Watch Van Halen’s “Jump” on the trailer of Spielberg’s “Ready Player One”

Van Halen’s “Jump” is on the new trailer of Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One” to be launched on March 30, 2018. The clip also features Depeche Mode’s “World in My Eyes”.

Check it out:

The movie is a science fiction adventure film co-produced and directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Zak Penn and Ernest Cline, based on Cline’s novel of the same name. The film stars Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, T. J. Miller, Simon Pegg, and Mark Rylance.

Plot

In the year 2045, much of Earth’s population centers have become slum-like cities due to overpopulation, pollution, corruption, and climate change. To escape their desolation, people engage in the virtual reality world of the OASIS (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation), where they can engage in numerous activities for work, education, and entertainment.

Wade Owen Watts (Ty Sheridan) is a teenager from Columbus, Ohio who frequents the OASIS and attempts to win “Anorak’s Game”, a game created by the recently-deceased creator of the OASIS, James Halliday (Mark Rylance), in search of its Easter Egg.

The winner is to be granted full ownership of the OASIS and Halliday’s $240 billion fortune. While Wade works with several friends from the OASIS to discover Anorak’s treasure, the corporate giant Innovative Online Industries (IOI) employs a number of players to try to discover the treasure first and seize control of OASIS for themselves.

Jump composition

The synth line was written around 1981 by Eddie Van Halen but it was refused by the other members of the band. In 1983, producer Ted Templeman asked Roth to take a listen to the unused song idea. Riding around in the back of his 1951 Mercury, with band roadie Larry Hostler driving, Roth listened repeatedly to the song.

To come up with a lyric for it, he remembered seeing a television news report the night before about a man who was threatening to commit suicide by jumping off a high building.

Roth thought that one of the onlookers of such a scene would probably shout “go ahead and jump”. Roth bounced this suggestion off Hostler who agreed it was good. Instead of being about a threatened suicide, the words were written as an invitation to love. Roth later told Musician magazine that Hostler was “probably the most responsible for how it came out.”