossier (01:12:05.518)
Yeah.

Eli (01:12:08.973)
Because it's something that Halliday created and they're like super fans and you know, and so But and then like I said, he's like more cynical he's like, yeah I guess I would like 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, I like his version of like doing good

It's like leaving the crap behind instead of trying to like fix the crap. and so it, yeah, I hated that, like that whole interaction because I was like, and it's probably, I probably hated it more because I hadn't read the book. but I was like, this is not, this is stupid. Like this is not this character at all in the book. Like, and 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, you, you are correct in that, like, I think you're correct in that, like Artemis has good motivations. and it's hard to see her like going for this guy. in the book it's, it's very similar. It's like,

Andrew Fossier (01:13:19.416)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli (01:13:36.302)
Because like I said, he is kind of like a jerk, know-it-all, annoying guy in the book, just like he is a little bit in the movie. she really like, it's kind of one of those things where they're teenagers, so there's a bit of like, I kind of like hanging out with this guy, because he likes all the same things I like, but also he's annoying and a know-it-all and kind of a jerk.

Andrew Fossier (01:13:58.51)
Yeah.

Eli (01:14:02.441)
And so it's in the book, it's like this like slow burn of him like being smitten with her and her like enjoying his 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 relationship and like, mean, within a few scenes, he's like saying like, love you. And it's like totally not believable.

Andrew Fossier (01:14:34.984)
yeah.

Andrew Fossier (01:14:38.861)
Yeah, he it's, I've seen this meme several times, you know, the, the, guy looking at a butterfly. Meme. And it's like, the, the one I've seen the most recently, it's not related here, but it's just like woman being professional. Some guys, is this a wife? Like, like, like completely misreading a situation and yeah, he is over. is head over heels for her immediately. And then when he says,

Eli (01:14:47.307)
Yeah, yeah,

Eli (01:14:56.973)
Yeah.

Eli (01:15:05.005)
Yeah, and he is in the book too, but there's a relationship development, like a slow burn, like I'm smitten with her, but I can't put that all on the table, like I'm trying to play it cool, like a typical teenager would be, you know?

Andrew Fossier (01:15:18.349)
Uh-huh.

Andrew Fossier (01:15:22.603)
Yeah. Yeah. I'm forgetting. I'm forgetting the teenagerness of it. I guess that makes that that makes it less. Yeah. Okay. No, that's that tracks more. I'm, I'm, I'm thinking of it in terms of my life right now too. And I'm just like, dude, come on, this is too much. Okay. He's 18. It makes sense. I remember being 18.

Eli (01:15:28.523)
Yeah, they're like they're 18. I think yeah

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

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 care what like with the relationship with the relationship of the characters 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 have the three the other three of the quote on

Andrew Fossier (01:15:49.772)
Yeah, for sure.

Eli (01:16:16.247)
quote-unquote high five, which is also the nickname they have in the book because they're the first five to get on the scoreboard. In the book, there's like a scoreboard that is just like up all the time. And so yeah, you have Lena Waithe as Helen slash H. I thought she was great. When she popped up on screen, I was like, yeah, her. I recognized her from

Andrew Fossier (01:16:18.103)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (01:16:37.303)
Yeah.

Eli (01:16:44.299)
that Aziz Ansari show, what was it called? Master of None, is that what that's called?

Andrew Fossier (01:16:51.705)
I don't remember her in it, but yeah, that's the Izzy's and Sorry show. Yeah.

Eli (01:16:53.461)
I think that's, I think.

Yeah, she's like his best friend in it, think. In that show. Gotcha, yeah. But yeah, she's in that. And so I recognize her from that. yeah, she's very like, she's one of the, I wish she was in more stuff. Like I don't feel like she's in very much at all. Like her, I think I looked at her filmography and it's like.

Andrew Fossier (01:17:02.179)
Okay, I've only seen it in passing by the way as well. that explains it.

Eli (01:17:25.111)
There's not a whole lot she's like acted in as far as like movies goes. But she, she has like a very like lovable screen presence. And I'm like, 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. 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 movie, she's like kind of this humanoid cyborg kind of thing. Whereas in the book, she's like, 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 some of the revelations in the book alone in case someone... Because we're definitely spoiling the movie, but there's some differences in the book that I think people would enjoy being... 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. So I'll leave that alone, but it's different. I'll just say that.

Andrew Fossier (01:18:24.858)
huh.

Andrew Fossier (01:18:31.203)
Okay, yeah.

Andrew Fossier (01:18:44.814)
Yeah.

Eli (01:18:52.705)
But it's a similar revelation, but it's different, I guess. get kind of like, the characters talk about why decisions were made and what went into it and backstory and stuff that you don't get here. There's just not time for it. And then you have Winn-Morisaki as Daito and Philip Zhao as Sho.

The guy that plays Daito is actually like, he's in a bunch of stuff in Japanese movies. It's nothing I've seen, but I did recognize a couple of like the directors he's worked with. So he's kind of a bigger deal over there. The kid is just a kid actor. I don't think he's really been in anything else, but he was fun. thought they were both good. They didn't really have much to do at all, but they were good.

Andrew Fossier (01:19:46.755)
Yeah.

Eli (01:19:51.214)
Yeah, let's there's a few so we could talk about the villain characters Ben Mendelsohn plays Sorrento 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

Andrew Fossier (01:20:21.217)
Yeah, no, I like him. He was a, he's, he's one of the, he's, he's a, he's a big character in rogue, rogue one, obviously. Yeah. But indoor and I like, I like his character there too, but, yeah, I liked him here.

Eli (01:20:33.505)
Yeah, he plays kind of like ambiguous characters pretty well, I think. And he's good in this. It's not like you watch it and you're like, Ben Mendelsohn is so good in this, but he's good, he's solid. He's doing his job well. And then T.J. Miller plays Irock, which is a...

Andrew Fossier (01:20:56.814)
Yeah.

Eli (01:21:02.829)
As far as I can remember, a completely made up character from It's Not in the Book. And if it is in the book, it's so little I don't even remember. Irock in the book. yeah. Uh, one of the things that I thought was funny with TJ Miller is that like he showed up and Spielberg was like, yeah, so what are you thinking for this, this Irock character? And TJ Miller is like,

Andrew Fossier (01:21:06.841)
Mmm.

Eli (01:21:32.524)
I was kind of thinking like the way like Beau Befett interacts with Darth Vader, but like just a funnier version of that, you know? And like when he was like giving an example in the special features, I was like, 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 all in the movie. He's just kind of like a goofy like mercenary, I guess, kind of guy in the movie.

Andrew Fossier (01:21:42.083)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (01:21:58.553)
Yeah.

Eli (01:22:02.177)
But I thought he was a fun, he's not in the real world at all. He only is in the oasis. But yeah.

Andrew Fossier (01:22:13.601)
Yeah, he's never revealed. I did think it in that way. He has a lot more in common with all the main, all the protagonists because...

Eli (01:22:27.137)
I thought so too, I thought they could have done something with that.

Andrew Fossier (01:22:29.697)
Yeah, like, especially when boss, you know, Sorrento is like gonna nuke everybody. And he even says that that's that's a camper move. Like, yeah, like, why did he not?

Eli (01:22:45.825)
But he just like runs off. He doesn't like stay and try to like fight with, you would have liked to see like him stay and try to like keep Sorrento from doing it with Parzival, but he just like runs off and is like, I have so much stuff.

Andrew Fossier (01:22:49.964)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (01:22:59.417)
But I guess he's also not honorable. Sounds too strong of a word to use for that, the context of what it is. But yeah, he chooses self preservation over trying to do what's right. But yeah, does feel like he, does feel like that would have shown up earlier, especially when.

Eli (01:23:07.201)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (01:23:24.887)
I don't know. guess he thinks he, his experience won't be affected because he's helping Sorrento, but it's like your, your experience in this is going to get way worse if he wins. So yeah, I don't know.

Eli (01:23:30.386)
yeah.

Eli (01:23:34.488)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's hard. It's not a very well fleshed out character, but for what it is, not bad. He's fine. The character, TJ Miller does good as comic relief. He kind of has the perfect voice for that's what they were going for, you That goofy sounding voice. He kind of like...

Andrew Fossier (01:23:46.145)
Yeah, no, he was, he was good comic relief too.

Andrew Fossier (01:23:57.658)
Yeah.

Eli (01:24:03.969)
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, that guy definitely like, it's like, you know, puffing weed in between, you know, and between shots, you know. He just kind of has that like kind of stoner like, yeah, man, kind of voice.

Andrew Fossier (01:24:12.59)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (01:24:24.781)
Yeah, I guess the first like imprint I had of him was on Silicon Valley. The character he plays there, he's always smoking weed on that show. So that just fits the character, yeah. It's pretty funny.

Eli (01:24:33.279)
Okay, yeah, I never watched that, but yeah.

There you go. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. We'll skip down a little bit. Hannah John Kamen plays finale Xandor. What even is that character? I don't know. She's the...

Andrew Fossier (01:24:56.621)
more like tactical version of Sorrento, guess, like the head of security.

Eli (01:25:00.909)
Yeah. And then all of sudden she's like doing like stunt car stuff and then the car chase at the end and I'm just like, I don't know what this character even is. Like why am I scared of her? Why do I care about what she thinks? I don't know. It's not this actress's fault. It's just a...

Andrew Fossier (01:25:20.183)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (01:25:23.819)
no, 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. He doesn't have the skill to do all the nerd stuff. What is he doing? How was, and maybe that's the commentary. Maybe that's the commentary. That's probably something to be said there.

Eli (01:25:45.846)
Yeah, he has the money, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, probably. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She's a, she's a nothing character, you know, you know, no disrespect to the actress. She's just fine. And even like in the special features, there was like, they were talking about like, they were impressed because she, she was able to do like some of the stunts herself. she's like,

Andrew Fossier (01:25:53.399)
But yeah, it got.

Eli (01:26:14.285)
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 talk props to her the character sucks But at least she's like doing some cool like acting and stunt work, you know So props to her, 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 two Ralph Innocent

Andrew Fossier (01:26:27.032)
Yeah.

Eli (01:26:44.287)
is in this movie, playing Rick, the boyfriend of Aunt Alice who's played by Susan Lynch, who Wade Watts does not try to save in the book. So I won't say any more about that, yeah. Claire Higgins plays Miss Gilmore, who is similarly like barely in the book as she is in the movie, but kind of like a

She's like a she's a nice lady that you know gives me hope that the world can be you know good or better And then this like I Lawrence Spellman plays. I love this in the credits. He's lame tattoo guy The guy that like kidnaps him and brings them to Samantha's hideout sort of thing I just thought I'd know him because I liked his name in the credits

Andrew Fossier (01:27:22.635)
huh.

Andrew Fossier (01:27:37.304)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (01:27:41.943)
Lame tattoo guy.

Eli (01:27:44.302)
Yeah, okay. Simon Pegg. Simon Pegg plays Ogden Morrow and also the curator. Spoiler alert, if you can tell that that was Simon Pegg's voice as the curator. 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 is like, okay, yeah, I guess I'll put a pause on my break and come.

work on a Spielberg movie because it's a Spielberg movie why wouldn't I? But 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 is like well written and funny and then you know he shows up at the end as Ogden Morrow he's he's good

Again, it's not like anything too special. He just is there for a minute. But yeah. But yeah, save the best for last. Mark Rylance as Halliday, James Halliday slash interact the wizard. Mark Rylance is just so freaking good. He's just such a great actor.

