Ready Player One

This is Steven Spielberg’s first proper crowd-pleaser of a blockbuster in a decade, and it delivers all the nostalgia, magic and wonder you would expect when one of the most visionary directors of our generation adapts one of the most pop-culture-packed novels ever written.

Premise:  In 2045, America is in the grip of a depression, and so most people escape their slums in the real world by spending their time in the OASIS, a vast virtual reality programme.  But when its creator dies, he hides an “Easter egg” in the virtual world, promising that whoever finds it will inherit his shares in his company and control of the OASIS.  Soon, a group of gamers find themselves in a race against a corporate CEO to solve the challenges and find the prize.

Review:

First up, I’ll start with the usual caveat that I haven’t read Ernest Cline’s source novel, so I’m reviewing the film adaptation in isolation.  In that context, Ready Player One is unarguably Steven Spielberg’s most enjoyable and entertaining film in over a decade.  Having focused primarily on thrillers and dramas in recent years, this feels like a return to the Jurassic Park era of Spielberg films.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the trailers for Ready Player One seemed to focus primarily on the action set-pieces and pop-culture references (which, admittedly, are a highlight of the film), so it came as a relief to me that the plot is actually a lot more engaging than I originally expected.  Based on the trailers (and not having read the book), I was expecting the whole film to be one long “chase” with all of the characters racing to find the Easter egg hidden in the virtual reality world, but in actual fact, there’s much more to the film than that.

“…Ben Mendelsohn is one of the key reasons why I enjoyed the film so much…”

For a start, the film picks up five years after the start of the game to find the Easter egg, and in all that time, no one has even completed the first of the three challenges needed to gain access to the prize.  By this stage, most people have given up, and the only ones still even attempting to complete the first challenge (a seemingly impossible race on a dangerous, ever-shifting track) are the independent “Gunters” (short for “egg hunters”) and an army of corporate players from Innovative Online Industries.  IOI is the second largest corporation in the world (after the company behind the OASIS), and its CEO Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) is determined to win the game and ownership of the OASIS, so that IOI can start exploiting it commercially.

Nolan Sorrento and IOI play a larger role in the film that I was expecting, and they are one of the key reasons why I enjoyed the film so much.  Not only does IOI’s plan to commercially exploit the OASIS (by charging people to use it, and by selling off every possible piece of advertising space) represent the antithesis of what was intended by its creators James Halliday (Mark Rylance) and Ogden Morrow (Simon Pegg), but IOI’s activities outside of the OASIS are even more frightening.  Given the real world concerns we have today about the influence that corporations have over our lives, this fictional depiction of a corporation that is able to privately detain debtors and force them to “work off” their debts by carrying out “virtual work” in the OASIS does not feel as far-fetched as perhaps it should.

“…several surprise pop-culture references really put a smile on my face…”

The quest to find the Easter egg was also a lot more entertaining than I was expecting.  Although the first challenge is the very action-heavy “impossible” race, the rest of the challenges are more to do with solving mysteries and riddles relating to the personal histories of OASIS creators Halliday and Morrow prior to their falling out, which was far more engaging than an endless stream of action set-pieces.

That said, when Steven Spielberg does stage an action scene, they are some of the most impressive I’ve seen in some time.  In fact, if I had one criticism it might be that there is too much cool stuff happening on screen at any one time, so that I feel I need to rewatch the film again to spot everything that I missed the first time around!  During the race challenge, as well as in later scenes (which I won’t spoil), there are so many pop-culture references and cameos crammed into each frame that I don’t think anyone could spot them all without several viewings (and a pause button)…

Speaking of the pop-culture references, it would probably take a separate blog entry just to summarise all the ones I spotted, but they covered everything from the 70s and 80s (such as the main character’s vehicle of choice, the flying DeLorean from Back to the Future), right up to the 90s and 00s (the Serenity from the cult TV show Firefly even makes an appearance).  There were more than a couple of surprise pop-culture references that really put a smile on my face.  The OASIS is modelled on everything Halliday loved from his youth, so it includes an infectious 80s soundtrack too.  There’s also an extended sequence relating to Stanley Kubrick’s classic film version of Stephen King’s The Shining, which is a lot of fun (and arguably pushes the boundaries of the 12A certificate).  You could spend the whole film just trying to spot all of the pop-culture references, but equally, you could still enjoy the film in isolation if you didn’t understand a single one of the references.

“…a fantastic showcase for Spielberg’s visual flair…”

The film is a lot of fun, but if there’s one weak point, it’s that the characters are fairly underdeveloped and are essentially little more than archetypes.  Ben Mendelsohn makes an interesting villain, but Tye Sheridan’s main character, Wade Watts (know as “Parzival” in the OASIS), doesn’t make much of an impression beyond a sense of his naivety.  Olivia Cooke’s “Art3mis” is a bit more fleshed out, particularly in terms of her motivations, but a muddled subplot about not knowing who you’re really speaking to online kind of undermined her character a little.  Mark Rylance and Simon Pegg are good as OASIS creators James Halliday and Ogden Morrow, but they’re effectively just cameos.  The highlight of the cast for me was T.J. Miller as “i-R0k”, an independent bounty hunter in the OASIS, whose sarcastic humour undercuts some of the film’s more ridiculous moments.

Not quite a masterpiece, but certainly a cut above most popcorn blockbusters, Ready Player One is a fantastic showcase for Spielberg’s visual flair and love of pop-culture, and the action scenes are second to none.  Although the characters are perhaps a little two-dimensional, the plot and pace held my interest and generated enough momentum to carry the film to its suitably epic final act.