READY PLAYER ONE Trailer Breakdown and Easter Eggs with Tons of Screenshots!
We recently were treated to a new trailer for Steven Spielberg's feature film adaptation of Ernest Cline's geek culture novel Ready Player One. If you haven't seen it yet, watch it now! I've been watching that damn thing over and over again and I've been enjoying the hell out of it!
If you watched the trailer, then you know that it's packed full of all kinds of surprises and Easter eggs. I eventually ended up going through it frame by frame to try and see what I could find. So, here are a bunch of screenshots from the trailer for you to go through, along with a breakdown of where I point out a few of the cool things that you might have missed. When talking about the story, Cline said:
“If Willy Wonka was a video game designer instead of a candy maker and he held his golden ticket contest inside the worlds greatest video game — that’s the essence of what the story is.”
I'm sure there are a ton of other things that I haven't caught yet, so if you see anything cool that I don't mention here please point it out in the comments!
The trailer opens with Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) walking through a junkyard to his hideout. Wade's dad gave him this name because it sounded like a good superhero name like Peter Parker.
Do you Remember Madballs from the 1980s? Well, you can see graffiti of one of the characters painted on the side of one of the Stacks in the lower right corner of this image.
Wade lives with his aunt and several other squatters in the Stacks. His bedroom is in the laundry room and he sleeps on top of the washing machine. The song playing in this scene is “World in My Eyes,” by Depeche Mode.
People living in the streets manage to scrape together enough money for the equipment to be a part of the OASIS, which is free to use for everyone.
Wade Watts enters the OASIS.
Here's our first look at Wade Watts’ alter ego, Parzival, which based on the knight Percival from Arthurian legend, as he logs into the OASIS.
The first big mission is a race to recover the Copper Key. In this image, you can see the 1960s Batmobile, the V8 Interceptor from Mad Max, the Mach Five from Speed Racer, and the van from The A-Team.
Parzival drives around in the DeLorean time machine from the Back to the Future films. This is one of the only movie references used in Ready Player One that involved Spielberg. He previously said that he cut out most of his own movie references. They couldn't have cut this, though!
This is a cool close up shot of Parzival. As you can see, the characters in the OASIS aren’t meant to look real. They purposely have a texture to them that’s slightly pixelated. After all, this is a virtual world they are living in.
As you can see, the front of the DeLorean is outfitted with the same red light that's on the front Michael Knight's Kitt car from Knight Rider.
Inside the OASIS.
Here we see Parzival meeting Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), a warrior-goddess rival who has also embarked on the quest to unlock Halliday's puzzle. You can see a ton of familiar characters in the background of this dance club such as Blanka from Street Fighter and a bartender wearing one of the terraced red hats of the band Devo.
Art3mis start to get flirty with Parzival and she touches him. With the haptic suit that he's wearing, he can feel the sensation of her touching him in real life.
James Halliday is the co-creator of the OASIS and was said to be bigger than Steve Jobs.
Here's Mark Rylance as James Halliday announcing the contest to solve his riddles and find the Easter eggs he's hidden in the OASIS. Whoever finds the three Easter eggs first will win half a trillion dollars and ownership of the virtual world.
I love that James Halliday has a Willy Wonka style look to him in the film. After all, he is the Willy Wonka of this story. It's hard to tell what all the pins he's wearing are, but one of them is definitely the game Simon Says.
This Wired magazine cover of Halliday features a QR code. See where it takes you!
This Easter egg is the grand prize of Ready Player One. It's displayed here like a relic. Written on the walls are some words from Halliday’s invitation, which reads, "Three hidden keys open three secret gates. Wherein the errant will be tested for worthy traits. And those with the skills to survive these straits. Will reach The End where the prize awaits."
Pavizal and The Sixers in action as they hunt for the Easter eggs.
Art3mis rides the motorcycle from the classic anime film Akira. If you look close, you can also see the Wonder Woman logo on the bike right below the windshield.
As Art3mis makes this jump in the race, we can see the Bigfoot monster truck. This is driven by Parzival's friend Aech.
Parzival is the first name on the scoreboard and everyone is wondering who in the hell he is.
Here we see Halliday's own avatar in the OASIS, which is a Gandalf-like sorcerer named Anorak. He is handing him one of the keys after solving one of the puzzels.
Here are a bunch of random screenshots featuring different things going on with characters.
Here we get a good look at Art3mis' birthmark on her face that she hides in the story.
Additional shots of The Sixers attacking.
This is Ben Mendelsohn as the villain Nolan Sorrento. He's an executive with Innovative Online Industries, or IOI. He wants to win Halliday's contest and take ownership of the OASIS so he can turn it into a cash cow. He also wants to make it harder for people to enter the OASIS.
Pavizal's home in the Stacks is blown up.
Here we see Art3mis in real life and her name is Samantha. She is welcoming Wade to the revolution.
As Van Halen’s “Jump” starts to play, we get an awesome shot of King Kong leaping from the Empire State Building in the OASIS.
I love that the 1990s Battletoads were included in this shot as the lead the charge of this massive army.
In the book, Parzival is rewarded with a 1981 quarter after playing a perfect game of Pac-Man. I won't say what meaning of this coin is, but Is this that coin being given to him?
This is Aech doing a little dance during the race.
It seems like here they are playing a little game of Dance Dance Revolution.
Here's a shot of The Joker and Harley Quinn.
This battle sequence featues Chun-Li from Street Fighter, Tracer from the video game Overwatch, Lara Croft from Tomb Raider, and more.
Here we see Art3mis and Parzival meeting the Curator, who is someone that controls much of the archive about Halliday and Ogden Morrow (Simon Pegg) and their story of creating the OASIS.
Parzival gives his inspirational speech.
I love that Parzival is getting his army pumped by lifting a boombox, which is a homage to John Cusack’s iconic scene from Say Anything. You can see Deadshot in this scene.
A giant Mobil Suit Gundam style mech warrior. I assume this is Parzival's robot. It's not the Leopardon Spider-Man mech from the book. But these mech robots play a big role in the story.
Here's Chucky in the heat of battle!
Here are some more action-packed shots.
And, of course, here we see The Iron Giant racing into battle as well.
