Ready Player One movie review

Here's what you need to know; in a bleak, hopeless future, the population has given up on the real world all together, instead escaping to the Oasis, a massive online world where they can be who they want to be. But hidden within the Oasis is an Easter Egg, one locked behind three impossible challenges that, once solved, grants its finder ownership and control over the entire Oasis, and Wade Watts, a nobody living in Ohio, has solved the first challenge, setting him on a path not just to the Egg, but to real world consequences he was never prepared for.
So, Ready Player One, I don't really have an anecdote for this one, other than getting a little drunk on cocktails after we got back from the cinema, where we ate shitty takeaway, played Clive Barker's Jericho and watched Scooby Doo, it was an interesting evening for sure. Really a more relevant anecdote is that that was two weeks ago, and it's taken me that long to finish this review because, and there really is no beating around the proverbial with it, I'm a lazy bastard. I'm also a lazy bastard who's proofreading this on three hours of sleep and a glass of whiskey, so it might be a bit nonsensical, just saying. And because I'm not much of a reader, I have yet to read Ready Player One by Ernest Kline, so I didn't really know anything about this film before going in, which is usually a good thing in film, but was Ready Player One a good film, let's see.

Ready Player One has a lot of work to do right out of the gate, opening with a very exposition heavy prologue where Wade Watts explains what the Oasis is, and gives us some backstory on the Oasis' creator, James Halliday and his Easter Egg. One of the things the film does well is world building, and the future depicted in the film is at once intriguing and unnerving. The world of the future in Ready Player One is one that, as Wade says in the prologue, has given up trying to fix its problems, the film establishes prior events that got us here; droughts and riots, without giving any further context, and depicts Columbus, Ohio as an overpopulated slum, there's also a Pizza hut delivery drone, which is both a product placement, and a suggestion that this world has been completely taken over by automation and technology. Then there's the Oasis, which is completely cool, but the implications of it are, to say the least, a bit creepy. The film never explicitly says it, but it's easy to infer that the creation of the Oasis was a contributing factor in this world's decent into dystopia; providing an easy and vastly more appealing alternative to reality, a reality that became more neglected as people abandoned it in favor of a virtual utopia. It's in this context that IOI, the film's main antagonistic force, becomes an ominously believable threat, as it desires complete control over the Oasis, an interesting take on world domination. There's a lot of reading between the lines that can be done in this film, and maybe I'll do that when the Blu Ray's out, but in the meantime, Ready Player One's evil empire has the storytelling advantage of being a figurative and literal empire; a mega corporation with dreams of securing monopoly over the Oasis, who in the Oasis, has access to an army that they can use for their bidding, the faceless players known as Sixers. It's not in the game however that IOI is shady, it's in the real world where they have loyalty centers where people 'pay their debts,' that's some creepy shit. Fighting IOI is a collection of characters that are, for me, a bit of a mixed bag. Wade and Samantha get the job done as the film's heroes, and at first the relationship between them is interesting, if a little awkward, almost like the film's going to say something about social isolation, but the potential of this relationship is effectively brushed aside at a point, and the romance that obviously blossoms between them feels rushed in the end. The Oasis does however give the film the advantage of having its heroes be ordinary people and superheroes at the same time, but as is true for a lot of things in the film, Wade and Samantha are more compelling and fun to watch in the Oasis than in the real world. Aech was however a pretty solid sidekick for Wade and his character does have a satisfying, if not majorly surprising twist in the film's latter half, while the other two members of the High-Five aren't really given enough to do to make them really memorable until the film's finale. Given how much I've said about IOI, it probably won't be surprisingly to know that Sorrento, the head of IOI and the film's main villain, was one of the more compelling aspects of the film for me, not really caring about the betterment of the Oasis, and only viewing it as a resource that him and his investors can profit from, with the Oasis giving him the excuse to be the maniacal megalomaniac that he obviously is, and as villainous as he is, he was fun to watch.

