#8 ‘Dr Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb’/’Ready Player One’

Movie night date – 10/04/19. Post date – 11/04/19.

Welcome back! This weeks movies was a suggestion and a topic of conversation recently. They are 1964’s ‘Dr Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb’ by Stanley Kubrick, followed by one of my favourites 2018’s ‘Ready Player one directed by Steven Spielberg. Once again, cause I’m getting busier and busier with ‘The Phantom Of The Opera’, my sister was in town for the week and watched the first movie with me once again.

Dr Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb – 1964 – Stanley Kubrick – 94 Mins

So this movie was suggested to me in the comments of one of my first, maybe even my first movie night. So thank you person! You know who you are; I won’t out you. All I knew about last nights movie was that I had heard it was a classic. The other reason I know it is because I am a sucker for these…references. Not only was this suggested for me by a friend, I saw this movie was listed when I watched a video on YouTube showing parallels to all these movies ‘The Simpsons’ pay homage to and parody. It added a lot of movies to my list and I’m sure I will say again when I get to one of those movies.

Quick rundown of the plot. Uhhhh…So this is set Cold War era. The American’s have a squadron of bombers flying in the air ready to retaliate if the Soviet people attacked. The General of said squadron sets them on ‘Wing Attack – Plan R’, which authorises a full nuclear strike on Russia without the need for Presidential orders and go nearly radio silent but one frequency. The President tells the Soviets this is happening and they are trying to stop it and they reveal they have a ‘Doomsday Machine’ which will activate if a strike happens and it can’t be stopped either. Basically, everything that goes wrong nearly does, when all but one bomber is turned away or shot down, and the ‘famous’ scene above happens as the remaining bomber fulfils its mission and bombs a Russian ICBM station.

My sister said, “Oh Peter Sellers!” during the opening credits. I recognised the name but I didn’t know who he would be. It interested me and my sister both when I Googled who he had played and it turned out he played three roles. Apparently Columbia Pictures had only agreed to fund the film if Peter Sellers played four major roles, as they had seen his success in doing a similar thing in ‘Lolita’ and ‘The Mouse That Roared’. While Sellers hadn’t been keen on playing the fourth role of Major T.J Kong with the workload already and worrying about poorly portraying a Texan accent, he sprained his ankle and couldn’t film the role in the cramped cockpit.

One of the first things I thought when I watched this movie was “Huh…its a Kubrick movie”. From memory, the only one I have seen of his is ‘2001: A Space Odyssey”, so I was excited to see more of his works. The second thing I thought was, “Oh man. For mid 60s, the special effects are pretty good!” The bombers flying albeit by today’s standards are not impressive, back then were impressive. This was in 1964, and cause I love it so much, I am going back to Gerry Anderson stuff. The moving background used behind the plane reminds me so much of Gerry Anderson stuff. I can’t say one happened before the other; Gerry Anderson’s ‘Stingray’ came out in ’64, but I don’t remember it using moving background flight effects like he did in ‘Thunderbirds’. That came out in ’66, so I don’t know who inspired who. Regardless, the filming was done near London so it wouldn’t surprise me if someone influenced someone.

An alternate ending! I don’t think I have had a movie yet with one of those.

I think I am wrong…I think there is a alternate ending for ‘Pretty In Pink’…If there were more, well this is the first one I am gonna talk about. The alternate ending was the War Room breaking into a custard pie fight after the Soviet ambassador refuses a strip search and throws a pie that hits the President. The madness escalates and continues till Dr Strangelove fires a gun to try bring about order, but all the other characters appear to have lost their minds. The President is making a sand castle out of custard pie with the Soviet ambassador. General Turgison then proclaims that the country needs to be run by people like Dr Strangelove. Sadly, the footage apparently was binned. But the ending changed. Stanley Kubrick said about it:

“I decided it was farce and not consistent with the satiric tone of the rest of the film.”

An Interview with Stanley Kubrick (1969) by Joseph Gelmis

Also, the scene was being edited around the time JFK was assassinated. In the scene, when the Soviet ambassador threw the pie at the President, General Turgison apparently yelled out “Our President has been struck down in his prime!”, and the decision was made that this was too close to the event to have in the final cut and it was removed. Personally, after reading the idea of the scene with the senselessness of throwing pies around to people undistinguishable because they are all covered in custard in parallel to the missile being thrown at each other’s countries, I would have preferred this ending. I have nothing against the current one; my grandmother loves the son ‘We’ll Meet Again’, but I found the symbolic nature of this one on point. So my thoughts on this film? Solid film! Captures an absurdity in the situation I love.

