Straight from the pages of Ernest Cline's bestselling novel comes Ready Player One, the newest Spielberg joint chock-full of pop culture references and CGI nostalgia. While every trademark beat of a Spielberg film is easily seen throughout, this movie fails to bring anything new to the science-fiction genre. Despite a few memorable scenes and some colorful aesthetics, this film is just another fairly generic action/adventure romp.
The most prominent issues with this film are things that are unfortunately absent: a riveting story and deep characters. This film follows Wade (Tye Sheridan), a hometown kid who lost his parents at a young age and looks to the Oasis for escape from his own reality. The Oasis is a virtual video game-type world that almost everyone is logged on to and provides endless possibilities for who you can be and what you can make of yourself. A large, forgettable organization is trying to win the final challenge of the game, Wade stands up for the people, he gets the girl, bad guys are thrown in a police car, blah blah blah. This plot has been seen countless times, especially in action/adventure films, and has become a sort of trademark for Spielberg. While the film still brings its own aesthetic style to the table, there is nothing that surprised me about the writing. I was not upset though that I didn't see anything wildly original, because I was not expecting anything groundbreaking at all. I can sit through a recycled plot as long as the characters are interesting, which in this film's case, they were not. Sheridan's Wade was the most bland and unemotional character and in my opinion, should not have been the main protagonist. His lack of personality and development matched that of a supporting character at best. Frankly, I would prefer he do independent films and shed a tear or two in an up-close, Mukdeeprom-type shot in an A24 film. He definitely needs to work on his screen presence, especially being in a Spielberg blockbuster, for God's sake. This goes for the antagonist as well. Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) was the threatening force behind the IOI, which is the organization focused on winning the final challenge of the game and using the profits for their own good. While he was a decent villain throughout, there is nothing that really scared me about his actions. Along with his performance, the writing behind the character was a solid "meh."
The romantic relationship that was attempted in this film was also a visibly awkward issue. Wade's avatar Parzival and Samantha's (Olivia Cooke) avatar Art3mis were set up throughout to be the perfect digital couple, but there was no development into their relationship whatsoever. After meeting up and helping each other get the keys, Wade dropped a quick "I love you" and scared off Samantha for the majority of the film, rightfully so. However, after deciding to help him finish the game, they were suddenly all over each other by the end. There was no buildup to this, and Samantha was given no reason to bow down to the heroic actions of Wade. The obligatory final kiss scene was so unnecessary, along with the entirety of that relationship. Other characters that felt vastly underdeveloped were Aech (Lena Waithe), Sho (Philip Zhao), and Daito (Win Morisaki). While they indeed helped Wade throughout the movie, they were the only minorities and were not given much representation.
I still relatively enjoyed this film, I just do not believe it was anything more than a generic blockbuster. There were many parts that I enjoyed, but felt could have used some improvement. The CGI used throughout the film was obviously very prominent, and because of that, the cinematography was quite useless. There was even an interview with the DP Janusz Kaminski, in which he said that he felt the art of the camera was going to waste, especially in films like these with so much of the work simply done by computers. This is the same issue with the hordes of characters that made cameos. The nostalgia was a great feeling, especially with the Iron Giant, the DeLorean, and some other memorable characters, but I can honestly say it got to be annoying trying to focus on the main characters when the hundreds of other pop culture references were getting in the way. My absolute favorite part of this film, however, was the entire The Shining sequence. When they stepped into the world of Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation, they used actual footage from the 1980 film and spliced in our heroes' actions. The whole scene with the evil twin girls and the blood rushing out the elevators was so visibly pleasing, especially with the characters' connections to the Overlook Hotel. This act proved to be very clever and definitely kept my attention when it was beginning to fade away.
Ready Player One is an entertaining but frankly empty film that I will most likely forget about in a few weeks. However, the massive slew of pop culture cameos along with a bit of impressive animation makes this movie worth a watch. Maybe two, to catch all the references.
My Rating: ★★★
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