Ernest Cline's novel Ready Player One is a fun read, made all the more enjoyable for those readers who grew up in the halcyon days of 80s video games, music, movies, and pop culture. The only way a movie adaptation of the story could be done justice is to bring in Steven Spielberg to wrangle the many, many references, Easter eggs, in-jokes, and pop culture milieu that the legendary filmmaker himself was a major part of. But as a trio of new TV spots/featurettes from Warner Bros. suggest, the studio is going for the hard sell where Ready Player One is concerned. The story is best enjoyed, in my humble opinion, as a fun romp through memories of the 80s as allowed by high-tech VR standing in for limitless imagination and possibility, but the suggestion that Cline is some sort of sci-fi prophet is ridiculous.This thing is popcorn, pure and simple.

Ready Player One stars Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn and T.J. Miller, with Simon Pegg and Oscar-winner Mark Rylance, and opens in U.S. theaters on March 30th.

Watch all the nostalgia-fueled insanity below:

Here’s the official synopsis for Ready Player One:

The film is set in 2045, with the world on the brink of chaos and collapse. But the people have found salvation in the OASIS, an expansive virtual reality universe created by the brilliant and eccentric James Halliday (Mark Rylance). When Halliday dies, he leaves his immense fortune to the first person to find a digital Easter egg he has hidden somewhere in the OASIS, sparking a contest that grips the entire world. When an unlikely young hero named Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) decides to join the contest, he is hurled into a breakneck, reality-bending treasure hunt through a fantastical universe of mystery, discovery and danger.

For more on Ready Player One, be sure to check out our recent write-ups below:

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Image via Warner Bros.
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Image via Warner Bros.
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Image via Warner Bros.

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