'The Art of Ready Player One', Book Review, Jawad Mir

0:06Jawad MirHello everyone. This is Jawad, your host of Kingdom of Dreams podcast. Today I'll be going over this wonderful book called The Art of Ready Player One in more depth than previous video. It has a forward by Steven Spielberg, introduction by Ernest Cline, who's the author of the original novel, as well as this book is written by Gina McIntyre, and it's provided to us by Inside Editions, who's also the publisher. So let's just, go through this wonderful and beautiful book. So the opening page, you have a still image from, Ready Player One finale. You have Iron Giant, and then there's a beautiful illustration from the race scene where you have... See King Kong, you see DeLorean, you see Ghostbuster mobile. And, there's a forward by Steven Spielberg, as I mentioned earlier, where he talks about that when he first became aware of it and when he went through the book, he realized that how it was so important for him to do this. Not mainly because his films were in there, but because eighties was one of those things where a lot of us grew up in, you know, as audience members, as filmmakers, as creative storytellers, and he really wanted to make this.

1:12Jawad MirAnd one of the things that he was really adamant about was making sure that most of his films do not make, the cut of the film, in Ready Player One. But because the people that were involved on this film were mostly people who grew up on Spielberg films in the eighties, you know, you're talking about the Island Wizardry team. You're talking about obviously Ernest Cline, who's the author, the production designers and all that. So they threw in a lot of stuff, and as you can probably remember, especially in the end, there's a very quick shot, maybe two or three seconds, of the final, fin… final battle, whereas, all these characters are coming to attack Planet Doom, and you see Gremlin right in the front. And actually that took me a third time, when I watched it the third time, that's when I noticed it because there's so many characters in this film, so much stuff that you have to watch it over and over again to pick things up. I mean, I saw Bumblebee somewhere in the middle of the film. Then there's other little c… characters, Hello Kitty. So many things in there. And, then Ernest Cline has an introduction who talks about that when the book was even… wasn't even published, studios had a bidding war, and Warner Brother Pictures actually ended up winning the bid.

2:23Jawad MirAnd they a… asked him, "Do you have a wish list of directors?" And he gave them a list, and one director he never mentioned in there, which has most amount of stuff in the film, was Steven Spielberg, because he didn't even imagine that would ever happen, and lo and behold, it did. This is a scene from the ending where they're playing the adventure game. For some reason, this reminds me of... I mean, yeah, I know they're playing a game and everything, but the TV set and somebody standing in front of a TV set reminds me of Poltergeist poster or that, you know, very, popular image. I wonder if that was done intentionally or if it was subconscious. And, then you have, chapters about welcome to Oasis, what Oasis is about. One of the things I really liked about this film, was very similar to Spiel… Spielberg's AI, Artificial Intelligence and Minority Report, is that all these three films are about future, right? One sets in twenty forty-five.

3:24Jawad MirI don't remember the years Minority Report and AI sets in, but it's in the very distant future. But they were able to balance everything from the futuristic look to rugged streets, to dark alleyways, to regular couch in a room. Blade Runner did that too, and I think that is, aside from many other factors, obviously the characters and the stories, from a production design, that is so important, for audience to be drawn into because, you know, we… we're not familiar with the futuristic technology other than the, what we see in the film, and we have never been in that environment. So in order for t… to make things relatable, Spielberg has this amazing ability to do these little things. A lot of other filmmakers too, but Spielberg really, you know, is up there in that regard. And that I really enjoyed. And then you have all these, character sketches. You have, Parzival. You have,..

4:25Jawad MirThe... What I love about this film, obviously these illustrations too, is the level of detail. Like if you look at the skin color, skin to… tone, not tone, skin, the texture on the skin in the film is just so vivid. There's these little minute blocks that make things stand out. And even in these, concept arts, I mean, look at this. That's what I love about these art of so and so books, that there's so much stuff behind the scenes stuff that we never get to see. A lot of the concept art that is designed for the film, they never even see light of the day in the movie, and that happens to a lot of artists. Obviously, they get paid, it builds into their portfolio, but it never sees the film. Like this is completely eighties, nineties look. Which I don't know if that was in the film. And this is Artemis played, avatar name Artemis, the, real life name Samantha. And these are some of the concept arts over the action sequences.

