Ready Player One
Ready Player One (2018)
Image From IMDB
I don’t really like to be negative, especially when i’m reviewing, so let’s get this first part out the way so I can talk about what I liked. The film just doesn’t quite work for me. It’s a movie I want to love as I really enjoyed the book, and i’ve always been a big Spielberg fan, but Ready Player One feels rushed. I just didn’t connect with the characters the way I did in the book. And, that’s not just the books fault as I first watched Ready Player One long before I read the book and felt the same. It’s okay, and i’ll talk about the stuff I enjoyed, but overall, the magic is missing.
Ready Player One is about a Virtual Reality easter egg hunt in the uber popular and practically essential to life at this point Oasis. It follows the story of a lonely kid called Wade, aka Parzival, as he tries to find the prize and save the Oasis from an evil cooperate takeover… because they’re a bunch of douche bags who want to monetise everything (sound familiar)
The slow paced clues of the book are substituted for balls-to-the-wall action as the film starts with a frantic race sequence (after a long prologue) This sets the tone for everything that is different between the two formats, and for many (not including myself) it may be for the better.
Seeing dinosaurs and Kong stomp around New York while smashing up every movie car known to man is definitely a different pace, and something you don’t see on film everyday. The mixture of avatars are cool as well. And, I couldn’t help but smile when I saw the Iron Giant. In that regard, the film tries to pay homage the way the book does to the works which have come before.
And it was great seeing Spielberg fanboy over Robert Zemeckis and Stanley Kubrick. The Shining Sequence was definitely the standout scene of the movie for me, even if I didn’t quite understand why there where zombies there.
The cast all tried their best in difficult roles with the action taking place both in the real world and virtual. I particular liked Olivia Cooke and Ben Mendelsohn as Art3mis and Sorrento respectively. I wasn’t too sure about the additional characters, but anyone who hasn’t read the book won’t care about that.
But, much like the book itself, a lot of the fun really does come from spotting all your favourite references from Back to the Future to Terminator. From Turtles to War of the Worlds, and everything inbetween. The movie is jammed with them, and you’re sure to spot something different every time you watch it.
As mentioned, the movie didn’t really do it for me, but it’s not a bad film by any means. It’s a fast-paced action flick with plenty of cool scenes, it’s just maybe lacking a little soul for my taste. I have no doubt that it was a near impossible task to bring this book to screen, and not just because of the scope of the story, but the insane amount of copyright issues which must come along with it too. So, I applaud Spielberg and author Ernest Cline for at least trying to give it a go… but next time I go back to this story, it will be the book.
