☆☆☆ 1/2
Two years ago, my English teacher brother recommended a book to me called Ready Player One. He gave me a brief description of it; it seemed like my cup of tea: a celebration of nerdiness and 80’s nostalgia. So I read the book and I really enjoyed it. It wasn’t the greatest story ever told, but any book that references deep cuts from Rush as a key plot point is A-OK with me. A couple of weeks later, I found out a movie was going to be made from this book. The main question at the time for me was: how you are going to adapt this? Getting the rights to these characters they reference would be a logistical nightmare.
Oh hi, legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg and storied movie studio Warner Bros. Pictures!
Ready Player One is one of those of those books that you wouldn’t think would make a good movie, but it’s a good movie. The trailer had me pumped from the word go. After being bored out of my mind with The Post, Steven Spielberg proves that he still has that blockbuster magic in him.
For those of you that don’t know of Ready Player One, it tells the story of a kid (Tye Sheridan) who hunts for hidden Easter Eggs in an immersive virtual reality world called The Oasis. If one were to find the Easter Eggs left by the recently deceased creator James Halliday, they would gain control to the company. So he teams up with a group of people who stop a corporation who wants to overload The Oasis with advertising.
I am going to do my best by talking about this movie without spoiling either the book or the movie.
Speilberg crafts two great worlds in one movie. Columbus, Ohio in 2045 look realistic and lived in for this universe. You see a run down vision of Columbus, Ohio. Cinematograper Janusz Kaminski captures this so well. There’s a lot of great attention to detail in this movie. This is a movie that will be pored over to find hidden references you didn’t catch the first time. Then you have The Oasis, the heart of this movie. The Oasis is at times visually gorgeous. The race scene that starts this movie off is incredibly awesome.
There are moments of genuinely funny humor, including a hilarious reaction involving Chucky. I love the conversations these characters have. At the end of the day, these are still big old nerds. I also really love the message of this movie, in which the character arc of James Halliday is one of a cautionary tale.
There is a scene in this movie that pays a loving tribute to Stanley Kubrick. It would make perfect sense that Spielberg would pay tribute to Kubrick, given that he took over directing duties on AI: Artificial Intelligence after Kubrick died. Hands down, this is the best scene in the movie for me. Kubrick is up there smiling, knowing a whole new generation will know about his work.
Tye Sheridan is actually a really good choice for Wade Watts, aka Parzival. He’s this goofy looking kid who sells that he would be this huge fanboy of Oasis creator James Halliday. If you got a Liam Hemsworth type for this role, it wouldn’t have worked at all. While I pictured Siaiorse Ronan as Art3mis reading the book (Yes, Lady Bird can be an action hero. Hanna is such an underrated and awesome movie), Olivia Cooke does a great job in this role. She is really charismatic and charming and like Sheridan, she isn’t exactly supermodel hot. Casting someone insanely gorgeous for this role wouldn’t have made this work either.
The fact that he stole Sylvester Stallone’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Creed aside, I liked Mark Rylance as James Halliday. Rylance does really good at capturing this big old nerd who made huge bank on this immersive world. However, I was picturing John Cusack as Halliday when I originally read the book. Cusack would have crushed it.
I don’t want to give too much away about Simon Pegg’s character, but let’s just say that I never realized how great of an actor he could be.
The MVP of Ready Player One is Aech. Everytime Aech is on screen, this character kills it. I’m purposely avoiding naming the actor or the plot twist in the book because it is one of those ideas that is better that you went in cold, knowing nothing about Aech. Really, I enjoyed all of the performances on display here.
Like the book itself, Ready Player is not a flawless movie. I was debating between giving this 3 or 4 stars. While Ready Player One is technically impressive and well acted, it doesn’t have any soul to it. At times, this movie feels like a really cool video game you’re watching someone else play. This is a movie that starts and ends with black background on white text credits. Come on Steven Spielberg, have some fun with your credits!
When I watched this movie, I couldn’t help but think of one thing: Steven Spielberg should have produced this, not directed. You need a Gen X-er or a millennial at the helm for this. Ready Player One needs that young, hungry director with something to prove; much like what he did with Robert Zemeckis for Back to the Future (who gets a power up named after him) or J.J. Abrams with Super 8. My picks would be Jordan Vogt-Roberts (seriously, listen to his Metal Gear Solid movie pitch), Stranger Things creators The Duffer Brothers, or Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, a team of directors that do have experience with a Warner Bros. Pictures backed multi-license franchise. If any one of those directors I mentioned were at the helm, this would have been a 5 star movie. Because Spielberg kind of comes off like the villain Nolan Sorrento, with a team of pop culture experts in his ear. It’s exactly why I’m worried about Solo: A Star Wars Story: you have an establishment director at the helm when you need fresh blood.
Another thing I didn’t like about this movie was how Suicide Squad-esque the soundtrack felt. These are the most painfully obvious 80’s tracks you could pick for a movie like this. Try a little harder than Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” as the big third act fight scene starts. Even then, all the songs that are picked seem like songs that the book version of James Halliday would hate. I think he would rather crank up Van Halen’s “On Fire” versus “Jump.” One of the puzzles in the book revolved around a Rush deep cut.
So let’s talk about the book vs. the movie, as these are two entirely different entities. The book is strictly about pre-1990 pop culture. So when I see cynical product placement for Minecraft in this movie or references to characters because Warner Brothers has the rights to them, it throws me off. As I read the book, I pictured The Oasis being something similar to augmented reality. The Oasis in the movie looks like a PS4 game. That’s kind of a problem because this film is set in 2045, not 2018. In the book, something happens with one of the main characters that adds weight to the story. But the book and the movie do two things right: the book perfectly develops characters, while the movie executes the pop culture references better.
If I were letter grading this, then Ready Player One gets a B+. Flaws aside, Ready Player One is easily the best Steven Spielberg movie I’ve seen since Catch Me if You Can. It’s nice to see that he still has that Spielberg magic. I still highly recommend seeing this in a theater. I’ll definitely be picking up the Blu-Ray for this.
Ryan Watches 