Awesome / Ready Player One (2018)

Moments pages are Spoilers Off.

Are you willing to fight?

The Trailers

• The reveal trailer is about fifty shades of awesome, with jaw-dropping visuals and a bevy of Freeze-Frame Bonuses. Highlights include Harley Quinn and Deathstroke exiting the Distracted Globe (and Gandalf among the airborne dancers), Parzival standing in a snowy landscape with the Iron Giant, a gigantic battle that includes Duke Nukem and Freddy Krueger fighting Aech, who's wielding a Halo assault rifle, while someone dressed as Napoleon rides Scorponok into battle against an army of ostrich-riding knights, and a huge chase between the Sixers, Aech driving a Twisted Metal-inspired Big Foot monster truck, Art3mis riding Kaneda's bike, and Parzival driving the freaking DeLorean (you can also see the A-Team Van and a 1958 Plymouth Fury among all the cars at the start, in addition to the Interceptor during the chase). All set to an epic orchestral piece that sounds like Pure Imagination and Rush's]] Tom Sawyer.
  • The official trailer reveals even more characters! Seen racing into battle with a lot more characters includes King Kong, the Mach 5, the Batmobile, Tracer, Chun-Li, Lara Croft, FemShep and the Battletoads leading an army of skeletons, Chuckie lunging at an enemy and the RX-78-2 Gundam materializing and joining the fray!
  • A later TV spot has a space marine that appears to be James Raynor himself. However, he's also specifically wearing what seems to be his Stars and Stripes skin.
  • Just one part of the licensing to make this film would be potentially expensive. About half the franchises listed in the first paragraph aren't even major parts of the narrative, BUT THEY GOT THEM. Also, considering that either Spider-Man (Japan) or Ultraman had to be replaced due to known licensing issues, to see a freaking Gundam (more so the original RX-78, albeit looking more like the real-life 1/1 Gundam erected in Japan years ago) appear is pure awesome in itself.
• When you see the DeLorean in the trailer, it's seen with the hover conversion active, spinning round... only to land and keep driving, something that was outright impossible with the original car.
  • Also, another Freeze-Frame Bonus is that you're able to see that even the DeLorean's distinctive time circuits are reproduced. When they decided to do Doc Brown's famous time machine, they did it.
  • Another thing noticed is something added to the DeLorean's front end... Namely, a moving red light. The Ecto-88 will have most of its distinctive features INTACT.
• The second trailer goes for Awesome Music using Van Halen's "Jump" to set the action.
• The third trailer makes great use of "Pure Imagination" and shows people literally running through the streets in OASIS gear to fight the Sixers and re-take Castle Anorak. And when the screen shifts back to the other world, who are they represented by? SPARTANS.

