Ready Player One (2018) might win best animated movie next year

Little while ago while discussing A Wrinkle in Time, I talked about adapting things. All those expectations to live up to. Of course, I left out one thing: Steven Fucking Spielberg. Dude does not give a shit about your hopes and dreams for the thing you like, he just wants to make a good movie well told. Turns out, he's pretty good at it, too.

    Wade Watts lives in the future where there's the Matrix, but everybody's okay with it because it's called The Oasis. They live, play, and pole dance there. The creator of The Oasis died years back and left a special thing somewhere in the Oasis. If you find the thing, you control the Oasis and therefore the world. Wade and his friends are trying to get the thing before the evil corporate bastards do. Pretty standard story.

    Because the majority of this story exists in a virtual environment, I would have no problem if this movie got nominated for best animated. It's gorgeous, cartoony when it needs to be and live actiony when it needs to be real. Like with Jurassic Park, at some point you stop noticing the effects and just enjoy seeing the Delorean from Back to the Future racing alongside Akira's motorcycle while dodging King Kong. Movie's nuts, y'all.

    Look, I'm a child of the 80s. Everything I loved growing up is in this movie, from Spielberg on down. I do not feel I can give an honest opinion because everytime I recognized a thing (Alan Silvestri did the score, motherfucker, and he used Back to the Future stings!) I felt a warm wave of nostalgia roll over me.

    Ready Player One, both the book and the movie, were designed to manipulate me with everything I love. And they totally did it even though they are very different animals.

EDIT - I just realized that's the kid from Mud. Go watch that.