Steven Spielberg’s upcoming virtual reality tale, Ready Player One, will feature a host of classic video game and popular culture characters. From the newest trailer to the oldest, we see cameos by Lara Croft to Gandalf to USMBC soldiers of Halo all the way to the titular character of The Iron Giant (1999).
The movie ties in icons across Disney, Sony, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, and Universal universes. Managing to get all those companies to comply could have been tedious, but, luckily, everyone cooperated seamlessly.
“Everybody basically came on board to help us take their IPs and allow us to create easter eggs from their own cultural phenomenons,” Spielberg said.
And, for the first time, PlayStation and Xbox heroes will be portrayed side by side. Some names are about to be dropped so you are warned. Spoilers are ahead!
From the trailer, we see Croft of the Tomb Raider franchise and Commander Shepherd from Mass Effect enjoying the bar. Reports indicate Kratos from God of War, Nathan Drake from Uncharted, and Sackboy from Littlebigplanet will appear in the film. According to Comicbook.com, the aforementioned characters, and likely many more, will take part in the final battle alongside Parzival against the evil corporation. Additionally, Spielberg and Warner Bros. received rights to use R2-D2 in the film.
“We didn’t want to use the main cultural icons from any of the Disney Star Wars films because those are ongoing. That’s part of our contemporary world right now.” Spielberg said.
Viewers privy to the film’s screening at this year’s South by Southwest conference praised the film. Eric Vespe, senior entertainment writer for The Know over at Rooster Teeth, took to Twitter to rave about the experience.
So yeah, I LOVED Ready Player One. It’s perhaps the geekiest movie ever made. So so so happy right now!
— Eric Vespe (@EricVespe) March 12, 2018
CNN reporter Frank Pallotta described the film as “Pure Spielbergian joy.”
#ReadyPlayerOne is nerdy as all hell but it’s hard to not leave the theater with a huge smile on your face. Pure Spielbergian joy. pic.twitter.com/7ToMQ7uIdL
— Frank Pallotta (@frankpallotta) March 12, 2018
More characters to pictured in the trailer are the Joker and Harley Quinn at 3:53 and horror genre’s own Chucky from Child’s Play at 4:03. Ready Player One hits theaters on March 29. Maybe, by the end of the film, audiences across America will cheer as they did at SXSW.
Standing ovation for Spielberg after the #ReadyPlayerOne premiere. “That was probably the greatest anxiety attack I’ve ever had,” he said, alluding to the screening’s technical difficulties (truth is, it actually only made the crowd more excited) #SXSW pic.twitter.com/FxYMfk7LZf
— Bryn Elise Sandberg (@brynsandberg) March 12, 2018