5:27Jawad MirThe dance sequence dress. And then you have Helen, which is a real world name, and I always have a hard time pronouncing it, pronouncing it, so I'm not gonna do it. This was a very good character. It really, to me personally, it connected me more to the film than anything else, especially in the first act of the film where Iron Giant comes in. And I... As in, Iron Giant is one of those films that if you grew up in the late nineties or early two thousands, I don't remember what year it came out. It came out at the time when… traditional animation was slowly drifting away and computer animation was coming in. This was mostly a 2D movie, pretty much all of it, except Iron Giant character. That was all three-dimensional. And it was such a great film. It had so many similarities to E.T., directed by Brad Bird, who went to make on films like Mission Impossible 4, I think.

6:27Jawad MirHe did one of them. I think it was the fourth. And then he did, The Incredibles. He did, Ratatouille. And the film opened up. I think they had expectations, very high expectations. Because it was a non-Disney animated feature, which at the time was very difficult for non-Disney animated films to do well at the box office, it made $5 million on the opening weekend. And I think it probably totaled up to $13 million, which was like three times or four times below its, production budget. Then you have, Dado, Toshiro. Look at these designs. Just immense amount of detail and planning that goes into, right? Show, I'm not even gonna pronounce his real, life, character name. And, yeah, it's just amazing. This is the, James Halliday attic room. This reminded me a lot of the scenes from Goonies, Home Alone, and, what was that movie?

7:28Jawad MirGremlins. I think Gremlins had something similar. But the idea is that, you know, as an 80s kid or a 90s kid even, definitely back then, attic was a place to be. You know, like your escape room where you have like everything is all over the place. If you're a movie nerd, you have, or game nerd, you have your Atari system or your Game Boy, and then you have your movie posters and books and all that stuff. And then this is the curator, which was played by Simon Pegg. This scene here, I wondered when I was watching the film that how they did the three-dimensional camera movement. So I was looking at behind-the-scenes stuff. I mean, I had imagined they probably had like multiple cameras positioned in an L shape. But it turned out, if you look at some of the behind-the-scene, making of, they had at least, I'm willing to bet, at least 15 to 20 cameras in an L shape. So it was recording everything from this angle and this angle simultaneously. And it just came out to be this amazing piece where curator would be showing, Parzival the three-dimensional archive, scene from, Halli… James Halliday's past, and he would just swipe, and the camera would shift.

8:42Jawad MirAnd, then you have, all these beautiful illustrations. They're just marvelous stuff in there. And, you know, Nolan Sorrento, one of the things I really liked about this antagonist, it's so important to have your protagonist, feel relatable. You have to have a strong antagonist. And that's one of the things that a lot of great films have. You know, you look at, Batman, Dark Knight Rises, you know, the Joker antagonist. You have Schindler's List. You have, you know, you have this film. Then you have so many other films like Gladiator. The strong antagonist which show, just shows as human as well with vulnerabilities really sets things up. And one of the things that they showed with Nolan Sorrento was, his weakness was more or less that he didn't know, he didn't want to kill anyone. He was always giving orders and which is why in the end, he finally holds a gun.

9:43Jawad MirI-R0k, loved his design and his personality. It was like a si… you know, like a humor character. Every time he said something, it sounded like a film nerd, which I thought was pretty neat. Yeah, look at these. And this was, all the, motion capture, animation that was done in this, studio. One of the things Spielberg talks about that how he, did not... He actually enjoyed, after he was done the motion capture part, he was so glad to be in a real, you know, live action set because that's something that he had been used to all his life. And, this scene is the one where, right here, you see Bumblebee right here and all these other characters. That's one of the few scenes in the entire film where you see a ridiculous amount of characters just walking around, and you can't figure out who is who. You really have to pay attention. I'm imagining some of these characters that you see in this illustration were in the film in the distant background. I don't remember picking on them.

