Ready Player One Movie - Upgrade Wade

"Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" by Wham! blares happily in WADE'S dimly lit room.  It is too dark to see the space clearly.

WADE     I'm up!

WADE stands in the slowly brightening darkness, stretching.  As the light increases, we see how different is body looks, though we do not see his face.  While WADE actually is taller, he appears even more so as he has lost weight. WADE has slim muscles, not overly worked-out.  The bed reshapes itself into his haptic chair in the center of the room, above his omni-directional treadmill and below large, articulated arms attached to the walls and ceiling.  The technology takes up most of the room and includes a sleek OASIS console, smell/air filter tower, and surround sound speaker system in the walls.  WADE's haptic suit has been upgraded as has his gloves and visor.  The window has been more carefully repainted black.  The kitchen is also clean.

WADE (from behind and from the shoulders down) shuffles towards the wall with the tiny, stainless steel bathroom with shower.  The wall's monitor changes from a rotating security camera view (hallway, lobby, roof, elevator) to MAX HEADROOM, his system agent software.

MAX     G-g--good morning, Wade!  Rise and sh-sh-shine!

WADE     Good morning, Max.

MAX     I think you mean "good evening", Rumpelstiltskin.  It's 7:18 pm, OASIS Sta-sta-standard Time, Wednesday, December thirtieth.  (looking down as WADE pees) Uh-oh!  It appears you've sp-sp-sprung a leak!

Conversation continues just as it does in the book

MAX makes a pouting face and drifts out of the screen, turning it back into a mirror.  WADE finds himself looking at his own image.  WADE looks alien with only stubble and his thinner face.  He looks away to finish peeing.  Done, WADE reseals his haptic suit and exits the bathroom.

Exercise scene continues as in the book followed by showering, which seems very futuristic--like a car wash.

WADE finishes cleaning, drying, and dressing in a new haptic suit.  While his apartment is no longer littered with garbage, it is dreary, empty, and lifeless.  WADE finally looks like he registers his surroundings and he is sad/scared/depressed.

WADE     Extend chair.

The haptic chair reassembles itself inside the room, dominating it, hulking in the middle.  The metal looks like bars to a circular prison.  WADE registers his acknowledgement of what it means on his face: sad/scared/depressed.

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Ready Player One Movie - Entering Cleveland

Note: my treatment of the Ready Player One movie opening was posted on 12/11/2017.

The battered, much-repaired electric bus slides into the terminal, cutting off the OASIS connection and turning on all interior lights.  WADE is momentarily startled, then pulls off his goggles and gloves, packing them away carefully.  Everyone is gathering their belongings and shuffling off the bus.  WADE is still sitting looking a little overwhelmed.  He is clutching everything he has: his OASIS gear in his old Star Trek lunchbox and a patched backpack.  WADE finds and opening, stands and shuffles off.

Cleveland, exterior bus terminal.  WADE is buffeted around, but finally makes his way to an autocab.  He closes the door and puts his thumb on the cab's computer screen.

WADE     [name of the apartment building]

The cab lurches off and WADE watches the city go by.  It is much cleaner-looking and more lived-in than his hometown.  This is a technological mecca: a new Silicon Valley.  The people, however, don't look great.  Homeless are begging, and the workers don't look much better.  There are automated street cleaners, but the people are haggard.  The city begins to look more decrepit as they get closer to WADE'S new apartment.

The autocab stops in front of what clearly used to be an old Hilton.  It has visible security features.  WADE enters the first door and must give retinal and fingerprint scans before entering the next.  The security display clearly says, "Bryce Lynch, Apt. 4211" and the interior door releases.  WADE enters the next door, which seals shut behind him.  The apartment building still has hints of the hotel lobby though it is quiet and empty and utilitarian.  WADE presses the button for an elevator, taking it up to the 42nd floor.  WADE exits the elevator cautiously.  He hears some yelling and explosion sounds (from a computer game or movie).  The hallway is deserted, dingy, and unadorned.  He finally makes it to his apartment at the end of the hall, scans himself again and enters, the door sliding shut behind him.

The apartment is a single, empty room, freshly painted white, with a single overhead strip light in the middle.  There is a kitchenette with a bar counter to the left, a narrow rectangular window across from the short entry hall, and, on the right, a wall of yellowed plastic.  The plastic wall houses a modular shower and toilet unit, a laundry unit, a monitor with small speaker, and a small closet.  The doors on this wall are flush and are touch-open.  The inside of the shower and toilet are stainless steel.

WADE still clutches his lunchbox and backpack, looking rather young.  He looks out the window and starts to breathe heavily, beginning to cry.  Scrubbing his eyes with the back of one sleeve, WADE sits on the floor in the middle of the room and puts on his gloves and OASIS visor, giving his passcode and making purposeful gestures.

The Wavelength

It was an amateur scientist in Brixton, just outside London, who stumbled upon The Wavelength.  He thought he was constructing a small version of a radio telescope, but he missed the mark and was listening to a different kind of radiation, uncatalogued, uncategorized, and unused by humans.  It was, however, still used.

Ian Davies just returned to his workroom in the third floor flat he rented from his mother, and, concentrating on not spilling his tea, he jostled the settings on his homemade electronic listening device.  This adjustment, coupled with the vagarities in the instrument's construction, picked up The Wavelength.  The incoming cacophony caused his headphones to rattle, which he luckily hadn't put on again yet.  Scrambling, Ian turned down the volume and clapped the headphones over his ears and became the first human to knowingly listen to an alien broadcast.

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Of all the lies movies have taught me over the years, I think the worst is that I believed that I could do anything in a reasonable amount of time.  I didn't think that I could do it within the space of a movie--that's ridiculous--but I did believe the movie time suggestion that within my lifetime I could accomplish goals.  Lies.  Dirty, rotten lies.

My days are spent on a treadmill.  My brain, on the shortest treadmill of them all.  Repetition, repetition, repetition.  Nothing accomplished.  Dishes pile up again and again.  Laundry.  Mail.  Shower.  Eat.  Sleep.  Dentist and doctor and optometrist appointments.  Repeat.  Holidays.  Repeat.  The things I dreamed of doing remained out of my grasp for the daily repetition.  My brain rehashed what it wanted and wondered why the hell wasn't I making progress?  I should have accomplished by now!  Where had the time gone?  Why couldn't I get motivated?  Why couldn't I get out of welding to accomplish my dream of being a professional dancer?  What happened to making the band and winning the hearts of millions?  Shouldn't I be able to save Christmas, or teach the town to dance or preserve the human race?  Goddamn movies.  Lies.

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Script pitch: Love story about a shy man who suddenly finds himself reaching old age without a companion.

Lead role: Gene Wilder

Opening: An older man (mid-70s) sits alone in his rather large, neat, beach-front cottage home in Connecticut.  We see him go about his morning, making himself tea, doing the puzzle in the paper, and painting in his home studio.  We finally see him looking in his calendar.  Forthcoming are a few doctor's appointments and one art opening that looks important.  The man looks rather disappointed that he doesn't have a more full social calendar.  He makes a decision and grabs his "little black book".  The entries are old, and many are crossed off with notes like "married", "moved to California", and "deceased".