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Hello...
Hahahaha, hahahha, ha, ha haha ha... ha... huuuu; sorry, I was thinking about the reaction of those in the last row. They're acting all shy, but I saw them nudging each other when I entered the room, "Oh, Poppi is telling us about a movie after so long!!! He's still alive!!!" But instead, I'm dead, and what follows for the reader won't be a movie review but a full tour in a micro-hell of chaos and nothing.
Happy reading, I missed you too.
At the time, I had been single for a few months after a long period of cohabitation. I was returning to the domestic walls and dragging with me a new sense of despair I had never felt before, two or three ugly sweatshirts gifted to me by something that now only knew how to hurt me, and a Babadook, which until the movie about the Babadook came out, I didn't know how to name or handle. And the next one who asks me why I worship Babadook so much should be content to know that "if you don't appreciate it, you've either never needed it, so wait, you will appreciate it sooner or later, or you're one of those who prides themselves on 'not having a heart'. A category I will never understand. 'Not having a heart' means, for normal people, 'being a jerk'. And I swear to God, for over 30 years, I've been wondering how so many people can brag about it. Then I answered myself that they're people who can't grasp the interchangeability of the above statements because being a jerk also means being dumb. Clinically dumb.
Billy, a true nerd friend, former "television producer", back then entangled in 3D printing - not anymore because "it's already too mainstream" (???)- during a dinner that appeared twenty minutes earlier in front of too many Camparis, offers me a book and a USB drive. And many colored popcorn we won't talk about here. Let's just say we won't talk about them, those are sacred things.
The next day, from the USB drive, I pulled out a series whose premise was a terrorist attack on my sensitivity: guy gets dumped by his ex. In depression, doesn't know what to do. Now, this is the first episode, at the end of the first episode he opens a detective agency and then the series is just one laugh after another... If you're not so bad off that you can only empathize with the depressed and wounded side of the protagonist. Because if things are that way, well, then I assure you that the best thing to do is to remove the USB drive and open the book you were lent. And stop whining that you're a soldier of testosterone-packed cinema, you little untouched sissy! Either you regain control, or next Christmas we'll gift you a tutu.
And so, in this climate of depression, sadness, and post-amph come-down, I found myself flipping through the pages of Player One.
The book...
Eh... well, it's not that I intend to recommend it to anyone. It talks about video games. About adventures of kids who have to save the world. From inside giant Japanese robots. There are people infiltrating stealthily in corporations, car chases. The DeLorean, a secret base inside a van under a pile of trash. Bad people killing other people's parents in a bad way. Disney-esque orphans. In short, it's a photonic coolness only in potential, because then to put all this stuff together you have to make a movie for kids, not a novel. There, good. Player One is a movie on paper. It works like a god, and it's a photonic coolness if you want to see something light. Sure, you have to read instead of watching a screen, but the return you'll get will be that. You know The Goonies by heart for 30 years, read Player One, you'll enjoy it like a kid in front of his first episode of Ken Shiro.
Because beyond the obviously cinematic-themed indebtedness even before the gaming world, there's a writing style that is tremendously "visual" (oh, sorry: I already can't write, imagine if I can review someone else's book). It's fast, and if it takes you more than three days to finish, it's because you've worked too much. Or you're out of the target, where the target is: kids raised with Daitarn and Uforobot. If you're part of this generation... oh, as I already wrote on Anobii "I don't recommend Player One, because it's so nerd that I'd be ashamed, but I swear to Christ, and I bet my right testicle (even the left one, never mind the greed, I have four aces in hand) you'll finish it in a weekend and it'll entertain you so much you'll be ashamed."
After this book, I was thrilled. I knew of Cline from Fanboys, a "nerd star wars" themed little film he had written the screenplay for. The movie wasn't great, but the screenplay had quite a few more than original ideas. That's when I started stalking the character on his social channels until the day it came out that he was releasing another book. I got excited, did some research, and discovered that Player One was now unavailable, that the publishing house distributing it had gone bankrupt, and that therefore his new book "Armada" would never be seen in Italy.
