Spielberg loves movies. That is one of the most obvious statements of all time, but his latest film, Ready Player One, proves even more what art means to him. It is a movie about virtual video games that everyone is obsessed with, yet Spielberg takes this media and says how much it was influenced by him in an flattered sort of way. He’s not sitting on his own throne taking all the praise. He lets it be known that he was influenced as an filmmaker by countless other movies. Here he takes entertainment and prays that he will be remembered and that his work will inspire many other filmmakers while also thanking past idles for getting him to this spot. All this in a pretty decent action flick.
The story of Ready Player One, based off a book by Ernest Cline, is about Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) a young kid in the slums, nearly post-apocalyptic world of 2045 Ohio. He and the majority of the population escape their sad little world by playing in the Oasis, a virtual video game where anything is possible. If you want to be Jason Voorhees and slash your ways through orcs and robots, go ahead. If you want to race with the DeLorean dodging a T-Rex, be my guest. Like every game there is an ultimate goal, you can just level up and wander, but the main objective is to find three keys that are hidden around the lands and you will gain control of the Oasis. This Willy Wonka-esque challenge was made by James Donovan Halliday (Mark Rylance) in a video will. After five years, no one has even come close to the first key. A determined Wade and his group of close allies try to find them all before the evil corporation I0I find them.
The acting here is fine, no one will make the best of the year list nor the worst, but I feel the characters are secondary to the ideas and the action scenes. Spielberg sort of goes back to an old trope and gets a bunch of kids together to have an adventure against some evil, corporate adults like ET and his produced film The Goonies. These characters add a lot of fun into the film. Wade’s best friend, a huge tough looking orc, has a nice reveal to who is the person behind the character. The love story Wade has with Samantha (Olivia Cooke) is super cheesy, but still works with Spielberg’s throwback theme. This also applies to the main bad guy, Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) who is onenote, no reasoning with villain who you are not quite sure what motivates him. The visuals, unfortunately, are only decent. They look really nice at times, but the film is on overload with random beloved characters from pop culture. Which is the point, the creator of the Oasis loved pop culture so he added everything he knew in the game. Oddly, it looks like a video game, which is probably on purpose as well, but it is kind of hard to look at Wade’s avatar character, Parzival. The action here is fine, Spielberg has proved he can make a thrilling sequence in recent years with the fourth Indiana Jones and TinTin. Here they are still pretty wonderful, but a tier bellow his more recent endeavors. Oddly, the humor in the movie is completely off tone. The “natural” humor that comes out of the plot is good. The jokes on the other hand do not work, specifically the avatar voiced by TJ Miller. He barely belongs in the film and is only hired because the movie otherwise would not have a comic relief. It doesn’t need one is the worst part about it.
One of the best scenes in the film takes place in a classic Stanley Kubrick film. I won’t be giving it away, but the sets and look of the scene is amazing. It really just seems that Spielberg took shots from said film and inserts Ready Player One characters into it. The scene is wonderful and is plenty funny. This let’s Spielberg pay homage to his long lost friend, Kubrick, and works as a confession. Here he admits that not only did his ally influence his work, Spielberg has stolen shots from him to make his movie. It seems he does this this to admit he’s stolen, because it looked good and pleads for others not to judge others for “stealing” shots and sequences. Every pop culture reference ends up being a connect the dots game for who inspired who along with being nerd eye candy. This all leads to a man that hopes his legacy means something, hands it down to the youth and says goodbye. I’ve been thinking a lot of what Spielberg means to me and what I’ll feel when he passes. The last scene with Halliday is the answer to that thought. It’s a love letter to us, begging that we keep making beautiful, enjoyable entertainment.
Schmuck For A Lifetime 