Movies are dream-making. This is a cliché. Not only movies, but novels, music, dramas, and paintings can all become containers of dreams.
I wrote a novel a long time ago. The heroine in the novel is a mixed-race, with short red hair. She is not tall, slender and flat-chested, but she is brave and independent. She likes to wear a leather jacket and ride a motorcycle for speeding. The novel is poorly written and I am ashamed to publish it, but this heroine has always been the most ideal female image in my mind. Later, I also communicated with some female friends. Most of them will be attracted to such "aggressive" women, probably because in the cultural context dominated by patriarchal aesthetics, this kind of courage does not let the eyebrows, temperament and innocence. The feminine women represent the hidden dreams of many girls.
Not long after the opening of "Top Player" was a drag racing scene in a virtual world, which directly raised the adrenaline of the audience to a high level. A slender girl in a cycling uniform, riding a red motorcycle sprinting on a dangerous highway. Needless to say, it must be the heroine who appeared in this way. When the heroine took off the helmet and revealed the face in the virtual world, my heart beat faster than the hero. She is exactly the same as my "ideal type"! Short red hair, heterochromatic pupils, a cold face, but innocent and agile when smiling. I gasped, and I believed that the movie was indeed a dream machine.
The heroine's name in the game "Oasis" is Art3mis, which is translated into Artemis in Chinese, which is the same as the hunting goddess in ancient Greek mythology. Artemis, the goddess of hunting, is one of Zeus's favorite daughters and the sister of the sun god Apollo. She loves freedom and is independent and brave. There is no shortage of similarities between the heroine's character and the fairy of the same name. Of course, this may be my wishful interpretation to a large extent.
As expected, the actor Parsifal fell in love with Artemis at first sight, and the seeds of love took root in the virtual world. But if dreams cannot come true, and love in the virtual world cannot be transplanted to reality, it will be a tragedy. In most movies and novels involving such subjects, it is always necessary to arrange a meeting between the heroes and heroines who love each other in the virtual world, so as to test their sincerity to a greater extent. "Top Player" talks about online dating. This kind of love is no longer avant-garde. Long before the Internet was invented, "pen love" was popular. The most famous one is "The Corner Shop", in which the pure and sweet Margaret Sullivan and the romantic and suave James Stewart play a pair of enemies, but they don't know that the other party is actually a secret life with their own geese. A pen pal of affection. The ending, of course, is that the truth comes to light, and the previous suspicions are cleared up, and handsome men and beautiful women are finally married. In the era of the popularization of the Internet, this film was remade into "Electronic Love Letter", starring popular lovers Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, and it has become a classic as usual.
If she is not beautiful, he is not beautiful? If two people who have fallen in love without meeting each other are utterly mediocre in reality, will they end up so beautifully? The director and screenwriter do not make this assumption. Once the ethereal online dating adds the skin-like factor, it will be swallowed up by reality immediately and there is no bones left. In recent years, there have been a lot of video game experience works, but no commercial film director really dare to tear the dream of an otaku. For example, "Pretty Girls" is full of hot and violent loli to satisfy the fantasies of male audiences; the fat house in "Pixel Wars" easily captures the hearts of the sexy beauties in red.
Movies adapted from games have always been gender-oriented. How to get more female audiences and non-player audiences has always been a headache for investors and directors. Artemis in "Ready Player One" is perfect, the kind of perfect for men and women. Spielberg has shown his ambition in this role-he is not only dreaming for game otaku, but also for women. He does not want this movie about VR games to become only a hotbed of otaku players' fantasy in the end.
After Parsifal fell in love, his partners kept pouring cold water on him: online dating is very dangerous, and love needs to be cautious. Who knows what she is like in real life? It is very likely that he is a man who weighs 250 kilograms, lives with his mother, and sleeps in the basement. Therefore, in addition to focusing on finding the three keys, the plot of the first half of the movie also left an important suspense: who is such a perfect Artemis in the game in reality? Everyone is extolling Yeats's "I love your pilgrim soul and the painful wrinkles on your aging face", but in reality, how many people will not run away when faced with a huge contrast skin?