Andrew Fossier (01:29:03.757)
Yeah, he definitely gave the...

the good performance as him. I found it convincing. Yeah.

Eli (01:29:16.993)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:29:20.833)
Yeah, before I talk more, I had heard somewhere that they actually wanted Gene Wilder in this role. But he already had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's at this point. And I think they had reached out to him to kind of just gauge, like, hey, we think we can work with you despite that. But he wasn't taking any more roles at that point.

Andrew Fossier (01:29:29.389)
Mmm.

Eli (01:29:49.58)
I don't remember where I read that or heard that, 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 point. He worked with him first on Bridges Spies and then, like, on that first day of Bridges Spies, he had actually like gave him the script for BFG and...

already was like casting him as the BFG, while still working on bridge despise. and then, yeah, this, he brings 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 in the special features a whole lot. but

One of the things he said that I thought was good was that he really only has a few chances to make an impression in the movie and so And there's a bit of mystery to the character that 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 visor like the

Visage of having a lot of depth, you know to the character even though he only has like a few scenes to do that with And when he said that I was like, that's true He really does like had a ton of depth to this character with like three scenes basically You can't really count the anorak stuff cuz anorak just kind of like pops up and like It and like gives keys out and says good job

Andrew Fossier (01:31:17.9)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (01:31:45.166)
Yeah.

Eli (01:31:46.318)
But when he's when he's Halliday, man, he adds like, I don't know, in a slightly lesser actor's hands, this would not have been as compelling of a character, I don't think. I don't know, what did you think of Rylance as James Halliday?

Andrew Fossier (01:32:06.009)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (01:32:09.689)
Yeah, I liked him. liked, um, I mean, I don't know if the, I don't think that this was an intentional like movie goal. Um, but one of the things, one of the themes that I picked up on was kind of like questioning the like deification of tech CEOs and like how, like it's, it's

Eli (01:32:33.825)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (01:32:36.759)
what they build is cool, what they build is, or what they're at the helm of creating is amazing in some cases, but kind of the caution. I think ultimately he seemed like he really was doing it because he enjoyed it. I don't know, the accidental trillionaire thing kind of feels a little like...

Eli (01:32:38.509)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:32:46.657)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli (01:32:58.743)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Fossier (01:33:06.105)
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 like that aspect of like He created this thing that's being abused by people but That wasn't he didn't want like I don't know

Eli (01:33:06.305)
Yeah.

Eli (01:33:21.762)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Fossier (01:33:33.855)
And I find the conversation that they're having about people are doing too much with it. it's becoming, like basically when the metaverse became everything, I guess. I find that conversation really interesting because his perspective is just like,

Eli (01:33:47.927)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Fossier (01:33:55.738)
What can I do? And I don't know. I like that conversation a lot. That's interesting.

Eli (01:34:00.59)
Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, I agree with a lot of what you're saying. Like the whole, it is interesting to think about like this kind of, I feel like we have a bit of a different like lens to look at this through. 2025, then we did even just seven years ago in 2018 of kind of like the rise of the

Andrew Fossier (01:34:24.078)
Yeah.

Eli (01:34:29.197)
tech CEO celebrity, obviously. We have a few of them that have gotten a lot of attention in the past, like since this movie. And yeah, it is interesting to think of this movie through that lens, which maybe not a lot of people are doing in 2018, even though it was there to see.

Andrew Fossier (01:34:34.221)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (01:34:51.769)
Yeah, I definitely definitely wasn't.

Eli (01:34:56.685)
if you were aware of it, but I just don't think 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 you said, accidental, trillionaire, billionaire, I don't know about that. These guys that are billionaires, there's no accidents about it.

Andrew Fossier (01:35:16.75)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (01:35:22.242)
Maybe accident was the wrong word. It more so was like, it more so was like,

Eli (01:35:30.613)
I think that I think it's a I think it's a fair term like because you do get that impression that like he never intended to become rich and just like oops I made a billion dollars in the movie

Andrew Fossier (01:35:33.72)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (01:35:40.825)
I mean, sorry, a trillion. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eli (01:35:44.398)
In the movie, get that, I mean, in that impression. The trillion thing, like whatever, it's just a number. It's a billionaire, trillionaire, I don't know. mean, trillion is obviously a lot more than a billion, inconsequential as far as like the commentary, like what it's trying to say. But yeah, it's like, there's a degree to which

Andrew Fossier (01:36:05.698)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli (01:36:13.366)
What do we do with these guys? Like how much...

Like these guys kind of become gatekeepers in a way of certain parts of culture. And in the case of this story, Halliday kind of becomes a gatekeeper of like pop culture. Like everyone is obsessed with 80s pop culture because that's what Halliday was interested in. And so like he like.

Andrew Fossier (01:36:24.568)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (01:36:34.766)
Yeah.

Eli (01:36:44.941)
It kind of like the what's important as far as cultural goal goes kind of trickles down from him. and there's a degree to which you can see that now even to like, I mean, like, yeah, there's a degree to which like the values of Elon Musk, unfortunately, like kind of trickled down to a portion of society where what's important to him, trickles down.

to that portion of society and it becomes important to them too. Maybe less so now after the break, the big breakup. But yeah, you can see degrees of that. It's probably more though, so, it's an interesting mix up because, or,

Andrew Fossier (01:37:20.408)
Yeah.

Eli (01:37:40.364)
mashup I guess is a better word I'm looking for because really typically the tech guys aren't really like gatekeepers of pop culture that's more like your Hollywood celebrities or your you know or directors or you know the people that are making the the art and the and whatnot typically like pop culture isn't like gatekeep by tech guys

So it's interesting to see that that's the case in this one. I don't know if that says anything, but yeah, I don't know. 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.

Andrew Fossier (01:38:31.853)
Yeah, in this representation, he kind of just made a thing that can be used.

That is, it's used to hurt people, but it's not explicitly bad. Like the internet's a good stand in. Like, yeah, there are awful things on the internet, but there's also amazing connection that can happen because of it. So it's more of a neutral as opposed to strictly evil thing. And we've seen kind of, I don't know, just a...

Eli (01:38:53.164)
Right.

Eli (01:38:59.937)
Yeah.

Eli (01:39:06.175)
abuse.

Andrew Fossier (01:39:07.235)
Yeah. Abuse of that kind of power when people get it, it's kind of, I've talked about this with a friend recently about like the, adage of, you know, like absolute power corrupts absolutely. And it's like, well, is it a chicken or the egg? Like which, which one causes and my, my synopsis of that is like, well, the people that are seeking absolute power are pretty corruptible. like there's, there's a skewed, we think about, we think about that phrase and 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 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

Eli (01:39:40.589)
Sure.

Eli (01:39:50.093)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Fossier (01:40:06.573)
getting more influence and bribing people to do. And it's like, so by the time they get to the point, yeah, by the time 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 for a lot of people, but

Eli (01:40:11.435)
It's the Sorento,

Andrew Fossier (01:40:35.223)
the people who end up with absolute power in our world in reality are bad. Like that typically leads to bad things. And so, yeah, I think that ties in here with, you're right. It's like Sorrento is the guy who's accumulated power and is trying to get the final piece. And for whatever, you know, our gripes are with Wade, Wade's goal is

He, wants to do it because he, he, he worships holiday. Yeah.

Eli (01:41:04.961)
He wants 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 how things end and everything. which is, I guess a similar problem in the book and the movie of like a bit inconsistent with its messaging. But yeah.

Andrew Fossier (01:41:08.994)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (01:41:18.873)
Yeah.

Eli (01:41:33.985)
There, think too, 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 like pretty big issues. Like there's some, and, and I think like, even though we look at how a day and we're like, 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.

Andrew Fossier (01:41:45.367)
Yeah.

Eli (01:42:03.709)
Probably like to 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 is becoming something that I never intended it to be And you know, you can question like well

Andrew Fossier (01:42:08.931)
Yeah.

Eli (01:42:32.811)
if you would have dealt with your emotional and social issues, would you have done this thing? Would you have been in a better mindset to maybe create something that wouldn't have gotten away from you and become something you intend it to be? But yeah, I don't know.

Andrew Fossier (01:42:50.636)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (01:42:54.029)
Yeah, his obsession with creation kind of created an obsessive addictive world for other people to get into. then that, yeah, had an effect on society. Yeah, that's interesting too. think you're right that it was a at least in my perspective, was a different lens in the time frame the movie came out during, but especially.

since the movie's been out, there has been kind the rise of just, 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 and.

his presentation in the film is incredibly idealistic. Like in other words, it's kind of the...

basis of a good intentioned person imposed onto someone with all this power who's just kind of like, I don't want to do with it. I'm just, I'm just your average trillionaire guy. like my tech. And it's like, he's, he's for that reason, admirable, but I'm just super skeptical sitting here thinking, okay, what, what, what atrocities has he committed with, you know, this level of control.

Eli (01:43:58.317)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:44:11.095)
Yeah.

Eli (01:44:21.675)
Yeah, and think there's a degree to which like, you know, I can kind of get on board with the whole thing. Like he also like started this company and 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 wanted it to be. they're also like, it's like the whole like,

Lot of times this will play out with like science in real life or in movies like any sort of like scientific or technological Advancement it's like you kind of have to get in bed with bad people to get the resources you need To like make the advancements, but then you're like making stuff for bad people that are gonna do bad things with it 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

Andrew Fossier (01:45:09.239)
Yeah.

Eli (01:45:19.981)
a real life example in Amenheimer and a fake one in Jurassic Park. But yeah, so yeah. At the end of the day though, Mark Rylance plays this character and gives it way more depth than anybody had business giving this character, I think. You totally buy in. We're kind of like,

Andrew Fossier (01:45:40.195)
Yeah, for sure.

Eli (01:45:47.565)
putting this character under a microscope, but in the real time watching the movie, you really love this guy and you feel bad for him and you also admire him and Mark Rilence does that with 10 minutes or less of screen time really.

Andrew Fossier (01:46:11.809)
Yeah. He, he captured, he captures the kind of like, I think I already said this, that the idealism and the lovability of what we envisioned all this technology could become maybe even before, before I was, before I was, you know, aware of this kind of stuff, like probably like early two thousands, you know, that, that kind of, that kind of optimism about what it could be versus

Eli (01:46:35.565)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Fossier (01:46:40.727)
Kind of what it is now, you know, with like dead internet, 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.

Eli (01:46:48.791)
Ha

Eli (01:46:57.709)
sure. Yeah.

Well, I guess we can move into talking a bit about the production. They filmed this from June to September of 2016. A bit unusual for filming because you're splitting between live action shots and 80 minutes of the virtual universe of the Oasis. Spielberg talked about this 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 four 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 together, you know But yeah they they started off with the oasis stuff with all the all of that so

They do their first take there in the summer in the UK. So they set up at Warner Studios in Leavesden, which is north of London. They have like the interiors for the IOI offices there. They build the stacks in the back lot there. That's also, 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 kind of like go outward. they go up to Birmingham, and Birmingham is like the real world representative of Columbus. they're not actually shooting in the U S. so Columbus also is, has a few locations in London, like the street where the, the friends meet up at the U S postal truck or whatever.

