Director: Steven Spielberg Writer(s): Zak Penn, Ernest Cline Cast: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, T.J. Miller, Simon Pegg, Mark Rylance
You’d be forgiven for thinking that Ready Player One is just a movie that jumps from one reference to the next without any coherent story-line, based on the trailers that preceded its release. Yes, admittedly, you do get more Easter Eggs than most children get at Easter (wait! Maybe that’s why Ready Player One was released on Easter Weekend! Because it is filled to the brim with Easter Eggs?!), but there is so much more at the heart of Steven Spielberg’s newest release…
Based on the extremely popular novel by Ernest Cline, first released in 2011, Ready Player One follows Wade Watts, and his online avatar Parzival, both played brilliantly by Tye Sheridan, and his friends and fellow gamers (or ‘Gunters’ as they call themselves in the book and the film) as they search for 3 hidden keys in the online paradise, The Oasis. Set in 2045, after a briefly mentioned crisis, where people escape from the harsh realities of real life into the world of The Oasis, almost coming across as a social commentary on the way society is headed.
I will get this out of the way now: I haven’t yet read the book that this movie is based on, so I am unable to make any qualified comparisons between it and Spielberg’s adaption. Having spoken to a few people who have seen and read both, there have been some major changes made from the source material, but everyone has said it doesn’t make the film any less enjoyable. In terms of production, I don’t think there is anyone better to helm this sort of movie that Spielberg himself, and he has done an amazing job at giving audiences another highly enjoyable adventure movie. After a string of historical dramas (2011’s War Horse, 2012’s Lincoln, 2015’s Bridge Of Spies and most recently 2017’s The Post), which were all extremely successful in their own right, but it is great to see Spielberg return back to his family friendly action adventure movies, with such success.
A large part of the book’s popularity (and now to a certain extent, the movie’s) is the mass of pop-culture references that feature throughout. Spielberg manages to leave out a large amount of self-referencing, choosing instead to focus on the 1980’s on a wider scale (One of the best action sequences takes place in the 1980’s horror hit The Shining, which plays of the fact that once of the main characters hasn’t seen the original movie so stumbles upon some of the movie’s scarier moments unwittingly, and that set piece alone is worth the price of a ticket itself.)
As Ready Player One is partially set in an online world, it is a credit to Spielberg and his creative team that the Oasis has been brought to life so beautifully on the big screen. As the Oasis itself is supposed to be a Virtual Reality world, the visual effects team Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) have managed to portray the world in such a manner that it feels like you are watching a superbly crafted video game, rather than a long drawn out Saturday morning cartoon, with the action taking place in the Oasis actually having repercussions in the real world. Obviously, in a movie such as this, the most exciting parts are going to be set in the Oasis, so it is great to see that there has been such care to ensure this happens succinctly (which is brought to a head when Ben Mendelsohn’s Sorrento attacks Wade Watt’s family in the real world).
The cast themselves give great performances, whether it be in the real world or as their digitally created avatars in the Oasis, managing to convey the emotional heft of both world’s seamlessly. Tye Sheridan’s Wades Watts / Parzival and Olivia Cooke’s Samantha Cook / Art3mis show the audience that the real heart of the movie is the most important thing in life is to find and experience friendship and love, and the dangers that can arise of spending too much of your life playing video games, and that at the end of it all nothing beats the real thing.
At times, Ready Player One does stray dangerously close to becoming very cheesy, but considering the source material, the movie itself does well to keep its charm for the majority of the rather lengthy running time (2 hours 20 mins). Although Ready Player One does deserve the praise it has received, it is not without its faults. For all the movie achieves, it does leave a few important questions unanswered (How does the population earn money? Is it from the achievement’s they unlike in the Oasis? Is everyone happy with the way the world has turned out? Or is there a small fraction of the population that refuses to enter the Oasis?), and it does become too focussed on lengthy exposition, feeling the need to point out the obvious at times rather than let the audience work it out for themselves. But all of this is easily forgiven when the rest of the movie is so enjoyable! So there is only one question left to ask: How long until Ready Player Two?
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