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| Tye Sheridan in "Ready Player One" Photo Credit: Imdb.com |
Over the last few years, there’s been a trend in pop-culture nostalgia, be it relating to the ‘70s, ‘80s, or ‘90s. 2015 brought us “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and “Jurassic World,” both of which tapped into audiences’ love of the originals and became box-office behemoths. 2016 gave us the ‘80s-set “X-Men: Apocalypse,” a reboot of “Ghostbusters,” and the Netflix series, “Stranger Things,” the latter of which reveled in its ‘80s setting and showed a deep love for the pop culture of that era. Then, last year, we had the live-action remake of “Beauty and the Beast,” a reboot of “Power Rangers,” the ‘80s-set “It,” and a second season of “Stranger Things.” While this trend wasn’t as bothersome at first, it’s become a little much.
Now, let’s go back to 2011. This is the year in which Ernest Cline released his sci-fi novel, “Ready Player One,” a story that followed an adventure that was focused on the pop culture of the ‘80s. While the constant throwbacks to the last few decades of pop culture seem to still be climbing and still getting annoying, I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t have a blast reading the novel, which now arrives to the screen as an enjoyable spectacle from Steven Spielberg.
Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) is an 18-year-old who lives in Columbus, Ohio, in 2045. The world has fallen apart, and the only way how its inhabitants escape their daily struggles is by plugging into a virtual reality, known as the OASIS. When its creator, James Halliday (Mark Rylance), dies, he reveals to the world that he’s hidden an Easter egg within the game, and whoever’s the first to complete three special tasks and find the egg will inherit the OASIS and his vast fortune. After a few years pass without anyone making progress, Wade accomplishes the first task. Once that happens, the future of the OASIS is put in jeopardy by Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), the CEO of Innovative Online Industries (IOI), who intends to beat Wade to the egg and take over the OASIS.
Although there isn’t much character development, it makes sense within the story because, since we spend a lot of time with the characters as their avatars, it reflects the characters’ detachment from reality, where we’re more familiar with the avatars then we are with the people behind their virtual selves. Despite there not being much to the characters as humans, the acting is still fine all round, especially Rylance. He exhibits the loneliness of reality that encouraged his character to create the OASIS, and Rylance delivers most of the film’s emotion as we learn about the dreamer behind the melancholy eyes.
The screenplay by Cline and Zak Penn deviates considerably from the source material, but that’s not a bad thing, as many of the changes provide the film with a faster pace. Two of the most-significant changes happen with the first two tasks, both of which are constructed to add more excitement and make the narrative more cinematic.
Something else that the screenplay does well is not overload us with pop-culture references at every turn. Although the cascade of references worked fine in the book, it would have been more distracting in a visual medium. With the book being scaled down to fit a feature-length movie, there isn’t a chance for the characters to visit as many worlds within the OASIS in the movie as they did in the book, and therefore, less references. However, this benefits the movie because while there are a few big scenes where the reference count is heavy, the rest of the film doles them out at a steady rate, instead of just trying to cram in as many as they can.
Spielberg’s only one of two directors that I could imagine making this movie (the other being J.J. Abrams), and he doesn't disappoint. He’s the perfect fit for this movie, seeing as the story focuses on (mostly) ‘80s pop culture, and he directed some of the most-influential movies of that decade. For this film, Spielberg delivers the visual extravagance that the book envisions, bringing the OASIS to realization with stunning effects. This is done most-notably in a thrilling car race inside the OASIS, and in the final battle when the OASIS avatars fight Sorrento’s virtual army, in which we get everything from The Iron Giant blasting away at IOI soldiers to Chucky the killer doll going berserk on them to a Gundam robot going head-to-head with Mechagodzilla. It’s all pure spectacle, but when you have someone like Spielberg at the helm and putting his heart into the work, it’s difficult to resist.
Spielberg teams up with his usual collaborators, such as cinematographer Janusz Kamiński and editors Michael Kahn and Sarah Broshar. However, a change in his usual crew is the composer. Instead of John Williams writing the score (he was busy working on the score for Spielberg’s “The Post,”), he uses Alan Silvestri. Because Silvestri’s known for writing the music for the “Back to the Future” trilogy, a staple of ‘80s and ‘90s cinema (the third installment was released in 1990), it couldn’t have worked out better to have him contribute to this film.
Even though “Ready Player One” doesn’t quite reach the heights of Spielberg’s sci-fi classics, it still has that sense of adventure that you’ll find in those films. With that, it’s worth it to do what Wade and the other characters do, and immerse yourself in the OASIS.
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