Despite single-handedly helping to forge modern mainstream
moviemaking in the 70s and 80s, Steven Spielberg has been kind of low key
lately, mostly sticking to historical pieces like Lincoln and Bridge of Spies.
Oh sure, he did The BFG as a token family film, but that ended up so under the
radar I’m not sure people even remember it existed. He certainly seems more
content this way, perhaps tiring of the blockbusters he used to churn out, or
perhaps just not too keen on the pressure you’d get for those to succeed. But
for this time, he’s going back to homage—in part—the era that made him a
success, along with videogames and geek culture in general, in his adaptation
of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One.
I did go through the book in preparation for this, and, well,
all I can say is that Cline really, really, really wants to show off just how
much pointless shit about the eighties he’s memorized. Here is a summation of a
typical paragraph in the book:
Wade adjusted his 1986
Jack Burton/1980 Elwood Blues combo costume as he prepared to play his version
of the 1983 game Attack of the Blocky Pixels for the Atari 2600, while he
listened to a rendition of 1986’s masterpiece Turbo Lover by Judas Priest, all
the time admiring his exact replica of Patrick Swayze’s ass on a wall, as per
the 1989 film Road House.
You get the idea. Some people love it for that sort of
thing, others hate it, and while there are some interesting parts, it wasn’t
exactly great literature. However, I can say that Spielberg’s take was a
considerable improvement.
It’s the future, and most people in the world are plugged
into an immense MMO simulation game known as the OASIS, where you can
effectively do anything and take on any avatar from across pop culture and
beyond. Our story follows the young geek Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), part of a
movement to find the clues and keys to a mythical easter egg left by the OASIS
creator James Halliday, with untold wealth and power over the simulation as the
reward. This is all given in a rather blunt burst of exposition at the start,
although it’s accompanied by some pretty shots that do sell the sheer expanse
and majesty of a limitless computer game like this.
Spielberg does expand things beyond just fixating on the 80s
as the book does—the soundtrack is mostly hits from that era (from Joan Jett to Bon Jovi) but there’s plenty
of shoutouts from across the decades, especially to contemporary gaming. If you
enjoy your visual nods, there’ll be tons to pick apart from every shot, from
assault rifles out of Halo to even certain action hero movies that involve
magic tickets. Admittedly it’s mostly superficial, but hell with it, my stupid
geeky brain can’t resist getting a kick out of seeing Serenity deploy a Gundam
into battle (and if you don’t know what that means, the movie might not appeal
to you as much). On the visual side, it’s definitely vibrant and insanely
detailed, but unfortunately the characters are a bit more thinly spread.
Wade himself is passable, though a fairly generic
protagonist, who just sort of does the right thing all the time and is always
selfless and all that. Next to him is Olivia Cook as Artemis, fellow cyberspace
crusader and his crush, who, as in the book, feels more like a geek girl
fantasy than anything else—she gets all his nerdy references, is hot, kicks ass
but is also vulnerable, and so on. The one who does get the most development is
Aech, who let’s just say is more than meets the eye.
On the opposing side is Ben Mendelsohn as Nolan Sorrento,
director of IOI, which is basically what you get if Electronic Arts and Comcast
combined their insidious forces. His character isn’t super-developed either,
basically amounting to ‘bwaha ha ha I’m evil’, but at the same time, we see
enough of his corporate wickedness from amassing debt slaves to bluntly wielding
masked peons out of THX 1138 that you do love to hate him. His minions include
the more charismatically sardonic I-Rok as a bounty hunter inside the
simulation and an enforcer in the real world called…F’Nale. Because of course
she is, I guess hipster naming really takes off in the future. Still, the movie
does a good job of providing baddies to hiss at, adding along to the old-school
throwback feel.
The movie does pick up once IOI starts directly intervening
in the real world, after a somewhat slow middle act. Between this all is an awkward
romance between Wade and Artemis that’s all predictable, but then we get into a
full-length movie homage that fortunately takes things and runs with them—and
it’s not one you might expect either. I can say that, unfortunately, they don’t
enter Ferris Bueller and punch Matthew Broderick in the face.
Of course, it all comes down to a big final battle where CGI
renditions of a million videogame and movie characters clash against faceless
goons—but between all this, the movie serves as a sort of character study on
Halliday himself, played by Mark Rylance, and his relationship with his
friend/Wozniak analogue Og Morrow, as portrayed by Simon Pegg. Here is where
the real meat is—we get to see how Halliday’s fixation on a virtual world left
him with regret, and just what he wants to pass onto a successor, making the
ultimate message of ‘reality is real’ resonate all the more, far more
effectively than it was in the book. Hell, the movie seems to understand the
appeal of what videogaming should be than in the book—less so about just winning
a contest, and more the thrill of just playing and being anything you can be.
So, as Spielberg did 40 years ago with Jaws, he did managed
to elevate an otherwise so-so piece into a more enjoyable big-name film. In
that sense, he also manages to throw himself back to his golden years. Despite
it’s flaws, Ready Player One is an enjoyable popcorn flick with fun visuals,
goodies to cheer and baddies to hiss—if you think the pop culture references
are overwhelming or aren’t interested in the gaming theme, or just want
something deeper all around, then it’s probably not for you however. Beyond
that, if you’ve got your expectations set, then give it a look and start playing.
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