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Ready Player One
A virtual reality game occupies the conscious being of human race and its consequences.
Steven Spielberg is the only director who feels commercial and auteury at the same time. Most of the times an auteur is someone who has a common theme and vision and point of view running across his movies. Nolan has obsessed character grappling with demons as his lead in almost all his movies. Tarantino cleverly has genre pictures smuggled through his auteur vision. Spielberg has parent's divorce as common theme. But I think Spielberg is the only one among these three whose movies feel like commercial when he is making blockbusters. They are more about clever ideas and concepts that are well made and so, they can avoid the stink of generic blockbusters. His movies have character scenes and he is given the levity by directors just so he could push them through the blockbuster product. Its only recently that I realized Leonardo DiCaprio found the key to maintain his fan base. It is the "WOW" - factor. Audience have accustomed to watching dramas and well made movies in laptop. So to make them go to the movies they need 2 things. One is they need to have a cerebral experience and the other is they need to know the movie is good. They might not want to know the beat for beat plot but they do want to know what the movie is about and that its one of the best movies of the year. Around 50% of movie going audience don't care about critics. But these are the one's that are hard to predict if they are gonna come to a movie or not. Most of the time they go to superhero movies or franchises or movies by some stars. But its the other 50% who checkout critics that can be seduced into coming to a movie with glowing reviews. DiCaprio realized somewhere around Inception that he should stop making movies like revolutionary road or J.Edgar and start making movies like The great Gatsby. Its a one two punch of pleasing the audience by giving them the "wow" factor and pleasing the industry by getting movies like those made which are not being made at the moment. So when ever your movie is up for Oscar, its not just your performance that deserves praise but it is your willingness to lend your star power to get the vision of the director upon screen for a 100 million $ budget. But the sad part is as long as audience flock to see a movie by a star or director like mindless sheep there will be no risk taken by those filmmakers.Spielberg is now boxed into making only movies for families or elderly. He can't make outrageous bloody movies because he is too afraid to fail. DiCaprio cannot play an overweight bald buy because his 15-25 yr old fans want him to be this macho force of nature they see themselves in. A white guy can't relate themselves to Django in Django Unchained but they can relate themselves to this charming rich and macho looking plantation owner up until his death because even though the hero gets the last laugh in the movie for the most part the villain has many scene stealing moments...uncovering the heroes plot or forcing them to listen to his evil psychology. Those are qualities of this character. His death is very minute part of his arc, so audience will erase that from their memory and will only think about his performance. It's the damn 15-25 yr old demographic man. That's the age group where anything masculine with perfect human specimens is the greatest thing. They laugh at a 50+ old man like Liam Neeson fighting bad guys but they are wowed by how a dad bodied DiCaprio is invincible in the role of Hugh Glass.
So all these changes in the audience preference kind of made Spielberg dated in the current generation. He does have his own core group of old people who grew up with jaws and ET. They will show up as long he makes movies like the post and bridge of spies for old people. But the moment he makes anything not in their wheel house, he looses them. He will have to rely on foreign audience from china and japan for movie like ready player one because those the kind of people that would cause a traffic jam to catch pikachu. They live in locker room sized rooms for months and years together just to work and make money and play video games.So his movies are targeting markets to make money. One might ask, if Spielberg movies are so by the numbers, then why would his movies get nominated for so many Oscars up until last years the post ? You see, that's where the internal politics of Oscars comes into play. Look, a studio will not launch an Oscar campaign for a movie they think is crap. Spielberg with all his talent won't be making a crap unless he makes a swords and scandals movie as long as he stays in his safe zone.From then on the campaign starts with something like this "the guy who helped you at different times in your career to either get the movie made or to tell an actor to be in your movie is making a decent to good movie.So, will you vote for him or not ?" the answer to this is mostly yes. There are 10 slots for best picture , can't they allocate something for the guy who helped them make money and get lot of their projects in the right track and pull some strings ? of course they can. Its easy to get Oscar nomination for a movie if it is the flagship movie from a big studio. Its all the behind the scenes stuff. If you are part of something that's doing greater good, then people will praise you for it. All this is within the condition that the movie should be good but need not be great.
The movie didn't use the concept to its full potential. Its missing the mystery and the edge needed for movies like these. Instead it just wants us to be in awe of this world and go along with ride and come out with a half baked hypocritical message about digital age. Go into it for visuals and some interesting nostalgia. Its not that great.
