Based upon the novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Screenplay Written by Zak Penn and Ernest Cline
Produced and Directed by Steven Spielberg
**1/2 (two and a half stars)
RATED PG 13
When it comes to the nature of homage in regards to the artifacts of the past, there is a very fine line between innovation and simple exercises in nostalgia.
Around the original release of Ernest Cline's debut novel Ready Player One, his science fiction adventure which served as a travelogue and tribute to the pop culture of the late 20th century between the 1970's and 1990's, it was a book that I had picked up and placed down in bookstores many, many times as I was unsure as to how that aforementioned fine line would be treated. Even excited recommendations for the book from treasured friends did not move me terribly much in this case as I feared that the work would essentially be an exercise in nostalgia and not much else.
By the time the novel hit paperback status, I finally picked up a copy and read. My reaction to the novel was mixed at best for while I did think the story itself was quite clever, its overall execution less so, especially with the book's dialogue, which frankly, to my sensibilities was quite awful. The novel of Ready Player One indeed felt to me to be an excuse for Cline to hang his fanboy passions upon, and while there was a certain inventiveness to his story and I did appreciate the questions of our culture's adherence to fantasy in virtual worlds vs. reality in our actual flesh and blood existence, when it was all said and done, it was fun but empty--a collection of pop culture name droppings at the service of characters that had no soul. Essentially, if the pop culture of the '70s, '80s and '90s never happened, this book would not exist.
Of course, a book like Ernest Cline's was practically screaming to be made into a big budget feature film and when it was first announced that none other than Steven Spielberg would take the helm, it felt to me more than perfect as this man was the architect of so much of the tremendous output of the past that Cline honored in his narrative. Now that the film is here, ready to be experienced, and I have now seen it for myself, I have to say that I really wanted to love it but just as with the book, it was an experience that felt to be terribly lacking in any sense of depth, soul and oddly enough, storytelling innovation.
Now don't get me wrong. This is Steven Spielberg we're talking about and there are quite a number of moments and sequences in the film that are dazzling but let's be honest, Steven Spielberg made more innovative films in the 1980's than anything presented here. Yes, dear readers, I do not wish not be a killjoy, but I have to call 'em as I see 'em, Steven Spielberg's "Ready Player One," while beautifully made, is precisely an empty example of nostalgia and 21st century CGI bombast desperately in search of a purpose.
Just as with the original novel, "Ready Player One" opens in the year 2045, where much of the planet has become desolate due to over-population, climate change, corruption, pollution and all manner of societal ills. Humans have turned to the expansive virtual universe of the OASIS as refuge and as a location for education, work and endless entertainment under the guises of whatever and whichever avatar they wish to exist as.
Tye Sheridan stars as Wade Watts, an 18-year-old based in Columbus, Ohio who lives in stacked trailer slums with his aunt yet spends every possible waking hour inside the OASIS as his avatar Parzival, getting into one adventure after another with his best (virtual) friend, the hulking, mega muscled mechanic and male avatar Aech (played by Lena Waithe and whose character's name is pronounced as "H"), the ninja styled avatars of Daito (Win Morisaki) and Sho (Akihide Karatsu), as well as Art3mis (a terrific Olivia Cooke), the one whom our hero houses a massive crush, even though he has no idea of who she is in the real world.
All five eventually team up and name themselves the "High Five" as they, and seemingly the rest of the world are all on the hunt for a series of three virtual keys that will lead them to the Easter Egg of the OASIS as designed and planted by OASIS inventor, the now deceased technological genius and social misfit James Halliday (Mark Rylance), who has filled this virtual universe with the complete and labyrinthine amount of the late 20th century pop culture (books, movies, games, music, etc...) he adored.
Retrieval of the Easter Egg will award the winner with complete control of the OASIS, and after five years of searching, Parzival and his friends have found two of the keys, a feat which has alerted them to the conglomerate of Innovative Online Industries (IOI) and the nefarious CEO Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), whose corporate based fleet of gamers are also on the hunt with IOI's intention to control the OASIS themselves.
As real world identities of OASIS avatars are soon discovered, the real world lives of Wade Watts and his friends are all in the balance.
As previously stated, and as with the original source material, Steven Spielberg's "Ready Player One" houses an extremely clever story, essentially a mash up of say Steven Lisberger's "Tron" (1982), The Wachowski's "The Matrix" trilogy (1999/2003) and Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) with the character of James Halliday serving as this tale's Willy Wonka and everyone else in the pursuit of those Golden Tickets, so to speak.
Also, as previously stated, it is a beautifully made film in which Spielberg performed the Herculean task of creating two visually distinctive worlds to play around in, from the drab, dour impoverished environment of the real dystopian world--itself not too terribly removed from some locales witnessed in Spielberg's own "Minority Report" (2002)--and the eye popping, vibrantly hyper-kinetic universe of the OASIS, which is bursting at the seams with any and every conceivable reference from the 1980's that you could think of...that is except from Spielberg's own films as he did not wish to inadvertently create a vanity piece--although the T-Rex from Spielberg's "Jurassic Park" (1993) and the DeLorean from Robert Zemeckis' "Back To The Future" trilogy (1985/1989/1990), which Spielberg produced, make notable appearances.
