How to Recover from the Ready Player One movie

  • There is a Youtube app for Playstation, presumably other consoles. Go in, hit Music, then a genre like ’80s Pop. MTV is back, baby! Minus the cool bumpers. I just watched A-Ha’s “Take On Me”, Police’s “Every Breath You Take”, and Culture Club’s “Karma Chameleon” as if it was 1984.
  • Get out Atari Classics or MAME and play thru every game.
  • Get Blu-ray, DVD, downloadable video, or preferably VHS of good movies, like The Last Starfighter (tonight’s entertainment), Real Genius, WarGames, Ghostbusters, etc.
  • Reread the book, and pretend a good filmmaker or game developer will adapt it decently in 20 years.
  • Drink a lot. Working on that.

  • The Last Starfighter: CGI 34 years ago was low-poly and glossy or phong shaded, but honestly no worse for storytelling, as long as they didn’t try to show living things. And the aliens in latex look FANTASTIC, so much better than the CGI chars in RP1.
    The orchestral soundtrack by Craig Safan is really quite good, it carries the film as much as the CGI does. Like Christopher Franke’s Babylon 5 soundtracks, the mood swings from ominous to war to comedy can be a little abrupt.
    Far more character development is given to each of Alex Rogan, Maggie, Centauri, Grig, and even mad, traitorous Xur. I’m not especially a fan of the Beta unit’s dating comedy. Short shrift is given to all the dead, maybe interstellar society is just that callous but we’re not. But the fate of the Beta unit, the war, and the ending, are much more emotional.
    ★★★★½