Ready Player One – 2018 – Steven Spielburg – 140 Mins

Ready Player One…I had planned on doing this movie, cause I like it. It is one of my favourite movies, though not for the typical reasons of a movie. I love it for the visual nature. I will begin this by stating yeah, the story is very “Ehhhhh…what?” in a lot of places. Story aside, I like this movie to take the base level of story understanding and watch all the easter eggs. I saw new ones even as I watched it last night! My recent interest has been Mortal Kombat and I swear I saw Jade in there…or was it Mileena? One of those three girls…anyway, I like this movie for the idea and the references. References bring me memories and I like memories. Most of the songs I listen to in my playlist, I can tell you where I heard them from, like ‘Shining Star’ by Earth, Wind and Fire is from ‘Austin Powers: Goldmember’, ‘Free Bird’ by Lynyrd Skynyrd is from ‘Kingsman: The Secret Service’, and I know ‘Private Eyes’ by Hall And Oats because it was from an episode of ‘Chuck’. So more than anything story based and the plot holes, I am going to talk about the things I wish they had from the book, as well as my favourite easter eggs, as well as one shoulda-woulda-coulda about the movie.

Above was the first image I saw of ‘Ready Player One’ and I was like “Hmm. This could be good!” I didn’t know at the time it was a book, so I read it after I saw the film, but what caught me for the film was the easter eggs of the teaser, such as Freddy Kruger and The Iron Giant. The book however goes to a nerdy level I am not on. Like it’s beyond me. The film is vastly different from the book because of copyright problems, and the cause and effect that has on the storyline. I could list of a huge number if differences such as the High Five are meant to find the final key in the safety of Ogden Morrow’s mansion, the first challenge for the easter egg was to complete a DND campaign then playing the game ‘Joust’, there is A LOT more development on the relationship of Art3mis and Parzival, and there is more shown on the real world side of things. Oh, and also you know…DAITO DIES IN REAL LIFE IN THE BOOK! Also, I’m torn about this difference, but instead of The Iron Giant having big roles, the fight with Mechagodzilla is meant to be done by three different mechs, but ultimately destroyed by Parzival using the Beta Capsule to transform into Ultraman., which Daito was using when he was killed in real life and given to him by Sho. To be fair, the only reason I know of Ultraman is because he was what Way Big from Ben 10 was based on.

One thing they kind of got from the book in the movie was the aspect of the Halliday’s love for movies. Some of the hunt for the easter eggs included becoming a role in a movie when you found it, and quoting the movie exactly word for word to pass it. In the movie, they add ‘The Shining’ as a setting and add parts of the movie as obstacles, but you don’t actually act out the movie to beat it. You just have to get to the Ball Room and complete a level of Mayhem Mansion, a game made by Halliday. One of the movies in book you have to act your way through is ‘WarGames’. It is on my list, maybe when I do another 80s night. Before moving on to what could have been section, I will say my favourite scene from the whole film was the dance scene at the Distracted Globe. I love the change from ‘Blue Monday’ to ‘Stayin’ Alive’. I love the visuals of the film in that scene; it works so well with the music. One time I will say visuals were too much for this film is in the race for the first key. The race gets so visually noisy I do not like it. But that may be just me.

The one thing I had read about the movie which turned out to be a rumour was that supposably Steven Spielburg went to Gene Wilder to look at coming out of retirement and playing the role of James Halliday. I may have not seen a lot of Gene Wilder movies, but as a kid I remember treasuring my VHS of ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’. He would have made an amazing Halliday. This was all completely a rumour and sadly he passed away in 2016, but the possibility would have been incredible. All the Gene Wilder love aside, Mark Rylance did an amazing job and I loved it too. So over all, if you can look past the story holes and far fetches in points and look at the wonder of seeing ‘Halo’ Spartans run past Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or Goro from ‘Mortal Kombat’ have a Xenomorph chest burster pop out of his chest in the same movie and look at the underlying messages of focus on what is real, don’t judge people for what you see in real life but by how they think and act and perhaps most importantly, there is more to life than just you. Yeah…I think thats most of the points I got from the movie. Solid movie! I like it.

Closing Thoughts

Following this week of having no real theme…other then perhaps movies with references? If you want to make that stretch, I am going to have a theme next week. Next weeks movies are going to be based on real lives. Movies of a biographical nature. I’m looking forward to it; one has been recommended by my sister, while the other one I have only seen once but I loved. I guess that’s what makes it a favourite…anyway!

Hope you’re having a wonderful day and keep smiling.