Eli (01:48:59.469)
and then the IOI HQ is like a school in London. Yeah, there's, yeah, so it's all just random, these few places in the UK that they shoot real world stuff and then like the interior sets and the motion capture stuff. And then, yeah, the rest is done by a digital domain in a virtual world. So.

Andrew Fossier (01:49:25.315)
Hmm.

Eli (01:49:27.381)
Yeah, I was right. They did do the performance capture studio in Leavesden is where that was set up at Warner Studios there. yeah. On set, know, people just, all the actors talked about loving working with Spielberg, him bringing tons of positivity. I just always love hearing that, you know, it's fun to watch him 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 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 unquote I was like, that's really sweet. I love that cuz he is a giant but like You just always get the feeling that people just love

Andrew Fossier (01:50:15.673)
Hmm.

Eli (01:50:24.109)
Working with them 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, cuz they're doing motion capture stuff Hey, do you have the parser will walk down and ties like I I don't know like I'm not really sure I haven't really thought about like how parser would walk and Spielberg was like, you know, yeah He he's gonna have like a swagger that Wade doesn't have in real life

Andrew Fossier (01:50:25.656)
Yeah.

Eli (01:50:53.985)
He said, and he was like, it's like the Saturday Night Fever walk. And so 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. he's like, OK, action. And so he is having them do a Saturday Night Fever walk to stay alive while they're filming it, recording it. I thought that was a fun little anecdote.

Andrew Fossier (01:51:22.029)
Yeah.

Eli (01:51:22.675)
of Ty's first day on set. But yeah, it's interesting. I guess we can talk a little bit about how it was filmed. okay, 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, obviously, that's done in pre-production that eventually is used by Stockhausen and the ILM people to kind of like build out this world. But yeah, they do kind of have to create two different worlds and they want to make them distinct. So one of the ways obviously is like color. The Oasis is very colorful, whereas the real world is kind of drab.

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 would look real, you 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.

Andrew Fossier (01:52:38.967)
Yeah.

Eli (01:52:49.397)
many people would have trouble making that distinction, but it is good to know that he was thinking about that at least. But yeah, mean, this is one of those movies where just like everything on screen is just like highly, highly designed. Because you have like, for one, like 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

Andrew Fossier (01:53:13.528)
Yeah.

Eli (01:53:19.339)
You know, old low tech stuff and high tech stuff 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 just like, just imagining like the stress of the, all these design people, both like real world and virtual of like, man, I have to create.

all this stuff.

Andrew Fossier (01:53:50.945)
Yeah. It's a lot. Yeah. Creating an, and maybe that's.

I think the metaverse oversight aspect of it is probably just.

Probably 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 less variety of things.

Eli (01:54:18.829)
Yeah.

Yeah, maybe so. Yeah, I mean, so like in the real world, the 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 inside of the IOI HQ is like really where a lot of the design stuff comes into play. So I mean, you have like the indentured servant.

pods, like that whole thing that you have to design. And then I think there's a large portion spent in either the war room with all the haptic rigs and Sorrento's office. And so since they're spending so much time there, they kind of built Sorrento's office up on stilts in the middle of the war room so that

They're not having it like, okay, now we need to go get takes, like them walking down a hallway. Instead, he can just like walk out of his office, down the steps, into the war room and back or whatever. I thought that was smart. And then, yeah, it's one of those things where like.

Andrew Fossier (01:55:30.584)
Yeah.

Eli (01:55:41.698)
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. cause they actually like built. there was like, I think six structures that they built four stories high. and then like, so anytime there's like real sets.

Basically, they build the real sets on a small scale and then in post they digitally expand it. So the war room is much smaller on the real set. There's a real set that they build and that they have real people on real rigs doing the stuff, but then they digitally add way more depth and width to that and like...

Andrew Fossier (01:56:19.56)
huh.

Andrew Fossier (01:56:38.957)
Yeah.

Eli (01:56:40.557)
kind of 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 indichard servant pods, like they have like a small version, real set of that, that they expand digitally. Same thing with the stacks, like they have those six, you know, structures that they've built, but then they like, that one, like they expand huge digitally.

Andrew Fossier (01:57:08.781)
Yeah.

Eli (01:57:10.975)
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.

Yeah, I 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, 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 out in your face. Like the, when the stacks explode, I'm like, that's a very digital.

Andrew Fossier (01:57:54.744)
Ha!

Eli (01:57:55.143)
stack, you know, trailer stack falling. I think I even wrote like stack explosion looks fake in my notes when I was watching the movie. That one just kind of stood out to me as I was like, I would have liked to see them really like explode and make the stack, you know, the big stack fall over. Which in. Yeah, yeah. And in most Spielberg movies he would so.

Andrew Fossier (01:58:05.369)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (01:58:16.865)
Yeah, or even a minute, a miniature or something, you know.

Eli (01:58:24.779)
I guess because he had ILM at his, you know, doing all this work and he 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 happens.

Andrew Fossier (01:58:24.791)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (01:58:39.769)
Hmm.

Eli (01:58:54.945)
But yeah, mean, so, you know, there's just tons of detail that has the costumes. There's so many different costumes they have to design for both like real world people, but also digital characters. The characters are like very highly designed. Spielberg does a lot of work like looking at the actors and the characters side by side when he's kind of like helping guide that design process.

Andrew Fossier (01:59:12.931)
Yeah.

Eli (01:59:24.525)
I mean, they're having to build like details upon details. I mean, yeah, you have like a whole team working specifically on facial expressions of the characters. To the degree that like, they're like studying the emotions that are being expressed. they're like, Parzival'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 the facts that I got from the special features and kind of like putting my own this may be the why behind it is they took his eyes and modeled Parzival's eyes more on Tye's and I think maybe what they did was they were like where is Tye doing the most like expression of his emotion

And maybe they saw, okay, it's in his eyes. So let's really like focus in on Parzival's eyes. And then with Olivia Cook, they were doing, they were like working on similar things with her emotions. And for her, they took her mouth and really like worked on Artemis's mouth, mimicking Olivia Cook's mouth. So maybe with her, they were, they were seeing, okay,

Andrew Fossier (02:00:28.91)
Yeah.

Eli (02:00:50.677)
A lot of her expression of emotion comes through her mouth. And so let's focus on honing on that for Artemis. Also with Artemis, she has like those big eyes, so it wouldn't really work for those. And they did talk about like it being hard to like at certain angles make her eyes not look like super weird and alien. But yeah, I thought that was interesting, like the way they are really like

Andrew Fossier (02:01:05.143)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:01:14.105)
Yeah.

Eli (02:01:20.503)
honing in on, how can we get emotion to come across correctly from the real world actors to these avatars? Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:01:32.609)
Yeah, that's cool. I just kind of assumed that they would have done.

Although I actually don't know if this technology was used as much then, or was fleshed out then. There's a game called Hellblade where the main character is a Celtic warrior and she, the person, it's a cool story, 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.

my gosh, his name is giving me golem. right, right. But, but specifically the level of the expression of the face in this game was way, way more fine tuned. And they wanted the, you know, they wanted this artist to showcase that in this, in this, in this thing. And then they kind of put her on the stage like, Hey, go do it for this thing. And then she kind of became the character for the game. But yeah, I don't know. I kind of just assumed that they would have done more.

Eli (02:02:16.161)
Yeah, that's motion capture.

Eli (02:02:22.785)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:02:28.236)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Fossier (02:02:45.419)
as opposed to explicitly being animated.

Eli (02:02:48.279)
So yeah, yeah, you are correct. So that is an element. So with the motion capture, which we can talk about it. It's next in my notes anyway. But yeah, in the motion capture, they have the suit on. There's like a whole suit they put on that picks up their movements. And then they have this kind of like head gear with the head cam on it that's like.

Andrew Fossier (02:02:57.656)
Yeah.

Okay.

Eli (02:03:17.095)
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 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 Ty Sheridan's face in a digital version of art of Olivia Cook's face. They they're making

Andrew Fossier (02:03:18.902)
huh.

Andrew Fossier (02:03:22.54)
Right.

Eli (02:03:47.128)
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 like, okay, 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.

Okay, there's something missing emotionally in these avatar's faces. They're doing the same like facial expressions, but there's something missing. Okay, with Ty, let's use the eyes. Let's bring his actual eyes somehow and integrate them into 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.

Andrew Fossier (02:04:21.451)
huh.

Eli (02:04:45.197)
because that's where we're seeing her expression of emotion come through. And so it's, you're not wrong. You're actually right, but they do have to like actually build the design of the avatar that, right.

Andrew Fossier (02:04:45.305)
Uh-huh.

Yeah, okay.

Andrew Fossier (02:05:02.873)
Because it's not a one-to-one. that's what I was, I think that's what I was missing up. And I quickly looked it up just to make sure I wasn't missing something. The thing that was revolutionary about what I was talking about with the Hellblade 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.

Eli (02:05:13.346)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Fossier (02:05:32.049)
So yeah, but the difference there too, the actress's face was what was used in the game. weren't, they put war paint or something on her, but it wasn't like an avatar of her. It was literally just her face. So yeah.

Eli (02:05:40.075)
yeah.

Eli (02:05:48.705)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's like, there is like some real time stuff like when they're doing motion capture, they usually have like a big screen out so that like the actors can like get a feel for like, okay, they go ahead and like puts more like, what's the word I'm looking for? Like less quality versions of their avatar.

the in the like the virtual 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 it's a more crude version and so in post what they're doing is they're going in and like

Andrew Fossier (02:06:25.593)
Uh-huh.

Andrew Fossier (02:06:41.784)
Yeah.

Eli (02:06:48.173)
fleshing out where this looks like the end product we get. Whereas the real time stuff is just more crude, less detailed versions of it.

Andrew Fossier (02:06:58.315)
Yeah.

Well, I bet that 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 360 degree screens that like create a virtual environment around. 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 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 a green screen around him, it just creates weird green clothes, but they have a big screen that they can dictate what's on all around the recording studio. I bet you that would have been 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, pre-determined movements.

Eli (02:07:37.461)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:07:48.652)
Yeah, I don't know.

Eli (02:07:55.757)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Fossier (02:08:00.53)
as opposed to just, Hey, go act against that green sheet over there, you know.

Eli (02:08:05.141)
Yeah, yeah, so you typically in in in motion capture, 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 all around it and they're like

there are these cameras that are picking up on the sensors in the suit and stuff, to the degree even to which if you're not in a suit, Spielberg could be in the middle of set directing and he's not being picked up and imported into the motion capture stuff. He's not being recorded by the motion capture. You have to be in the suit that these special cameras are picking up the motion of. And so,

Andrew Fossier (02:08:51.762)
yeah.

Eli (02:09:01.835)
Yeah, so there's this space that I wish I could remember the term, but you can go back and listen to Tintin and learn the term there. It didn't come up in my research for this. Yeah, there's this space and then they have all these props. So they're basically like these crude PVC pipe versions of whatever prop or vehicle or whatever.

they're in in the movie. So they have like a space and stuff to interact with. But yeah, it's for the most part, like they are kind of 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 movement.

