Ready Player One Poster Parodies

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Part of a series on Ready Player One. [View Related Entries]

About

Ready Player One Poster Parodies refer to a series of jokes and photoshops inspired by the advertising campaign for the 2018 science fiction film Ready Player One.

Origin

On December 9th, 2017, the official Ready Player One Twitter account tweeted the poster with the caption "A better reality awaits. Tune in tomorrow at 9:45a PT for a special live stream event with @erniecline.^[1] #ReadyPlayerOne." The post (shown below) received more than 1,000 retweets and 3,300 likes in two days.

Spread

Shortly after the poster was uploaded online, Twitter users began posting photoshops and image comparisons, emphasizing the length of Sheridan's leg. Twitter^[2] user @AH_Ethan tweeted a photoshop of Sheridan's leg moving through portals to stay in the frame of the poster. The post (shown below, left) received more than 70 retweets and 280 likes in two days. Twitter^[3] user @asher_nieman tweeted the poster juxtaposted to a screenshot from SpongeBob SquarePants of SpongBob on stilts. The post (shown below, center) received more than 180 retweets and 440 likes in two days. Twitter^[4] user @paultoesjohn tweeted a photo of Sheridan photoshopped to have longer legs. The post (shown below, right ) received more than 6,300 retweets and 13,000 likes in two days. They captoned the tweet "There is nothing wrong with the new Ready Player One poster.
#stopbodyshaming."

On December 10th, tweeted,^[5] "The leg in the Ready Player One poster is proportionally correct. THREAD!" They then followed up with several diagrams showing that the poster is anatomically correct. The thread (portions shown below) received more than 300 retweets and 975 likes in one day.

Several media outlets covered the response to the poster, including NME,^[6] The Daily Dot,^[7] Kotaku ^[8] and more. On December 10th, Twitter^[9] published a Moments page regarding @CDisillusioned's response to the criticism.

Movie Homage Posters

On March 6th, 2018, a new series of posters for Ready Player One were released. In this case, the posters were designed to pay homage to famous movie posters that are associated with blockbuster entertainment from the 80s and 90s but using characters and imagery from Ready Player One. These include such films as The Matrix, Blade Runner and The Breakfast Club (examples below, respectively).^[10]

People online reacted negatively to the posters. While many tweeted their disapproval of the posters, others made parodies of them, paying homage to films that are generally considered bad using Ready Player One iconography.

That day, Twitter^[11] user @Doug_Tilley posted a series of parodies that include the films Top Dog, X-Men First Class and Mortdecai. The post (shown below, left) received more than 20 retweets and 60 likes in 24 hours.

Additionally, Twitter^[12] user @damnyouwillis paid homage to the film Foodfight with the caption "all those READY PLAYER ONE posters are good, actually." The post (shown below, center) received more than 740 retweets and 1,900 likes in 24 hours. Twitter^[13] user @darth posted a number of parodies including Paul Blart: Mall Cop (shown below, right), Human Centipede and Nacho Libre. The Paul Blart post received more than 300 retweets and 1,100 likes in 24 hours.

Several media outlets reported on the parodies, including The Daily Dot,^[14] Dorkly,^[15] Motherboard^[16] and more.