Spielberg injects "Ready Player One" with an enthusiasm and exuberance that he has not been at liberty to display in recent years due to the nature of his recent films' subject matter. His obvious joy at just being able to play again is evident with his speed-of-light pacing in the film's spectacular opening OASIS car chase starring all manner of pop culture vehicles plus the arrival of King Kong himself, an absolutely brilliant tribute to Stanley Kubrick (I just can't spoil that for you), a swirling flight of fancy dance sequence set to the likes of New Order's "Blue Monday" and of course, The Bee Gee's "Staying Alive" and even more. Spielberg is having fun again, popcorn movie fun, that is and it is a sheer testament to the mastery of his powers with filmmaking craft and filmmaking genre that he has been able to arrive with this new film mere months after his previous and stylistically opposite experience with "The Post" (2017).
The visual effects are resplendent. The music selections are often spot-on and I enjoyed the performances from Olivia Cooke, Mark Rylance and Simon Pegg, who portrays James Halliday's one and only friend and former business partner Ogden Morrow. Also, as with the source material, I did appreciate the inclusion of themes pertaining to the dangers of living one's life completely on-line and to the detriment of making connections within the real world with real people. And, also without delving into spoilers, I also appreciated the film's sly critique of purely White, male fandom as pop cultural gatekeepers.
But again, I did not love this film and in fact, over the course of its two hour and twenty minute running time, I found myself growing less involved than I was at the film's outset, definitely during its strong first hour or so.
For all of the visual dynamism, and dual universe helter skelter, "Ready Player One" is a dangerously over-stuffed film that ultimately is not about terribly much of anything and does not really go anywhere significant. It doesn't help whatsoever that the film's primary heroes and villains are sadly underwritten and developed therefore making nearly all of them equally bland and characterless, with only Olivia Cooke's Art3mis, and possibly Lena Waithe's Aech to a lesser degree, making any sense of an impression.
I just find it strange and more than a little troubling that the leading character of Wade Watts is especially less than paper thin thus giving Tye Sheridan absolutely nothing to play or attempt to become other than simply being wide eyed and that is not nearly enough to even begin to base a character upon. If we are being given this story in which five years have passed in the pursuit of the three virtual keys, shouldn't we know something more about Wade's character that makes it possible for him, out of a world of gamers to be the one and only one to figure out Halliday's puzzles? Is it just that he is "pure of heart," or something? Granted, there's not much to him in the book either but even so, I would think that it would have to be more than his nature as a fan to fuel his success. But none of whatever that could be is ever seen or experienced at any point in the film and the results were lacking considerably.
Now, if I had been at all skeptical about this film before seeing it, it was based entirely in the notion of the movie existing as much as an exercise in nostalgia as the original novel. Well...that was actually not the main problem I had with the visual/conceptual presentation. In fact, the film and special effects are, again, so overstuffed and over-crowded and the proceedings fly by so rapidly it would be impossible to catch every single reference on first viewing--itself a canny way to get audiences to plunk down more money to see the film over and again and play "Spot The Reference." But all of that is painfully superficial as far as storytelling is concerned...even when the pop culture essentially is the story.
It can be done, however, and has been done before and to levels of cinematic brilliance and provocativeness. For instance, I still feel that Edgar Wright's superlative, spectacular yet profoundly under-appreciated "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" (2010), contained some of the most imaginative, inventive, creative special effects in years while also presenting a clean yet complex and enormously entertaining narrative that explored a young man's arrested development and fear of real world relationships, thus sparing himself real emotional pain if he just treated life as if it were a video game.
Additionally, I was also reminded of Cameron Crowe's polarizing, challenging "Vanilla Sky" (2001), which delved into more disturbing territories centered around the dangers of virtual reality and defining one's being through the pop culture they adore and treasure, making life a veritable dream world from which there is no escape.
"Ready Player One" does touch on those concepts but they are indeed all lost in the deluge which eventually dissolves the film into a series of characters just running around, either chasing or being chased, and we ultimately don't care terribly much about any of them at any time. The film's final "storm the castle" grand battle is also deflating as it is just yet another CGI bludgeoning that signifies nothing at all other than the massive budget the film received.
But worst of all is the story itself, which elements have been changed drastically from the novel--most egregiously, having characters' real identities that were revealed at the end of the book being revealed early in the movie--thus also deflating the slim emotional connections we would have otherwise felt between these virtual and real world characters. So, with that element taken away, all that is left is to watch the pretty pictures and that is just not enough to recommend this film as far as I am concerned.
Dear readers, at times, when I have had conversations with younger friends, young enough to not have experienced the artifacts of the past firsthand as I did, I often express the following sentiment: "I am old enough to remember a time when there was no such thing as 'Star Wars,' "Indiana Jones," or "Ghostbusters.' But then they came into the world and it was AWESOME!"
I was a child in the 1970's and a teenager in the 1980's and as I look back at those period, specifically through the lens of pop culture, I think I admire those times even more now as an adult as I did back then. For now, we are living in sadly derivative times as well as times w hen the gatekeepers are so afraid at trying anything that is not based upon something, anything that is not already part of the pop lexicon. To think, someone out there could possibly have that next whatever that can change the game forever but would we ever even see it because it is unknown? Are so-called "new" stories which only exist because of the past going to be what passes for innovation from now on? I hope not.
Steven Spielberg's "Ready Player One" is fun. It is...to a degree. But even so, and especially from a legend like Spielberg, we expect more. Something fresh, something new, something that doesn't feel like a shiny new trip through an old yearbook.
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