Andrew Fossier (02:09:58.22)
right. So the green. OK, that's true, though. Yeah.

Eli (02:10:00.715)
So they're not like filming them in motion capture. They're like,

Andrew Fossier (02:10:03.573)
Yeah, no, that's true. The green screen is like if they're just putting the character into the environment, motion capture is, yeah, yeah.

Eli (02:10:10.251)
Right. Yeah, motion capture is literally just recording their movements and facial expressions. And so that's the cool thing about motion capture and why people like Andy Serkis have been big advocates for it is because you still get to be an actor in a space acting against other actors. And there's a degree to which like

Andrew Fossier (02:10:35.737)
Uh-huh.

Eli (02:10:39.691)
you get to actually act. It's obviously like there's elements that are missing. And sometimes they do build like, like in 1010, they would build like these wire and PVC pipe versions of the sets. So they're actually like in this like fake version of the set to like move around in the space and act in with like props that are like PVC pipe versions of the.

that props that will be digitally added later that they use. like for instance, there's the recording the race and you know, he's in the DeLorean where they have like a PVC pipe DeLorean that he's like sitting in and like steering in and stuff in the motion capture stage. yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's really interesting how it works and I think it's cool.

Andrew Fossier (02:11:09.465)
huh, yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:11:26.893)
Yeah, then it's, yeah, that's cool.

Eli (02:11:36.034)
No, one cool thing about the DeLorean is so Ty Sheridan had met Ernest Cline when he got cast on the movie and Cline owns a DeLorean and had let Ty drive it. and so, which it was funny in the special features cause, Ty didn't know Cline and his brother were the only ones that had ever he'd ever let drive it.

Andrew Fossier (02:11:49.917)
wow.

Eli (02:12:02.925)
And so Ty was like, I'm the only the third person to ever drive this. And he like got real nervous. Um, it was funny. Um, but it was cool cause he was like, Oh, I was on the set and I was remembering driving the, um, 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. I remembered from

Andrew Fossier (02:12:08.28)
Well...

Andrew Fossier (02:12:23.282)
Uh-huh.

Eli (02:12:26.133)
driving the real DeLorean that you can't really see very well looking out of the back because there's the flux capacitor back there and other stuff in the way. And so that's where he gets the idea, no, I'm going to need to open the door and look out the door. so, yeah, I thought that was a cool thing that Ty Sheridan actually gave some good input into what he needed to do to drive backwards.

Andrew Fossier (02:12:39.67)
Yeah.

Eli (02:12:54.327)
But it's also a good example of what it's like to work on a motion capture stage.

Andrew Fossier (02:13:00.505)
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 environment as, as opposed to putting the costume actor in front of a green screen and then putting a virtual environment around them. They have a digitally created environment that's being projected. So you have color accurate lights.

Eli (02:13:11.884)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:13:28.363)
Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:13:28.441)
coming off the screens, reflecting with his armor and it looked really cool, but that's not mocap, that's like more green screen as opposed to motion capture is capturing the performance of the actor and then putting that in a digital environment after the fact. Yeah, that's an important distinction.

Eli (02:13:45.289)
Yeah, yeah and it's yeah, was talking to Robin my wife earlier about like motion capture and stuff 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, okay 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. And I was like, yeah, is one of those things you just have to know it is or it isn't. It's not like you can watch something necessarily and tell a huge enough difference to know like, oh, this was created digitally or oh, this was like a motion capture digital performance.

Andrew Fossier (02:14:17.762)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:14:32.119)
Right.

Eli (02:14:41.397)
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, so.

Andrew Fossier (02:14:42.651)
yeah, sorry.

Andrew Fossier (02:14:50.049)
Right.

Andrew Fossier (02:14:59.577)
As opposed to green screen, which is in everything. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's what's, I think part of what, what MoCAP does too, is it specifically is speeding up the process for the artists because it could be done annually. would take way longer. And so that, that saves, that saves time and money, but it also gives the actors the ability to put more,

Eli (02:15:13.186)
Hmm?

Andrew Fossier (02:15:29.599)
into it. 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 know, an animal, well, it doesn't necessarily go. I think I'm thinking of Planet of the Apes 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 baseline.

Eli (02:15:55.64)
Yep. Yeah. You make adjustments and whatnot and you you kind of have to like, you kind of have to map out, like, you know, for, for Caesar, for example, you kind of have to map out like, okay, and 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 kind of have to like map out that stuff in the coding, to what movements like

Andrew Fossier (02:15:59.268)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:16:18.776)
Uh-huh.

Eli (02:16:24.831)
make what parts of the digital character move. Yeah, there's a lot that goes into it. It's really fascinating and I think it's really cool way of doing things, like a really cool method of capturing a performance, even though it's gonna be digital in the end, digitally rendered, you're still giving the actor a chance to like, they're not just voice acting.

Andrew Fossier (02:16:40.632)
Yeah.

Eli (02:16:55.435)
they're actually like doing the physical performance too. And you know, you see a lot of that in the behind the scenes, like Lena, Lena Waithe, like they have her like rolling around on a rolly 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, 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 around and stuff.

Andrew Fossier (02:17:20.505)
Yeah.

Eli (02:17:25.451)
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's, she's like, she's actually like flying across the, this, the motion capture 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.

Andrew Fossier (02:17:36.761)
Yeah.

Eli (02:17:54.445)
in the performance, think. A little bit more realistic than sometimes it can be with just working with a green screen or that sort of thing.

Andrew Fossier (02:18:02.2)
Yeah.

Eli (02:18:10.637)
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 working against other actors y'all are both gonna be digitally rendered But at least you're working against some somewhat real, you know

Andrew Fossier (02:18:20.825)
Uh-huh.

Andrew Fossier (02:18:31.117)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli (02:18:32.757)
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. like, you think of like the dancing scenes, like the zombie dancers or like the Zero Gravity Club sequence. They actually like have like wired, people wired up in the mocap suits like.

Andrew Fossier (02:19:00.033)
huh.

Eli (02:19:00.397)
float like, I think they brought in like some trapeze artists for that to have like some floating around dancers that they're 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, get all of the zombies or all of the people in the zero gravity thing.

Andrew Fossier (02:19:07.853)
Yeah.

Eli (02:19:29.601)
But yeah, I thought it was cool. They're not just digitally creating those. They're actually getting real people dancing performances in the motion capture. So I thought that was cool, too.

Andrew Fossier (02:19:41.325)
Yeah, definitely.

Eli (02:19:44.014)
But yeah, then we moved to ILM. Well, I mean, they do, after they do the motion capture stuff, they go record the real world stuff. And they, I'm pretty sure, yeah, they shot that on film, the real world stuff. They wanted kind of that, the effect of.

shooting on film for 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 like captured is Spielberg. Where does Spielberg come into all this? And if you remember from the 10 10 episode, we talked about like

how it works with like the camera, it's like virtual camera sort of thing. So Spielberg actually has like this big controller and he can stand in front of a screen and he can see the environment that they've created, that the digital act, 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 would a 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 he would on a real set. And so that's another cool aspect of this way of doing things with... It is.

Andrew Fossier (02:21:27.672)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:21:35.961)
That's a pretty amazing level of control to have too.

Eli (02:21:39.359)
And I think, you know, I talked about on 1010, you can really feel a lot on 1010, 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 a balance on the movement and the placement, you know, and the virtual, with the virtual camera, you can like put it under.

You 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 1010 that would be like really Impossible or difficult to do with a real camera and the real world. So you you can feel that a lot in 1010

Andrew Fossier (02:22:15.406)
Yeah.

Eli (02:22:36.565)
And it becomes, to me it was distracting. You don't feel that as much here. I think he's grown a lot. think he grew, I he maybe got it out of his system in Tintin. And here he's like, you can still feel the playfulness sometimes with the camera, but 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...

Andrew Fossier (02:23:00.696)
Yeah.

Eli (02:23:05.869)
the Oasis than it did in the 1010 world with the way Spielberg uses the virtual camera. But another element in this one that he hadn't had in the past is because they use the VR goggles in the context of the story in the film or the book or whatever. Spielberg, I think they were 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 and virtual lighting and test shooting his his little like virtual 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

Andrew Fossier (02:23:45.465)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:23:57.017)
Aww,

Eli (02:24:04.875)
And then he had the actors do that too, walk around in the environment with the VR headset on. yeah, it's, you and you better believe that HTC was 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 also, while we're on the subject of camera work and stuff, one of the cool things was that they shot the holiday memories with, they basically set up multiple cameras at multiple angles to all record at the same time these takes so that when you're in the archives with the curator, and he's kind of like,

spinning the set around, you know, and the moot, it's because they filmed it like from all those angles so that you could like rotate it like you would, you a product that you're buying on Amazon that you want to like flip around in 3D. Yeah. So I thought that was really cool too. A cool, smart idea. The lighting, this is the lighting to, you know,

Andrew Fossier (02:25:03.609)
Uh-huh.

Andrew Fossier (02:25:17.585)
huh, yeah that's cool.

Eli (02:25:29.645)
I Kaminsky, Kaminsky probably, I mean, he's definitely lighting the real world sets. But as far as everything else goes, 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, but Spielberg worked with ILM on the lighting for like two years. And I think, I'll say this about like, we'll talk a little bit more about the virtual environments and stuff that we see before we move on to other stuff, but I wanted to say the lighting in the Oasis universe is really good.

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 is what makes this CGI world feel cinematic and not like a video game. Because when you're watching them in the Oasis, I think most, most directors, it would have like ended up feeling like you're watching a video game.

Andrew Fossier (02:26:52.354)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:27:06.819)
Yeah, cut scene as opposed to acting.

Eli (02:27:08.767)
Exactly. Yeah. And in this, you really, you're watching it and you're like, this would never be a cut scene on a video game. Like this is, this looks like it was digitally, like virtually shot on a virtual camera with virtual lighting by a virtual Spielberg for the big screen, you know? And I really, really appreciate it. That's one of the things that probably I appreciated most.

Andrew Fossier (02:27:30.584)
Yeah.

Eli (02:27:37.696)
is like 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. Yeah, I really, really appreciated that aspect of it. Did you think about that at all when you were watching?

Andrew Fossier (02:28:04.255)
not, not consciously, but, but 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 can appreciate it. thinking back to a few scenes that really stuck out.

Eli (02:28:23.661)
Yeah. Yeah, and like a small example would be they're really trying to light it like a real set would be lit. when a character's face goes somewhere that it would get dark, their face actually gets dark and isn't still lit. And so little details like that, they really, you're working in this virtual environment and you're really having to like,

Andrew Fossier (02:28:41.869)
Yeah.

Eli (02:28:52.673)
pay attention to those details of what's lit and what's not. Yeah, I really appreciated that aspect. Yeah, ILM, assisted by Territory Studio, they developed around 60 virtual environments. They're creating all these spaces that either feels true to the character, like H's garage or whatever, feels like.

It feels like H's garage. It's really well designed, I thought. 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.

Andrew Fossier (02:29:24.781)
Yeah.

Eli (02:29:44.033)
Like the, the club is supposed to be like a sphere, but they couldn't actually like make it a sphere because then it looks the same from every direction. And so like their work around was like to make the middle of it, zero gravity, spherical. and so yeah, there's just a ton of attention to detail. and then, yeah, I mean, one of the cool things is.