Eheh, no way I thought: Player One in America had sold really well. Cline worked in Hollywood... trilogies are all the rage... well, it's only a matter of time. Within ten years someone will make a terrible film version of the nerd epic, they'll reprint the book, and at that point, to ride the wave, they'll also release Armada. It's just about waiting and knowing that this movie will be violated by some idiot in Hollywood.
One evening... several evenings, I happened to discuss the matter with friends I converted to reading the said book and we all agree: a movie couldn't be made, it's true, too many things happen and they're told just by "chapters", in blocks. We hate trilogies and don't want to see them, but it would be nice if someone could make it decently. Of course, these were all our assumptions, the idea of the film in Hollywood, or at least on the channels I follow, would arrive three years later, the movie five.
I remember at one point I laughed. I was still drinking, and I think that evening it was Nebbiolo. Few wines I like more than Nebbiolo (good, obviously). I laughed, looked at Billy, and shot it in his face: Spielberg. Damn, he's perfect: the movie is an homage to the films he directed and produced in the 80s, he's practically perfect with blockbusters, he's only botched 2 in his entire career, and they were both crazy projects.
And that's it, it died there. Beautiful evenings with Billy.
Years went by, Billy ended up working in Saudi Arabia, I hear little from him, always on WhatsApp. One day, at an unlikely hour of the night, God knows what time zone it was and is, my phone buzzes, I open it and read a serene: "check Spielberg's projects on IMDB!"
I don't know how much the call cost me that I made five seconds after seeing the IMDB page, but I remember the first thing I heard was: "eh, now you'll read Armada too, huh???" Billy knows English well, he read Armada in its original language. I've only seen the cover, beautiful.
The film took, I can't remember if it was two or three years to come out, and we happily waited for it. And we went to see it together happily because he returned to live in Italy in February. And when we left the cinema, he was happy.
I, on the other hand, was not.
The film.
We got there, high five!
It's not a trilogy.
So I'm not going to talk about it.
Because I can't.
I don't know if what I've understood about the film, I understood because it's clear, or if I understood it because I read the book... three times (yes, I told you it reads faster than a comic). So everything that happens on screen is perfectly clear to me, but I suspect that those who haven't read the book will only see a parody of a plot interspersed with special effects added just for color.
The film's most impressive action scene begins after 3 minutes. Like Matrix Reloaded. Which is all wrong. And Spielberg can't not know that.
Then, well, there are two or three good things for me who read the book. But I (who read the book) am not the best witness to examine: the initial shantytown is identical, sequence after sequence, to what I had in mind. Same for the refuge. And that's quite obvious: Cline drew from a standardized imagery by Spielberg's youth cinema that heavily forms part of my cultural heritage, which influences it, and when the two meet, they necessarily give birth to what... I no longer know what I'm writing, "but the facts are what they are, so I'm right" Quote."
I realize that this page lacks pretty much everything needed to be defined as a "review," but I can't make one for this film, I'm not able, I appreciated the book too much and know it too well to objectively talk about the film.
Which leaves me with very little: weak characters, flat and unadventurous aesthetics, the only good point I found was that it's not a trilogy. Sure, as a trilogy it probably would have worked.
Well, anyway, I hope they translate Armada, you all go find the reprint of the Player One book (whose original title is precisely Ready Player One, and for once we managed not to butcher a title on placards. Yes, okay, we butchered the book's title, but not too much, come on.). Retrieve it especially if the film made you cringe. I promise you'll like it. If not, I'll shoot three or four of Billy's colored popcorn down your throat to bring your good mood back.
Bye, dear ones, stay well, I'm going back to dying before reading everything again: I'm writing while lying on the sofa watching a TV that's piercing my eyes: I can no longer see anything, and I know for certain that for every three keys, I press one wrong more than when I'm writing at a desk... it must have been a ordeal to get this far, but I warned you."
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