Or seven.

From: Terry
To: Sid

Thoughts on Infinity War - saw the post on the IR blog you saw the IMAX 3D version. Worthy of Big Ed’s first trip to the movie theatre?

- Terry

Hey, Terry.  Should Avengers: Infinity War be your son's first opportunity to see a movie on the big screen?

Hmmm...

Nope.  Nope nope nope nope nope.

Not that it's a bad movie, rather the opposite, but let me give you some fairly spoiler-free information about the film.  Infinity War does NOT have a happy ending.  Or a happy start.  Or a happy middle.  No spoilers, but the good guys lose, and a lot of people die.  No, let me rephrase that:  A LOT OF PEOPLE DIE.  A lot of them are the good guys. I went to a screening where a lot of adults were audibly expressing their shock, it might be a bit much for Ed, who is what now, six (or seven)?

Now, admittedly, it's the first of two movies, and my long-term experience with comic book plotting (and the original comic book version of this story) tells me that a lot of the people who aren't around at the end of this movie will almost definitely be back by the end of the sequel, but that might be an abstract expectation to explain to a six (or seven) year old.

Or maybe he'll be fine, it's not like I have a lot of experience with six (or seven) year old children.  It's certainly an epic film, and it literally spans the universe, so there's certainly lots and lots of eye candy for young Edward.  If you go either with Eddie or perhaps decide to go on your own (or with your wife, get oba-chan to watch the kids) I strongly recommend 3D - and if IMAX is an option, do that too.

It's also pretty much the definition of action-packed, so at least Edward wouldn't be bored, although it is quite a long movie. It goes from battle to battle and climax to climax without a break - a struggle for the Asgardian refugee ship, another clash in the skies of New York, combat in Edinburgh to save the Vision, Thor's quest for a new weapon with which to focus his godhood, one team racing Thanos to Knowhere to obtain the Reality Stone, another going head to head with Thanos on his destroyed homeworld of Titan, a third fighting alien armies in Wakanda, and the successive shocks that mark the final confrontation.  It actually gets tiring after a while - you can only be astonished so many times in 160 minutes, after all.

However, if any of those scene descriptions made no sense at all to you, you've obviously missed a few movies.  Because this is such a full court press for the Marvel Comics Universe, you pretty much need to have seen everything from Marvel going back as far as the first Captain America movie or a lot of what's going on will be a mystery to you.  (Okay, you can skip Ant-Man, nothing is referenced from there - I think...)  For a very minor example, I felt that they completely wasted the potential of the long-awaited phone call from Tony Stark to Steve Rogers - which, again, is going to make no sense to you if you missed Civil War.  Has Edward seen all the other films?

In addition to all the references to the other movies, they've included a few Easter Eggs aimed at the long-term comics fan: without very much fanfare, Tony Stark appears to have switched to the Extremis nanotech armour that debuted in the Iron Man comic back in 2005, and we see Spider-Man using the Iron Spider armour, complete with extra legs, that first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #529 in 2006.  Given that Edward is six (or seven) it's unlikely he's familiar with the back issues of either comic book.

For myself, that sort of background knowledge* meant that I had a pretty good idea of where the story would end up, thanks to familiarity with the original 1991 Infinity Gauntlet comic book series by writer Jim Starlin and artist George Pérez. 

Speaking of which, the script writers have managed to make Thanos, the mad Death-loving** Titan of the comics, into a surprisingly sympathetic character for the film - okay, sympathetic to a point, he's still the villain, regardless of the sacrifices he makes, and he's unlikely to be voted Father of the Year, either.  There's been a lot of discussion about Thanos' solution to the problem of the inevitable (in his mind, at least) exhaustion of the universe's resources - again, no spoilers, but the consensus is that having infinite power would give him options other than the one he chooses.

 

Because it's such a busy movie, there are some things that are just glossed over: no one ever explains why Peter Dinklage is the tallest person in the film, how Vision is able to look like a human, or why Bucky has been released from suspended animation.  Or maybe they're comic book references that I just didn't recognize, you're welcome to look those up if you're curious.

My final advice?  Take him to Solo instead.  It's apparently full of Star Warsy goodness, it's half an hour shorter, and I'm more than a little confident that Han and Chewie will both be alive at the end - which sounds like a better ending for a kid who's only six.  Or seven.

- Sid

* No, I don't mean that I remember in what specific issue of Spider-Man the Iron Spider first appeared, but I recognized what it was. Same with the Extremis armour.

** In the original comics, Thanos is literally in love with Death - the female personification of the end of life.

Ready Player One: Digital Man

 

He picks up scraps of information
He's adept at adaptation
'Cause for strangers and arrangers
Constant change is here to stay.

