This year’s WonderCon, the little sister convention to Comic-Con International’s San Diego Comic-Con, took place at the Anaheim Convention Center Friday, March 23 through Sunday, March 25.
After only attending for a short time after work on Friday, on Saturday morning, Violet and I prepared for our long stint in the Arena at WonderCon 2018. We arrived at the Convention Center and met up with Cyberaug and Corgi Kohmander, and headed into the Arena.
Batman Ninja
Violet and I were most excited to see the Ready Player One panel, but the panel prior to it was the Batman Ninja panel, which was an animated DC/Warner Bros. film that featured our favorite, brooding, Bat-loving hero in Japan, dressed as a Ninja (Samurai [?]), along with the Joker. We walked in towards the end of the film, but we got to see Batman and the Joker do some fun battle in a more anime-esce animation style.
After the episode ended, the creators, writers, and voice actors came out to discuss the movie, which was primarily written in Japan. An interesting note about the film is that Warner Bros allowed Japan and the writers to collaborate on the film, and had little studio input. Additionally, the writers also indicated that the film was not directly translated to English from Japanese, but was more “adapted” to English, which would probably mean it might work out better, given translations don’t always work well, given the differences in the languages being translated.
We did not see the full movie, but it did seem like a very interesting watch! The film actually releases digitally on April 24th, then on DVD and Blu-Ray on May 8. The Arena was packed during this panel, so I think a lot of people were excited to watch the film since it was still about a month from release. What we saw from the film did look interesting, and I will likely be watching it in full when it releases!
But enough of Batman Ninja and on to Ready Player One!
Ready Player One
For those unfamiliar with Ready Player One, it is a book written by Ernest Cline, that is about a teenager living in the future, where the real world is destroyed by over-population, so most people take refuge in a Virtual Reality world known as the OASIS. The main character, Wade Watts, finds himself undertaking a massive quest—to discover the keys that open an “Easter egg” that gives the finder full ownership of the OASIS along with a large sum of money. The owner of the OASIS had died, and upon his death, released this “quest.” However, a maniacal corporate shill, Sorrento, who works for IOI, is attempting to use his company’s resources to find the egg first. Oh, and I shouldn’t forget—the book is full of 80s references, and certainly tugs at people who are fond of the 80s.
Scott Mantz, who is from Access Hollywood, moderated the panel, and gave the film a pretty brief, but glowing review, appreciating all of the Easter eggs there are to find in the film. On the panel were author Ernest Cline, Zak Penn, the second Screenwriter (Ernest Cline started the screenplay), Tye Sheridan, who plays Wade Watts, Olivia Cooke, who plays a fellow Gunter (name of the people searching for the treasure) and love interest, Art3mis (that’s her in-OASIS name), Lena Waithe, who plays Aech (Wade’s friend), Ben Mendelsohn (who plays Sorrento, the villain), Philip Zhao, who plays Sho, and Win Morisaki who plays Daito (these brothers are also fellow Gunters in search of the treasure within the OASIS).
The panel began with a brief video, which showed some footage of the movie, along with Steven Spielberg discussing the movie and how the technology in the movie is the future of entertainment. In the video, Spielberg definitely seemed to be excited about making this film. The video also paid a little homage to Spielberg, showing clips of many of his previous films, like Jaws, Indiana Jones, The Color Purple, and many others.
Steven Spielberg seems like the perfect director for the movie after hearing this panel. Ernest Cline basically gushed about him the entire time, telling the audience how there would be no book without Steven Spielberg’s movies. Cline discussed how E.T.’s main character, Elliott, was a big inspiration for writing this book. We can see this is evident in the book as well, as there are many Spielberg references in the movie.
Interestingly, even though this is a Steven Spielberg movie, according to Zak Penn and Ernest Cline, they both said that Spielberg had a condition for directing the movie—that there should not be many, if any, references to his own films, and he didn’t want to pay too much homage to his own films. Zak Penn and Ernest Cline said that Spielberg kept taking out the Spielberg Easter Eggs in the film, but the two promised that Spielberg didn’t find them all. It will be exciting to see what made the cut!
