[ZeoRangerV]

Having never even heard of the thing before the trailer came out at Comic Con it's fair to say READY PLAYER ONE immediately caught my attention, and between the sheer amount of cameos in the trailer and the incredibly polarising opinion of it on the internet I knew I had to give it a read before the movie hit.

It was...an interesting read. All of the criticisms levied against it are incredibly fair, and despite enjoying my time with the book I can't really defend it. It's a guilty pleasure read for me, and a story that uses references as a tool to get you to fall in love with it. It's kind of like an episode of Family Guy as book, only instead of the most basic 80s references it's throwing the likes of Ultraman, Kikaider and obscure Atari games at you.

The delivery of said references is incredibly cringeworthy at times. Lots of "here is a thing from a show" and wikipedia style paragraphs about stuff. Reading Ultraman and Toei's Spider-Man referred to as Urataroman and Supaidaman (yes I know everyone calls it that but still) as if they were the shows' real names was particularly eye-rolling.

Even though the characters are fairly cookie cutter (OP protagonist and manic pixie dream girl love interest ahoy), I did get engaged with the setting/story and felt there were the makings of a fairly good movie in there. Especially since presumably the movie is going to have to be a lot more lax on how and when it uses its references.

So yeah, excitedly curious to see what Spielberg does with it.