Ready Player One arrives—abundant references intact—in its first full trailer

"Even Michael Crichton on the set of Jurassic Park couldn't be this happy," says Ernest Cline.

https://youtu.be/cSp1dM2Vj48

After an initial glimpse at this summer's San Diego Comic-Con, the first full trailer for Ready Player One premiered this weekend. Author Ernest Cline brought the footage to his hometown theater—Austin, Texas' Alamo Drafthouse—and live-streamed it (with a post-roll Q&A) for fans worldwide on the film's Facebook page.

"If Willy Wonka was a game designer instead of a candy maker and held his golden-ticket contest inside the world's greatest video game, that's kind of the essence of what the story is," Cline said.

For those unfamiliar with Cline's best-seller, Ready Player One is the story of a kid growing up in the near future, dreaming of escape from his life in a massive, dystopian trailer park. Our hero Wade Watts only finds real happiness in The OASIS, a massive multiplayer VR world where he can indulge his love for 1980s pop culture. (See flashes of The Iron Giant, Battletoads, Lara Croft, Chun-Li, Overwatch characters, and many, many more.)

As the trailer reveals, the creator of The OASIS has (like any great game dev) hidden an Easter Egg within this world. The first person to find said secret stands to earn a boatload of money and control over the Oasis platform itself. Watts soon finds himself going toe-to-toe with corporate overlords tossing many, many resources at this quest given the economic (and real-world power) upside of running The OASIS.

A nostalgia-reference fest combined with a sort of gaming Matrix doesn't automatically make a great film, but hopes are high given '80s' pop culture master Steven Spielberg signed on long ago to guide Ready Player One. Keeping an eye on the plot through the referential trees will be vital for this story successfully jumping from page to screen, but all the licensed characters showing up even within this brief trailer gives us confidence that a lot of what people loved in the book will be represented fully here. (Cline also helped screenwriter Zak Penn, of X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand, directly craft the story.)

"I wasn't sure you could have a Mecha Godzilla fighting Ultra Man and get away with that and not get sued into oblivion, but that was what's amazing with having Steven Spielberg coming on board," Cline said. "The example I always used was Who Framed Roger Rabbit, because they managed to get a bunch of different properties into one movie. That was Steven Spielberg, and with Ready Player One he made that happen. We weren't able to get everything we wanted, but we got the vast majority... It's amazing how many people want their IP involved in a Spielberg movie."

In the Q&A, Cline went on to say the characters found in this first wave of footage merely represent "the tip of the iceberg" and that "even Michael Crichton on the set of Jurassic Park couldn't be this happy seeing this world come to life." So suffice to say, the Ready Player One version fans will get on March 30, 2018 appears to be very creator-approved.

If you're trying to keep up with the onslaught of trailers sneaking in before a new-year deadline, Teaser Technica has you covered with Batman Ninja, Altered Carbon, a WarGames full-motion video game, and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (plus at least mentions of Black Mirror S4, Alita, and a new animated Spiderman featuring Miles Morales).