Rush, Digital Man, Signals

And the votes are in for the Ready Player One movie - I agree with Karli, it was fun.

Fun at a price, in terms of being faithful to the original.  As expected, most of the extreme geek gracenotes from the book are gone, disappointingly so to anyone who particularly enjoyed the nerdish 80s nostalgia that provided the basis for so much of the story.

However, I have to say that Zak Penn, who also worked on the scripts for The Avengers, The Incredible Hulk and X-Men: Last Stand, and Ernest Cline, author of the original book, do a noteworthy job of humanizing the story and tightening things up.  The referential background is updated and expanded, resulting in a stream of background visual cues that will undoubtedly result in a lot of frame by frame analysis when the film is released for the home viewing market.*

 

The IRL performances are uniformly well done. Tye Sheridan, who failed to impress me in X-Men: Apocalypse, redeemed himself as a completely believable Wade Watts, and Olivia Cooke and Lena Waithe both deliver solid performances.  Ben Mendelsohn plays Nolan Sorrento, the villain of the story, with the same air of grim menace that he displayed in Rogue One, and Mark Rylance does a surprising fragile turn as James Halliday, inventor of the OASIS.

And, speaking of the X-Men, it's obvious that the producers weren't able to make a deal with Marvel for any of its intellectual properties.  DC gets a few references, including the uninviting prospect of climbing Mount Everest with Batman, but there's no sign of Captain America, no friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man, no invincible Iron Man, and so on - and when you think about it, there would undoubtedly be thousands of Wolverines in an unrestricted virtual reality.**

However, the computer gaming companies obviously felt no compunctions about having their creations appear in the film, along with lots of anime, science fiction and pop culture Easter Eggs.

 

All of the mechanics of the movie aside, as above, it's just fast paced fun, with good acting, lots of inside jokes, and an upbeat theme. Sadly, though, I couldn't help but think that Ready Player One was a movie out of its time, overwhelmed and overshadowed by the superhero franchises that dominate the box office right now.  Ironically, it might have been a blockbuster film if it had been released in the decade that provided the background for the book.

- Sid

* For example, the astute reader will look at the shot at the top of this page and see the Winnebago Chieftain from Spaceballs, what looks like the powerlifter from Aliens, and a Battlestar Galactica Viper Fighter suspended over ED-209 from Robocop, who is standing beside the Ferrari from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  There's a glimpse of a Buck Rogers Thunderfighter, the maintenance pod from 2001, and the Swordfish II from Cowboy Bebop.

** You do have to wonder how that sort of thing is policed in the OASIS.  Does Wade's friend Aech have to pay anyone for the right to build a replica of the Iron Giant?

"First to the key! First to the egg!"

(Contributed by Karli Thomas)

When my dinner plans fell through on the same night that Sid was going to see Ready Player One, he invited me to join him. I hadn't planned on seeing the movie as I had heard mixed reviews and hadn't read the book. But, I love popcorn, I love going to movies and I love Sid, so I said yes, and joined him.

I am so glad that I did. The movie was full of delightful surprises. Not having read the book meant that I didn't know what I was missing, or if there was even anything to miss. The joy of spotting characters and hearing references from the 80s was fresh in a way it couldn't have been if I'd read the book.

 

Early on in Ready Player One there is a race sequence that plays a lot like a car chase. Full disclosure, there's not much I find more boring in movies than car chases. The longer a car chase goes on, the more bored I get. Car chases are where I find myself wondering what I should make for dinner, or if I should add pink streaks to my hair, or if I should rearrange the furniture in my living room.  (The two exceptions to this are The Italian Job and any chase sequence in any Bourne movie.) The race sequence in Ready Player One was exactly the right length to hold my attention and full of interesting extras to keep me entertained. It was during this sequence that I had the thought "Well, this is fun!".

 

And the fun continued!  The action sequences were interesting and the pace of the film neither rushed or dragged. The Shining sequence edged right up to 'too long' but didn't step over that line. The High Five were sweet and innocent and full of tame rebellion. I felt as though I was watching a good YA novel unfold on the screen. After the credits finished rolling and the lights in the theatre came back on, I turned to Sid and said "I loved that! It was just pure fun!"

In the days since seeing Ready Player One, I find myself thinking about it and wanting to talk about it. To me this is the the true test of a movie's enjoyability (not a real word, but it should be). If you haven't read the book, don't! Enjoy watching it unfold as a movie instead!

- Karli

Thanks for an excellent guest posting, Karli!  On behalf of the movie Easter Egg crowd, reading from left to right, you will note that the race starting line image above features 1) The Mach Five car driven by Speed Racer in the anime of the same name; 2) the classic television series Batmobile, and Mad Max's V-8 Interceptor from The Road Warrior.

 - Sid