Monday 2 July 2018

Is It Filmable? Ready Player One

Quite controversially, amongst the fans of the book, I really liked the film called Ready Player One...


See what I did there?  I separated the book from the film... They have the same name in the sense that we call a Guinea Pig a pig... But they're not pigs and despite borrowing a few parts this film is not of the much better book.

Why the divergence?  Well, simply put the appeal would have been too niche, the geek chique of even knowing about RP1 is far below the radar scatter detection level of a Hollywood film executive or producer squad, and sadly gone are the games of rock or pop stars funding a film just "so they can see it" (*cough* shout out to George Harrison there).

The book therefore does not have a main stream enough appeal to warrant the investment as it would likely not make any return, where have we heard this before?


Putting aside human interest, the logistics...  Technically the story told in the produced film is far more technically and spectacular with the visual effects, so logistically yes of course the story of the book could be physically manifested, so logistics really comes down to copyright infringement and matters of runtime.

For instance the book takes you through the re-enactment of other films...


You can't show another film in its entirety within another film, however the text of the book doesn't do this, nor does it show us all of the Holy Grail, you get exerts.  The film of RP1 went with the Shining, seeing even the references to WarGames and Holy Grail as too niche, so I can make my peace with the films decision, but I can't say that either reenacting parts of another film were not possible.  Indeed in the case of Holy Grail, do we not have Spammalot still on stage!  An adaption of the original film, so there's logistical barrier, it's all legalities which are not insummountable and to make the book into celluloid you only have to reparaphrase the little to make the whole so much more.

That said, I like the current film, but it is not RP1.

Therefore, technically, logistically and legals surmounted you could film the actual text of RP1...

You just couldn't make it stick on the silver screen, it would not fly... Maybe Netflix could make it and maybe not into a film but a multi-part series?

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