Another topic that came up was how to make this book cinematic in nature. Zak Penn described how many times working with the author of a book can put the screenwriter at odds with the author, but Penn said working with Cline had been very collaborative, which is great news. Ernest Cline said that there are some pretty big changes in the film from the book to the movie, as it was necessary in order for the film to have a cinematic feel. He even provided an example of this, when he described how the character in the book plays a game of Pac-Man for 6 hours—as this would not be something very interesting to see on a movie screen. Penn and Kline said they had to come up with other ways to handle this so that the movie is a good movie experience.
Another interesting thing we learned at the panel is that Cline seemed to have cinematic hopes for the movie from the beginning, as he had been working on the screenplay along with the book, and new compromises would have to be made at that point in the writing. The good news to hear about the writing though, is that they both sound like it is a collaborative effort, which (almost) always translates to a better film than if the two parties were at odds with each other.
As for the cast, they all had some interesting aspects from their perspective to bring up. For example, none of the cast had done motion capture before. Lena Waithe (who is also in her first film) discussed how she looked into motion capture by watching behind the scenes of Avatar being made. The cast also talked about the challenges of filming in motion capture, as there are often very few objects in the room, so they had to rely on their own imaginations, and the director/crew providing the information for the group to react to. The group also talked about how the camera that picked up their facial movements or body movements required much grander gestures in order to pick up the movements properly. A specific story that Lena Waithe and Tye Sheridan told was regarding Lena portraying Aech, as his avatar is supposed to be an 8 foot tall character, so when people looked at Lena, they were supposed to look at a pink tennis ball on a stick that was mounted 2 feet above Lena’s head, but that the actors often forgot to, so the scene would have to be shot again. Lena also talked about portraying a robot, which required her to walk and “lumber” around differently, in order for the robot to look “right”. Zak Penn discussed how he was able to see this all “live”, as he saw Lena being trained how to walk by someone on set, and he would see two robots—one of Lena learning, and another of the crew member who was showing her what to do.
Olivia Cooke discussed how they didn’t have to worry about hair/make up during their motion capture scenes since it would not be seen in the animation. Olivia Cooke also discussed how there were often people visiting the set, and one day Tom Cruise showed up. Olivia was in her motion capture suit, and did want to meet him looking like this, but Spielberg invited her right over, which sounded like was embarrassing for her. Interestingly, when asked the most difficult part of filming the movie, the motion capture seemed to be the majority of what the panel answered.
Speaking of set visits, they seemed to have quite a few, with one big name being George Lucas. Zak Penn told a pretty funny story about George Lucas ribbing Spielberg for shooting on digital during his set visit, and Spielberg telling Lucas to get off his case as he has been filming digital for years. Penn described it as two ten year olds giving each other a hard time, which showed how good of friends the two were.
Another thing that came up was regarding the appearance of certain characters in the book being a surprise to the reader/Wade Watts, and how that would be handled in the movie. Zak Penn informed us that this would be handled differently in the film, because these actors need their screen time to connect with the audience better, and since the point of the appearances of some of the characters was not for shock value, it would not be as much of a surprise in the movie for more logistical reasons.
Other things that came up during the panel was the first video games system each person had—which was pretty much expected. Older generations like Ben Mendelsohn and Zak Penn had Pong, Ernest Cline had Atari 2600, while Tye Sheridan had Gamecube. Lena Waithe had an original Nintendo, and Philip Zhao didn’t have a system, but played on PC. The cast also discussed their favorite video games, with Ernest Cline saying that Adventure for the Atari 2600 was another big inspiration for him writing Ready Player One.
Ernest Cline also discussed how he completely forgot to use some 80s references in the book, but he said that the 80s were 10 years long, so trying to cram everything into one book would have been an impossible task. I did particularly wonder why Nintendo was not featured more, but that question will have to wait for another day.
The movie comes out this Wednesday night, March 28th, and Violet and I will be seeing it then! While it looks like it is going to be significantly different from the book, I hope that there are a lot of fun references/Easter eggs, and that it is as entertaining as or more than the source material! If you have a fondness for the 80s, video games, or movies, it would be worth a watch!
Following the Ready Player One panel in the Arena at WonderCon was Netflix’s Lost in Space panel. Click here for our recap and photos of it!
You can view more of our photos from the Ready Player One panel below.