As the plot progresses, Artemis gradually reveals the true face of Lushan. Her real name is Samantha, she is the same age as the hero, and has a slap-sized birthmark on her face. She is not a shocking beauty, but she is definitely not ugly. To be honest, I was a little disappointed to see here. For a moment, I really hoped that Artemis's real body was a 250-jin man, and the male protagonist was still committed to it. In this way, the classic line in "A Passionate Fire" (Billy Wilder, 1959) can be reproduced: "No one is perfect." But I believe that the brains of investors and directors are not broken, and they will never take this risk from a commercial point of view. They want to get rid of clichés but they will not challenge the aesthetic limits of the public. So I came up with a compromise method to draw a birthmark on the heroine’s face, which would not affect the actor’s appearance, please the audience who looks at the face, and pass the birthmark to the audience in the context of the film’s structure. Convey the message "She is not a beauty". As early as 2001, Du Qifeng's "Zhong Wuyan" operated like this.
One advantage of virtual games is that players can set their own image in the game according to their personal preferences. In reality, the dull male protagonist is a handsome silver-haired guy in the game; the female protagonist with a birthmark in the game is a confident girl with a flawless face in the game. Many years ago I read a best-selling American novel "Angel's Palmprint". The girl in the book had a palm-sized birthmark on her face. When she grew up, she had to cover it with a special foundation in order to travel freely in the social network. . In the highly developed future of science and technology, virtual games are the special foundation that creates a second face for people.
A qualified film usually pursues the double closure of the outer plot and the inner plot. The so-called outer plot is the main line of the story and the task that the protagonist needs to complete urgently, while the inner plot usually refers to the change curve of the character's inner world. The outer plot in "Ready Player One" is obvious, which is to find the secret key to pass the game and defeat the villain. In the uncomplicated narrative process, a large number of dazzling special effects, tribute to the classics and 80s pop culture symbols are added, which is extremely lively and dazzling. This undoubtedly squeezed the space for the character to be created in the film, so the protagonist’s friends and villains had to be treated as facial expressions. But Artemis is obviously the one that is favored. She doesn't have many roles, but she has the most complete character arc in the hugely informative film. She feels low self-esteem because of the birthmark on her face, and designed a flawless face for herself in the game; she is also tempted by the male protagonist, but refuses to meet him in reality. Later, she became teammates with him, gradually facing herself and trusting others. In the final climax battle, she stood majesticly in the hands of the villain, her eyes pierced, and the birthmark appeared in the same position on the face of the avatar, which was as red as fire, like a totem. Just this one scene, without saying more, knows that she has walked out of her appearance and low self-esteem, completed the construction of her own personality, and now the plot is closed.
For a long time, I have been repulsive of love in the virtual world. Love can only take root when it falls. Isn’t it a trifle to fall in love and get married in the game? However, with the waves of VR and AR craze, and after seeing works such as "Avatar", "Black Mirror" and "Western World", the concept has gradually shaken. Perhaps in a more technologically advanced future, everyone's life is divided into A and B like a tape. Side A is reality, side B is virtual; side A is a little character who endures his life, and side B is a hero who saves the world. Side A and Side B complement each other. Reality and virtuality live and die together. Humans shuttle between virtuality and reality to construct a more complex and three-dimensional personality. Therefore, although the protagonist is aware of the importance of reality, after having absolute control of the "oasis", he did not make a one-size-fits-all move to destroy the "oasis". He only chooses to suspend the game service two days a week to encourage everyone to Looking back to reality, there is no need to give up the hard-built virtual world.
A friend asked, if you don’t play games, you haven’t seen classic sci-fi movies, and you don’t understand American pop culture in the 1980s, can you still understand this movie? It must be admitted that this is a popcorn movie with a threshold for viewing. Without the relevant collective memories, it is difficult for ordinary viewers to feel the scalp tingling and heartbeat speeding during the viewing process. Fortunately, there is a love line in the story, at least love is something that can be understood without review.
Spielberg is more than seventy years old, but he still carries the romance of a little boy. This is not only reflected in his tribute to classic movies and games, but also in his innocent narrative perspective. Most of the emotions portrayed in his works are simple and simple, but they are extremely innocent and romantic. There was a scene in "Ready Player One" that moved me for a long time. Artemis and Parsifal are dating in the bar and dance to the air with nostalgic music. The virtual world is free of the constraints of gravity, and the people in the entire bar seem to be floating in space. Artemis danced in the air, with a long skirt floating in the air, like a firework that pierced the sky.
At this moment, I sincerely accepted the love in the virtual world. Think about it. Is there anything more romantic to be able to fall in love with the same person in two different worlds?
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