Movie Review: Ready Player One (2018) directed by Steven Spielberg
It is the dark future of Columbus, Ohio in the year 2045. Ecological disaster and economic collapse have made the outside world unbearable for many of the world’s citizens. Fortunately, there’s an online virtual world known as the Oasis that they can escape to. But worse news, creative culture has stalled out since sometime around the pandemic of 2020. And that’s been made worse by a resurgence of fanatical worship of 1980s pop culture. You see, Halliday (Mark Rylance), the inventor and owner of Oasis, died a few years back and left control of the company and its virtual world to whoever solves a series of riddles and challenges, and to beat them you must know all about Halliday’s obsessions–and since he was an 80s kid….
One of the Gunters (Easter egg hunters) is Wade Watts, known online as Parzifal (Tye Sheridan). He lives in the Stacks (mobile homes stacked on top of each other in rickety frames) outside Columbus with his aunt and her abusive boyfriend. He’s secretly created a base where he has a decent gaming rig to play games in Oasis and search for clues. Wade is best online friends with Aech (Lena Waithe), who often teams up with Daito (Win Morisaki) and Sho (Philip Zhao) in competitions. During a race meant as the first challenge in the Halliday contest, Parzifal meets his favorite livestreamer Art3mis (Olivia Cooke) and quickly falls in love despite warnings from both Aech and Art3mis that he only knows her online persona.
Opposing our heroes in their quest is the monopoly-seeking IOI corporation, led by CEO Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) who was once Halliday’s intern. IOI wants to turn the Oasis into a pay-for-play advertising-ridden cash cow. “We can cover up to 80% of the display with advertisements before triggering brain aneurysms.” Most of IOI’s employees are anonymous Sixers (because they are issued six digit employee numbers) but two minions who get names are online expert I-R0k (T.J. Miller) and offline enforcer F’Nale Zandor (Hannah John-Kamen). F’Nale is a movie-exclusive character.
Early in the story, Wade figures out a clue that no one else had in the last five years, and wins the first key. Although he refuses to “clan”, it’s people near him that get the idea from him, and become the High Five. Can the High Five solve the remaining challenges and beat IOI to the prize before they’re zeroed out online and in the real world?
This movie is based on the novel by Ernest Cline, which I have previously reviewed. As with the novel, this movie is squarely aimed at men who were nerds in the 1980s, although the big cultural references are well known enough that other audiences will be able to follow along. The move from book to movie means that quite a few references have to be changed because of rights issues, and there’s much more emphasis on movie references. On the good side, this also means that at least in the background of scenes, we see much more variety in eras and fandoms than the book has, even a blink and you’ll miss it appearance by a character from a movie that wasn’t out yet in 2018!
The CGI is nifty, and really shows off what you can do with a full budget. (The Iron Giant and Gundam RX-78 vs. Mechagodzilla!) The actors for the High Five do an okay job, but the baddies’ acting is better. Spielberg (famous director in the 1980s) is still good at his profession.
Good: The movie scraps a lot of Parzifal’s stalker tendencies towards Art3mis, probably to condense the timeline, but it also makes him a bit more likable. This version of the story also foregrounds that the contest is as much about not making the same mistakes Halliday did in not connecting with people and pushing them away as it is about sharing his obsessive fandoms. This Wade Watts, having learned those lessons, would never have made the mistakes the Wade Watts of Ready Player Two did.
Less good: The main romance still feels forced.
Content note: attempted suicide, gore (the movie warns you it’s coming up) and female nudity.
Overall: A fun popcorn movie, especially for male nerds of a certain age. Watchers the same age as the protagonists may find it a bit baffling.