The Movie

• Halliday's will. Nearly every moment of it is true to the book.
  • Earlier, there's Halliday's Establishing Character Moment: although he's an eccentric geek, he proves to be cheeky enough to trick the board members into looking under their chairs to find... nothing. Crosses over into Funny Moments.
• The DeLorean model's transformation into its normal size TRON-style set to the tune of Joan Jett's "I Hate Myself For Loving You", especially when the engine revs up at exactly the moment the chorus comes up, is truly something to behold.
• Art3mis's performance in the first race is extremely impressive, with her nonchalantly dodging every obstacle, until she finally gets caught in an impossible spot by King Kong. This shows you exactly the kind of movie you paid for.
• Wade's no wuss in the real world either. While he is a little intimidated, he doesn't take any crap from Rick when he comes back to the trailer despite getting pushed around and punched in the face.
• Art3mis's dress at the Distracted Globe is stunning, and she easily keeps pace with Parzival during their impromptu dance-off to "Stayin' Alive" by The Bee Gees.
• Wade using a Rubik's cube artifact, deemed a Zemeckis Cube in-universe, to essentially rewind enemies by about sixty seconds, giving himself and Art3mis some borrowed time to escape. What makes it even better is Spielberg himself told Alan Silvestri, the original scorer on BTTF, that he didn't want that moment to just sound like Back To The Future, he wanted it to BE Back To The Future. Suffice it to say, he succeeded.
• When the High Five play through Stephen King's "The Shining". Just about every inch of it is faithful to the Kubrick movie. Well, except for the zombies, but that can be expected from Halliday's Easter Egg.
• Wade's response to Sorrento pretending to be a nerd, and trying to win him over. He says he knows Sorrento is faking it, and calls him on just being another Corrupt Corporate Executive.
  • How did he know Sorrento was faking? He asked him what Halliday would've done. The moment Sorrento coldly responds, "James Halliday is dead," that's when Wade knows this businessman is just a fraud, because no OASIS nerd worth their haptic gloves would've trivialized Halliday's memory so readily.
  • Even better, the way the camera switches from Wade in his van to Sorrento in his office makes it feel as though second-hand, Wade is telling his rant to Sorrento's face.
• Samantha is enough of a leader to have assembled a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits to oppose IOI's combined efforts to find all the keys. Think of them as the Good Counterpart to IOI's unfeeling corporate machine.
• Toshiro taking out the IOI drone with a baseball bat. What's more, his using it with the skill of a samurai sword is how you know he's Daito in real life.
• Using every detail he remembered about Sorrento's personal War Room and rig (which is every detail), Parzival, Daito and Aech recreate that room to convince Sorrento that Wade and Toshiro have him at gunpoint, and therefore extract information from him.
• Everything involving the final battle on Planet Doom. Really, until the Cataclyst explodes, the entire battle is one Moment of Awesome after another.
  • Wade's epic speech to everyone in the OASIS, rallying them to battle the Sixers.
  • Sorrento and crew don't believe anyone will come to his aid. They are very wrong. Countless players come to aid them. The Sixers bust out every weapon they have, but Sorrento stays locked behind his shield.
  • Taking advantage of the chaos, Samantha sneaks around IOI's headquarters, learns how to deactivate the shield and then infiltrates Castle Anorak (using one of the Sixers' rigs, no less) to open the way for Wade and the others.
  • Wade hoisting his boombox over his head, playing "We're Not Gonna Take It". As his Badass Army charges behind him.
  • Art3mis and Parzival absolutely wrecking the Sixers in a straight fight, as is to be expected.
  • Aech finally unleashing the Iron Giant, as seen in the trailers.
  • We briefly cut to the real world to show Aech throwing Wade a weapon. We then cut back to the game to see what was handed over: THE CHUCKY DOLL! Parzival and Art3mis have to dodge his indiscriminate knifing themselves before throwing him out of the Delorean where he proceeds to absolutely shred his way through a bunch of Sixers.
  Sixer: (about to be killed) IT'S FUCKING CHUCKY!!!
  • Sorrento's last resort? Mechagodzilla. Complete with the theme "Godzilla's March".
  • Daito's arrival in response, with the Gregarious Gauntlet. He proceeds to transform into a Gundam and fight Mechagodzilla one-on-one. What ensues is an all-out brawl between an iconic mecha and a mechanical kaiju.
    • And he jumps into the fray from the cargo hold of Serenity.
    • In an excellent bit of sound design, the classic Gundam warning sound can be heard right before Daito's final attack.