So do you remember the moment where Wade puts on the goggles and the camera zooms in on his face and then goes into the goggles and you go into the Oasis for the first time? So for that little, that 10 seconds of transition from the real world to the Oasis, they did a ton of extra work. It was one of the times where Ty was in front of a blue screen.

Andrew Fossier (02:30:22.677)
Yeah, uh-huh.

Eli (02:30:43.135)
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 to a point where like that doesn't work anymore. So they scanned his face and recreated his face digitally 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 Ty Sheridan's face.

Andrew Fossier (02:30:50.499)
Uh-huh.

Andrew Fossier (02:30:58.905)
Mmm.

Andrew Fossier (02:31:02.819)
Yeah.

Eli (02:31:12.907)
before it pans over into the goggles. And I thought that was really cool. thought, yeah. Yeah, we talked about the wide shots being added digitally. We talked a little bit about the Overlook Hotel from The Shining. They basically scanned those.

Andrew Fossier (02:31:18.167)
Yeah, that was a cool shot.

Eli (02:31:40.718)
They scanned it into a computer to like recreate those sets And yeah, they they tried to like imitate the grain of the film and the lighting of those sets and like the texture of the fake snow When they're outside And and yeah, I thought it looks good, you know, it looks like the shining and Yeah, it was fun We talked a little bit about you know

Andrew Fossier (02:32:04.973)
Yeah.

Eli (02:32:10.893)
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 though like the like blood splattering on the camera for like the The blood river was a bit much but you know, it was fun They do have like a few real actor actors like stand-in for

Andrew Fossier (02:32:17.88)
Yeah.

Eli (02:32:38.807)
the characters, so like the Grady twins, those are like two little girls, like not the original ones obviously, that they have stand-in on a real set, and then like the old woman that comes out of the tub is like a stand-in real actor for the original. And then there's like digitized versions of those two, obviously, for some parts, but yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:32:46.108)
Aw.

Andrew Fossier (02:33:04.665)
Yeah.

Eli (02:33:07.489)
Ernest Cline said that was his favorite addition, was the whole like shining thing. But you know, it wasn't my 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 kind of had to because in that last battle sequence, they're having to animate half a million characters basically.

Andrew Fossier (02:33:36.313)
Wow.

Eli (02:33:36.877)
and so So yeah, they they 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 different like fighting styles That are like randomized or whatever They're like randomized but controlled, you know

Andrew Fossier (02:34:04.407)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli (02:34:06.217)
And so, and then they like, they just started like letting the engine run and then Spielberg would watch it and he would be like, okay, 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 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 then like, they don't really do anything. They just, everyone shows up, but then it just like goes back into like the Parzival versus Sorrento thing. And so like,

Andrew Fossier (02:34:41.536)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:34:46.317)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:34:58.169)
Yeah, was no, the them showing up had no, I mean, they wanted it to be kind of more of the community. I think that was the goal is making it, it's the community is assisting, but like if she hadn't got the shield down, they wouldn't have been in any way. So yeah, it was kind of muddy in that sense, but it was cool to see the community supporting him. I don't know. Yeah.

Eli (02:35:02.38)
No fact.

Eli (02:35:09.356)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:35:27.619)
conflicting.

Eli (02:35:28.705)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, sound, 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 tests with her voice to see, can she do a fake deep voice? But they ended up letting her just do her normal voice because 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 like it's an avatar. 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

Andrew Fossier (02:35:59.809)
Uh-huh.

Andrew Fossier (02:36:08.569)
Yeah.

Eli (02:36:25.545)
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 Yeah, so Rydstrom does a ton of 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

Andrew Fossier (02:36:32.77)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli (02:36:53.833)
because he was a producer for Back to the Future. And so he remembered, yeah, when we were doing the steam coming out of the back of the DeLorean, we went and got like, I don't, I can't remember. It was like maybe some fire hyd, fire hydrants, I mean, not hydrants, extinguishers or something like that, and like sprayed those for the sound of the steam. And so like, so yeah, they did that. They recreated that.

Uh, one of the things ride from talks about was he recreated the, the creaking of the Titanic for when the stacks are starting to tip over and fall. Um, 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 ride strum actually like researches how they originally made that sound and tries to recreate it, which I think is cool. Um,

Andrew Fossier (02:37:27.325)
wow.

Eli (02:37:49.121)
The race sequence has no music. I thought that was interesting. I didn't realize that, but then like thinking about it, was like, yeah, there is none. It's just all sound effects. And Reitstrom did talk about something with sound that I, I guess kind of like intuitively know, but like he put it in a way that I would explicitly that I haven't thought about it, at least not recently. And that is that one job of sound in a movie is to focus your attention. And so like,

Andrew Fossier (02:38:10.659)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:38:18.313)
in busy sequences like the race where there's so much happening, the sound really does a lot of work to help focus your attention. like when, you know, Wade's driving through and there's like, there's so much stuff happening around him, but you're hearing the sound of like the coins clicking into his thing. Like 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 in his fuel tank.

Andrew Fossier (02:38:35.69)
Yeah.

Eli (02:38:48.491)
And so I hadn't really thought about that before, but I was like, yeah, that makes sense. 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 viewer's attention in on this one thing.

Andrew Fossier (02:39:00.055)
Yeah, I feel like needle drops are addictive. Like you want to get a good one, but...

Eli (02:39:07.317)
Yeah, there's actually not a lot of them in this movie. You would expect more,

Andrew Fossier (02:39:12.203)
Yeah, actually that is an area that it, it felt kind of like not reference see, I don't know. And it's also, I'm not a hundred percent sure. I, know, now 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 split between, I would assume most of the music is diegetic, but then like,

Eli (02:39:20.107)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:39:41.505)
It's not in the intro. Like, I don't know. I guess, I guess, I guess I didn't really pay attention to that very much.

Eli (02:39:45.953)
Yeah, well, it starts off with Jump by Van Halen.

Andrew Fossier (02:39:51.266)
Yeah, but isn't it like him putting, isn't that when he, no, no, no, that's him leaving. So it's not diegetic. It's not, yeah.

Eli (02:39:56.918)
Leaving the stacks, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guess he is kind of jumping down the stacks.

Andrew Fossier (02:40:07.489)
Okay. Jump into the oasis. That's what it is.

Eli (02:40:12.779)
Yeah. yeah, I mean, you know, there's, there's a kind of a philosophical difference between sounds and the virtual and real world. So they have to think about too, but yeah, there's, there's a lot of, it is a very like sound heavy movie when you really think about it. and then we haven't talked a bunch about the score. Spielberg had worked with Sylvester never on his own films, but

He had worked with him on all the Robert Zemeckis stuff that he had produced with Amblin and everything and so But yeah, 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 really had to wait till post-production to do the score and so Silvestri comes on for 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. He already had it all mapped out, which is a little different than typical for the way Spielberg works with John Williams. This is just a very different sort of process. But yeah, a lot of the score is kind of like, it's not really...

Andrew Fossier (02:41:22.745)
Mmm.

Andrew Fossier (02:41:28.835)
Yeah.

Eli (02:41:41.287)
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 sounding things when you know quests and epic things are happening and it's just yeah 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

Andrew Fossier (02:42:10.947)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure.

Eli (02:42:11.405)
if that makes sense. Yeah, there are a few fun facts about the score. one of the things Sylvester was saying was Spielberg would give him notes on like, okay, in this sequence with the DeLorean, he was like, I don't want the score to sound like Back to the Future. I want it to actually be Back to the Future.

Andrew Fossier (02:42:36.28)
Yeah.

Eli (02:42:36.813)
And so like you'll hear stuff like that in the score like the you'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 and They they use they he so vestry looks up what Easter egg is in Latin and it's

Ovus Petrum Tui, and so he like, the chorus of the choir part the score is that, is Easter egg in Latin, and then the verses of the Latin choir is the words of the second clue in Latin. So that was a fun little thing. Yeah. Tons of post-production work.

Basically like most of the stuff we just talked about is post-production. It's so much post-production work that Spielberg filmed and released the post during post-production of this movie.

Andrew Fossier (02:43:41.613)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:43:48.985)
Yeah, I guess when you're creating a digital world you're gonna have a lot more post-production

Eli (02:43:53.358)
Yep Yeah, I mean he Spielberg came on in 2015 and this movie really didn't really still 2018 so Yeah, the book released of course with a movie tie-in cover with Ty Sheridan on the front And it actually was the first time it was the number one New York Times bestseller It had been top five before but the movie tie-in release was number one

That's a fun fact. Spielberg does a little pat on the back for the high tech community by doing the premiere of the movie at South by Southwest, which is, it's kind of like a festival dedicated to interactive technology and media. So there's the film festival part of South by Southwest, but then there's other aspects to that festival too, dealing with like tech and media and stuff.

But that was on March 11th, 2018. There were two interruptions to sound when they were starting it off, 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 million worldwide box office.

After opening number one Making 52 million first weekend. So yeah, I mean this movie really kind of erased his Three consecutive box office failures for all into first Spielberg movie, you know And so yeah And even like in 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

Andrew Fossier (02:45:23.374)
Wow.

Andrew Fossier (02:45:49.805)
Wow. Yeah.

Eli (02:45:52.223)
Unfortunately, it was overtaken by a little movie called Avengers infinity war the next month but but yeah, it did 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

Andrew Fossier (02:46:01.485)
You mean it took its rightful place behind and anywhere?

Andrew Fossier (02:46:14.829)
Yeah.

Eli (02:46:21.357)
Turns out that, you know, US 80s pop culture is kind of internationally loved, I guess. To a certain degree, I guess. But yeah, people, and that really came through in the reception of the film. People were more excited about the references than all the VR CGI stuff. And so much so that both the New York Times and Wired,

Andrew Fossier (02:46:30.883)
Yeah.

Eli (02:46:50.295)
compiled lists of all the references that they found in the movie. And yeah, the people were impressed with the CGI. I was impressed with the CGI and this is seven year old CGI. So it holds up, yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:47:04.503)
Yeah, I mean, it definitely was well done. There were no glaring problems that I remember.

Eli (02:47:12.769)
Yeah. Honestly, like the only CGI problems I had were when it was in the real world, not in the digital world. Yeah, it's kind of some kind of saw this as a renewal of Spielberg's sense of entertainment. The French magazine Le Monde called it quote, an atomic inventiveness unquote. So people are seeing.

Andrew Fossier (02:47:21.057)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli (02:47:42.538)
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 masked kind of the emptiness of the project project it's kind of like outdated dynamic of hero and in sidekicks and You know all that kind of stuff Yeah, the actually the video game community was the hardest on it

Andrew Fossier (02:48:11.777)
Yeah, that's tracks.

Eli (02:48:12.141)
Apparently, they felt like the game culture of the book, which 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 from reality and loss of social ties. And I think the gaming community kind of scoffs at that, that kind of opinion of what gaming is.

Andrew Fossier (02:48:38.827)
Yeah, yeah, because I mean it is, it it is a different type of community. But I...

Eli (02:48:46.837)
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 of this 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 fake world. Not. Yeah. Right.