10:45Jawad MirThis is, I'm guessing, some sort of a mall. And then you have the casino city. I mean, look at this. I love this design, that they did. And a lot of pages with nonstop visual imagery. And this was one of my favorite, and I think a lot of people's favorite sequences, was Off to the Races. When you see, when you first see DeLorean, and then it goes up the ramp, and it comes down, and then it goes through T-Rex and King Kong. One of the things I didn't notice about this, and I noticed it when I was going through this book, was DeLorean, in the front of it, where the lo… in front, in the front of it had a little light that was going back and forth, and that's KITT from Knight Rider show. For those of you who don't know, it's a David Hasselhoff TV series where a car has a computer built in, kind of like Siri now, but much more advanced.

11:48Jawad MirAnd it had the light on the hood in the front, and I think that was a little tribute they did to, Knight Rider. Like, this is the light that I'm talking about right here in the front. And this is the illustration of T-Rex chewing up the car. Like, if you look at this, right, like you have so much c… great stuff happening. You have like an old New York type feel. Then you have, you know, it presented in a motion capture animation. Then you have this p… you know, time machine, DeLorean. And then one of the things that they did in Wade's world, the place that he lived where the film opens up on, and he comes down like four or five stories, they actually built a real, stack of trailers on top of each other as... And this is some of the illustrations. And I was, watching, one of the interviews of production designer, Alex, I forget his last name. He said that the way they stacked it up, they had wanted to make sure that it was not just built that way.

12:51Jawad MirThey wanted to make sure it came across like over time, you know, these trailers kind of popped in as population grew. So it had to look not perfect or not designed from scratch. And everything else around it obviously was, computer animation, sorry, motion capture animation. And this entire, office, that was where everybody was playing the game, was built on Warner Brothers studio lots in London. And because to avoid any kind of extra production cost, they had to find an exterior which was in UK, not in back in States, that would look like, you know, Ohio. So they went to Birmingham, which is about a couple of hours away from UK, and that's where they shot all the stuff that was exteriors, like the ending, everything, the streets, all that stuff they shot in Birmingham. This is a great image of Spielberg directing.

13:53Jawad MirThe suits were pretty neat, too, and the gloves, and everything was done s… so much aesthetically nice. And this scene, chaos at the Distracted Globe, you know, when, our protagonists come under attack, and they can't find a way out, Parzival, he takes the Zemeckis cube, which he had bought earlier after winning the first key. He throws it out there, and it reverses time and gives them ti… enough time to escape. Instead of showing that they're gonna get in DeLorean and go back and change time, they just use something very small, very simple, and got the point across as a little nudge to Back to the Future trilogy. So this was a real explosion they did. If you watch the behind-the-scene, footage, the actual trailer stack that they built, they blew it up, in real time. And they had to... I remember watching the behind the scene where, they had to practice and rehearse obviously so many times just to make sure the camera angle is right, the actor's movement is right, and everything is to the T before they actually shoot, and it came out perfectly at the end.

15:05Jawad MirSo the scene about The Shining, again, something new to me. In the book, they were supposed to go to a film called War Games, which I remember seeing it as a kid, and I have to watch it again. It's been such a long time. But Spielberg changed it to The Shining because of his relationship with Stanley Kubrick, his friendship over the last, you know, when he was alive. And obviously he did, Artificial Intelligence, which was being developed by Stanley Kubrick. And after he passed away, Spielberg directed that couple of years later. And in order to recreate the hotel scene, the team, behind the scene really tried to mimic it using, you know, computer imagery. But every time they tried that, it didn't work out. So what they did was they went back to the film stock of The Shining, and they replicated everything digitally. And they put all these characters that were motion capture characters in this environment. And that's why it ca… turned out to look almost identical, and just perfect. This is the famous, The Blood River scene, the illustrations for it.

