People are making Ready Player One’s terrible posters so much better

The one thing that Ready Player One and the 90th Academy Awards have in common is reminding us that movies from decades past were great.

The Academy Awards reminded us during a lengthy montage segment this past weekend, and Warner Bros.’ reminded us with a set of new Ready Player One photos. Each Ready Player One poster imagines the movie’s main protagonist, Wade Watts, in other popular movies from years ago. It’s similar to what what Netflix did with Stranger Things 2 last fall.

The only defense Ready Player One has for these posters is that it’s literally a movie full of nostalgia and it’s not entirely out of place. One of the first trailers for the movie included a reference to some entertainment property every five seconds. Still, that isn’t a defense or explanation for why these posters are terrible. As Adi Robertson, one of the foremost voices on VR and sci-fi, points out at The Verge, “the aesthetic looks more like something you’d get if you handed a teenager a cracked copy of Photoshop.”

Here’s an example:

Slashfilm

Luckily for us, the internet has already started working on ways to make this better. The concept of the meme is simple: Poorly photoshop Wade into another poster and just use Ready Player One’s title. For example:

[Ready Player One version of Cars.]

The meme quickly caught on with certain parts of Twitter. “Film Twitter,” for example, which is often how critics and reporters refer to the people they follow on the platform had a day with it. Scott Wampler, news editor at Birth.Movies.Death made this delightful contribution.

[Ready Player One version of Mac and Me.]

Chris Evangelista, a staff writer with Slashfilm, was inspired by Tomas Alfredson’s 2017 thriller, The Snowman. This version of the meme will be particularly funny to anyone who used New York’s subway system last summer and were greeted by these disturbing posters at nearly every subway stop.

[Ready Player One version of The Snowman.]

Internet personality extraordinaire, Darth, has en entire thread of better versions that are worth checking out; like this Paul Blart: Mall Cop poster.

There are countless other examples of the meme, but we’ve collected a few of our favorites below for you to enjoy. Proving that sometimes you don’t even need to include a poor Photoshopped version of Wade to get the point across.

[Ready Player One version of Twins.]

[Ready Player One version of Kes.]

[Ready Player One version of The Crying Game and Straw Dogs.]

The actual roundup of all Ready Player One homage posters can be seen at Slashfilm. The film will be released on March 29.