Andrew Fossier (02:49:04.023)
Right, right, yeah. And it supplants the real world. we, you know, I don't know, we haven't talked, we haven't gotten like specifically talking 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, you can wear it and film video. 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, okay, okay. I am very tech forward. I am chronically online, but take the headset off, man. Like what, you know, it's like, so in, 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.

Eli (02:49:34.125)
Yeah.

Eli (02:49:41.705)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:50:00.899)
But, you know, on the other end of that, if you're connecting virtually, that is, that is a community. Like there are communities that, connects that way. And so, yeah. But I, but I also would push back. I also would push back on the, gaming like critique of it's, it's cinephile focus. It's like, yeah, but like the last, the, the, the thing that's interesting to me that I do like about the way the final challenge.

Eli (02:50:09.729)
Right.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Andrew Fossier (02:50:30.721)
His voiceover is kind of awkward talking about it. We, you know, what's it go, but it's like.

Eli (02:50:33.441)
Yeah. 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. Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:50:37.785)
really?

Andrew Fossier (02:50:43.321)
that's interesting. But it's something that is special to me, because it's something that I recognize about 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 it and you can be very invested in and love, obviously, we're on a podcast, right, about it.

But the thing that's unique about video games is that it's a much more visceral interaction with the creator of that environment. And especially, you know, those older games where it was one or two people making a game, it's a different experience than watching it happen in a film because you're doing it. And so I do like that.

final part where he's talking about the uniqueness of, he's not talking about that, but he's talking about the, I guess what an Easter egg is, yes. Which the film got wrong, but whatever.

Eli (02:51:51.351)
creator of the game and the Easter egg, yeah.

Eli (02:51:58.214)
I was so I was so upset at the very beginning when they're doing like the whole anorak ex, you know expo 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 the East the an Easter egg doesn't have anything to do with completing the game That's the whole point

Andrew Fossier (02:52:07.097)
Uh-huh.

Andrew Fossier (02:52:20.683)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:52:26.135)
Right, yeah, and Easter egg, and my.

Eli (02:52:28.897)
I was so upset. I was like, why did they have him explain, define an Easter egg the opposite of what an Easter egg is?

Andrew Fossier (02:52:36.985)
Right, it's not an objective. The objective is the Easter egg. Does that make sense? That might sound semantic, but a quest objective is explicitly outlined, go talk to so-and-so to get your powers. An 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.

Eli (02:52:41.601)
Right.

Eli (02:52:49.291)
No, I mean it's...

Eli (02:52:56.567)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Fossier (02:53:05.687)
or something, you know, like that kind of stuff.

Eli (02:53:05.739)
Yeah. Yeah. It's yeah. It's like when you talk to the creator of the, the Pokemon game inside, inside like the, you know, the office set in that one building and Pokemon and in the, you know, the Pokemon game, you know, that's what an Easter egg is. It doesn't have any bearing on the game. It's just like, cool. That thing's there. Like that's what the Easter egg and adventure is the whole in the

Andrew Fossier (02:53:22.591)
yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:53:28.441)
Yeah.

Eli (02:53:33.565)
very beginning of the book, it's talking about how like this guy created this game. but, 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 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

Andrew Fossier (02:53:51.051)
wow.

Eli (02:53:59.307)
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. And so he doesn't really explain that in the movie.

Andrew Fossier (02:54:00.695)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Fossier (02:54:09.144)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:54:13.261)
Well, he doesn't explain all that context, but he explains the, I guess the reason for wanting the Easter egg. It's about finding the, it's about the Easter egg is the destination, not an object, an objective, I guess. I don't know. It still feels semantic, but.

Eli (02:54:17.537)
Yeah, right.

Right, right.

Eli (02:54:32.077)
Right, right. And it's similar with like the Easter egg, the holiday Easter egg is not some like quest to complete. It's like, it's all about like the journey and exploring his mind and all that. But yeah. One more quote I wanted to say that I had written down from reception, Matt Zoller Cites, who writes for

I think New York, the New Yorker magazine a lot. And if you remember, if anyone has been listening since the Wes Anderson series, he does like the big, all the Wes Anderson books, you know, the big fancy coffee table looking books where there's a ton of interviews with Wes Anderson. That's Matt Seller's sights. But on this movie, I really liked this. said, quote,

Spielberg is not given 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 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 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

Andrew Fossier (02:55:34.969)
Hmm.

Andrew Fossier (02:55:52.291)
Yeah.

Eli (02:55:57.998)
spun positively, but it's still kind of sad. You know, yeah, they won and you know, they're friends now, but like the Oasis is still the Oasis and it's like, you know, taking away Yeah, you close it two days a week. But yeah, it's still Right, right

Andrew Fossier (02:56:16.281)
that's not addressing the systemic problems that make it. why did you shut down, they, wait, no, no, no. He did say something about IOI.

Eli (02:56:25.217)
Yeah, they kicked IOI out.

Andrew Fossier (02:56:27.245)
But they shut down the sinners, right? That's the positive. So they did address probably the most abusive group we saw, but...

Eli (02:56:31.831)
Yeah.

Eli (02:56:38.923)
Yeah, no, it's true. But like, the root issue is still kind of there of this virtual world that is not reality that everyone spends all their time in. But anyway.

Andrew Fossier (02:56:54.691)
Well, well, and what I would say about that too is the optimism of the end of the movie is, well, we have kissy days now. I hated that whole, the ending, the implication is just like, we're going to have kissy days instead of Oasis days. It's just like the, the brute problem, I would say more so than even the Oasis. The implication is that.

Eli (02:57:06.541)
That's a great term, kissy days.

Eli (02:57:16.204)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:57:24.791)
Reality is dystopian and horrible. And I mean, the stacks are just like the manifestation of that. 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.

Eli (02:57:26.69)
Right.

Eli (02:57:34.764)
Yeah.

Eli (02:57:46.06)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:57:52.013)
babysitting the amount of time people spend in this virtual world. There's like...

systemic problems that led to its prevalence. yeah, I don't know. that's, Hunter was, my wife, Hunter was reading the, the premise of Ready Player Two earlier today. And it's like an even bigger notice and even bigger holiday treasure. I'm like, what's bigger than the button to turn it off and a trillion dollars. That felt a little, I know nothing about it, but that just was.

Eli (02:58:03.597)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:58:14.381)
I don't even.

Eli (02:58:25.483)
Yeah, I don't either. I haven't looked up anything about Ready Player Two and don't really plan to. It's not a book I read and I was like, I really would love a sequel to this, you know. Same with the movie. But, yeah. Before we keep going, I will mention, before we like kind of wrap up our thematic and characters, thoughts and all that, it was nominated for, for

Andrew Fossier (02:58:32.556)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (02:58:38.326)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Fossier (02:58:48.418)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:58:54.771)
Academy Award for visual effects, but did 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 I don't know

Andrew Fossier (02:58:58.649)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Fossier (02:59:09.077)
Yeah. I didn't see First Man, I don't think. Yeah.

Eli (02:59:12.629)
It's pretty good. It didn't get all, it didn't get like great critical reception, but I thought it was pretty good.

Andrew Fossier (02:59:20.963)
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. that film or was it later? Okay, yeah. Maybe I did see it. If I do, I don't recall.

Eli (02:59:32.789)
I don't remember, honestly.

Yeah. Okay, so we've kind of been 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 with the movie. I think there's so many things it could be about, but it chooses not to really be about any of them. And I think that's the biggest problem. If you could have just chosen one of the things that is like

Andrew Fossier (03:00:01.996)
Yeah.

Eli (03:00:08.769)
that's touched in this movie and just chosen to like hone in on it. But I don't know, it just feels like Spielberg's playing it safe with this movie. It's about all these things and none of them at the same time. Because at the end of the day, it's, I don't know, 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 that 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, and we closed it down for our Tuesday kissy days and you know, everybody's happy now and it's like no the world seems like

Andrew Fossier (03:01:03.161)
Heh.

Eli (03:01:08.225)
What did you do to fix the problems of the world?

Andrew Fossier (03:01:11.755)
Yeah, yeah, does the book focus more on the problems in the world?

Eli (03:01:18.005)
Not really. It's kind of a problem in the book too, I think. It's kind of like a yada yada, everything was, we were all happy now kind of thing. 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 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? You know, 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? 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 into like 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 talk about like how people can be so Vastly different online than they are in person. It doesn't really like push into that at all And then like you have this whole like

Andrew Fossier (03:02:31.885)
Yeah.

Eli (03:02:45.737)
Reality is the only thing that's real. It's like saying everything and nothing at the same time Yeah And it I feel like it's 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

Andrew Fossier (03:02:52.173)
Yeah, get off your phone, be in the moment.

Andrew Fossier (03:03:09.177)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (03:03:11.997)
That's like the big quote, you know that Halliday says so I think that's what them the you know, Zach Penn and Klein and Spielberg That's like the big quote that Halliday 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 in the real world and you know spend time with your friends instead of you know online or whatever, but it It's about like, you know, it's it's it's trying to be about

Andrew Fossier (03:03:29.387)
huh.

Eli (03:03:40.201)
regretting spending too much time on the Oasis and not with your friends, but then you make a contest that like forces people to spend all their time on the Oasis and not with their friends in real life.

Andrew Fossier (03:03:48.473)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (03:03:52.814)
And not even like just on that only ways it's like specifically how it is interpretation of reality. Like that was the thing that was just was like.

Eli (03:03:59.692)
Right.

It doesn't make any sense. Like it's so inconsistent. It didn't bother me when I read the book so much and 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, I'm like, this is stupid. It's like, let's try to get people to spend more time in reality and.

Andrew Fossier (03:04:03.929)
Yeah, yeah, it's weird.

Eli (03:04:28.733)
not regret like missing time with their loved ones and their friends, but like, but also let's make a contest that makes everyone obsess about the things that I love and spend all their time trying to find like this, this crap. Like it it doesn't make any sense. to me, 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.

Andrew Fossier (03:04:32.792)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (03:04:47.843)
Yeah.

Eli (03:04:58.857)
quote from holiday that I remember but definitely in this movie, it's like Yeah, it just it doesn't make any sense to me thematically like there's a huge thematic inconsistency with that That is that I think is dumb

Andrew Fossier (03:05:12.385)
Yeah, it is strange. And again, it's like, think that can be taken, I think that obviously anything can be taken to an unhealthy level, Obsession is dangerous, but obsessively consuming and being interested in pop culture is like, you're following your interests. You're seeing this film because

You know, you found out it was an inspiration for this film and you're following your own path. That is, you're jumping into a world of possibilities and you're forging your own interest path. This is, well, hey, he made this cool thing and his 11th favorite horror film was The Shining. So that's where we're going. It's like, but okay, hold The Shining up.

on its own merits. Is it the best horror film? Is it your favorite horror film? Well, it's Halliday's 11th favorite horror film. So that's why it's important in this context. And that just, I don't like that about it.

Eli (03:06:14.967)
Yeah.

Eli (03:06:18.625)
Yeah. 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 fan boy culture, like where your whole like interest revolves around what this particular person that you idolize thinks, which is, which can be a big problem sometimes with pockets of pop culture, like with, especially like in our

Andrew Fossier (03:06:26.98)
yeah.

Andrew Fossier (03:06:44.557)
Yeah.