A virtual reality game occupies the conscious being of human race and its consequences.
Steven Spielberg is the only director who feels commercial and auteury at the same time. Most of the times an auteur is someone who has a common theme and vision and point of view running across his movies. Nolan has obsessed character grappling with demons as his lead in almost all his movies. Tarantino cleverly has genre pictures smuggled through his auteur vision. Spielberg has parent's divorce as common theme. But I think Spielberg is the only one among these three whose movies feel like commercial when he is making blockbusters. They are more about clever ideas and concepts that are well made and so, they can avoid the stink of generic blockbusters. His movies have character scenes and he is given the levity by directors just so he could push them through the blockbuster product. Its only recently that I realized Leonardo DiCaprio found the key to maintain his fan base. It is the "WOW" - factor. Audience have accustomed to watching dramas and well made movies in laptop. So to make them go to the movies they need 2 things. One is they need to have a cerebral experience and the other is they need to know the movie is good. They might not want to know the beat for beat plot but they do want to know what the movie is about and that its one of the best movies of the year. Around 50% of movie going audience don't care about critics. But these are the one's that are hard to predict if they are gonna come to a movie or not. Most of the time they go to superhero movies or franchises or movies by some stars. But its the other 50% who checkout critics that can be seduced into coming to a movie with glowing reviews. DiCaprio realized somewhere around Inception that he should stop making movies like revolutionary road or J.Edgar and start making movies like The great Gatsby. Its a one two punch of pleasing the audience by giving them the "wow" factor and pleasing the industry by getting movies like those made which are not being made at the moment. So when ever your movie is up for Oscar, its not just your performance that deserves praise but it is your willingness to lend your star power to get the vision of the director upon screen for a 100 million $ budget. But the sad part is as long as audience flock to see a movie by a star or director like mindless sheep there will be no risk taken by those filmmakers.Spielberg is now boxed into making only movies for families or elderly. He can't make outrageous bloody movies because he is too afraid to fail. DiCaprio cannot play an overweight bald buy because his 15-25 yr old fans want him to be this macho force of nature they see themselves in. A white guy can't relate themselves to Django in Django Unchained but they can relate themselves to this charming rich and macho looking plantation owner up until his death because even though the hero gets the last laugh in the movie for the most part the villain has many scene stealing moments...uncovering the heroes plot or forcing them to listen to his evil psychology. Those are qualities of this character. His death is very minute part of his arc, so audience will erase that from their memory and will only think about his performance. It's the damn 15-25 yr old demographic man. That's the age group where anything masculine with perfect human specimens is the greatest thing. They laugh at a 50+ old man like Liam Neeson fighting bad guys but they are wowed by how a dad bodied DiCaprio is invincible in the role of Hugh Glass.
So all these changes in the audience preference kind of made Spielberg dated in the current generation. He does have his own core group of old people who grew up with jaws and ET. They will show up as long he makes movies like the post and bridge of spies for old people. But the moment he makes anything not in their wheel house, he looses them. He will have to rely on foreign audience from china and japan for movie like ready player one because those the kind of people that would cause a traffic jam to catch pikachu. They live in locker room sized rooms for months and years together just to work and make money and play video games.So his movies are targeting markets to make money. One might ask, if Spielberg movies are so by the numbers, then why would his movies get nominated for so many Oscars up until last years the post ? You see, that's where the internal politics of Oscars comes into play. Look, a studio will not launch an Oscar campaign for a movie they think is crap. Spielberg with all his talent won't be making a crap unless he makes a swords and scandals movie as long as he stays in his safe zone.From then on the campaign starts with something like this "the guy who helped you at different times in your career to either get the movie made or to tell an actor to be in your movie is making a decent to good movie.So, will you vote for him or not ?" the answer to this is mostly yes. There are 10 slots for best picture , can't they allocate something for the guy who helped them make money and get lot of their projects in the right track and pull some strings ? of course they can. Its easy to get Oscar nomination for a movie if it is the flagship movie from a big studio. Its all the behind the scenes stuff. If you are part of something that's doing greater good, then people will praise you for it. All this is within the condition that the movie should be good but need not be great.
The movie didn't use the concept to its full potential. Its missing the mystery and the edge needed for movies like these. Instead it just wants us to be in awe of this world and go along with ride and come out with a half baked hypocritical message about digital age. Go into it for visuals and some interesting nostalgia. Its not that great.