Ready Player One's story is told through two perspectives, the real world and the Oasis, and while this should be an advantage for the film, it kind of isn't. The real world in this film is crap, as previously mentioned, it's a slum, it's dull, dingy and grey. The contrast between that and the Oasis is deliberately as huge as possible, with the Oasis being everything the real world isn't and more, it's colorful and full of life. The potential of this virtual world is infinite, and the film takes full advantage of that, with some awesome sequences of action and suspense, including very meta homage to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, and a badass race in the film's opening. And unlike Tomb Raider, where the video game-esque special effects didn't look all that great, Ready Player One's video game-esque visuals work excellently in creating the atmosphere of the film, with a very appealing, yet very deliberately fake presentation. The scenes where the crew are in the Oasis are naturally therefore the film's visual highlights, but the literal absence of rules in the Oasis also allows for some fun storytelling, such as the scene in the nightclub, the Shining homage, and the excellent final battle. In contrast however, in the dull, grey real world, where there are things like physics, the film becomes more conventional, and I'd even say restricted. The contrast between the heroes in reality and in the game is clearly deliberate, with them being superheroes in the Oasis, and completely average people in the real world. The problem I have with this average joe approach to the heroes is that they're not all that compelling; Wade's character ark is practically non-existent, and in the film's finale, when Halliday shows up to deliver a heart-felt life lesson to Wade and his friends, it feels hollow, like the characters haven't learned anything in their adventure. And that's just Wade, Sam's worse. At first the film looks like it might take her somewhere, giving her an axe to grind with IOI, and setting up a conflict that the film then throws away when her character ark, like Wade's, grinds to a halt after the first few sequences. Aech was probably the most interesting character in the film for me, the anonymity of him and the friendship he's developed with Wade was fun to watch, and as already said, the twist, while not completely mind-blowing, was satisfying nonetheless. None of this is to say that the characters aren't fun to watch; when they're in the Oasis, solving Halliday's riddles and battling IOI, it is a lot of fun, but it's fun that's compromised by a lack of development. Sam and Wade don't change over the course of the film, and the lesson they learn in the film's final act comes across as hollow in its delivery, despite it being delivered by Mark Rylance's Halliday, the awkward and socially isolated creator of the Oasis, who quickly becomes one of the film's most intriguing and enigmatic elements.

Ready Player One's greatest strength is the Oasis, in a visual, character and storytelling sense, it completely dominates the film, to the point that the real-world story becomes less compelling. And here is where we get to the pandering. You can use another word if you want, but this film is completely filled with references to pop culture and media, there are literally hundreds of them; Ninja Turtles, Halo, Alien, King Kong, Jurassic Park, The Shining, Godzilla, Child's Play, Overwatch, Street Fighter, Back to the Future, Minecraft, there's even a reference to The War of the Worlds, and not even the Steven Spielberg one, but the Byron Haskin film from 1953, which naturally gave me a kick. I'm not against this kind of pandering when it's not stomach ulcer inducing levels of obnoxious *cough* The Emoji Movie *cough*, but like all films with this kind of pandering that are actually watchable, they're not the point. The Lego Movie worked because it was funny and riddled with subtext, and Ready Player One works because it's fun. This film's action sequences are a real beauty to behold; the opening race is exciting and vicious, and done with long takes that are great to watch. The homage to The Shining is atmospheric and creepy, and the finale on Planet Doom is just insane, don't really know how else to describe it. And it's also on Planet Doom that the pandering becomes a strength; as seeing a squad of Spartans fighting the Sixers is just cool, even if they're the Halo 5 variety, and seeing Mechagodzilla charging up his finger rockets while Akira Ifukube's Godzilla soundtrack played really tickled me in the right places. Anyone who says they didn't have a big smile on their face while watching the film's finale is either lying or unable to have fun, it prays on nostalgia, but it does it well. As mentioned previously, the film also knows how to create atmosphere, most notably around the Oasis and particularly in the Shining scene, but even in that scene, and littered throughout the film, is some pretty decent comedy, granted, some of it doesn't work quite so well, most notably with the youngest member of the High-Five, but then there's moments like one in the battle on Planet Doom that is side splittingly funny, and one of the most memorable moments of the film, and a few times in the prologue, where the film does a good job of portraying some serious video game addiction in an effective and comedic manner. And even with the lack of character development, Wade and Sam, or rather, Parzival and Art3mis solving riddles and blowing things up with an M41 SSR kind of makes it worth it, at the very least, it's fun to watch.

In a World of Pure Imagination
Ready Player One's strengths are undeniably in the Oasis, the game itself is a fascinating concept, and one that the film does a decent job of exploring, and while it only touches on the events and conditions of the real world, what is there is bleak and intriguing. It's a shame that the film's heroes aren't quite as strong, and while their story in the Oasis is an absolute blast, their adventure in the real world is where the film's enjoyment pretty much dies, as without the fantastical adventure or exciting action, their characters are weak and largely uncompelling. The Easter Egg hunt itself largely makes up for that weakness and is easily when the film is at its most enjoyable and visually appealing, until the film's finale, when the heroes learn a life lesson that falls flat. Ready Player One is a film with flaws, but it's also a film that, when it works, is a lot of fun to watch, and for that reason, I'd say it's worth watching.