Eli (03:06:47.507)
IP driven world and you know people may you know online fans thinking they like own the the rights to like dictate what what their 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

Andrew Fossier (03:07:13.389)
Yeah. Yeah. I, and, this is kind of, this is kind of part of we've had, there's been a lot of societal conversations. And to be honest, I don't know the studies that have been done. 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, well, like video games cause violence or video games cause addiction, or I feel like video games get put in a weird.

Eli (03:07:34.593)
Yeah

Andrew Fossier (03:07:42.906)
like hypodermic needle kind of territory when it's like the current generations film or D and D equivalent. Like, you know, D and D is the devil. that kind of stuff. There's, there's, there's a healthy moderation. And I think the dutiful adherence to reality is kind of a weird.

Eli (03:07:57.037)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (03:08:12.931)
I don't know. 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 connections with people in your personal life is, is more important than playing video game. But

Eli (03:08:32.577)
right.

Andrew Fossier (03:08:34.201)
Again, in the book, it's more of a metaverse. So 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, 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. So yeah.

Eli (03:08:51.98)
Right? Yeah.

Yeah, you can't just shut it down, yeah.

Eli (03:09:01.461)
Yeah, but that 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 half or two since it's probably been a couple of weeks since I finished the book. So it's hard to remember, but

Andrew Fossier (03:09:10.829)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (03:09:18.585)
It's like once, once, once or twice a week. don't remember. I said Kissy Tuesdays because repeating what you said,

Eli (03:09:24.971)
Yeah, it's I think in the film it's Tuesdays and Thursdays, which is like sounds random to me, but whatever 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 And I think that's unfortunate because there's a lot there. Like I said But yeah Okay, let's do this I have like a list of quibbles

Andrew Fossier (03:09:31.8)
Yeah.

Eli (03:09:55.565)
And I'm just gonna run through them So there's we've talked about this there's spurts of a lot of exposition that's kind of boring to listen to You know movie 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

Andrew Fossier (03:10:01.399)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (03:10:10.873)
Yeah, it opens with X position.

Yeah.

Eli (03:10:24.481)
like he doesn't trust the audience. 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 cause I thought at first it was one of their like yada, yada, yada. And then they end up in Sorrento's office and you don't, was like, how do they get in there? It's like, that doesn't make any sense. And then you realize like, they've hacked into his rig. that, that whole thing, you know,

So it actually did fool me because there is a lot of yada yada ying in the plot of like, how did they escape here? How did they get there? It doesn't, they don't show me or tell me or it, and then I'm like caught up on that. 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 up with guns and, know, in Sorrento's office,

Andrew Fossier (03:11:01.945)
Yeah.

Eli (03:11:23.521)
So it fooled me, but then like, they show you visually, like, you kind of catch on, like, 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've already shown me that you're not actually 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.

Andrew Fossier (03:11:50.594)
Yeah.

Eli (03:11:52.95)
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, felt like that's a big product. That's one of the big problems I think of the switching so much back and forth from the real world to the fake world is honestly like watching people move around in VR.

goggles and haptic suits kind of looks stupid to me. It's like, it's not exciting to watch. It doesn't add anything to like what's happening in the virtual world to me. It's not like, I don't know. It's not exciting. It kind of looks stupid. Like I hated the whole sequence where like he's like swinging around in the back of the van cause they're getting rammed by other vehicles in the haptic suit.

Andrew Fossier (03:12:25.29)
Yeah.

Eli (03:12:50.349)
and the cables and stuff. And he's like flopping around in the oasis because of that. And I'm like, this is just stupid. I hate the way this is playing out. I get it, but I don't know. It's just, that's one of my quibbles is I think showing people in VR goggles looks stupid and it's not fun to watch in a movie.

Andrew Fossier (03:13:00.075)
Yeah, I guess.

Andrew Fossier (03:13:15.831)
No, yeah, that's true. And I feel like one of the major areas that it struggled with was consistency with the tech. Because honestly, the startup of him getting on the omni-directional treadmill, that was pretty cool. But then we cut to the kids running in the street, and it's like, okay, I can suspend disbelief that the motion tracking doesn't need a full suit.

Eli (03:13:32.695)
Sure.

Eli (03:13:39.454)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (03:13:44.375)
Right? It's better. It's good enough.

But is this VR AR or is this VR? Because if this is VR, they're gonna run over the curb and trip. If it's VR AR, maybe there's a, what been a fit? It just felt like the technology understanding was kind of limited. And I wish, yeah, I wish that.

Eli (03:13:51.094)
Yeah.

Eli (03:13:54.625)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli (03:14:08.009)
Yeah, they they're kind of all over the place with it

Andrew Fossier (03:14:14.273)
I don't know. just felt like the reason it was that is because that's more visually interesting to see happen than a bunch of teenagers on omnidirectional treadmills on the side of the street. The same thing with the... Yeah, I was gonna say the war room.

Eli (03:14:27.221)
Yeah, and then, you know, the war room. And then, and then a totally different one is Sorrento's rig is like a big seat. It's like, how is he running around? It's, it's all very inconsistent.

Andrew Fossier (03:14:37.663)
Yeah, well, in that case, would assume, right. In that case, that's the other thing.

Andrew Fossier (03:14:47.575)
I can buy that it looks so good, it's hard to tell what reality is. like, he's sitting in his chair and he can't, I don't know, I don't know. How does the movement work in that chair?

Eli (03:15:04.065)
Yeah, it's all done with like the little roller mouse thing, guess, mostly.

Andrew Fossier (03:15:08.601)
So if you stopped rolling, yeah. At that point, just make it like a neural thing. Like you're connected or they could put something on the side of their eyes and their eyes turn blue and they're in the metaverse. Just forego the VR goggles and the crotch shots and the armor and stuff. Just make it all.

Eli (03:15:24.15)
Right.

Yeah.

Eli (03:15:31.053)
I guess it's like more fun to design those things, like the visual things, but it looks cooler like just a person standing there in it, but like when you get, when you're like painting across people in the stacks, like flailing around in their living rooms, it just looks stupid. and it's not like, I think some of it is played a little bit for like, for comedy, but like, but yeah.

Andrew Fossier (03:15:34.369)
Yeah, it looks cooler.

Andrew Fossier (03:15:43.801)
Hmm.

Andrew Fossier (03:15:51.289)
You

Yeah.

Eli (03:16:00.662)
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 that to be comic relief, but it does look stupid and comedic. it looks ridiculous. Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (03:16:19.353)
Yeah. Well, and the war room stuff, think part of that too was, yeah, but what I was going to say was the visual interest of seeing something happen and then it happened, like the laser shot knocking them all out of the line. There's no way they would be, especially if they're in those rigs, those rigs have the omnidirectional treadmills. They're not.

Eli (03:16:24.309)
that I can get it, I can buy into.

Andrew Fossier (03:16:48.877)
The trend 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. I could buy that knocking them all out. But yeah, it was. The technology was inconsistent and that's part of what was the most interesting part to me about this world is the technology and how.

Eli (03:16:53.333)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, right.

Andrew Fossier (03:17:18.083)
people integrate it into their lives.

Eli (03:17:20.311)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I don't know there's I mentioned this already, but there's a lot of like Yada yada ing and what I mean by that is like it kind of skips over stuff so in the and 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 like something else. And then when it cuts back to her, she's just like outside now she's out of the IOI headquarters. It's like, she is like a wanted person. And like, this is a like, this is a, you know, billionaire, trillionaire, trillionaires, like tech heck, evil headquarters. Like there's not like security that's going to stop her from going out the door. Cause it's not like

Andrew Fossier (03:17:57.379)
Hmm.

Andrew Fossier (03:18:15.991)
Yeah, she's supposed to be at work as well.

Eli (03:18:16.661)
She's not like sneaking out. She's just like walking down the sidewalk 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 know, security everywhere and they would have pictures of her and 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.

Andrew Fossier (03:18:22.411)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (03:18:38.37)
Yeah.

Eli (03:18:46.349)
I don't know, there was a lot of stuff like that that they kind of yada yada'd past like plot holes, you know? That bothered me.

Andrew Fossier (03:18:55.499)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli (03:19:01.131)
Yeah, Yeah, I wrote down characters get out of sticky situations through film editing instead of like actually getting out of the situations Yeah, I don't know zee Parzival's inspirational speech is kind of The yeah, this is one that we we talked about before we got on the whole like

Andrew Fossier (03:19:10.68)
Yeah

Eli (03:19:29.749)
driving backwards thing, like somebody would have driven backwards. But after all this time has passed, people would have got bored trying the same thing. Someone would have been like, I'm gonna go backwards this time and would have accidentally discovered it.

Andrew Fossier (03:19:36.002)
Yeah.

It should have been more.

Yeah. Like driving backwards in racing games is like a thing you do when you get annoyed like that I've done when I get annoyed with 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 is something you do when 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, cause I, I, I, that's one of the things I said to Hunter as soon as it happened. I was like, is the gaming community. They know.

Eli (03:19:57.825)
Right.

Eli (03:20:01.772)
Yeah.

Eli (03:20:07.223)
Ha ha.

Eli (03:20:11.757)
Yeah. Yep.

Andrew Fossier (03:20:11.779)
They know the pixel to stand on for the Dark Souls boss to make the bug happen. Yeah, it would have been found. It should have been a little more complicated, but that's a nitpick, I guess. But yeah, it just, was too convenient.

Eli (03:20:24.619)
Yeah, it is. 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 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 those we've seen no signs of like him actually being caring or He doesn't actually care about like the integrity of the game like that's not part of the character and that's kind of what it seems like it's doing like I Don't know it made no sense to me. I was like

Andrew Fossier (03:21:02.016)
Yeah.

Eli (03:21:22.443)
I kind of like threw my hands up and I was like, what? Like this is, this makes no sense.

Andrew Fossier (03:21:26.295)
Yeah, I mean, he nuked the virtual world. I guess the movie's argument is he nuked the virtual world and then he got to the real world and he couldn't do it because he knew what was wrong. He couldn't kill him. But he killed the ant. He killed the whole stack.

Eli (03:21:30.252)
Right.

Eli (03:21:41.013)
That that would be that would be it if it wasn't Well, yeah, I could see that if it was and that is a big thing like in the books like he's he 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

Andrew Fossier (03:22:01.745)
wow.

Eli (03:22:07.359)
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 he has this like goofy like this kind of like, 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, but that's not like the expression he did. And that's not like the moment, you know, that way it's yeah.

Andrew Fossier (03:22:30.626)
Yeah.

Eli (03:22:36.959)
It just a really bad choice. Like, I don't know if that's Mendelssohn's fault or like, 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 this scene. I need you to do more of this sort of reaction.

Andrew Fossier (03:22:55.897)
Yeah, that was a strange tone with the whole, like, I didn't believe, I believed based on the character, he would have shot him. I was confused because it kind of seemed like a New York standing up for Spider-Man thing 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, go to the, I don't know.

Eli (03:23:00.075)
Yeah.

Eli (03:23:05.826)
Yeah.

Eli (03:23:18.849)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (03:23:24.409)
Yeah, it didn't, it didn't wrap up well in that, in that sense. It 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 it was a hard, it was a hard ending.

Eli (03:23:33.43)
I don't know.