16:13Jawad MirYeah. I'm just so glad that they published this book. This is Planet Doom. And then you have all these beautiful illustrations. That's the Zemeckis cube that I was talking about. This I thought was pretty neat. Maybe this is me looking into it too much. You know, you have a T-Rex, which is a character from one of the Spielberg films, Jurassic Park, and then you have Napoleon. Napoleon was a series that Stanley Kubrick was developing, before he passed away. And then in s… about a couple of weeks ago, Spielberg announced that they have been developing a miniseries based on Stanley Kubrick's notes. So I wonder if this is just a little tribute to their friendship, you know, Napoleon riding T-Rex as in like Stanley Kubrick and Spielberg's friendship. And there's a nice... Look at this. And there's a nice little pull-out here. I mean, this is such a good thing for people who are trying to get into film, especially illustration, just to inspire them.

17:19Jawad MirThis is a giant from Sinbad and Seven Seas. I saw that movie so many times along with, Jack and the Giant Slayer, in the '80s. They came out in the '50s. If you watch them now, yeah, you may think, okay, well, the animation is so, you know, not up to par. Obviously, it was the '50s. But if you look at it from that perspective, especially the stop-motion, it's just amazing what they were able to achieve like over seventy years ago, right? And there's the famous Iron Giant sequence. And what's so cool, because Iron Giant in the original film was 3D, so he looked pretty much exactly the same as he did in Iron Giant original film and obviously in, Ready Player One And then this scene where he's, creating a pathway for Parzival and Artemis, above the lava, and eventually he falls into it. That's… And then he sticks his thumb out as in thumbs up. That's a little tribute to Terminator 2 because that's how T2 died, in Terminator 2, which was directed by James Cameron.

18:26Jawad MirSpeaking of James Cameron, one of the things I really enjoy with very few directors, and James Cameron, Steven Spielberg being the two of them, whenever they use special effects of any kind, CGI, motion capture, you look at Abyss, you look at Avatar, you look at Terminator, you look at Jurassic Park, you look at, Indiana Jones, you look at so many other films, Minority Report, AI, they're just so blended in properly that if you look at the films back, that made, that were made back then now, they look way better than some of the stuff that's being done right now. And I think that's a really great salute to them that they are able to figure out how to balance them too and make them realistic looking. Yeah, and that's it, guys. So this was the book, Ready Player One, The Art of Ready Player One, published by, Inside Edition right here, right here. So what I'm gonna be going through in the next little while is that the way the format of the show is, you know, as you know, it started off as being focused on Spielberg, Amblin, and DreamWorks, but now it's sort of expanded to cinema worldwide.

19:36Jawad MirWe'll still be doing a lot of stuff that's Spielberg, Amblin, and DreamWorks, just because a lot of great films that came out in the eighties and the nineties, even the last twenty years were based out of that. But at the same time, we're gonna be covering, films like, we're gonna have people on our show that worked on films like Die Hard, Home Alone 1 and 2, Crimson Tide, Top Gun. I'm just trying to remember. There's so many names. We have got about, you know, enough interviews or conversations scheduled to have episodes three times a week until mid-May. And then aside from that on, you know, that would be Monday, Wednesdays, and Thurs… Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays. And then Tuesday and Thursday, I'm trying to play around a couple of things. At least one of those days I will have, a review like this on a book. So we have Art of Ready Player One. I still have to go to the la… through the last part of the Jurassic World book. Then there's a Jurassic Park trilogy book, which will be, made into three different parts as well.

20:38Jawad MirThen there's Jaws Memories from Mar-Martha Vini… Vineyard. Then there's Die Hard, and there's Tenet, and so much other stuff. And yeah, one of the interviews that I'm really looking forward to, that I've been trying to get for a long time, I finally got it, is, Lorna Cook, one of the directors of one of my favorite films, Spirit: Stallion of Cimarron. So a lot of stuff co-coming. I mean, these are just some of the things that I mentioned, some of the names. And then, you know, I want to thank you guys for sticking around. And if you're on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, head over to YouTube to watch these kind of videos where it's more visual and subscribe. And thank you so much, guys. Have a great one.