    • In an equally-nice visual touch, watch Gundam-Daito's face turn toward Parzival and Art3mis as he intercepts Mechagodzilla's descending foot-stomp. For an instant, his robotic face looks like hand-painted anime artwork, not just another CGI robot face.
  • Even as Daito loses Gundam form, he still takes the time to flip Sorrento off before being vaporized.
  • The Iron Giant, on its last legs, still distracts Mechagodzilla long enough for Art3mis to use a grenade, bringing it down and temporarily killing Sorrento.]Also, Art3mis' avatar is shown to now have the same birthmark she was so ashamed of, indicating that she's getting over that lifelong insecurity.
    • Fringe benefit: Mechagodzilla's fall even zeroes out an entire war room of Sixers. By landing on them.
  • The Iron Giant becoming a bridge, allowing Parzival and Sho to pass.
  • Parzival wiping out an entire legion of Sixers. With the Holy Hand Grenade, no less.
  • Likewise, ninja Sho taking I-R0k and his terrifying screaming-skull weapon out of the action by cutting his arm off at the shoulder. With a shuriken? No, with the Glaive.
  • Credit where credit's due: That Sixer at the end still beat Adventure in the midst of a massive battle. He was wrong about it being the path to the Easter egg, but it's still impressive.
  • Wade's final showdown with Sorrento. He doles out kicks, punches, and extremely impressive fighting skills. And a Hadouken. All with a badass one-liner. You don't mess with a gamer in a video game.
    • Better than that, Wade initially gets his ass handed to him by Sorrento when he fights with Boring, but Practical martial arts that would be effective in reality. It's when he starts using video game logic, bringing out the jumping spin-kicks, the Hadokens, and the flashy stuff that he starts to dominate.
  Wade: This is my world, Sorrento!
  • Wade surviving the Cataclyst wiping everything out, because the quarter the Curator tossed him was an extra life. Doubly so with The Reveal that the Curator was Og, helping them uncover Halliday's egg all along.
• All of the High-Five (save Aech, who’s driving) taking on corporate assassin F’Nale in the real world inside of Aech’s van:
  • Daito is first into the fray and shows some impressive martial arts skills, actually getting the drop on F’Nale for a moment and disarming her before she fights back properly.
  • Samantha then jumps in, despite having no real-world combat skills whatsoever. While she gets her ass kicked for her trouble, she occupies F’Nale for a good few moments and stops her from attacking Wade.
  • This then gives Sho, an 11-year old boy with no hope in a straight fight]], the opportunity to fling a heavy oxygen cylinder directly into F’Nale’s gut, winding her and utterly wrecking her hopes for a quick, clean win.
  • And finally, Wade ducks back into reality for a moment, uses his suspension rig to kick off the wall and spin around, and roundhouse kicks F’Nale right out of the back of the moving van and into the street.
• Bordering on Heartwarming and poignant, Parzival deciding against signing the OASIS to himself and no one else. Why? Because he understands that was Halliday's biggest regret, cutting Og out of his partnership. So he's going to share the OASIS with his friends. As it turns out, that was the correct response.
• Sho turns out to actually be an eleven-year-old boy. The awesomeness lies in that he's perfectly aware of his reputation as "the biggest badass in the OASIS" and happens to Think Nothing of It. Though he brushes them off, Wade and later Samantha are no less starstruck.]]
• Og revealing he was the museum curator simply by tossing a quarter to Wade. When Wade guesses his identity, Og even does it in style when he imitates the curator's butler-like mannerism and compliments "Well played, Parzival."
• One of Wade's rules for the OASIS is to close it on certain days. Unlike the book where the future was just hand-waved, it shows Wade actively doing something to fix the world so it's not destroyed by its inactivity and addiction to the OASIS. After what Halliday told him, he has a better understanding that people need to stop escaping life and start fixing their reality. Not only does he do it, he does it despite the fact that the populace objects to it. He's just bravely lead a war like a real leader, and like any real leader, he's not going to shrink away from doing the right thing for his people.
• While the book made it vague that Sorrento and IOI was going to be punished for their crimes, at the end of the film the first thing the High Five did with their ownership of the OASIS is ban all loyalty centers (i.e. the places where gamers in debt are forced into indentured servitude) from accessing the OASIS. Since the loyalty centers can no longer turn a profit, they have no option but to shut down.
  • Just the fact that Sorrento (and his assistant F'nale) go to prison. What's more, Aech got his confession recorded, meaning they have sound evidence of what he did. And the cherry on top is when she flashes her trademark cheshire-cat-smile from the book.