Yeah. and my other, yeah, and my other quibble with like the whole like finding the egg thing is like the not signing the paper thing. He's like, he's like, he's like, this is like when you made Ogden sign away his rights. Okay, I'm not gonna sign. I'm not gonna make the same mistake you did. I was like.

Andrew Fossier (03:23:50.585)
Mmm.

Eli (03:24:04.877)
How is that the same as what you're doing? 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. It didn't make any sense to me.

Andrew Fossier (03:24:16.409)
No, that's the thing. Hunter made a really good point about this when we were talking about it. She said if he had said something, if that's what the movie wanted to go for, if he had said, hey, sign this and you'll have control, you'll have control, you can do it, you'll be the guy in charge. And he said, I want to share this, I want my friends, or something to that. His whole thing is I don't plan up, I'm parsable.

Eli (03:24:43.329)
Yeah, right, right.

Andrew Fossier (03:24:46.509)
I'm the one kind of, and if he'd gotten to the end and he had made the realization that he wanted his friends to be there, 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. You regretted that. I shouldn't do it. It's...

Eli (03:25:11.031)
Yeah, but you, and then he still gets, he still gets it. Like he still gets the thing he didn't sign for.

Andrew Fossier (03:25:16.491)
Yeah. How does the book handle that part?

Eli (03:25:21.581)
That's not really in the book. It's not like that at all. Yeah, he went, yeah, the winnings is the same, but there's not the whole like, I'm not gonna sign this because of your, like that's not in the book. But yeah, the prize is the same. Like he wins control of the Oasis and the money and all that.

Andrew Fossier (03:25:24.685)
Does he get control? So what is the Easter egg?

Andrew Fossier (03:25:34.681)
Andrew Fossier (03:25:41.899)
Okay.

Andrew Fossier (03:25:45.933)
Yeah, so the test is strange. Yeah, that's good. I like that. just wish that I like it's like what Hunter said this Hunter is the origination of the idea is like if he had made the decision to be different than Halliday because he wanted his friends there as opposed to I got to follow Halliday. It's like, okay, you got to the end now.

Eli (03:25:48.577)
But he does split it with the high five just like he does in the, yeah.

Andrew Fossier (03:26:14.263)
You're at the end of your holiday knowledge. What are you gonna do? Are you making a decision or is holiday making a decision? Yeah, anyway.

Eli (03:26:21.579)
Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. We could go on and 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, was, there was just so many that kept popping up and they really bothered me because there's a lot of potential. There was so much potential with this movie and they just like, I don't know. I feel like they really did not do with this movie what it could have done.

Andrew Fossier (03:26:22.839)
Hahaha!

Andrew Fossier (03:26:40.814)
Yeah.

Eli (03:26:49.665)
but it's getting late and we still have to record a movie draft episode. So I'm gonna 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 resurfacing and why a generation can love old pop culture that wasn't theirs is interesting, but I just.

Andrew Fossier (03:26:53.251)
Yeah

Eli (03:27:16.545)
I wonder like, does new culture get created anymore or are we in this cycle of just recycling pop culture where it's the problem of IP, you know? Are we making new things? 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 there's a lot of nuance in that. you can see like,

You can see times when like, like Oppenheimer, for example, there's Oppenheimer had no business making as much money as it was, but it was an original idea made in an original way. and people 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 really like new culture can only be made.

through engaging with the real world in some way. And I think the movie wants to be about that and doesn't really actually delve into it. But I do think that's something that I was thinking about after this is these people are obsessed with old culture. They're not actually creating anything new. And do we have the same problem? Is our online

obsession and our, you know, obsession with seeing, you know, I don't know, happy Gilmore too, instead of some new original comedy. 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 not.

Andrew Fossier (03:28:54.147)
Ha

Eli (03:29:12.503)
We're so engaged online that we're not like engaging with the real world and real people around us enough to actually like create something new. some new pop culture. and, you know, I, I don't think that's like all and 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.

but I do, I do think it is a, important question to ask and to contemplate. Are we engaging with the real world enough to get actual inspiration to create new things? And cause even memes are kind of recycled. They're recycled. They're recycled pictures in quotes and you know, memes get recycled over and over again. like, I don't know. I think it's good to appreciate.

Andrew Fossier (03:29:57.209)
Yeah.

Eli (03:30:10.669)
existing creation. Like I don't think it's wrong to go to watch Happy Gilmore 2 if you know you're interested in that. It's good. It's good to appreciate existing stuff but I think it's better to create new things and I think that's one thing that we get stuck in as humanity is we settle for good when we could have better and I think

Andrew Fossier (03:30:37.753)
Yeah.

Eli (03:30:39.797)
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? Are we settling for good when we could 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's just kind of like something to think about.

Andrew Fossier (03:30:57.528)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (03:31:04.227)
Well, no, it's definitely a good question. And I feel like a good example of that idea is like, I think we've talked about it before. I'm not a fan of the remake, the remake, the remake of things that were animated live action. I don't like that. I find it, I find it.

Eli (03:31:23.125)
Yeah, me either.

Eli (03:31:27.017)
Offensive.

Andrew Fossier (03:31:28.249)
It's it's awful. No, it just makes me sad because it just makes me want to watch the original for the first time again. Does that make sense? And so to contrast that, something that I think is incredible that I went to, by the way, with no expectations because this is controversial, I haven't really, I haven't seen all of the direct films all the way through. I've seen bits and pieces here and there, but my point is my...

Eli (03:31:36.321)
Yeah.

Eli (03:31:55.053)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Fossier (03:31:56.482)
My interest in this fandom was basically zero. I hadn't even seen the first Puss in Boots, but Puss in Boots The Last Wish is incredible. It is a sequel to a spin-off from the Shrek universe. And the art team was like, hey, we are going to try so hard. We are going to pour our souls into this animation. The animation is amazing. The story is okay. I don't know why. But my point is, like, it's so obvious to 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.

Eli (03:32:27.286)
Yeah, sure.

Andrew Fossier (03:32:43.491)
They could have been, I guess. They went way harder for that goal. And so anyway, I think the question is good because...

creating new stuff, I think takes a lot. It doesn't just take the courage as part of it, too. It takes courage, but it also takes, you know, studios willing to 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? And that's, I hate that. I hate that it's like, well, we could have had a new movie, but the executives decided to make a remake of an old movie because that tested better or something, you know. I'm not cynical. know there are artists working hard to make new stuff.

Eli (03:33:47.405)
We're gonna trash the ACME vs. Wile E. Coyote film as a tax write-off.

Andrew Fossier (03:33:56.121)
Yeah, yeah. I'm not cynical. I know there are people, you know, pouring their soul into making art. It just increasingly discourages me the frequency with which artistic decisions get made by committee or by dollar, as opposed to people just making.

Eli (03:34:18.295)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Fossier (03:34:22.029)
to 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 how many people with for how much money like it was nothing, you know, it was it was an incredibly small team. was incredibly low budget. Best picture and everything it took. I mean, I don't 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.

Eli (03:34:43.511)
Yeah, love that movie.

Eli (03:34:48.385)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (03:34:51.829)
everything everywhere all at once five, you know, or the remake in 20 years. So yeah, anyway, that's my soapbox. Good question.

Eli (03:34:56.042)
right.

Eli (03:35:01.943)
Yeah, it was all the sequels of it wrapped into one movie. Yeah, it was everything everywhere all at once. Yeah, every sequel all at once, you No, yeah, I think that is definitely like the other aspect 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, where does this

Andrew Fossier (03:35:05.785)
Every sequel.

You

Eli (03:35:31.703)
fall for you as far as like Spielberg movies. For me, it's like, it's like just above like the bottom tier of like three 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 have it in a tier with like,

Amistad, The Lost World, Hook, and this. Kind of like, not the bottomest of bottom tiers of Spielberg, but pretty much bottom tier.

Andrew Fossier (03:36:09.689)
Yeah, I would say I agree. I don't have all of his films ranked, but yeah, yeah. And that's also wild, because I also don't know off the top my head success rankings, but this is up there, right? mean, this did amazing in the box office.

Eli (03:36:15.895)
Sure, yeah. Just ballparking.

Eli (03:36:33.357)
Yeah, I mean, it made over 500 million worldwide. Like it did really well. Yeah, I don't know. It's hard to say.

Andrew Fossier (03:36:38.37)
Me?

Andrew Fossier (03:36:45.943)
Yeah, I'd be interested to see where it ranks in his greatest hits box office wise because

Yeah, I don't know. It's funny because...

Eli (03:36:58.253)
I mean, it doesn't have terrible, like, critic review. It has like a 64 Meta score, which is green. It has a 3.3 on letterboxed, which isn't terrible. It's kind of in that range where it's like, oh, I might like this, I might not.

Andrew Fossier (03:37:04.249)
Mmm.

Andrew Fossier (03:37:15.576)
Yeah.

I haven't been keeping up with the letterbox. What star rating did you give?

Eli (03:37:23.597)
Two and a half. Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (03:37:25.465)
Two and a half? That's, I would say, I would say either two or two and a half from, I'm stuck on that last half star, but that's about where I'd put it too. I've seen way worse movies. It was not bad.

Eli (03:37:34.509)
71 % tomato meter. So it's ripe. So I don't know. Yeah, I have a two and a half.

Andrew Fossier (03:37:38.833)
wow.

Yeah. I know we dug into it. I know we dug into it a lot, but I think that's just because it was so close to being something interesting and they just didn't commit.

Eli (03:37:53.346)
Yeah, there's a degree to which like, I'm gonna be harsher on a Spielberg movie than I might be on someone else's movie. And yeah, because it's a Spielberg movie. I expect more, you know? So, but yeah, it's like those four movies I named with this included are all, I have all ranked two and a half stars. And the ones, the three Spielberg movies I have below it are,

Andrew Fossier (03:38:03.374)
Yeah.

Eli (03:38:22.975)
Ranked less than rated less than that. but yeah. so yeah, it's, it's kind of in that. But most, most Spielberg movies are like eight stars and hub maybe seven. but yeah, it's, it's down there. I, I just really, it was just kind of like one of those movies where there's one, there's an eye roll for something in every scene.

Andrew Fossier (03:38:25.443)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (03:38:52.531)
sequence and it just gets old after a while but yeah. Yep. Yeah I don't know I guess I'll say next week me and you are doing a motion capture performances draft so that's gonna be fun. It's probably gonna be a short episode because it is pretty late for us as we're recording.

Andrew Fossier (03:38:55.651)
Yeah.

Andrew Fossier (03:39:11.257)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (03:39:20.491)
So we might fire through those real quick, but it's still gonna be fun. 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. yeah. But Andrew, I know you're not on the socials a whole lot, but I do always like to share your letterbox with people, so.

Andrew Fossier (03:39:41.293)
Yeah, I just said I'm not up on it, but I reviewed Superman and I will review Fantastic Four. No spoilers. I already told you my tagline. Yeah, yeah. Happy to share that.

Eli (03:39:46.155)
You did, I saw your review. Yep. Yep, follow Andrew on Letterboxd. If you want to know where to follow him, just click on the episode description and click the link because I'll put it there. Yeah, that's all we have for this week. I've been Eli Price for Andrew Fosier. You've been listening to The Establishing Shot. We will see you next time.